Author: Fr. John Waiss

Fr. John Waiss

Father John Waiss is the pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Church in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a member of Opus Dei, the prelature founded by St. Josemaria Escriva.

How to Celebrate First Holy Communion

April 26, 2026April 25, 2026 Articles, Family and Kids

Parents—along with Godparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles—have the great and primary responsibility of educating children in the Faith. Your example means everything to them: attending Sunday Mass each week expresses your faith, thanking God for the greatest gift his love could give: to receive him in the Blessed Sacrament. Parents can highlight the true meaning […]

Our Lady, Mother of Purest… Most Beautiful Love

April 19, 2026April 19, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality, Family and Kids

Our world treats vocation as a choice of career and treats sex as meaningless recreation. As rebels we turn to Our Lady, Mother of Love Most Beautiful, to teach us and our young people the beauty of a chaste heart in response to God’s call to love. The Church teaches that God calls all to […]

Love Goes Beyond Rules

March 29, 2026March 27, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

We often portray Christian morality as something negative, a series of don’ts: Don’t kill… don’t miss Mass on Sunday… don’t lie or steal… In other words, don’t have any fun… Seeing morality as a list of arbitrary rules that restrict and control our lives makes it unattractive and repulsive. True Christian morality is a positive […]

The Divine Pedagogy of Love

March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

Forming our conscience is key to living in Christ’s love, a “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith,” moving us to “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. [But] by rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith” (1 Timothy 1:5,18-19). To help […]

Resolving Doubts and Uncertainty Prudently

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

Just as we doubt about what or how to say something, sometimes we have doubts, uncertainty, or fears about what we should do. Forming our conscience responsibly includes developing the virtue of prudence, the habit of properly exercising the conscience, knowing when we can trust its formation and the need to act on its judgments. […]

An Action’s Moral Meaning

March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 Articles, Catechesis

Each human action objectively “says” something, especially in relationship to a person we love. If I point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, even if the gun doesn’t fire, I “say” something evil to that person (doing so as a joke with an obviously toy gun or finger is not the same as […]

Forming Our Conscience

March 1, 2026March 1, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

Some say: Ignorance is bliss, because it excuses them to do what really want to do. Yet only invincible ignorance of a person who has no possibility of knowing the morality of an act excuses. Such ignorance is common among small children and very uneducated people. If… the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject […]

The Field Hospital for our Mortal Wounds

February 15, 2026February 13, 2026 Articles, Catechesis, Faith and Spirituality

Reconciliation is a wonderful sacrament of God’s mercy that restores a relationship killed by sin. It is a “moment of intense prayer,” “source of true interior peace,” and a way “to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy” (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, 17): God’s forgiveness knows no bounds. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, […]

Morality as a Dialogue of Love

February 1, 2026January 30, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

Out of love God created Adam and Eve in his image and likeness. He asked them to obey a simple commandment as a sign of their trusting love in return: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge […]

Biblical Morality: A Story of Love and Mercy

January 24, 2026January 23, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

The Bible is a love story, the story of God revealing his love for man and of man’s response to that love, making the Bible a source of moral reflection. This love story begins with God creating Adam and Eve and inviting them to freely join him in a covenant of holy love. Morality—being good […]

Pope Leo’s Message for the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2026 (part III)

January 20, 2026January 19, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

The following is Part III of a message from His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for the LIX World Day of Peace. Read Part I here and Part II here. An essential service that religions must render to a suffering humanity is to guard against the growing temptation to weaponize even thoughts and words. The great […]

Pope Leo’s Message for the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2026 (part II)

January 11, 2026January 12, 2026 Articles, Faith and Spirituality

The following is Part II of a message from His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for the LIX World Day of Peace. Read Part I here. When we treat peace as a distant ideal, we cease to be scandalized when it is denied, or even when war is waged in its name. We seem to lack […]

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