Precepts of the Church (CCC 2042) 1: Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. 2: Confess your sins at least once a year. 3: Go to Communion at least once a year during Easter season. 4: Keep holy Sundays and holy days of obligation. 5: Observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence. […]Read more

Blessed are the meek… because “love is patient” (makrothyméi). Pope Francis links this assertion of 1 Corinthians 13 to God’s meekness and mercy: Makrothyméi… [is] the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where we read that God is “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18). It refers, then, to the quality of one who does […]Read more

Hungering for the Lord’s Day Holiness is a right relationship with God: “Be holy; for I the LORD am holy” (Leviticus 20:26). Our hunger and thirst for righteousness makes us hunger and thirst for God and for keeping his special Day holy, thus fulfilling the Third Commandment. Think: if you love your mother, wouldn’t you […]Read more

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Matthew 5:6). In Sacred Scripture justice or righteousness are essentially religious notions, like the biblical notion of holiness. As God says: the “righteous shall live by faith” (Hebrews 10:38, quoting Habakkuk 2:4), and “without faith it is impossible to please” God […]Read more

St. Paul says: “Love bears all things” (panta stégei). Christian meekness means “more than simply putting up with evil… [or] holding one’s peace… It implies limiting judgment, checking the impulse to issue a firm and ruthless condemnation: Judge not and you will not be judged (Luke 6:37)” (Amoris Lætitia 112). For condemning others is the […]Read more

Respecting human life means also respecting the body, temple of God’s gift of life and of the Holy Spirit. Meekness towards our body means giving it proper nutrition and care—as we would any gift from someone we loved and respected—and avoiding things that harm or incapacitate the body, even temporarily, such as recreational drugs or […]Read more

Racism has been polarizing our country unnecessarily because all lives matter to us as children of God! As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says so forcefully: Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice […]Read more

If God loves human life into existence, it “must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person” (CCC 2270). This is why “Direct abortion…willed either as an end or a means, is gravely […]Read more

“Blessed are the meek… You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:5,21). Our Lord, who is meek and humble of heart, teaches us the way to “find rest for our souls” (Matthew 11:29). Meekness helps us avoid harming others by anger and verbal abuse, increasing peace here on this […]Read more

The third Beatitude is Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). Faith in God gives us an inner strength and peace to remain faithful in life’s ups and downs even if others are against us: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31). This is the faith […]Read more