Priestly identity: truth & charity

Priestly identity: truth & charity

Rabbi: You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. (Jn 1:49) This brief but resounding confession of faith by the apostle Nathaniel gives us the basis for Christ’s mission: his divine sonship. He is the Word Incarnate. This is one of the two hinges on which...

Jesus Christ our Priest

Jesus Christ our Priest

The great and abiding cause of the joy of the Nativity of the Lord and of His Epiphany to the nations through the Three Kings is clearly expressed in the First Letter of John. The cause of our joy is the testimony given by the Holy Spirit Himself: God gave us eternal...

St Maria Goretti

St Maria Goretti

Such is the embrace of the communion of Saints that today’s commemoration of St Maria Goretti, whom the Church reveres for her witness to virginal chastity one century ago, easily takes the Christian mind back to the memory of the martyrs of her early centuries —...

Lord, accept this sacrifice

Lord, accept this sacrifice

Through catechisms, we are all familiar with the ends for which the Eucharistic Sacrifice is offered: in praise and adoration, for intercession and atonement. But in recent decades much less emphasis has been placed on the fourth end – that the Sacrifice of the Mass...

The Catholic priesthood

The Catholic priesthood

... I also repeat what the priest says just after receiving the Sacred Host at this Mass: “Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi? — What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered to me?” (Ps 115:12), I think also of what St...