The Second Book of Maccabees, Chapter 7, recounts the horrific story of the Jewish mother who was forced to watch the killing of her seven sons during the persecution of the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 BC). This evil military general inherited a portion of Alexander the Great's empire and set about forcing everyone [...]
Consider how you would react if a man in a police uniform barged into the room where you were teaching catechism to children and, with a gun in your face, yelled: “I’ve told you many times not to speak about Jesus. You must not mention God here, otherwise I will kill you all.” And [...]
The architects and stone masons who built the great medieval Gothic cathedrals would not have shared the opinion of the current Jesuit General that the devil is just a figment of our imagination. (That whirring sound you hear is the Jesuits’ founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, spinning in his grave.) No, the medieval craftsmen [...]
“Mont Saint-Michel has broken the English siege!” cried the messenger as he galloped into the little town of Domrémy at the far eastern edge of France. It was the year 1424 AD, and a twelve-year-old girl of that town named Jehanne received the news with open enthusiasm. “There is hope for the kingdom of [...]
[This article is a sequel to the 9/19/21 email newsletter, "See the Unconquered Fortress of a Mighty Archangel".] Why does the Church venerate an invisible warrior? Because spiritual warfare is the lot of Christians on this earth. Pure and simple. The great Archangel, St. Michael, is known as the Prince of the Heavenly Host [...]
Italian folk songs are often performed using an artistic technique the Italians have perfected. They call it “Bel Canto”, a name that literally means beautiful song or music. The Harvard Dictionary of Music describes the vocal technique as placing “emphasis on beauty of sound and brilliance of performance rather than dramatic expression or romantic [...]
My excellent Latin teacher in college caught me by surprise one day. I thought I’d impress him with my deep culture by telling him how much I liked listening to the Ave Maria in Latin. He responded, “Oh really? Which one?” (There I was – busted – I didn’t know there was more than [...]
One day in a big city, the managers of a supermarket looked at their profit-loss sheets and discovered that they were losing business to their local competitors. They knew they had to figure out some way to generate more interest in the store and increase sales. They settled on the idea of holding a [...]
Have you ever found yourself so transfixed by the beauty of something that you become totally absorbed in it, or found yourself listening to a single piece of music over and over because it speaks so deeply to your heart and soul? That is what happens to me each time I listen to the [...]
Although the small rural town of West Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, might not be familiar to most, the tragic shooting of Amish schoolchildren that took place there in 2006 probably is. It is notably one of the saddest incidents in the whole history of school shootings in this country, but it is [...]