John M. DeJak

The Empire Builder (or, What I Saw on the Train)

Trains and Christmas go together. It has been so—at least in the United States—since the early part of the 20th century. It is not unusual to see a train encircling the Christmas tree, or to read a Christmas story or watch a Christmas movie with people traveling by train. There is a certain romance bound…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Ninth Day

In the Year of Our Lord 1846 the bishops of the United States dedicated our land to Mary of the Immaculate Conception.In a brave and splendid gesture they presented to the Queen of Heaven the new republic with its high hopes and uncertainties, with its enormous possibilities for good or evil, with the record of…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Eighth Day

Life is not easy for a man who aspires to strong virtue.Temptations are much too fascinating.In youth passion plays like a livid flame.In success false loves throw themselves before him.In failure he is prompted to seek forgetfulness in sin.And always, creature of body and of soul that he is, he knows the war in his…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Seventh Day

…flows the future of the race. Rightly then do those who love Mary know her importance to the women of our world. In those dark days before Mary, women had…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Sixth Day

“Like Mother, like child,” runs the ancient saw.He who accepts the Savior as His Lord and God cannot doubt the perfect sinlessness that was Christ’s. It is blasphemy to imagine for a second that Christ could have been in the power of Satan, that His soul lacked the fullness of divine life, that He was…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Fifth Day

Nothing else had been so holy among the chosen people as had the ark of the law.Within this sacred tabernacle had rested God’s promise to his people.Yet within this ark there rested only a few things that God had touched or designed. The table of the law, precious writings of God’s dictation, the loaves of…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Fourth Day

Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with Thee, blessed art thou among women.The immortal words, spoken prayerfully every day by millions of Catholics in millions of rosaries, were not of human thought. They were spoken by the Archangel Gabriel, who came straight from the throne of God. These words were an angelic echo of…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Third Day

What does this mean, the Immaculate Conception?Through sin Adam and Eve threw away the divine life that we call grace. And since they were the ancestors of all of us, we lost through them the inheritance that should rightfully be ours.All men, the children of Adam and Eve, were born without grace, without divine life,…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: Second Day

Dark were the days that preceded the birth of the Savior.Sin had thrown over mankind the pall of ignorance and error, despair of God, and distrust of man.Even the chosen people knew that they were waiting in the dark night of their race for the coming of the new dawn that was to be their…

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Immaculate Conception Novena: First Day

Two Eves figure in the history of mankind.The first was called Eve by God himself when he made his first daughter.The second was called Ave, Maria, when God’s messenger told her how deeply beloved she was by God and God’s Son.The first Eve, born sinless, brought sin to the world by the fact that she…

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