Posts
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…
Christmas as Real History
Ed. Note. In this 2005 article authored by WFF President Charles E. Rice, he suggests to Notre Dame students and to all of us a new approach in considering Christmas. In the face of the secularization that continues to get worse with each passing year and in the midst of an increasingly hostile federal government…
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…
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…
Saint Nicholas has something for Everyone – Even Pawn Brokers
Today’s feast is that of Saint Nicholas, a saint worthy of notice by anyone and everyone. He was a Bishop at the young age of 22. (22!). He is famed with resurrecting people from the dead, including three young boys who had been butchered by their father. He brought wheat to his famine struck area…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
