September 29, Feast of St. Michael Left, a 600-year-old Russian icon of St. Michael the Archangel. It was done by St. Andrei Rublev and dates from the early 1400s. St. Michael's Feast Day is September 29 in the West, November 18 in the East. St. Michael is not a saint in the traditional [...]
"Deepen your knowledge of Jesus. This ends loneliness, overcomes sadness and uncertainty, gives real meaning to life, curbs passions, exalts ideals, expands energies in charity, brings light into decisive choices. Let Christ be for you the Way, the Truth, and the Life." —St. Pope John Paul II (Pope from 1978 to 2005) May 4, [...]
“Do not be ashamed to enter again into the Church... These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine. Just as there are for the body wounds and medicines, so for the soul are sins and repentance. However, sin has the shame and repentance possesses the courage.” —St. John [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "What united Orthodox and Catholics in those years was far more important than that which divided them, for they were united by love of Christ.”— Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, "Foreign Minister" of the Russian Orthodox Church, in his address on May 11 to the "World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense [...]
May 10, 2017, Wednesday "I will go to Fatima on a pilgrimage, to entrust to the Virgin the temporal and eternal destinies of humanity.”—Pope Francis today at his May 10 Wednesday General Audience, referring to his upcoming trip on Friday to Fatima, Portugal, to canonize two of the shepherd children who were witnesses to the apparitions [...]
September 18, 2016, Sunday -- The Face of Christ and Unity "Seeking the Face of Jesus must be the longing of all of us Christians... If we persevere in our quest for the Face of the Lord, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, he, Jesus, will be our eternal joy, our reward and glory for [...]
A number of pilgrimages, especially from abroad, who were present in Rome for the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta at St. Peter's (Sunday, September 4) also took the opportunity to come to the Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello. On the day following the canonization the pilgrimage sponsored by the American Catholic magazine INSIDE [...]
August 29, 2016, Monday -- Rome-Moscow Exchange Intensifies "May the Holy Mother of God, our common heavenly Mother, keep all of us and cover us from all evil.'" —Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, speaking to a dozen visitors from Rome, his guests for two [...]
Icon of Sts. Peter and Paul Saints Peter and Paul are considered pillars of the Orthodox Church, and thus share a special feast day which is celebrated on June 29. This feast is preceded by one of the main periods of fasting in the liturgical calendar, a time of fasting that is unique to [...]
St. Gregory Palamas We are made up of a soul and body, and both soul and body consist of many members. For the soul too has members after a fashion: those parts of it concerned with growth, desiring, anger and reason. Therefore, true fasting must extend to every part, cleansing and healing them all. [...]
