The question posed starts with the standard of proof. A civil verdict requires only a preponderance of the evidence, a fraction over half. However, the test I applied in my book, Resurrection on Trial, is explanatory adequacy, used by historians and forensic investigators for events long past. Does the Christian claim of the Resurrection explain the full record more completely and coherently than every rival explanation, and does it resist displacement by them? That is a higher bar.

An account does not clear this higher bar by merely edging out the competition. It must leave the fewest questions unexplained. It does not require absolute certainty, which no claim about antiquity can meet. We do not demand it of Alexander, Caesar, or Socrates. So, let’s legally test the claim of the Resurrection.

The Direct Examination

The Gospels come in first. Their adequacy as historical documents rests on ordinary evidentiary grounds, not any claim of inspiration. They were composed within the lifespan of eyewitnesses, their authorship is uniformly attested with no competing attributions, and they were transmitted within a culture trained in controlled memorization. Their central claims converge across independent accounts while peripheral variations differ as genuinely independent testimony does. That does not prove the Resurrection. It establishes admissibility.

All four canonical Gospels report that women discovered the empty tomb, a detail no first-century forger would invent, since ancient courts gave a woman’s word little standing; Josephus wrote that women should not be permitted to testify on account of “the levity and boldness of their sex” (Antiquities 4.8.15). The witnesses then behaved in ways that make no sense for men protecting a fiction. Peter, who denied Jesus three times, weeks later declared, “This Jesus, God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Thomas, who refused to take anyone’s word for it, said upon seeing the wounds, “My Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28). Men who had scattered in fear proclaimed a risen Christ within weeks, in the city that had crucified him, and suffered torture and death rather than recant.

Now the Cross-Examination

Opposing counsel asks:

Isn’t the Resurrection based only on the gospels that made it into the Bible, while other gospels disagree? No. This assumes a competition the record does not show. Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary date from the mid-to-late second century or later, generations after the events and after the four Gospels were in public use. The Muratorian Canon (c. AD 170-200) records the four as writings read in churches, reflecting what was already received, not a committee’s decision. Those texts do not contest the empty tomb or offer a rival account of the body. They rest on a philosophy that denies the goodness of the flesh, which is why they held little interest in a bodily Resurrection. There was no suppressed counter-testimony, only a later genre answering a different question.

Isn’t it obvious that they stole the body? No. This was the first counter-story, and Matthew records it circulating from the beginning (Mt. 28:13-15). Justin Martyr complains in the Dialogue with Trypho that agents were sent abroad to spread this story, and Tertullian was still answering it in North Africa at the end of the second century. Notice what that establishes. For 150 years, the standing objection was never that the tomb was full; it was an argument about who emptied it. Opponents with every motive to produce a body spent generations explaining its absence, a strong hostile-source concession. The theory asks us to believe that men who scattered and denied Jesus under questioning overpowered a guard, then were beaten, imprisoned, and executed for a claim they knew to be false. People die for what they wrongly believe true. They do not die for what they know is a lie, one after another, with no one breaking.

Didn’t Jesus simply survive the crucifixion? No. This “swoon theory” appeals to some because it requires no miracle. For it to be true, a man scourged nearly to death and pierced with a spear that drew what John describes as blood and water (Jn. 19:34), a detail modern medicine associates with cardiac collapse, would have to regain consciousness unaided, free himself from burial wrappings, move a sealed stone from inside, evade a guard, walk miles on ruined feet, then persuade his followers he had conquered death rather than barely survived. Roman crucifixion was designed to end in death. It did.

Weren’t the appearances hallucinations? No. This is a strong modern objection, and it fails on three fronts. First, hallucinations are private events. They do not occur to groups, and Paul reports an appearance to more than five hundred at once (1 Cor. 15:6). Second, hallucinations do not empty tombs. Third, they do not explain witnesses who had every reason to resist: James, who had doubted Jesus, and Paul, who was persecuting the Church. Even Gerd Lüdemann, an atheist scholar, grants that the earliest disciples genuinely believed the risen Jesus appeared to them. The dispute is not whether they believed it, but what explains why.

Isn’t this all just legend that grew with retelling? No. Legends need time, and here there is none to spare. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians transmits a formula older than the letter itself, one he says he “received,” naming Peter, the Twelve, James, and the five hundred, most of them still alive and available to be asked. That creed predates the letter by years, placing it within the first decade of the Resurrection itself, testimony offered while it could still be checked.

Isn’t it true that miracles would violate natural law and thus cannot happen? No. This treats the laws of nature as prescriptive commands rather than descriptive observations. They summarize what ordinarily happens; they do not forbid what is rare. The Creator stands above and outside of nature. Additionally, unprecedented does not mean impossible; the Big Bang has not happened twice. Hume’s argument that miracles are always the least likely explanation makes the error a good lawyer spots at once: he did not weigh the evidence, he excluded it, letting his premise dictate his conclusion. That is not evaluative; it is announcing the outcome before any evidence is heard.

Based on the standard governing claims about the ancient world, the Resurrection explains the most and leaves the least unexplained. Each objection may nick a single strand. None displaces the whole, because they conflict and leave untouched what others cannot explain.

Many Catholics were taught their faith need not face such scrutiny, leaving them unprepared for serious objections. But the Church has never treated faith and reason as rivals. The East proclaims the Resurrection in Paschal homilies and before empty tomb icons; the West argued it through Augustine, Aquinas, and Newman. Pope St. John Paul II issued the encyclical Fides et Ratio, calling faith and reason “like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Both wings carry us toward the same truth.

The next time someone asks why you believe in the Resurrection, do not change the subject. Examine the record together. It has been surviving cross-examination for two thousand years.

Editor’s Note: For a disciplined, methodologically rigorous inquiry into the validity of the Resurrection, read Peter D. Martino’s upcoming release, Resurrection on Trial: A Judicial Inquiry into the Christian Claim of the Resurrection of Jesus, available for preorder from Sophia Institute Press.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

This Sunday, Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive a brother who sins against him.  Jesus tells him to forget the math.  Why?

Gospel (Read Mt. 18:21-35)

In last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus instructed the apostles on how to handle problems that would arise in His Church when brother sinned against brother.  Now, Peter asks the question that cuts to the heart of what makes Jesus’ teaching so difficult:  How many times do I have to forgive a brother who keeps sinning against me?  What an honest question!  Peter wants to put a limit on forgiveness, because as we well know, nothing makes us angrier, more frustrated, or more disgusted than having someone wrong us over and over with the same offense.  Whatever we have in the way of patience, compassion, or tolerance gets completely spent on the repeat offenders in our lives.  As Peter listens to Jesus describe the long, drawn-out process of correcting a sinner (read Mt. 18:15-20), he wants to make sure that the sinner doesn’t get treated too leniently.  Seven “second” chances seem like enough, seven being the number that represented fullness to the Jews.  Was he prepared for the answer?

“I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”  Did Peter’s heart sink?  “Seventy-seven times” was Jesus’ way of saying, “Don’t bother counting.”  What?  How contrary to human nature this is!  So many objections rise up in us:  “Not fair!  What am I, a doormat?  How can this be good for anyone?”  Jesus knows how foreign this kind of forgiveness is to us, so He illustrates why it is necessary in the kingdom of Heaven He is building on earth, His Church, with a parable.

A king was settling debts owed to him by his servants.  The first debtor to appear before him was one who owed him “a huge amount.”  More accurately, the amount was “ten thousand talents,” representing about 2,700 years worth of work.  It was a debt that could never be repaid in the servant’s whole lifetime, so the king requires his whole life from him:  “his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.”  The servant’s debt was so large that he would have to forfeit everything, with no hope of ever being free from it.

Realizing his predicament, the servant falls down before the king, paying him respect, and asks for patience (interestingly, not for mercy).  He also makes a rash promise:  “I will pay you back in full.” This response from the servant, both his seeming humility and desire to set things right, if only the king will be patient, moved the king to compassion.  He “let him go” and “forgave him the loan.”  It wasn’t reduced to a manageable size, nor was the servant jailed briefly to teach him a lesson.  In an amazing act of mercy, not patience, the king wiped everything away.  The servant had a fresh start in life, completely free from indebtedness.

As we read on, we can see for ourselves how inappropriately outrageous it was for this servant to attack a fellow servant who owed him much less than the debt he’d been forgiven.  The “smaller amount” was about three months wages, easily repaid if the fellow servant got the patience he requested.  The forgiven servant refused and put his fellow servant in prison for repayment.  News of this got back to the king, and the forgiven servant had to forfeit all he had received through the king’s mercy.  Jesus ends this story with a solemn warning:  “So will My Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”  

We understand from this that our Heavenly Father has forgiven us much more than we will ever have to forgive anyone who sins against us.  If, at the end of our lives, we have not forgiven those “who trespass against us,” as we say in the Our Father, then we prove ourselves to be outsiders to the kingdom of Heaven and not interested in living in its light.  In the exaggerated drama of the parable, we can see what hardness of heart looks like and the ultimate price we will pay for it.  Even a casual reading of this parable should put us on alert to follow Jesus’ advice and toss our forgiveness calculators.  However much we need God’s forgiveness of our sins becomes the measure of how much we must offer it to others.

Possible Response:  Lord Jesus, I surely need Your help to quit counting when I forgive others.

First Reading (Read Sir. 27:30-28:7)

The Book of Sirach is a book of Hebrew wisdom, probably written about 200-175 B.C.  We can easily see how much of this wisdom appears in the what Jesus taught His disciples about forgiveness:  “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.”  Even before the appearance of Jesus, the Jews knew that anyone who needs God’s mercy cannot refuse one who needs it from him.  So, Jesus’ teaching was not new, but what was new was the spectacle of the Cross.  

In His Passion, Jesus proved forever what God’s forgiveness of sin cost Him; He willingly paid the price.  His demonstration of loving forgiveness dwarfs anything required of us by the sins of others.  In addition, the gift of His own Spirit now makes it possible for us to “think of the commandments, hate not [our] neighbor; remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.”

Possible response:  Heavenly Father, forgive me when I so easily look for faults in others. Wisdom tells me to be blind to them.

Psalm (Read Ps. 103:1-4, 9-12)

This psalm is a magnificent song of praise for the unfathomable mercy of God.  It establishes the theme that the Gospel reading elaborates:  “The LORD is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion.” In particular, the psalmist gives us an exquisite poetic description of what God has done with the debt we owe Him because of our sin:  “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He put our transgressions from us.”  Our response to God’s great kindness should be as the psalmist’s:  “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”  If we remember God’s mercy to us, the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel, although it stretches us, makes all the sense in the world.

Possible Response:  The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read Rom. 14:7-9)

In the epistle, St. Paul explains why lack of forgiveness for others simply won’t work in the Christian life:  “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself…whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (RSV translation).  Our lives, bought with the price of Christ’s own life, are not our own.  If we are His servants, then we are like the servant in the Gospel parable.  We have been forgiven and set free from our debt of sin.  We are to live as true servants of our King, extending to others what we have received.  That is what establishes the kingdom of Heaven on earth, where Christ is “Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Possible Response:  Lord Jesus, You bought me out of mercy.  May I become a vessel of that mercy to others.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In the great mystery of God’s plan, it is hidden souls who He uses to unleash supernatural power in the world. In our worldliness, we think it is much more “useful” to be visible while working on grand plans and lofty goals with clear successes. This is not how the Lord sees things. He calls certain people to a life of hidden sacrifice and prayer in order to aid those serving in active apostolates and vocations. The successes of those in visible apostolates or priestly vocations depend on the prayers of hidden souls.

The contemplative orders uphold the Church and the world by their prayers and sacrifices. Without these contemplative orders and the hidden laity living this calling, the Church would cease to be successful in the world. In fact, I would be willing to argue that the loss of vocations and the tens of thousands who left contemplative orders in the wake of Vatican II is in some mysterious way tied to the collapse of Christianity as a dominant force in the West.

It is the prayers of hidden souls that allow for success in the temporal order in the Divine Plan. We will discover in the next life how often our successes were won through the prayers and sacrifices of another person who was praying for us and we never knew it. Priests will discover the spiritual mothers and fathers whose hidden prayers and mortifications allowed them to persevere in their ministry.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was a Discalced Carmelite nun, wrote a beautiful reflection on hidden souls in her essay “The Hidden Life and Epiphany.” She wrote the essay as she meditated on Christmas and Epiphany. While we are not in that liturgical season, her words offer a rich understanding of the power of hidden souls of which the Carmelite Order, along with others such as the Visitation nuns, Poor Clares, and many others are a part. There are also many members of the laity who have been called to this path of a hidden life. It is not simply about being hidden. It is that hidden souls seek deep intimacy with God through a life of prayer which allows them to help the Church and the world.

The deeper a soul is bound to God, the more completely surrendered to grace, the stronger will be its influence on the form of the church. Conversely, the more an era is engulfed in the night of sin and estrangement from God the more it needs souls united to God. And God does not permit a deficiency. The greatest figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest nights. But for the most part the formative stream of the mystical life remains invisible. Certainly the decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross understood the true supernatural power of prayer that is intimately united to the Holy Trinity. There is an open mockery of prayer in our culture. Whenever disaster or violence erupts, those who do not believe in God’s power mock those who offer their prayers. We too as Christians can doubt the efficacy of prayer.

At the supernatural level, it is a life of prayer and intimacy with God that allows Him to operate more freely through the temporal order. We are meant to be conduits of His grace in the world in the measure we are conformed to Him in prayer. Wars have ended, lives and souls have been saved, conversions, and the course of history have been changed through prayers. The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7^th reveals this to us in an overt manner. Prayer changes things.

Hidden souls operate behind the scenes. Their prayers and influence may go unnoticed for the whole of their lives. They may never fully know how they have helped others. St. Teresa Benedict explains:

Perhaps it is revealed in an epiphany, the work of God becoming visible in our external behavior and activity noticed by those around us. But perhaps it also bears fruit that, though observed, conceals from all eyes the mysterious source from which its vital juices pour.

These hidden souls live in a perpetual state of faith, hope, and charity. They never know fully what their prayers have done. There must be a total trust in God’s plan and working in the world since the fruits are so often obscured in this life. St. Teresa encourages:

Today we live again in a time that urgently needs to be renewed at the hidden springs of God-fearing souls. Many people, too, place their last hope in these hidden springs of salvation. This is a serious warning cry: Surrender without reservation to the Lord who has called us. This is required of us so that the face of the earth may be renewed. In faithful trust, we must abandon our souls to the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. It is not necessary that we experience the epiphany in our lives. We may live in confident certainty that what the Spirit of God secretly effects in us bears its fruits in the kingdom of God. We will see them in eternity.

This is a much-needed reminder in a time when darkness continues to grow that Christ is raising up souls in the heart of the Church who are interceding on her behalf. There are countless souls called by Christ to be hidden lights in the darkness through the intensity of their prayers and sacrifices. They are helping us in our vocations and missions. They are upholding us in ways that will remain mysterious until the next life, but the graces continue to flow unceasingly throughout the Church and the world. The prayers of a hidden soul intimately connected to the Sacred Heart of Jesus are powerful—so powerful that they can change the course of history.

Image by Tomasz Kmita-Skarsgård via Wikimedia Commons

“What does it mean to feed someone?”

Every human being understands, almost instinctively, that food and water are not merely biological necessities. Think of a mother feeding her child, a wife bringing soup to her sick husband, a nurse moistening the lips of an elderly patient, a son helping his frail father drink water. These gestures are not simply acts of nutrition. They are acts of presence. They say, “You are not alone. You are still loved. Your life still matters.”

This is why debates about artificial nutrition and hydration are so emotionally and morally charged. Food and water touch something very deep in the human imagination. To feed another person is one of the most basic signs of care. To deny food and water can seem, at first glance, like the most radical form of abandonment.

For many Catholics, the name Terri Schiavo still evokes precisely this anguish. Her case became a national symbol because it concerned not an obscure medical technology, but food and water. She was not being asked to undergo a dangerous surgery or an experimental treatment. The public question, at least as many Catholics perceived it, was whether a severely disabled woman who was not imminently dying could be deprived of nutrition and hydration because she was judged never likely to recover consciousness.

This is why the case became so morally explosive. It forced the country to ask whether the unconscious or severely disabled person remains someone to whom ordinary care is owed. It also helped explain the urgency behind John Paul II’s 2004 address on life-sustaining treatments and the vegetative state, and the later 2007 response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith concerning artificial nutrition and hydration. The Church’s concern was not to canonize a medical procedure but to defend the person who could no longer speak for herself.

Yet modern medicine has created situations in which feeding is no longer simply a meal shared at the bedside. It may involve tubes, surgery, restraints, aspiration risks, complications, institutional care, and difficult decisions near the end of life. Artificial nutrition and hydration, often abbreviated as ANH, can sometimes be a simple way of providing nourishment. In other cases, it can become a complex medical intervention.

Catholics, therefore, need to avoid two opposite errors. On one side is a cold utilitarianism that treats the disabled, unconscious, elderly, or dying as burdens whose lives are no longer worth sustaining. On the other side is a kind of technological vitalism that imagines every possible means of prolonging biological life must always be used, regardless of the patient’s concrete condition. The Catholic tradition rejects both. It begins not with technology, but with the human person, created in the image of God.

The Patient Never Loses Dignity

The first principle is absolute: the patient never loses dignity.

Rev. Joseph Torchia, O.P., makes this point forcefully in his study of artificial hydration and nutrition for patients in a persistent “vegetative state” (PVS). Such patients, he argues, force us to confront a fundamental question. Does human dignity depend on consciousness, cognitive output, usefulness, or visible responsiveness? The answer is no. The patient who cannot speak, remember, respond, swallow, or recognize loved ones remains a human person with fundamental rights and intrinsic dignity (Rev. Joseph Torchia, O.P., “Artificial Hydration and Nutrition for the PVS Patient: Ordinary Care or Extraordinary Intervention?” — NCBQ, Winter 2003.).

This same conviction appears in the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute’s “Reflections on Artificial Nutrition and Hydration.” The CCBI statement insists that all human beings, regardless of health or function, are persons endowed with a spiritual soul and created in the image of God. Patients in persistent “vegetative state,” which the document prefers to call post-coma unresponsiveness, remain persons. Patients with advanced dementia remain persons. Persons with severe developmental or physical disabilities remain persons. Their personalities or capacities may be diminished, but their dignity is not diminished (“Reflections on Artificial Nutrition and Hydration,” n. 2 Colloquium of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute — NCBQ, Winter 2004.).

No Catholic may speak as though a person in PVS, advanced dementia, severe frailty, or profound disability is “less than” human. The inability to speak does not erase the image of God. The inability to swallow does not erase the image of God. The inability to remember, respond, or recognize loved ones does not erase the image of God.

This is the first thing that must be said, because everything else depends upon it. Decisions about ANH must never be based on the judgment that the patient’s life is no longer worth living. The question is never whether the person has value. The question is whether a particular intervention, for this particular patient, in these concrete circumstances, remains a proportionate form of care.

This concern also appears in Nicholas Tonti-Filippini’s important essay on secularism and the loss of consensus about the diagnosis of death. Although his article concerns organ donation and the criteria for determining death, it is relevant here because it shows how fragile end-of-life judgments become when medicine loses a shared anthropology. Catholic moral reasoning cannot reduce the person to consciousness, responsiveness, or social usefulness. Nor can it simply accept every changing secular standard regarding life and death. Tonti-Filippini defends the Church’s integrationist understanding of death: death is not merely the loss of consciousness or interaction with the environment, but the irreversible loss of the body’s integrated unity as a living organism. This matters because the same anthropological instinct is at work in the debate over artificial nutrition and hydration. A patient who is unconscious, severely disabled, or unable to communicate is not therefore dead, nor less than a person. The question is never whether such a patient possesses dignity, but how best to care for that patient truthfully and proportionately. (Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, “Secularism and Loss of Consensus about the Diagnosis of Death” — NCBQ, Autumn 2010.).

John Paul II and the Presumption in Favor of ANH

This is the context in which John Paul II’s important 2004 address on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and the Vegetative State” must be understood. The Holy Father stated that the administration of food and water, even when provided by artificial means, should be considered “in principle” ordinary and proportionate care, and therefore morally obligatory, so long as it attains its proper purpose, namely, providing nourishment and alleviating suffering (John Paul II, Address on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State,” March 20, 2004).

MaryKatherine Gaurke and Daniel P. Sulmasy helpfully summarize the later development of this teaching in their survey of influential Catholic statements on artificial nutrition and hydration. After John Paul II’s 2004 address, some questions remained about how broadly the teaching should be applied and whether artificial nutrition and hydration should always be considered morally obligatory. In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to a formal question from the United States bishops and clarified the matter with respect to patients in a “vegetative state.”

The CDF answered that the administration of food and water, even by artificial means, is “in principle” an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life. It is therefore morally obligatory to the extent that it accomplishes its proper purpose: hydrating and nourishing the patient. The CDF also specified the limits of this obligation. If the patient’s body can no longer assimilate the food and water, or if the means of administering them causes significant physical discomfort, then the obligation may cease.

At the same time, the CDF rejected the idea that artificial nutrition and hydration may be discontinued simply because doctors judge that the patient will never recover consciousness. A person in a permanent vegetative state remains a person with fundamental human dignity. Therefore, lack of consciousness by itself does not justify the withdrawal of food and water. The decisive question is not whether the patient is likely to recover cognitive function, but whether the nutrition and hydration are still nourishing and hydrating the patient without imposing excessive burden.

This is an important distinction. The Church does not teach that every medical tube is morally absolute or that every procedure must be continued indefinitely. Rather, she teaches that the patient remains a person with inviolable, God-given dignity. Because of that dignity, food and water may not be withdrawn merely because the patient is unconscious, disabled, dependent, or unlikely to recover. But because the patient is also a concrete human being with a real body and real medical circumstances, the means of providing nutrition and hydration must still be judged according to whether they truly attain their purpose and remain proportionate care. (MaryKatherine Gaurke and Daniel P. Sulmasy, “Influential Statements on the Provision of Artificial Nutrition and Hydration as a Means of Sustaining Life” — NCBQ, Autumn 2021.).

If artificial nutrition and hydration are effectively nourishing and hydrating the patient, and if they can be provided without excessive burden or serious complication, there is a strong moral presumption in favor of providing them. Otherwise, withdrawal of food and water can become a way of causing death by dehydration or starvation. John Paul II was especially concerned about precisely this danger: that the unconscious patient would be quietly reclassified as a life no longer worth sustaining.

At the same time, the phrase “in principle” matters. The CCBI “Reflections” interpret John Paul II’s words carefully. “In principle” does not mean “absolute” in the sense of exceptionless. It means that ANH should be considered ordinary and proportionate when it can be delivered without being itself overly burdensome, costly, medically complicated, or in conflict with other grave responsibilities (CCBI, “Reflections,” n. 5).

In other words, the Church gives a strong presumption in favor of food and water, but she does not abolish the traditional Catholic distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on Bioethics & Culture by Fr. Francesco Giordano, tackling the challenging moral issues of our day.

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

Fourteen-year-old Marie Bernarde “Bernadette” Soubirous had never been considered an important person. She had a hard time in class and struggled with asthma-like symptoms. However, on February 11, 1858, she was searching for firewood near the grotto of Lourdes when she encountered a mysterious girl, around 16 or 17 years old, who was surrounded by light.

The Lady would later come to introduce herself as the “Immaculate Conception.”

From February 11th to July 16th, Bernadette would see the apparition 18 times. The Lady spoke about the need to pray for conversion in the world and asked the priests to establish a chapel where the faithful should go in procession. Throughout, Bernadette had to deal with people—including public officials—who thought she was a fraud.

“I have been asked to tell you about it, not to make you believe it,” was her quick-witted reply.

One of the most famous moments happened on February 25th, when Bernadette began rooting around in the mud near the grotto, since the Lady had told her to drink and wash in “the spring”…even though no spring existed.

Not yet, anyway.

After Bernadette scooped out handfuls of mud, a spring eventually bubbled up from the earth: the same spring that pilgrims can journey to Lourdes and drink from today.

To date, over 7,000 Lourdes-related healings have been reported, with over 70 affirmed as miraculous. “Most of the people were healed by contact with Lourdes water (50), most of them at the Sanctuary’s baths,” according to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.

However, even if pilgrims don’t experience a miraculous healing, many who have been to Lourdes experience a healing of the soul through drawing closer to Christ through the Blessed Mother’s guidance.

When I visited Lourdes as a 13-year-old—one year younger than Bernadette was at the time of the apparitions—I didn’t see a Marian apparition. And yet I believe I did see Our Lady of Lourdes, in a way. 

Although many of the millions of pilgrims who pray at the Marian apparition site each year are suffering from physical or mental illnesses, there’s a presence of peace there that you’d have to experience to believe. I believe I caught a glimpse of Our Lady of Lourdes in the incredible joy saturating the entire town in Southern France.

I know I will never forget how it felt to soak that peace in.

Bernadette never forgot what it was like to be in the presence of the Blessed Mother, and she tried to convey that through the way she lived, saying, “I want my whole life to be inspired by love.” After she died at 35 years old, she was declared a saint in 1933.

Through her witness, St. Bernadette has brought me, and millions of others, to a closer encounter with Jesus. And the great news is, beginning September 18, 2026, St. Bernadette’s relics will be coming to the United States.

If her relics’ past visit to the U.S. in 2022 is any indication, God is continuing to transform lives through St. Bernadette’s prayers.

What is the United States Tour of the Relics of St. Bernadette?

The year 2022 was a ground-breaking year for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, France. That was the year when the Sanctuary brought St. Bernadette’s relics to the U.S. for the first time.

The 2022 USA tour logged 45 stops stretching from coast to coast. The first stop was Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Miami, Florida, on April 7, 2022. The final stop happened almost four months later at St. John Baptist de la Salle Parish in Granada Hills, California, on August 3, 2022.

Monsignor Kenneth Schwanger, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Miami, was instrumental in coordinating the tour, contacting “all of the parishes and institutions dedicated either to Our Lady of Lourdes or to St. Bernadette in the country to ask them if they would be interested.”

“At the end, more requested the visit than could be arranged for, so they were promised [a visit] the next time,” he said.

Faith communities testified to incredible spiritual experiences, as recorded on the tour website.

At Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Mineral Wells, Texas, more than 3,000 attendees came to pray with the relics from July 20-22, 2022, including some from Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.

Fr. Victor Ulto from St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, shared of his parish’s April 19-21 visit: “Confessions are non-stop, the level of prayer is intense…This week has reminded me why I became a priest.”

According to Fr. Joseph Wolfe from the EWTN Chapel in Irondale, Alabama, which hosted the relics on April 30, 2022, “One woman told me that she received healing from respiratory and digestive problems.”

Monsignor Schwanger recounted, “Many of the parishes, especially the smaller ones, said they hadn’t seen that many people in their church in ages.”

Now, in 2026, St. Bernadette’s relics are returning: and this time, the tour is going to be even bigger.

The 2026-2027 U.S. tour will stretch from September 18, 2026, through August 2027, stopping at approximately 140 locations along the way. This time, the first stop on September 18-20, 2026, will be at North America’s largest Catholic church, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

The full tour schedule is currently in progress as more stops are updated across the country.

According to Toni J. Pallatto, one of the official U.S. representatives coordinating the relics tour, “The interesting thing is how many locations [St. Bernadette] wants to visit. She’s going to be here [in the U.S.] for almost one year.” Additionally, unlike the previous time, the 2026-2027 tour includes stops at university campuses, including at Pope Leo XIV’s alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania. 

This time, St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes “have a mission not only for parishes, basilicas, and cathedrals, but also for outreach to the youth of our country, who are the future of Catholicism,” said Pallatto.

The fact that this year’s tour coincides with the USA’s 250^th anniversary isn’t the only beautiful US-Lourdes connection, she noted.

“Pope Leo XIV is going to Lourdes, France, on September 27th,” she said. “We had no knowledge that the pope was going to be in Lourdes on September 27th, but the relics’ visit to Villanova was [already] scheduled on the 28th.”

“So you see Mary’s hand in arranging the schedule,” she added.

How can I participate?

The best way to find out about the 2026-2027 tour stops is to view the schedule and sign up for email alerts, as stops continue to be added.

For those unable to travel to one of the tour stops, you can submit prayer requests that will be printed out, joining other USA tour intentions to be physically transported to Lourdes, France.

Users of the Hallow prayer app will also have the opportunity to engage in a special prayer journey.

St. Bernadette can become a friend to people coming from all types of backgrounds. She can relate to students who have been told they’re not smart enough. She can sympathize with people who have struggled financially or grown up in poverty, and she knows what it’s like to be challenged by health problems.

But she also knows what it’s like to encounter the love of God.

The Blessed Virgin Mary transformed her life. She spoke to Bernadette with a kindness that astonished her: she was used to being seen as nobody special.

That’s not who she was in Mary’s eyes.

Throughout her life, St. Bernadette strove to bring people to God. Monsignor Schwanger encourages everyone to encounter the saint’s friendship by coming to a relics tour stop near them.

“Information only takes you so far: the real thing is the experience,” as Monsignor Schwanger put it. “I just invite everyone to show up, be present, to have the experience for themselves.”

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The scourge of anti-life laws and provisions in our Western society is expanding at a rapid pace. Regarding euthanasia, the Catholic Church is absolutely clear: it is strictly forbidden. This is part of the perennial teachings of the Church; it will never change. The Church is also very clear about its acceptance of organ donation, under well-regulated safeguards which respect the dignity and life of the donor and where death is clearly and ethically determined and not willed.

The Church does not sanction hastening people’s death to harvest their organs. Paragraph #2296 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “…it is not morally admissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.”

Furthermore, in Paragraph #2279, in its teaching on caring for the sick and palliative care, the Church states that death should not be “willed as either an end or a means” and that care must be given as a form of “disinterested charity.”

These statements highlight the fact that death should not be willed. In the case of death by organ donation, death is necessarily willed, and there does exist a goal, which is the harvesting of a person’s organs. It is in fact the commodification of human life under the guise of helping the life of another person. Now, more than ever, the Church needs to speak out against the horrendous ideology of death by vivisection/death by organ donation which is now being advocated by proponents of medical assistance in dying (MAiD).

The euthanasia industry is reaching a new low in their ideological quest for choosing one’s own death. The New England Journal of Medicine published a paper on July 8, 2026, “Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia,” which, in the abstract, argues that since there is a growing acceptance of euthanasia, and organ donations are needed, the DDR (Dead Donor Rule) needs to be revisited and recontextualized to eventually open the door to death by organ donation.

What used to be ethically unacceptable would now be reassessed. With unvarnished logic, death by vivisection (the cutting and operation on a living being) would become the norm, and organ donations would be secured from live patients who had previously requested medical assistance in dying; they would therefore die by donating their organs. The mindset is that these organ donors requested assisted death anyway; it is thus the adage of killing two birds with one stone being put in motion.

This is a horrific low point on the scale of ethics in the euthanasia industry. The argument by the three doctors, two of whom are Canadian critical-care physicians, includes the ultimate logical solution of harvesting organs before the patient is dead. This idea aims to normalize the procedure of death by vivisection. As euthanasia gradually has been been accepted by society, so would this new form of dying.

The use of the “choice” narrative plays a major role in this growing acceptance of evil deeds. Death by organ donation would become a person’s choice of assistance-in-dying method. It is the logical next step in a culture gripped by death on one’s own terms. In addition, the rhetoric presents a false virtue: “helping others” receive much-needed organs thanks to one’s “choice” of being euthanized.

As reported by Valerie Hudson, PhD. in her July 2026 opinion piece, the three proponents of the death-by-vivisection method have stated, in relation to the DDR, that:

…the moral significance of strict temporal sequencing is diminished. In death by organ donation, the patient’s authorization, experience, and outcome are not altered by whether death occurs moments before or during organ retrieval. Ethical focus should therefore shift away from identifying a precise moment of biologic death and toward respecting patients’ autonomous decisions…

They openly advocate the shifting away from ethical concerns to a strictly logical and practical viewpoint, thus erasing any moral reservations people might have against this expansion of euthanasia.

So far, in the organ donation/organ harvesting system, the DDR has functioned as a “do not kill rule”; the removal of organs is supposed to occur after death has been ascertained. Whenever this edict is not being strictly adhered to, scandal erupts. However, if this new proposal of death by vivisection becomes implemented in law, it will have the veneer of legal respectability, thus immersing itself in the culture as just another autonomous choice. Once again, the evil of relativism and subjectivity will rear its ugly and malevolent head. What was once regarded as unacceptable would now be viewed through a softer lens under the guise of “freedom of choice.”

Historically, vivisection was viewed as an atrocity; it was part of the Nazi war crimes which were tried at the Nuremberg trials, namely the “Doctors Trial,” where doctors were charged and tried for the medical experiments and torture inflicted on their prisoners. Who could have dreamed that less than a century later, it would be advocated as a right?

While I am shocked to learn about this bold advocacy from medical professionals, I am not surprised. The push for assisted death is reaching new heights. This proposal of death by vivisection is just another step in the euthanasia mindset. It is not surprising that two of the three physicians arguing for this concept are Canadians. Canada has opened the door to legal killing of its vulnerable citizens since 2016 and has outnumbered every other country in numbers of deaths by MAiD. It is therefore not unexpected that some Canadian doctors would want to expand the accessibility to assisted dying and find a practical solution to combining organ donations with euthanasia.

So far, however, this procedure is not legal in Canada; death must be declared before the removal of organs. It is prohibited to kill solely to obtain organs. However, this new argument from the three doctors may soon change the way Canada regulates its medical laws surrounding euthanasia. Canada seems to be on the path of pushing the boundaries when it comes to assisted dying. Only time will tell where this new proposal will lead.

In closing, let us pray that the culture of death reverses before more unseemly barbaric acts of legalized killing continue. The scourge of euthanasia, like abortion, must be opposed by caring and concerned people everywhere. Let us continue tirelessly to be vocal in our opposition to the prevailing culture of death and advocate for a culture of life.

Pope St. John Paull II, tireless advocate for life, pray for us.

Photo by Mathurin NAPOLY / matnapo on Unsplash

In the collection of Eastern monastic writings called the Philokalia, the goal of the spiritual life is clear: “We must make ourselves a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit,” writes St. Diodachos of Photiki. This directive to enshrine the Holy Spirit in oneself is consistent throughout the collection, and the way to achieve such a lofty purpose is by total surrender to the Divine Will through a focused, serene prayer life. It is no coincidence that the iconographic tradition emerged from this theology of serenity. Icons, as a liturgical art of great significance, are meant to attune the soul to surrender and break open the heart to God’s mercy.

It would not be fitting to place iconography as simply one of many art forms in human history. Icons are meant to be prayed with as liturgical art in the context of the Mass. These sacred images are representative not of earthly reality obscured by sin and death, but of a transfigured reality. In his tour de force work The Meaning of Icons, Leonid Ouspensky articulates the purpose of icons as a direct result of the Incarnation:

Through the Incarnation of the Son of God, man received the possibility not only to restore his likeness to God with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit, that is, to make an icon of himself by inner doing, but also to reveal his grace-given state to others in word-images and visual images…. Thus holiness is the realization of possibilities given to man by the Divine Incarnation, an example to us; the icon is the means of revealing this realization.

Simply put, icons are both a response to the Fall in the Garden of Eden and a physical reminder of the balm of the Passion and the transformative joy of the Resurrection. The rich grandeur of this sacred tradition is an illumination of each individual person’s redemption by Jesus, Who is both God and flesh-and-blood Man. It is a sacred duty of the iconographer, therefore, to create works that maintain theological correctness as well as reveal the astounding nature of divine possibility from our salvation.

The trademark elements of iconographic images, namely line and perspective, synchronize to give the viewer a taste of transfiguration and relationship with the Divine. For instance, the arresting and deliberately unrealistic perspective of a traditional icon guides every element in an icon to reach for the viewer. As George Kordis writes in his work Icon as Communion:

In Byzantine culture, a work of art is not a passive and abstract object that is in front of the viewer in his own time and space; on the contrary, it is something active that moves toward the viewer, from whom an answer is required…

Beholding an icon, therefore, is entering into a dialogue; it is an asking and a listening. The striking lines of an icon guide the viewer’s focus in this way as well. The very lines of a saint’s garments often seem to cause the saint to lean out of the picture. The icon is not so much about the saint as it is about conveying that the viewer is its center of attention; indeed, the viewer is the one who is being gazed upon by heaven and invited to join in the Beatific Vision.

In keeping with the emphasis on theological truths, iconography is built on a foundation of traditional prototypes, which, despite war, iconoclasm, and anti-Christian sentiment, have withstood the test of time. A traditional icon, or a prototype, remains the same because it represents a unique person with features specific to him or her. The copying of an icon is a way to acknowledge the reality of this individual, and, more importantly, the belief that this person is now a saint. For example, even if posture varies, it is easy to recognize the Virgin Mary across iconographic tradition with the three stars on the forehead and shoulders of her veil which represent her perpetual virginity before, during, and after the birth of Christ. Dedication to prototypes does not mean there is no creativity within the Byzantine icon tradition—but writing an icon, like copying Scripture in an illuminated manuscript, must be a measured, careful endeavor.

In fact, an icon is said to be “written” because praying with an icon should be a similar experience to encountering the Word in Sacred Scripture and the lives of the saints. Very like in the divinely inspired Word of God, the message of God’s love greets the viewer of an icon in a dynamic, captivating moment of grace for which every heart longs. When “read” honestly, an icon will reveal the same message of the Good News: God has made you—specifically—and He finds you good and wants you to be happy with Him forever.

St. John Damascene, master defender of the iconographic tradition, writes of holy images:

I have looked upon the human form of God, and my soul has been saved. I gaze upon the image of God, as Jacob did, though in a different way. Jacob sounded the note of the future, seeing with immaterial sight, whilst the image of Him who is visible to flesh is burnt into my soul.

The sacramental power of icons is nothing short of metanoic. And the veneration of holy images is a serious matter of right worship. Beholding an icon, locking eyes with the image of the saint in it, and placing one’s whole self in prayer—this is how to remember that the Word chose to dwell among His creatures and call them His children. Prayer before an icon is both a physical and spiritual sign that a person is willing to accept God’s love. This is the way, at once simple and glorious, to prepare a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit in the heart. Such is an act of total, beautiful surrender.

Photo by THLT LCX on Unsplash

Most years, on Mary’s birthday, I’m recuperating from a Labor Day weekend involving a backhoe and at least one cookout and probably canning of one sort or another. Labor Day seems like the perfect backdrop for a reflection of the Blessed Mother, though. It’s a chance to stop and honor the work and toil we do in our everyday lives, women and men.

We can look to Mary’s example in the house at Nazareth and see a loving model for a fresh approach to what was dull and routine before. We can think of the miracle of her birth—not to mention the birth of her Son—and open our eyes to the miracles that are around us in the bustle of traffic, the piles of laundry, and the demands of children.

The Power of Prayer

St. Anne’s heart was broken because of her infertility. St. Joachim was ridiculed at the Temple and even spent forty days fasting in the desert as penance for his childlessness.

All they wanted was a child.

They had lived a good, holy, blameless life. Back then, children were seen not just as a blessing, but as a sign of how much God loved you; if you didn’t have children, you had obviously done something wrong.

Even though I know this, I can’t separate myself from the women I’ve known who have struggled with infertility. I think of Anne, alone in her house, and I see so many other faces. I see the red-rimmed eyes and the desire, feel the emptiness, and wonder with her…When? Why? Why?

Anne and Joachim did not give up. It would have been so easy to throw up their hands, to snub the whispering neighbors, to withdraw into their own misery.

Instead, they offered their pain to God in prayer. They remained open, even when everything looked hopeless.

And in old age, at a time when their friends were grandparents (or perhaps even great grandparents), Anne and Joachim were rewarded.

God Asks Great Things…of All of Us

Having a child is no small thing. It changes you.

But to have a child who is to be the Mother of God…

Anne and Joachim knew their child would be special. Mary’s birth was preceded by angelic visits to each of her parents, and they had promised to dedicate her to God.

But did they know?

We might not feel like God has given us quite the important task He gave Anne and Joachim or other saints. Who am I? I often wonder to myself. Just another woman, just another mom, just another worker.

Except that’s not true. God made each of us for a purpose, and we are the only ones who can fulfill that mission in life. He’s asking something great of each of us, and we can look to Mary for help in following God’s will toward that purpose.

I often have to remind myself that the really important things God has in store for me don’t need fireworks or flashing lights. I might not even realize the impact I’m having.

Mary wasn’t born in a palace, and neither was Jesus. Their lives didn’t follow the pattern we might have chosen, if we were planning out the path for “Mother of God” and “God made Man.”

God had a better plan. We’re all better for it.

A Purpose for Life

At an early age, Mary was dedicated to God. Her mother made sure that Mary took her first steps at the Temple. At age three, we’re told, she was taken to live at the Temple with other consecrated virgins. She had to leave at age twelve, the age of womanhood, because she would be ritually unclean.

She married Joseph, so that she was protected, safe, taken care of, though “the deal” was that she would remain a virgin. Then the plan took an unexpected turn. Gabriel showed up and announced something so far beyond what anyone could have imagined that I think Mary must have just gasped.

Her “yes” continues to inspire us today. I look to it when I’m feeling like the world is too much or that maybe God had someone else in mind for my life.

If a teenage girl can say “yes” to being the Mother of God, then maybe I can say “yes” to the clean-up of a Labor Day work weekend. If she can keep saying “yes” even as she saw where it would take her Son, then maybe I can “yes” my way through splashtime in the bathtub. If she can hold her Son after standing at the foot of the Cross and still say “yes,” I shouldn’t even hesitate to put down my gripes and pick up my own cross with a smile on my face.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I’ll never forget when I once told a relative about a group of cloistered nuns—the Poor Clares—in Cleveland, Ohio, who spend their entire lives adoring Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. That relative thought it was a wasted life. Surely, they could be doing something better with their time, this person thought.

My relative’s words echoed a similar complaint made to Jesus by His close friend Martha. Upset that her sister Mary was not helping her, Martha said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me” (Lk. 10:40). But Jesus reminded her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Lk. 10:41–42).

This brings me to the life of Christ. Many Christians overlook one of the most important truths of Jesus’ life: He spent the majority of His life hidden from the world—thirty years, to be precise.

St. John the Evangelist declares: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25).

Hence, Scripture tells us only part of the story of Jesus’ life. And while Scripture records the most important parts—His teachings, the Beatitudes, and, above all, His Passion, Death, and Resurrection—there is still much to learn from Jesus’ hidden life.

What was He doing for the majority of His life before He began His public ministry at the age of thirty? We see glimpses from the time He was “lost” in the Temple (see Luke 2:41–52). But in all truth, He was not lost. He was with His Father. He was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Lk. 2:46).

Nazareth was Jesus’ cloister, where He “grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk. 2:52). He learned from St. Joseph how to be a carpenter, and through His Mother Mary, He came to understand the feminine heart more and more. He learned how to pray from His parents, but at the same time, He showed them how to pray. He grew in all the virtues in His human nature, especially humility, meekness, and obedience.

I can only imagine what St. Joseph and Our Lady saw when they got up in the middle of the night. They would have seen their Son conversing directly with the Father. What a sight to behold!

In my own attempts to understand the significance of Jesus’ hidden life, I providentially discovered a spiritual gem by the great French spiritual writer Fr. Henri-Marie Boudon called The Path to Humility: How the Hidden Life of Jesus Is the Model of Holiness, which is published by Sophia Institute Press. Fr. Boudon’s writings were so impactful that they greatly influenced the likes of St. Louis de Montfort. Fr. Boudon also wrote an incredible work on the holy angels called, Devotion to the Holy Angels.

Fr. Boudon opened my eyes immensely to how much Heaven prizes the hidden and humble life. For instance, he declared:

Let us consider also that this dear Infant, who as man is descended from the blood of so many kings, conceals all His glory by choosing to be born of the wife of a poor carpenter. He, who is innocence itself, wills, in the order of His Providence, that in His temporal genealogy should be enumerated women who were sinners, to teach us to make light of family nobility; not to value ourselves upon it, or bring it into notice; not to be ashamed of our relatives if they are poor or humble, or have fallen into disgrace. (17)

Everything Christ reveals by His words and actions—even what is not intentionally written in Scripture, such as most of His thirty years in Nazareth—has an important lesson for all of us to imitate. One of Christ’s salient teachings is that our prayer lives ought to be secret and hidden. Hence, Jesus reminded His followers: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt. 6:6).

At the same time, this does not mean we should never pray in public. We ought to witness to our faith in public by praying grace before meals and, above all, by attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The scribes and Pharisees wanted their holiness to be seen by the world. Jesus is revealing to us that we ought to pray to Him in the tabernacle of our hearts.

The saints, and especially Our Lady, sought to imitate Christ’s hidden life. Did not Mary and so many other blessed souls, like Bernadette and Thérèse, hide themselves behind the walls of their homes and convents, respectively? They wanted the “one thing” that is God alone.

Many today have overlooked and even distorted Jesus’ words and hidden life. As a result, activism, social justice, and making a name for oneself have become the marching orders for many Christians. But this could not be further from the truth—or from the example of their leader, Jesus!

Not surprisingly, since Jesus is our humble God, He is perhaps even more hidden now in the Holy Eucharist than He was during His time on earth. How many Catholics, and especially secular people, drive by a Catholic church and act as if it is not a big deal? Few people pay Him a visit at the tabernacle, where He dwells forgotten and alone, just longing for a visit.

But those souls who leave everything behind to follow Jesus, especially our cloistered sisters, realize that Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the greatest treasure of all. There, in the Sacred Host, Jesus continues to efface Himself until the end of time.

And therefore, being with Jesus is not a wasted life. It is truly the greatest thing we can do in this life: adore God, for that is what we will be doing for all eternity.

The hidden life of Jesus may be the most overlooked life by His own followers, but it is truly the most glorious life of Our Lord.

There He dwells.
There He reveals to us His humility.
There He waits for us.

Editor’s Note: For more on how to grow in humility through devotion to the hidden life of Christ, check out Fr. Henri-Marie Boudin’s book, The Path to Humility: How the Hidden Life of Jesus Is the Model of Holiness, available from Sophia Institute Press.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In 1894, Labor Day was declared a national holiday. Most worked a six-day work week and then enjoyed Sundays for worship, time with family, and relaxation. Sunday was their “Divine Day of Vacation,” set aside by God to slow us down and recharge us physically, mentally, and—most importantly—spiritually.  

In God’s 3rd Commandment, “Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day,” He gave us an incredible gift. However, many don’t open and accept this gift. Instead, many choose to make the Lord’s Day another “labor” day to catch up on chores, laundry, shopping, and yard work. Has your weekly Lord’s Day become a “labor” day? God’s wisdom offers us a better plan.

“Six days you may labor and do ALL your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God.” (Ex. 20:9)

It is a matter of priorities and trust. Which plan is better? Your plan, or God’s? I challenge you to choose to accept God’s gift, trust in His plan, and commit to preserving your Sundays for worshiping, slowing down to spend quality time with family and friends, to count your blessings, and to thank God for them.

Opening God’s gift of Sunday starts with planning and rearranging your schedule during the week to get important tasks done earlier, so that your Sunday is cleared to enjoy your weekly “Divine Day of Vacation.”

Consider the benefits of setting Sunday aside to nurture your relationships with family, friends, and especially your Creator, the source of life, wisdom, and truth. With such an incredible gift waiting to be opened, make a plan and give yourself permission to rest and relax with God! Remember, Christ has personally invited us:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt. 11:28)

God has given you this gift of rest—you now just have to open and enjoy His gift for you and your family.

Decide as a family to put down the electronics and spend time together. Explore nature, take a walk, have a picnic or BBQ, play sports or a board game. Cool off swimming or just take a nap. Center your day around Jesus’ love and mercy by going to Mass, reading Scripture, and discovering the lives of the saints and discussing them. Pray together. The Rosary is a great place to begin.

Reflect on how trusting in God’s plan for Sundays also sends the right message to your children. Your actions and choices now play influence whether they choose to include Jesus and weekly Mass in their lives when they leave the home, go off to college, get a job, and have a family of their own.

This Labor Day Weekend, take an honest look at on how you spend your time on Sundays and during the week. Identify time that is spent on low priority, unnecessary, and unhealthy activities. Cut them out and reorganize your plans so you can get everything done in six days, as God advises. Here are some questions to help you rebalance your time and priorities and open this precious gift from God:

• What activities have I allowed to waste my time, drain my energy, and rob me of a good night’s rest?
• Do I intentionally spend time with God on Sunday? How can I be more intentional?
• Do I look at attending Mass as my Sunday “obligation,” or is it a time I look forward to worshipping, honoring, and giving thanks to God for all my blessings?
• Do I do unnecessary shopping and chores on Sunday? How can I plan to do them at another time during the week?
• Do sports take priority over God during my Sunday? How can I reprioritize my time on Sundays?
• How would having a better plan for my week enrich my relationships with God? Family? Friends? Someone in need?

Do you know others who generally spend their “Divine Day of Vacation” as a day of labor? In love, bless them by sharing how truly incredible God’s gift Sundays can be for them if they choose to open it.  

Author’s Note: For additional insights on the truth and wisdom of the 3rd Commandment, check out these helpful resources:

• Visit the overview of the 3rd Commandment at If U Love Me
• Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the 3rd Commandment
• Check out previous blogs/articles at GodsRecipe.org on the 3rd Commandment

Image by Freepik

Over the past sixty years the documents of Vatican II, and indeed the council itself, have become emblematic of a sort of Catholic ideological divide. Opponents and proponents site problems and progress that don’t necessarily originate in the Council, which closed on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1965.

Pope St. John XXIII opened the council with words that should reassure those who doubt the continuity of its teachings:

What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what everyone imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men’s moral lives. What is needed is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms…

Hopefully we can all agree that the main reason for the Church’s existence is the salvation of souls. But if the font is not accessible, the light not visible, that reason for Her existence will not be realized.

The Universal Call to Holiness

Chapter V of Lumen Gentium, a central document of Vatican II, is entitled, “The Universal Call to Holiness in the Church.” For the Church and Her members to be an accessible font, a visible light, no one is exempt from this call.

…everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness, according to the saying of the Apostle: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification”…(the) holiness of the Church is unceasingly manifested, and must be manifested, in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful; it is expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life, tend toward the perfection of charity, thus causing the edification of others…

Answering this call to holiness requires a deep union with God, a union aided by the choices we make and the way we live our lives.

The Structure for Answering the Call: A Rule of Life

A Rule of Life is a framework that encourages discipline yet gives freedom, by supporting our truest human growth towards deeper union with God and all things eternal. It is not a turning of our backs on the world God gave us. Instead, this framework reorients our life away from a secular way of living to the original way God designed us to live, grow, and flourish.

In his recently published book, The Pathway to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: A Rule of Life, Fr. Robert I. Bradley, S.J. offers three levels of development and an “agenda” common to all three for progressing along the path to holiness.

The three levels of development describe progressive stages of the interior life, ever deeper into union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Along these stages we increasingly surrender more of our time and our lives to that pursuit, according to the holy will of God as given to us through our state in life. Time becomes available as we gradually let go of activities that are not helpful to our vocation and perhaps distract from it.

The agenda, or list of components of this rule, are:

Mass and Holy Communion: The source and summit of our Faith which is common to us all is also the most intimate and important part of our individual spiritual lives. Progressing along the stages will include more frequently availing ourselves of the Mass and reception of the Blessed Sacrament.

Prayer/Spiritual Reading: Outside of Mass, we will feed our souls through devotions, our conversation with God, and our study of God. As we follow a rule, we will make time for this by letting go of activities that have less eternal importance.

Mortification: With purposeful acts of self-denial, our flesh will gradually come under the rightful authority of our wills. Our souls will benefit from a gradual loss of taste for the things which were once so hard to let go of and an increased longing for the things of God.

Works of Mercy: Similarly, as we look more to the needs of others and the Church than to our own desires, we will grow more deeply in union with Christ and come to resemble Him. There is perhaps nothing that shines the light of the Church, makes Her font more accessible, than serving others through the Works of Mercy.

Apostolic Action: By our membership in existing apostolates, such as the third orders, we contribute to the strength of the Church herself. As we follow God’s individual call in this area, we ourselves are built up as well. Discerning this Apostolic Action will be aided by our deepening prayer life.

Guidance: From regular confession with the same priest, to spiritual direction, to annual retreats, this is time set apart to review our progress with the help of a trusted guide. Problems are gently revealed and adjustments can be made.  

As Individual as Each of Her Members

When in place, our unique framework of a Rule of Life will be somewhat hidden within our daily life. Once construction is completed on a home, we don’t keep staring at the blueprints. Periodic inspections may be made and needed repairs discovered. But the building functions without thinking much about the foundation and framework.

A Rule of Life that fits the user will be the same. It should be flexible and nearly invisible most of the time, allowing God’s will, revealed to us in the duty of the moment, to come to the fore. We don’t have to think about it too much because it is a part of who we are.

Living a rule should yield freedom from the things it excludes. It should be akin to a completed home which needs regular care, attention and maintenance. If we find it has more in common with a battering ram which requires heavy effort to hold back the world, the flesh and the devil, it may be time to reevaluate with that trusted guide.

Chances are many of the agenda items are already a part of your informal rule of life. This can be viewed as your onramp to a more explicit Rule. Through prayer, take the next step, follow the Holy Spirit’s lead, and entrust the endeavor to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As we individual members of the Church answer the Universal Call to Holiness trough practicing a Rule of Life, our brothers and sisters in the world will be more able to access Her font and see Her light.

Author’s Note: For much more on the importance of the Universal Call to Holiness for Catholics today, as well as deep theology on the Sacred Heart, the Eucharist, and the foundational aspects of the Faith, you can find Fr. Bradley’s book here.

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