(This is a little bit I wrote as a comment to a post of my dear blogfriend JessicaHof, “Why go to Church?” The discussion there is worth reading, but I also thought my response here might make a rare, short, succinct post for The Lonely Pilgrim.) The deeper Catholic reason why Catholics must go to …
Category Archives: Sacraments
He welcomes me home by name
There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, …
Eat my flesh and drink my blood: A crucial Gospel passage, the Catholic Eucharist, and bad Protestant commentary
Often when it comes to the Scripture readings at Mass — especially in early morning Masses — I must confess, my eyes sometimes tend to glaze over a little and I don’t absorb them as well as I should. This is why it’s important for me to have read them beforehand, something I often don’t …
St. Justin Martyr on the Eucharist
Y’all love Justin, don’t you? Here is the continuation of the quote from yesterday, from St. Justin Martyr (100–165), describing the Sacrament of the Eucharist, in his First Apology, about A.D. 150 (Chapter 66): And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man …
The Body and Blood of Christ
Today at Mass we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. According to the Roman Missal, the actual date of the feast worldwide was last Thursday, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday; but in countries in which Corpus Christi is not a Holy Day of Obligation, …
St. Justin Martyr on Christian Baptism
St. Justin Martyr (100–165) was a second-century Christian apologist and one of our earliest testimonies to the worship of the Early Church. A pagan convert, he died a Christian martyr in Rome. In St. Justin’s First Apology (ca. 150), he writes regarding Christian Baptism: I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves …
Confirmation in Penance
The way I know it’s God: when the penances Father Joe gives me are the same things God was leading me to do anyway.
Merton on Baptismal Grace
“Once you have grace, you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don’t really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit …
Emotion and the Leap of Faith
I wondered if receiving the Real Presence would feel any different than any other time I’d taken Communion in my life. I wondered if the Sacrament of Confirmation would evince any inward or outward change in me — if I would feel that, too. Through the years of confusion I experienced as a Pentecostal, I …
Birth of a Catholic
Tonight, I go to bed a Catholic, having been sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit, welcomed into the arms of the Mother Church, and communing in the true Body and Blood of my Lord. I am entirely overwhelmed.