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Sacraments of Grace and Strength In the weeks leading up to my reception into the Catholic Church, I prepared to not only to be baptized, but also to be confirmed. The sacrament of baptism uses water to communicate grace that takes away sin, while the sacrament of confirmation uses hands that spread oil across the forehead. This oil seals the person with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to help him live out the Catholic faith. Hebrews 6:2 alludes to this sacrament when it says how, …

Recognizing the Presence of Jesus in the EucharistThose of us who believe that the Eucharist is really Jesus have to examine our own hearts and lives, too.Some time ago, I met a man who had once worked for a Western intelligence agency. He was embedded in a majority-Muslim country, posing as a businessman. Given the lawlessness of parts of the country, he had to be driven across it in the dead of night to avoid bandits. As they were speeding across the desert at high speeds, with the headlights …

Many non-Catholics struggle with the concept of praying to saints because they think prayer and worship are the same thing. Since the Bible says we should only worship God, then shouldn’t we only pray to God? But the word “worship” refers to giving someone “worth-ship,” or the honor that person is due. We call judges “your honor,” for example, as a way of paying them respect, but we don’t treat them like gods. “Prayer” comes from the L …

One mode is by way of intercessory prayer. Just as I can request that God help you grow in holiness in this life, by giving you graces to repent of your venial sins, to reorder your will toward him, and to inspire you to perform penitential actions to discharge your debt of temporal punishment, I can request that God help you in the next by bringing your final purification in purgatory to completion. The basis for this intercessory prayer, whether you’re here on earth or in purgatory, is the bon …

People lament that there is no longer a Christendom, but, you know, Christendom wasn’t exactly heaven on Earth. The Church doesn’t have worldly power any longer, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.So it has to be nuanced, this idea that we’re living in a post-Christian world that’s so much worse than it was in the past. In some ways, we’re more similar to Christians living in the Roman Empire of the first century than to those in other eras throughout the centuries. It’s almost like we’re …