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The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”Well, when I was a child, I thought you got to heaven by just being a nice person. My parents never took me to church, and the closest “Sunday school education” I received was from old Bible cartoons produced by the same animation company that made The Flintstones. I thought they …

Could we imagine what it would be like if athletes stopped training their bodies? It would be unthinkable. Without training they would never have the strength and stamina required to perform. They also would lose their fans, since we respect athletes because of the great feats their training allows them to perform.The same can be said of the saints, the champion athletes of the Faith. ThefFy are exemplars not of physical training but of the ascetic life. This ancient staple of our Faith is view …

Biblically, an idol is anything to which we give the adoration and submission that are due to God alone. The ancient world worshiped personal idols, such as Zeus and Athena. Our contemporary world struggles with more spiritual idols, idols that are more discreet and seductive, such as pleasure, money, and power.Just as, in the early centuries after Christ, ancient peoples tried to retain their idolatry and impose it upon the gospel, leading to Christological heresies such as Docetism and Ariani …

The Eucharist: Understanding Through Simple Stories My old pastor gave a homily in which he talked about preparing a girl for First Communion. Her parents had been wondering if she was ready yet, so Father asked her to explain her understanding of the Eucharist. She pointed to the large crucifix in the back of church and said, “That looks like Jesus, but isn’t. The Eucharist doesn’t look like Jesus, but is.” It’s hard to imagine a better or more succinct way o …

Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code wasn’t the first historical fiction where the history was just as fictional as the story. Émile Zola beat Brown by over a hundred years.Zola was a famous French writer and avowed atheist whose novels and other works had won popular acclaim. In 1892, he decided to write a novel about the amazing cures said to be taking place in the waters of a spring in Lourdes, France, where the Virgin Mary had reportedly appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous eighte …