Catholic Church

By Bree A. Dail,  National Catholic Register - Antonia Acutis, the mother of Servant of God Carlo Acutis, said her son lived a life centered on God. In a phone interview Feb. 22 with the Register, one day after the Vatican announced that her “techie” son, who died in 2006 at the age of 15, would be beatified, Acutis shared joyfully that this news did not come as a surprise to the family… Acutis shared with the Register details of Carlo’s personality and the graces she believed let him live his young life “filled with God.” Explaining his draw toward documenting Eucharistic miracles, his mother revealed that Carlo had received certain mystical experiences that drew him to the Holy Eucharist, even at a very young age.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - “Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever”…. “Battle,” “weapons,” and “armed” all clearly have military connotations, but so does the phrase “campaign of Christian service” if we look at the Latin text: praesidia miltiae Christianae. The service or action (praesidia) is one of Christian battle or militancy (militiae). This refers to the Church Militant—the Church here on earth—waging war against sin and the kingdom of darkness.

By Philip Kosloski, Aleteia - We humans love to talk and fill our world with noise. However, God speaks rarely and even during the incarnation, Jesus’s life was spent primarily in silence. All we know about Jesus comes from the beginning of his life and his end, with virtually nothing known about the 30 years he lived in Nazareth. Nineteenth-century writer Frederick Charles Woodhouse reflects on this reality in his Manual for Lent and ponders the silence of God.