The season of Advent, which is the beginning of the liturgical year, has many similarities with the season of Lent. Advent, like Lent, is a time of penance, but Lenten penance is stricter, because Holy Easter is preceded by the Passion of Our Lord, while Advent prepares and introduces us directly to the joy of Holy Christmas. For this reason, as Father Faber notes, there is a difference between the night of Bethlehem and the night of Calvary. On Calvary there was an earthquake, whereas…
Cristiana de Magistris has explained well the nature of Christian peace (Voice of the Family Digest, 26 Nov), which is the Church’s moral imperative and a precept of divine law. Peace, however, is not the mere absence of war but is founded on the order established by God; and only the state which promotes or at least respects this order can enjoy political and social tranquility. So, for the sake of achieving peace, it is no use appealing to a purely human idea of brotherhood…
In 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima to three little shepherds, Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, entrusting them with a message whose contents were officially authenticated by the Church on 26 June 2000. This message is divided into three parts, also called “secrets”; the first part depicts a terrible vision of Hell, the second contains a prophecy about the future of humanity, and the third presents a dramatic vision of martyrdom, against a backdrop of destruction, which awaits…
The results of the recent election confirm that Italy is a basically conservative country, its roots on the Right, notwithstanding the repeated attempts of the Left to seize control of the government by overstepping the outcomes at the ballot box. The sole winner was the leader of the center-right coalition, Giorgia Meloni, and the main loser was the leader of the leftist bloc, Enrico Letta. The victory of the Center-Right was of historic proportions, with 235 congressmen out of 400 and at least 112 senators…