Austria’s president honored Pope Benedict XVI on the final day of his visit to the “Alp Republic” on September 9, 2007 with Mozart music in the Vienna Concert House. While it is true that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg in 1756, that is not
We are currently amid what has been termed the largest consultation process in human history. Launched at Pentecost 2021, the Synod on Synodality—the hallmark of Pope Francis’s pontificate—will take place this October, just months away. The Working Document for the Continental Stage has been compiled from submissions from national Bishops’ Conferences.
A Child and His Mother The redemption of suffering and the mystery of love are inseparable. The response to suffering is not to stop caring—that, in fact, is hell—but to experience a caring that sustains us in our humanity as it was meant to be. This is the redemption that
There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody
Moses and John the Baptist: The Final Exodus As explored in a previous essay on Fra Angelico’s The Harrowing of Hell, both Adam and Abel, leading the procession from the cavern of hell, serve as a first reminder of the dust of the wilderness. Through its very distance from heavenly glory,
Sharing life in a human and Christian way does not require that the conditions of this act be conscious. Most of the time, they live implicitly in our good will—a will that is sustained, especially in difficult moments, by a reasoned explanation. Therefore, when the Gospel says, “Take heed, watch
Noah was different. His world was different. According to the figures provided by Genesis 5, at the time when Noah’s father Lamech was born, his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was still alive, at 874 years of age—Adam. Seth, too, was alive. And so were Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, all of
Amid the vicissitudes of the COVID-pandemic, another disease quietly spread through the American population: depression. A staggering 1 in 3 adults in the United States are now suffering from the affliction, a rapid elevation that shows no sign of reversal. Depression is a uniquely debilitating illness. While perhaps most readily