Focus on Faith

The gift of Advent is time to prepare ourselves to embrace all things new, for it reminds us that we continually begin again.

While they may not always be expressed plainly, the questions that occupy our hearts are often what drive us forward or hold us back.

The Catholic customs of praying for the souls of the dead, praying to the saints who have gone before us in earthly life, and of venerating relics are based primarily in the church’s long-standing tradition and theology rather than explicit scriptural “prooftexts.” However, the Bible does indeed allude to these practices.

Through the holiness and witness of its members, the church not only receives Christ’s grace but dispenses it, all the while pointing to him as the one Savior. “Lumen Gentium” says that each “disciple of Christ has the obligation of spreading the faith” so that others might be saved, too.

Eucharistic love is not given to keep as a possession, but to hand on so those around us, and those after us, may know and believe in themselves in a new and better way.

We are greatly blessed by the contributions of Black Catholics in the church in the United States, particularly their illuminating legacy of holiness. The struggles and pain faced by the African American community are succinctly captured in the lives of these six Black Catholics now being considered for canonization. In them we can find the greatest of human characteristics, truly men and women for our times.

The theology of this passage from Mark matters. Obviously so does its place within the extended debates of rabbis and theologians, arguments now millennia old. “Which is the first of all the commandments?” the scribe asks Jesus (Mk 12:28).

Are Catholic families supposed to be different? What would that difference look like? These are important questions for each Catholic family to consider. Here are the things I suggest are the five most important differences that distinguish a family committed to living the Catholic vision of family life.