New Giveaway for Spring 2024

+JMJ+ Okay, I’ve narrowed it down for our Spring Giveaway. Sorta. I’ve put what I came up with on the Giveaway Spring 2024 page tonight.  

Time for a Giveaway!

+JMJ+ Our most recent loosely-themed series, Catholicism 101 or What is Christianity, has ended for now. While I decide what to do next (and I have some ideas), why don’t we do a giveaway? We haven’t done one in a while, Pentecost is coming up, so that sounds like as good an excuse as any. Now we just have to decide what to give away. What will it be?

It’s about transformation

+JMJ+ (Our loosely themed Catholicism 101 or What is Christinity series continues.) A Christian anthropology: what would that mean? Christianity does have a certain way of looking at man, at God, at the world, at reality. It is more than a way of looking but, yes, it is a way of looking. It’s a way of describing what reality is. And it is more than describing it. We describe it to think about it and to tell others about it, but we also describe it so we can do something with it or about it in an interior and an exterior way. 

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday, y’all!

+JMJ+ You expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls, and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty Yourself out upon us. 

The Way to Emmaus

+JMJ+ Tonight I was reading in the devotional, In Conversation with God, Vol. 2 (see notes below) for Wednesday in the Octave of Easter. The chapter talks about the disciples on the way to Emmaus, part of the readings for the day’s Mass, and the title is “Letting Oneself be Helped.” Sometimes that is the hardest thing, isn’t it? Asking for help. Letting someone help us. Surrendering that insistence on doing things our own way when clearly our own way isn’t working. Or isn’t working as well as it could be. Or is actively working against us. Surrendering control, allowing someone else to decide how to help us and when, and what we need to do. We balk at it naturally. But what if the One trying to help us is the Lord? Do we balk at His direction? Do we refuse to let Him help us?

Happy Easter!

Regina Caeli

V: Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia.
R: The Son you merited to bear, alleluia,
V: Has risen as He said, alleluia.
R: Pray to God for us, alleluia.
V: Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
R: For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Read more about the Regina Coeli.

+JMJ+  Regina Caeli! Christ is risen, alleluia! A blessed and happy Easter to you and your loved ones. In honor of the day I’m sharing some sacred choral music in four videos. I was craving some beauty for today and I thought you might enjoy it, too.

My First Holy Thursday Experience

+JMJ+ Though this was originally written a few years ago, I’m including it as a re-share in our current Catholic Christianity 101 or What is Christianity series. No other Holy Thursday has affected me as deeply as that first one just two nights before I was to be received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. And so I will share with you again, and for those who have not read it, for the first time, my account, lightly edited, of that evening.

It’s not about comfort

+JMJ+ (We’re continuing our series on Catholicism 101 or What is Christianity.) People have said to me, people who should know better, but the secular world has gotten to them and their minds have been affected and they have said things like, “I understand why you need religion, it gives you comfort.” 

Happy and blessed feast day of St. Joseph

Patron of the Universal Church, guide us.
Protector of the Holy Family, guard us.
Show men not to be afraid of being men.
Amen.

---

Join me on Fridays for the Rosary Project Live on Twitter at 8pm ET, 7pm CT, to cultivate a culture of Light, Life, Love, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, for the conversion of sinners, and for the salvation of souls. There’s also a Rosary on the blog you can use anytime.

“The Rosary is the ‘weapon’ for these times.” — Padre Pio

---

Subscribe via email: While you’re here, subscribe to get new blog posts, updates on projects like the ebooks, giveaways, and who knows what else. And thank you very much!

Full disclosure: When you make any purchase through my Amazon affiliate links (or my general Amazon link) on this site, I may make a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you. And thank you for your prayers and support.

Copyright: All original material on Catholic Heart and Mind is Copyright © 2009-2024 Lee Lancaster. All rights reserved. Read more.

I am a soul who has a body, oh, really?

+JMJ+ (We’re continuing our series What is Christianity? or Catholicism 101.) How many times have you heard someone say it? “I am a soul, I have a body.” That’s not what the Church teaches. Think it doesn’t matter? Oh, but it does. If you think you are a soul who has a body, then you probably think your soul is the more important of the two and that the body is somehow second rate. There is a sense in which this is true. After all, the soul can live without the body, but the body can’t live without the soul. But without the body you would be incomplete. A human person consists of a soul and a body. A better way of saying that would be, a human person is a union of body and soul. *I like to say the words together, well, as close together as I can say them, bodysoul or soulbody. I just can’t seem to say them at the same time. We humans are limited that way, one thing after another, one thing at a time.)

Oops! Errata from the previous post

+JMJ+ Just a quick post to correct some errors. I mentioned previously that it would be a good thing to do some extra prayer to counter some activity coming from New Age circles and I got my timing mixed up. For New Agers the New Moon is a time of special meaning and influence. This Sunday the New Moon, I thought, would be in Aquarius. But it will be in Pisces instead.

I can see clearly now

+JMJ+ (This week our informal series, What is Christianity, continues.) I wear glassess. When I was younger, before the days of plastic lighter weight lenses, I wore thick glass glasses. They were heavy, too. But without them I couldn’t see two feet in front of me. My third-grade teacher had observed that I couldn’t see the chalkboard at school so I had to move my desk right up next to the board when an assignment required reading it. That was embarrassing. But that same teacher told my parents about my poor vision and that’s how I got my first pair of glasses. What a difference they made. And not just in the classroom. I was amazed at all the things I could see now. Is this the way it had been all this time? I never knew!