“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). How harsh these words of the Divine Master seem! Those who choose the path of justice, of living as God…
Command, understood in its strict sense, is the power of a person invested with religious or civil authority – whether military or merely administrative – that gives him the right to say to a subordinate: “Think in this way, because this is how one should think!”, “Act it in this way, because this is how…
Curious, Friar Dominic of Caserta began to observe a monk who daily passed through the monastery at a very peculiar hour. Before Matins – therefore, in the first hours after midnight – he would steal quietly out of his cell and return just as the bell rang for prayer, so as not to be seen….
Jesus looked lovingly upon a young man who practised the Commandments and invited him: “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; and come, follow Me” (Mk 10:21). This call to abandon everything in order to follow the Divine Master first came to the Apostles and, in…
Work, worries, misfortunes, achievements, dreams of success and distractions of every kind often completely absorb our attention, immersing us in a vicious and constant dissipation… Yet Scripture says: “Non in commotione Dominus” (1 Kgs 19:11), the Lord is not in agitation. Caught up in the turmoil of earthly concerns, we end up distancing ourselves from…
There are few stories as fascinating as those that tell of the mysterious relationship between Creator and creature, especially when they manifest the sublime fatherliness of God, intent on saving His sinful child by any means. Such accounts, however, are even more admirable when they feature, in a discreet but pervasive and insistent manner, the…
“My God, if that’s how it is, I give up!” It was October 1942. With this cry from the heart, a fourteen-year-old youth directs his steps to the study hall of the seminary of Quảng-Uyên, run by French Dominicans. Despite his simple, friendly and even charismatic character, we find him in a state of torment…
There are two positions of God in relation to men. Some fall under what we call general providence; others under what we call special providence. General and special providence Divine Providence is that supreme perfection of wisdom by which God conducts events. In view of the way things are, He disposes them according to His…
Perhaps Angels are not as we imagine them to be. Several centuries of sentimental religious iconography have ended up peddling us a kind of standardized figure of the winged personage: a youth – or child, according to the taste of the patron – dressed in light robes, or none at all, and nonchalantly exercising his…
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gn 1:1-2). The most prodigious intelligence would be unable to grasp with what wisdom, magnificence and…
