The Narrow Gate Blog

This article first appeared at: stpaulcenter.com In contemporary society, most people have no awareness that the offering of sacrifice to God is a central act of the virtue of religion and thus a good and morally obligatory thing. Even Catholics who attend Mass are generally unaware that they are participating in an infinite offering to God or that that is the principal reason why there is a Sunday Mass obligation. The more society becomes secularized, the more the notion of sacrifice and its ob …

This article first appeared at: stpaulcenter.com Every year in Lent the Church directs our thoughts to Jesus on the Cross. This is the sacred center of everything we believe and celebrate as Catholic Christians. Take away the Cross and you take away our salvation. Take away our salvation and everything “good” about the good news of the gospel evaporates.Most of us sense the importance of Jesus on the Cross, but how many of us really understand what was taking place? I would guess that very few c …

This article first appeared at: catholic.com The (Catholic) Eucharist appears in a striking and mystical way in the book of Revelation.On Easter morning, two disciples of Jesus are on their way from Jerusalem back to Emmaus. They might be husband and wife, but the text doesn’t say for certain. St. Luke names only one of the two: Cleopas. If they are a married couple, they might be Jesus’ aunt and uncle. (Hegesippus, a Christian writer from the second century, references “the Lord’s uncle, Clopas …