VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Every important journey should be preceded by adequate preparation, and the run-up to the Holy Year 2025 is no exception. Pope Francis asked Catholics to get ready for the jubilee journey with a Year of Prayer and now, a few months after the year was officially announced, a kind of prayer…
Reading 1 Acts 8:26-40 The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip,“Get up and head south on the roadthat goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route.” So he got up and set out. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch,a court official of the Candace,that is, the queen of the Ethiopians,in charge of her…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — At its most basic level, a vocation is a call to happiness, said Korean Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, prefect of the Dicastery for Clergy. “Vocation is essentially the call to be happy, to take charge of one’s life, to realize it fully and not waste it,” the cardinal told the Vatican…
Reading 1 Acts 8:1b-8 There broke out a severe persecution of the Church in Jerusalem,and all were scatteredthroughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria,except the Apostles.Devout men buried Stephen and made a loud lament over him.Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the Church;entering house after house and dragging out men and women,he handed them over…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Exercising the virtue of temperance is not a recipe for a boring life, Pope Francis said, but rather it is the secret to enjoying every good thing. If one wants “to appreciate a good wine, savoring it in small sips is better than swallowing it all in one go. We all…
Reading 1 Acts 7:51—8:1a Stephen said to the people, the elders, and the scribes:“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears,you always oppose the Holy Spirit;you are just like your ancestors.Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one,whose betrayers and murderers you…