The sermons are by a priest whose books and talks are often mentioned on this site--Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa: LENTEN SERMONS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY FATHER[Emphasis added by me] VATICAN CITY, 6 MAR 2009 (VIS) - At 9.00 a.m. on Friday 13 March in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Pala...

Here is the Zenit.org link to this third and last Advent homily to the Pope and the Curia. In the last day or two before reading this latest homily, I was pondering how dangerous it is for us Christians to learn a lot about religion and talk about it a lot without letting it blossom and take form in...

Here is the Zenit link. It's a great sermon that goes to the heart of the Pauline Year, a year not merely to learn more biographical and geographical facts about the life of Paul (and so show off our supposedly impressive religiosity), but rather and most importantly to receive deeper conversion to ...

Yes, it's a challenge for everyone of us. Here are the excerpts from Papal Preacher Fr. Cantalamessa's little book The Eucharist: Our Sanctification (revised ed.): Faith doesn't "make" the sacrament but it "receives" it. Only Christ's words repeated by the Church and rendered effective by the Holy S...

Often, Catholics are understandably confused by the biblical term used by the Lord Jesus himself when He declares that He will baptize in or with the Holy Spirit [see Acts 1:5 and Acts 11:16 at this link]. You can easily look up a reliable explanation of Baptism in the Holy Spirit online, courtesy o...

It is a commonplace of Catholic spiritual writing to recommend that Catholics seek a spiritual director. It is a very good thing. Yet, I have a confession to make: I do not have one individual person who is my "spiritual director." Yet, I do have and get spiritual direction regularly. I get it from ...

This post continues a recent treatment of discernment at this link. We looked at the comments of papal preacher Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa on the charism of discernment in his excellent and erudite book Come, Creator Spirit. He continues: A danger in some modern ways of practicing discernment is that ...

I will share again excerpts from Fr. Cantalamessa's book Come, Creator Spirit, as I did yesterday in the post on purity. Today's topic is the charism (that is, Holy Spirit inspired gift) of discernment whereby Christians can distinguish between what comes from the Holy Spirit, what comes from our ow...

"Power From Above"by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap Feast of Pentecost A - 2008-05-11 Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23. Everyone has on some occasion seen people pushing a stalled car trying to get it going fast enough to start. There are one or two people pushing from behi...

Papal preacher Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa gives the grand strategy: Living in purity is one of the very sure ways of coming to experience the Holy Spirit. Yet we know how sensitive this question is, and how difficult it is to be truly pure of heart. What does one do so as not to give in and fall? Ther...