No doubt you've heard the phrase before, "Oh, I'm spiritual but not religious." Or, "I don't go to any church but I still pray." Once I heard someone say, "Well we might leave the Church, but we won't lose our faith." In today's culture there is a distinct animosity towards organized religion – the Catholic Church included. How do we respond?

First, it is necessary to remember that the Church, like Christ, bridges the gap between heaven and earth. This means that despite her divine origin and identity, she is populated by sinners like you and I. The ministers and members of the Church fail to live up to the Gospel and the standards that Jesus preached, and many of the 'spiritual but not religious' crowd have been turned away by our actions. This cannot be!

I've been reading the book God or Nothing by Robert Cardinal Sarah, and it has been really fantastic. It's clear that Cardinal Sarah is a deeply holy and courageous man, and his words have been both challenging and inspiring to me. (The book was published by Ignatius Press in 2015 and is subtitled "A Conversation on Faith with Nicolas Diat" if you want to find it.) Here are a few quotes that stood out to me – I hope you enjoy them!

"We understand, therefore, that in piercing the Heart of Jesus, the soldier's spear revealed a great mystery, for it went farther than the Heart of Christ. It revealed God; it passed, so to speak, through the very center of the Trinity." (p. 25)

"Man is great only when he is on his knees before God." (36)

I would like to introduce to you a very ancient reality that many people today experience and they don't know why? I can tell you there are no real answers to why some people have this ability. These are graces that have been given to those who need them, the Gift of Tears.

Tears hold a special kind of power to cleanse your mind, reconnect the head and heart and realign you with the power of your soul, but many people see tears as a form of weakness, as being "childish" or giving into negativity. We need to refuse to accept the worldly view of tears and embrace them as Holy.

If you’ve read C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, then you’re familiar with the character Eustace Scrubb. He begins as really a terrible person: always complaining and making others around him miserable,believing himself to be the victim of circumstances, being arrogant and selfish. By the end of the story and in subsequent books, however, he becomes a man of great courage and self-sacrifice. There is an episode near the middle of the book that helps to explain this change. Eustace finds himself transformed into a dragon, and one night he follows the great lion Aslan to a spring in the midst of a garden. Although he longs to bathe in the cool refreshing waters, he is unable to shed the dragon skin that prevents him. At last Aslan himself peels off the foul scaly skin and allows Eustace to be renewed in the water. He describes the experience: