Author: Howie Cassan
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Your Guardian Angel Is Always Near
3 Beautiful Ways to Strengthen Your Relationship With Heaven’s Unseen Protector Discover how three simple Catholic practices can help you grow closer to your guardian angel and deepen your awareness of God’s loving protection. Every human life is precious in the eyes of God. From the beginning of our earthly journey, our Heavenly Father surrounds…
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Understanding the Parts of a Catholic Church
A Deep Guide to the Sacred Architecture, Theology, Liturgy, and Spiritual Meaning of God’s House A Catholic church is not simply an auditorium in which Christians happen to gather. It is a sacred place set apart for divine worship, a visible expression of the mystery of the Church herself, and a building whose arrangement is…
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Are All Religions Paths to God?
Francis, Leo XII, Leo XIII, and the Catholic Distinction We Keep Missing When Pope Francis said in Singapore in 2024 that “all religions are paths to God,” Catholics understandably began debating what exactly he meant. Some reacted as though Francis had formally declared every religion equally true and equally salvific. Others reacted in the opposite…
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Amen, Amen: Faith, Works, Sacraments, and the Gospel of John
Brothers and sisters in Christ, and especially my Protestant brothers and sisters, I want to begin with a simple question. If every outward action connected with salvation is dismissed as a “work,” then what do we do with the Gospel of John? When we read John carefully, we find that Jesus repeatedly presents divine grace…
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The Catholic Gentleman: Manhood Is Not a Costume
A CatholicG33k Reflection on Sam Guzman’s The Catholic Gentleman: Living Authentic Manhood Today There is a way to read The Catholic Gentleman badly. You could read it as a Catholicized masculinity manual: dress like an adult, drink like an adult, work hard, protect your family, develop some discipline, stop looking at pornography, learn some manners,…
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The Holiness No One Sees
A Reflection on The Mother of the Saviour and Our Interior Life There is a kind of holiness the world will never understand. It does not build a platform. It does not announce itself. It does not need to be noticed, praised, followed, or remembered. It simply belongs to God. And perhaps no human life…
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The “Apocrypha” Points to Christ: The Deuterocanonical Books Protestants Are Missing
If you have ever opened a Protestant Bible and compared its Old Testament with a Catholic Bible, you probably noticed something strange. The Catholic Bible has more books. Tobias. Judith. Wisdom. Ecclesiasticus. Baruch. First and Second Machabees. Plus additional portions of Esther and Daniel. Protestants commonly call these books the Apocrypha. Catholics call them the…
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The Holiness of the Given Moment
A Reflection on St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will There are spiritual books that give us new ideas, and there are spiritual books that quietly take away our excuses. St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will belongs unmistakably to the second category. It is astonishingly small. In the edition before us, the…
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The Will Is Trained by What We Love
What if strengthening your will isn’t really about trying harder but learning to love the right things? A reflection on The Training of the Will, grace, temptation, attention, and the slow Catholic work of becoming free enough to choose the good.
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Is Purgatory Real? Beyond the Myths
The biblical, historical, and Catholic case for purification after death. The small Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Prati, on the banks of the Tiber, houses a most curious collection of artifacts: sixteen pieces of cloth, paper, or wood, each claimed to bear the scorched signs of hands and fingerprints from souls in…