Bob Dylan said, "The executioner's face is always well-hidden". That's the problem: The cross pulls that hood off.

The long nights that Pier Giorgio Frassati spent on his knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament had something to do with the long days spent in service of the poor.

In a way, fasting is like the "calming of the monkey mind" effected by the rosary prayer: both are means of stilling the effervescence of relatively superficial preoccupations.

Again, I hear almost everyday from atheists who write off religion as primitive, premodern nonsense. I summon Aquinas, Augustine, Paul [of Tarsus], Teresa of Avila, Joseph Ratzinger, and Edith Stein-in all their intellectual rigor-as allies in the the struggle against this dismissive atheism.

Love without truth devolves into sentimentality. Truth without love becomes cold and calculated.

If the Word truly became flesh, then God had not only a mother, but also a grandmother, cousins, great-aunts, and weird uncles. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional, a mix of the good and bad, the saintly and the sinful, the glorious and the not so glorious. And this is such good news for us.

Begin with the beautiful, which leads you to the good, which leads you to the truth.