Prime Matters

We are living in a highly religious age. Secular gospels and dogmatic faiths promising salvation are all around us. So what is the belief system, the religious vision, that is displacing Christianity as the assumed narrative by which our post-Christian, modern societies live? And what is the religion that we ourselves need to be converted out of if we are to be fully converted to the Christian fai...

In 1974, Archbishop Fulton Sheen declared, "We are at the end of Christendom. Not of Christianity, not of the Church, but of Christendom." For the Church today, the fading of Christendom is an hour of testing, calling us to recover for our age the apostolic mindset and the bright hope of those first Christians of the Cenacle. The Catholic Truth Society, in collaboration with Prime Matter...

Just as faith actively receives from God, faith actively rejects that which is not from God. Each of us entertains (and often believes) lies and false images of God and oneself, obstructing our attempts to receive from God. Turning to God involves rejecting that which holds us back from him. Actively receiving and actively rejecting are two sides of the same act of faith. In this three-part series...

Faith acknowledges the needs of the heart and relates them to Jesus. However, due to original sin, we often sit in self-made aloneness, failing to bring our needs to him. Filled with anxiety and worry, we try to fix ourselves, not realizing that this tendency arises from the often-misunderstood vice of sloth . It’s time we kick the spiritual bachelor out of the basement and open up to Christ in pr...

As Christians, we need to make sure that we’re getting God right. It is possible to pray for years without a Christian heart, approaching prayer as pagans in Christian clothing. In this reflection, Msgr. Thomas Richter helps to expose the pagan vision of prayer that exists in our hearts in hopes of clearing the way for each of us to encounter God. In this three-part series, Msgr. Thomas Richter of...

Much of the Christian journey involves gaining a sense of the big picture: actively interpreting our lives according to the Catholic imaginative vision is essential for the Christian life. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairi...

The Church is at once changeless and remarkably flexible: while the battle is constant, the terrain on which it is fought changes from one generation to the next. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairing reflections on the gift...

If it is true, as Christians believe, that Christ is incarnate in a Mystical Body, then that Body is the necessary focus of the world's story. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairing reflections on the gift of faith with Adora...

God established the Church as a colony of heaven on earth, which he inhabits and in which he clothes himself, continuing the rescue mission of Christ. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairing reflections on the gift of faith wi...

In the midst of a great drama of realities visible and invisible, God invades rebel-held territory to redeem the wayward human race, taking on our nature in order to suffer on our behalf. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairin...

Faith is a matter of vision: it is a way of seeing more truly and more fully, the healing of our minds that allows us to grasp what is real and what is true in its entirety. In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairing reflections...

The question of faith is not as much about whether we believe God exists as it is whether we are willing to come to him and trust in him. We say we have faith - do we really? In the final days of Lent in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Monsignor James P. Shea delivered a retreat from an empty campus entitled, "From Shadows into the Light: Gaining the Eyes of Faith." Pairing reflections...

The ancient battle between good and evil continues today in each human heart. God calls; darkness seduces; and here, now, each one of us is faced with the choice on which our fate rests, a choice as old as the angels and our first parents. Will we accept life with God, embracing in all humility the path He lays out for us? Or will we draw up hedges around our egos, echoing those fallen words: “I w...

The controversy sparked by the life of Jesus has followed his Church down through the ages. Deemed a refuge for the ignorant as often as the ark of salvation, a haven for barbarism as often as a lover of freedom, Darth Vadar as often as a queenly and tender mother, the Church remains plagued by division, confusion, and betrayal in its adherents. And yet it continues to find new converts, new Chris...

Pentecost ushered in the apostolic age of the Church, those years in which Peter, Paul, and all the apostles ventured across the known world, spreading the Gospel to all nations, evangelizing Jews and Gentiles alike. Before long, small churches popped up across Asia, Africa, and Europe, even as disciples began to cultivate a Tradition and the beginnings of a book of Scriptures, all amidst an atmos...

Where is the great drama of human history headed? What does the Christian know about his future? We consider here what we know and what we do not know about the pilgrimage of the human race toward its ordained end. As we await the end of history as we know it, the “end times,” the “apocalypse,” the final judgment, in what (or whom) shall we place our hope? While the word "myth" has come to mean "u...

After His Resurrection, Jesus’s disciples wondered: would he now establish the long-awaited messianic kingdom, authoritative and powerful beyond measure? But Jesus had something different – and far more satisfying – in store. The divine Logos was to ascend once more to the Father, sending down the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, establishing the Lord’s presence within each of His followers. And the frui...

The Resurrection of Christ formed the culmination of his ministry. It was Mary Magdalene who first received news of the event, having come upon the empty tomb guarded by an angel. There Jesus came to her, bidding her to tell all of his followers that he had risen from the dead. And so the first Easter brought with it the defeat of death, the lifting of the ancient curse, the realization of God’s p...

When he arrived at Jerusalem, Jesus went directly to the Temple and declared that his Father's house was not be profaned. For Passover, Jesus took his apostles to an upper room, celebrating the Seder meal with them and instituting the Eucharist in their presence. He went next to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he anticipated his betrayal at the hands of Judas. And upon his betrayal, Jesus was trie...

Jesus’s ministry was neither haphazard nor inefficient. Rather, it was careful, systematic, organized, and impressive, as Jesus arranged his followers into bands of fellow leaders, preachers, and attendants who ventured throughout the region of Galilee. His following became a particularly potent force... one which Roman officials and Jewish Pharisees who were worried about the disruption of order...

What was the “Good News” that Jesus brought to the human race? It was the news that God continued to be present and interested in human lives. It was the news of God’s readiness to forgive the guilty, to respond with both justice and mercy. And it was the news of his promise to heal sinners, defeat Satan, destroy death, and adopt human persons into the life of the Trinity. But all this would come...

Jesus’s life and work were the sources of tremendous controversy: here was a man claiming not only to be a great teacher, but Lord over the Sabbath; a man claiming not only to be an eloquent teacher, but “the way, the truth, and the life.” Eventually, two camps formed around: those who worshipped him as God himself, and those who stiffened in resistance to him. While the word "myth" has come to me...

Jesus’s miracles, well-known to many, pointed to his authority as the Son of God. Among his most famous was the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Who is this man who had the authority not only to heal paralytics and those possessed by demons, but also to command even death itself? These acts had a deeper purpose: to reveal Christ’s capacity to heal far deeper wounds, namely those of sin, those of...

Jesus began his ministry by slowly and carefully revealing himself as the Messiah. He took up the identity of a recognizable Jewish figure a prophet and rabbi... yet to all who encountered him, he seemed like more. Jesus ventured from town to town, teaching in a way that was in keeping with Jewish law and tradition even as he deepened the demands of love, mercy, and conversion. He gave his “Sermon...

John the Baptist, having first encountered Jesus while still in Elizabeth’s womb, leaping with joy at Mary’s visitation, served as the forerunner to the Messiah. Living in the desert and preaching Christ’s coming, he prepared the way for the King of the Jews, eventually baptizing him. After Jesus had been baptized by John he went into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights to be tempted by...