November is a month for gratitude, the time of harvest and remembrance of the dead. In the United States, Thanksgiving Day calls us to pause, gather as families, and thank God for his many blessings. Earlier in the month, Martinmas Day, in honor of St. Martin of Tours, serves as a Catholic celebration of the fall harvest and its new wine. Giving thanks is at the heart of our faith through the Eucharist...

“What most attracts God’s graces is gratitude,” says the Little Flower, “because if we thank him for a gift, he is touched and hastens to give us ten more, and if we thank him again with the same enthusiasm, what an incalculable multiplication of graces! I have experienced this; try it yourself and you will see! My gratitude for everything he gives me is limitless, and I prove it to him in a thousand ways.”

In the Gospels it often seems as if Jesus grants healing to anyone who asks for it. For many of us, this raises the question of why the same doesn’t hold true today. We all know people who have prayed for healing for years without ever seeming to receive what they ask for. Perhaps we’ve even had that experience ourselves. So why is Jesus apparently less willing to heal people today than He was when He walked on earth?

Before anything else, take a minute to pray this morning for 253 students and 12 teachers who were kidnapped last Friday from St. Mary’s School in Papiri, northwestern Nigeria. In fact, more than 300 students were kidnapped last week, but 50 managed to escape their captors late Friday night, and to run home. The students are between 12 and 17 years old. Most of them live at the school...

The Vatican has announced the most far-reaching overhaul of its internal administration in a quarter of a century, with Pope Leo XIV approving two major regulatory texts that will reshape daily life inside the Holy See. Signed on the Feast of Christ the King and published on 24 November, the new Regulation of the Roman Curia...

Thanksgiving is a “beautiful feast” that reminds everyone to be grateful for the gifts they have been given, Pope Leo XIV said.“Say thank you to someone,” the pope suggested two days before the U.S. holiday when he met reporters outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo before returning to the Vatican after a day off.Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, was scheduled to spend his Thanksgiving Nov. 27 in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey, the first stops on his first foreign trip as pope.

Jesus exaggerates in today’s Gospel when He claims not to know the day or the hour when He will come again. Christ occasionally makes such overstatements to drive home a point we might otherwise miss. His point here is that the exact “hour” is not important. What is crucial is that we not postpone our repentance, that we be ready for Him, spiritually and morally, when He comes...

A caller on my radio show today asked whether angels are responsible for the “vibrations” heard throughout the universe. He had come across a speaker who suggested something along those lines and wanted to know if it was odd speculation or if the Church actually teaches anything that resembles it. His description mixed a few ideas together, but it touched on something more significant than he realized.

The Vatican closed 2024 with a budget surplus of 1.6 million euros ($1.85 million), it said on Wednesday, signalling a turnaround after years of deficits that had frustrated Church leaders, including the late Pope Francis.In its first budget report since 2022, the Vatican said it had seen a "significant recovery" in its accounts last year, thanks mainly to higher donations and strong investment gains.

I found Art Allen a few miles inland from some uninviting Connecticut beach. He was in his mid-60s at the time, a scientist with a man-of-action feel to him. He wore a Coast Guard Search and Rescue polo, a massive Fenix 3 GPS watch, and he had this snow-white Hemingway beard. Six canoes hung from hooks inside his garage, mountain bikes leaned against the wall, and all looked as if they had a lot of miles on them. So did he.