Benjamin

[Fr. Chris Vorderbruggen @FatherChrisVor1]

Holy God, we praise thy name;
Lord of all, we bow before thee!
All on earth thy sceptre own,
All in heaven above adore thee.
Infinite thy vast domain,
Everlasting is thy reign.

Hark! the loud celestial hymn,
Angel choirs above are raising;
Cherubim and seraphim,
In unceasing chorus praising,
Fill the heavens with sweet accord:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord.

Holy Father, holy Son,
Holy Spirit, three we name thee.
While in essence only one
Undivided God we claim thee;
And adoring bend the knee,
While we own the mystery.

Spare thy people, Lord, we pray,
By a thousand snares surrounded;
Keep us without sin today;
Never let us be confounded.
Lo, I put my trust in thee;
Never, Lord, abandon me.

[Jason Bartlett @Jason2bartlett]

I’m just a white South African having a lovely, peaceful and safe weekend on my farm in Alabama.

God is God

[Carrie Prejean Boller @CarriePrejean1]

The Eucharist is what led me home to the Catholic Church.

As a convert, I spent years not fully understanding what Catholics believe about Holy Communion. Now I know that the Eucharist is not a symbol. It is Jesus Christ Himself. Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

That realization changed everything for me. It changed how I dress for Mass. How I pray. How I prepare my heart. How I veil. How I approach the altar with reverence, and humility.

I kneel and receive holy communion on the tongue because I want my outward actions to reflect my inward belief. Not because I’m perfect, but because He is worthy.

My prayer is that all of us grow in reverence and awe for the greatest gift God has given us. Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist.

He deserves nothing less than our deepest love, reverence, and devotion.

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[Tridentine Brewing @TridentineBrew]

@Eagles Happy month of the Sacred Heart! ❤️‍🔥

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Wolverine converted to Catholicism.

In X-Men: The Animated Series (specifically Season 4 episode 8 titled "Nightcrawler"), Logan is portrayed as a bitter, violent man deeply angry at God.

He meets Nightcrawler, as a devout Catholic monk who has been hunted and hated by the world, yet feels at peace. Kurt’s pure faith completely shatters Logan's cynicism.

In the final scene of the episode, Wolverine is shown kneeling alone at the altar of a French monastery, physically crossing himself and reading the Bible.

Having the humility to kneel is the only thing that can actually heal a broken soul.

[Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 @CforCatholics]

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children." GK Chesterton

Wanna be extraordinary? Build a patriotic Catholic family 🇺🇸

[Sr. Mary Joseph Calore, SSCJ @sscjusa]

Repost of excellent insight by Debra Gagnon Kelly via Facebook

Pope Leo XIV may have just fulfilled a 100-year-old prophecy.

And almost nobody is connecting the dots.

To understand why this matters, you have to go back to October 13, 1884.

After celebrating Mass that morning, Pope Leo XIII suddenly collapsed at the foot of the altar. His face turned ashen white. For about ten minutes, he stood frozen in what witnesses described as a trance.

When he finally came to, he revealed what he had seen.

A vision of Satan, boasting before the throne of God:

“I can destroy your Church.”

And the Lord replied:

“You have the time. You have the power. Do with them what you will.”

Most accounts say Satan was granted somewhere between 75 and 100 years.

Leo XIII walked straight from the chapel to his office and composed the Prayer to St. Michael — and ordered it prayed at the end of every Low Mass throughout the world.

He knew what was coming.

Now look at the last hundred years.
Two world wars. Mass apostasy.

The collapse of the family. Catholic divorce rates matching the secular world. Liturgical abuse. Scandal at every level of the hierarchy. Atheistic communism sweeping nations.

Exactly what Satan had threatened.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Exactly 33 years to the day after Leo XIII’s vision — October 13, 1917 — roughly 70,000 people gathered in a field in Fatima, Portugal, and witnessed the Miracle of the Sun.

Our Lady had appeared to three shepherd children months earlier. She warned that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world.

She told them the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and the family.

Russia became the first nation to legalize ab*rtion. The first to legalize no-fault divorce. The birthplace of modern atheism and communism.
She was right about everything.

But she also made a promise:

“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”

Now watch the dates closer:

→ October 13, 1884 — Leo XIII’s vision

→ May 13, 1917 — Our Lady appears at Fatima

→ October 13, 1917 — the Miracle of the Sun

→ May 13, 1981 — an assassin shoots John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. He survives, the bullets narrowly missing his vital organs, and credits Our Lady of Fatima with saving his life.

→ March 25, 1984 — John Paul II consecrates the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

And now, in our own time:

On May 8, 2025, a new Pope steps onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.

He chooses the name Leo XIV — explicitly stating he chose it in part to honor Leo XIII.

The same Pope who started this whole story.
Five days later, on May 13, 2025 — the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima — the world reflects on his election as the bookend to a century-long battle.

The bookend has arrived. And the data is staggering.

In 2025, nearly 160,000 adults entered the Catholic Church in the United States — the highest level in twenty years. By 2026, the average U.S. diocese reported a 38% increase in converts over the previous year.

Los Angeles received 8,598 people into the Church.

The Archdiocese of Paris welcomed its largest group of converts ever.

France’s adult baptisms have tripled in a decade.
England. Norway.

Australia. Belgium. Ireland.
Everywhere, the same story.

The 100 years are closing. The triumph is beginning. And you are alive to see it.

Our Lady didn’t perform the greatest public miracle since the parting of the Red Sea for nothing. She came with two requests:

1. Pray the Rosary daily.
2. Pray St Michael's Prayer often.

That’s it. That’s how you join the winning side of the greatest spiritual victory in centuries.

50 to 100 years from now, I believe most of the first world will be Catholic again.

The question isn’t whether the triumph is coming.

The question is whether you’ll be one of the souls who helped bring it about — or one who watched from the sidelines.

[ChurchPOP @Church_POP]

Do you feel called to the priesthood?

For those who might feel God is leading them in that direction, one Catholic priest explained three signs to look for in a viral reel published by Sydney Vocations on Instagram.

In the video, Father Daniele Russo, the Director of Vocations for the Archdiocese of Sydney, quickly breaks down signs of a potential call to the priesthood and how to recognize them. The caption also encourages the viewer to bring these signs to prayer.

Here are Father Daniele Russo’s three signs you might have a vocation to the priesthood:

1) The Holy Nag
“Sign number one, the holy nag,” he says. “So those who are called might experience thoughts of the priesthood that don't seem to leave them. Thoughts of celebrating the sacraments that seem to persist through time.”

2) An Attraction to the Sacraments
“Sign number two: an attraction to the sacraments,” Father Russo continues. “If we are at Mass or in confession and imagining ourselves as being the one to administer the sacrament– if our love for the sacraments goes beyond admiration into desire for imitation– that could be another sign that God is calling us.”

3) An Increasing Desire for Love
“Sign number three, an increasing desire for love.”
“Saint John Paul II said, 'Every vocation is fundamentally a call to love,’" the priest says.
“But when one is called to the priesthood, their desire to love expands beyond the normal boundaries, especially of family life. Whereas a priest in celibate love is called to love the entirety of God's family, an enlarged heart, an unrestricted love, an exclusive love for God so as to be non-exclusively available to his people.”

Father Russo’s reel generated approximately 117,000 views, over 10,000 likes, and almost 80 comments. Several users even expressed interest in the priesthood after watching the video.
Here’s what some people said:

“I just got back from Mass, and I prayed to God about what he wants from me… Then I saw this video. Is this a sign?” one user asked.

“You just described me,” another person said.

“Extremely blessed to have these signs,” someone else wrote.

“I've got all these signs. May thy will be done. 🙌🙌” another user said.

Let us pray for all men who are discerning a vocation to the priesthood!

https://t.co/cZLkvOuA47

[CatholicVote @CatholicVote]

Beautifully Catholic speech from Sec Marco Rubio:

"Almost every region of what is now the United States was first explored and mapped by Catholics. This is no coincidence... The Church calls us as Christ called St. Peter to 'duc in altum' — to 'put out into the deep.' Catholics across time have answered the call—from the forests of pagan Europe to the wilderness of North America—to bring new worlds to Christ. This is the inheritance which has shaped our pioneer nation."

👏

[Eva Vlaardingerbroek @EvaVlaar]

Starmer has just admitted he banned me and other commentators from traveling to the UK because we would “set back communities.” Yet mass third-world migration doesn’t bother him as it only sets back the one community he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about: the White native population.

[Trad West @trad_west_]

This is the story of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the saint of the little way - She never performed a public miracle.
She never left her convent. She died at 24, unknown to the world.

But today, she’s a Doctor of the Church, and one of the most powerful saints in Heaven.

Thérèse Martin was born in 1873 to devout French parents (both canonized saints).

Sensitive, passionate, and deeply spiritual, she desired only one thing from childhood: to love Jesus with all her heart.

And she meant it.

By age 15, she begged the Pope Leo XIII to let her enter the Carmelite convent.
He was stunned.But she was unshakable.

She entered, took the veil and began what she called “the little way” a hidden path of radical love, sacrifice, and humility.

Thérèse wanted to be great.
A saint. A missionary. A martyr.

But illness and cloistered life kept her unseen.
So she gave God everything—in the small things.

She smiled when mocked.
She stayed silent when insulted.
She offered up suffering with joy.

She said: “I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight.”
“To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”
To the world, she was small. To Heaven, she was a giant.

She suffered from tuberculosis in her final years.
Her nights were filled with pain, temptation, and even spiritual darkness.

But she held fast: “I have never relied on myself. I have always relied solely on God.”

Before she died in 1897, she said:
“I want to spend my Heaven doing good on Earth.”
“After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.”

And she kept her word.

Miracles began. Healings, conversions, spiritual awakenings.

People all over the world testified to her intercession.
Her autobiography, Story of a Soul, spread like wildfire millions have read it and wept.

I can attest to its power personally. Reading her book changed my life.

During World War I, French soldiers began reporting something strange: A young Carmelite nun in white would appear beside them in the trenches.

She warned them of danger guided them to safety and healed their wounds.

They later recognized her in a photo. It was Thérèse.

But one of the most beautiful stories from her intercession comes from before she ever entered the Carmel. Thérèse set her eyes on a soul:

A brutal murderer named Henri Pranzini was sentenced to death. He showed no remorse. Refused a priest. Everyone gave up on him.

But Thérèse didn’t.

She offered rosaries, sacrifices, tears, all for his conversion. On the day of his execution, just before the blade fell, Pranzini seized the crucifix and kissed it three times.

Thérèse wept with joy.

“This was my first child,” she wrote.
“Jesus had given me the soul I asked for.”
Even murderers couldn’t escape her love.

In 1925, she was canonized.

In 1997, 100 years after her death, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church.

She joins St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas… and she never wrote a single theological treatise.

Her theology was love. And her little way works.

St. Thérèse is now one of the most beloved saints in history. She is Patroness of florists, foreign missions, loss of parents, priests, and the sick.

She is an example for anyone who feels small because her strength was childlike trust in God, and God made her do wonders.

When you feel too small to make a difference, remember the cloistered girl who shook the world, not by being seen, but by loving in secret.

And by God's will she became everything she wanted. A missionary, a martyr and a warrior.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, pray for us!

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Bishop Fulton Sheen was a visionary. I'm so glad he is getting beatified this year.

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Aura.

[Ascension @AscensionPress]

Hail Mary, full of grace... 🙏

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Fr. Mike Schmitz: “Jesus is not an option. He is a necessity.”

[Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone @ArchCordileone]

“I shall spend every moment loving. One who loves does not notice her trials; or perhaps more accurately, she is able to love them. I shall do everything for heaven, my true home. There I shall find my Mother in all the splendor of her glory. I shall delight with her in the joy of Jesus Himself in perfect safety.”

St. Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

[Jack @jackunheard]

A baby at 32 weeks in the womb was caught smiling the moment she heard her dad’s voice during a routine ultrasound.

The scan showed the unborn girl breaking into a clear smile as soon as her father started speaking.

By this stage of pregnancy, babies can hear sounds from outside the womb and often recognize their parents’ voices.

An unforgettable moment. Life is truly precious.