”Dear children, in this time of grace, anew, I am calling you to offer your lives to God that He may lead you towards the resurrection through your personal conversion. Little children, God is near to you and heeds your prayers, but you are lulled to sleep, and that is why He sent me to you to awaken you, and that you may shine holiness like a spring flower. Thank you for having responded to my call.” -Our Lady of Medjugorje, in private revelation given to Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, on February 25, 2026
An excerpt from “The Sinner’s Guide” by Venerable Luis of Granada:
Since it is the property and function of grace to make us virtuous, we must love virtue and abhor sin, which we cannot do if the understanding be not divinely enlightened to discern the malice of sin and the beauty of virtue. For the will, according to philosophers and theologians, is a blind faculty, incapable of acting without the guidance of the intellect, which points out the good it should choose and love, and the evil it should reject and hate. The same is true of fear, of hope, and of hatred for sin. We can never acquire these sentiments without a just knowledge of the goodness of God and the malice of sin.
Grace, as you have already learned, causes God to dwell in our souls; and as God, in the words of St. John, is “the true Light, Which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9), the purer a soul is, the brighter will this Light shine in her, just as glass, according as it is clearer, reflects more strongly the rays of the sun. Hence, St. Augustine calls God the “wisdom of a purified soul,” because He fills her with His light, which enables her to apprehend all that is necessary for salvation (see “De libero arbitrio voluntatis” by St. Augustine of Hippo).
Nor should this surprise us when we consider with what care God provides even the brute creation with all that is necessary for the maintenance of life. For whence is that natural instinct which teaches the sheep to distinguish among plants those which are poisonous and those which are wholesome? Who has taught them to run from the wolf and to follow the dog? Was it not God, the Author of nature? Since, then, God endows the brute creation with the discernment necessary for the preservation of their animal life, have we not much more reason to feel that He will communicate to the just the knowledge necessary for the maintenance of their spiritual life?
This example teaches us not only that such a knowledge really exists, but also marks the character of this knowledge. It is not a mere theory or speculation; it is eminently practical. Hence the difference between knowledge divinely communicated and that which is acquired in the schools. The latter only illumines the intellect, but the former, the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, communicates itself to the will, strengthens it for good, governs and stimulates it. By its efficacious virtue, this divine knowledge penetrates into the depths of the soul, transforms our passions, and remodels us upon the likeness of Christ. Hence, the Apostle [St. Paul] tells us: “The Word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching unto the division of the soul and spirit” (Hebrews 4:12)—that is, separating the spiritual man from the animal man.
This, then, is one of the principal effects of grace, and one of the most beautiful rewards of virtue in this life. But to prove this truth more clearly to carnal men, who reluctantly accept it, we will confirm it by undeniable passages from both the Old and the New Testament. In the New Testament, our Savior tells us: “The Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you” (John 14:26).
And again: “It is written in the prophets: And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me” (John 6:45).
Numerous are the passages in the Old Testament which promise this wisdom to the just. “I am the Lord thy God, That teach thee profitable things, That govern thee in the way that thou walkest” (Isaiah 48:17).
“The mouth of the just,” says David, “shall meditate wisdom, and his tongue shall speak judgment” (Psalm 37:30). Throughout the one hundred and [nineteenth] Psalm, how frequent is his prayer for this divine wisdom! “Blessed art Thou, O Lord: teach me Thy justifications. Open Thou my eyes, and I will consider the wondrous things of Thy law. Give me understanding, and I will search Thy law; and I will keep it with my whole heart” (see Psalm 119 verses 12, 18, 34).
Shall we not, therefore, appreciate the happiness and honor of possessing such a Master, from Whom we may learn sublime lessons of immortal wisdom?
An excerpt from “The Light of Christ” by Father Thomas Joseph White:
Original sin is not “something” that is transmitted, like a biological disorder. That idea is irrational. Rather it is best understood as an effect of the “real absence” of grace. We continue to receive a nature composed of body and soul, which are both good in themselves: the body comes from our parents and the soul directly from God the Creator. What is now missing, however, is the original grace that kept this unity of body and soul harmonized and unified morally.
As a consequence, the nature we inherit lacks the integrity it once possessed in the state of original justice, and is instead characterized by the four kinds of “wounds.” The first is ignorance, which affects our intellect: we are unable to grasp who God is personally, and live in a kind of spiritual orphanhood regarding the knowledge of our Creator. The second is malice or egoism in the human will. This is a self-referentiality of the human heart that tends to desire its own good above that of others and even in preference to the goodness of God. This wound of sin causes in us a fundamental distrust of God and an affective antipathy to religious truths.
Third is weakness that affects our emotional life of fortitude, so that it is more difficult for us to struggle to obtain difficult goods. We are typically slothful or indifferent in the face of serious moral demands. Finally, there is concupiscence, an exaggerated desire for sensate pleasures of food, drink, and sex, wherein human beings seek rest or even personal transcendence primarily in the pleasures of the senses, rather than in the goods of the spiritual life. It is not only all individuals who are marked by these wounds as enduring characteristics. It is also all human cultures, which are marked by various “social structures of sin”: collective habits or characteristics that incline people to acts of moral ignorance, selfishness, complicit weakness, and lust.
From an Angelus address by Pope Benedict XVI, on August 6, 2006:
Light, it is said in the Psalms, is the mantle with which God covers Himself (cf. Psalm 104:2). In the Book of Wisdom, the symbolism of light is used to describe the very essence of God: wisdom, an outpouring of His glory, is “a reflection of eternal light” superior to any created light (cf. Wisdom 7:26, 29).
In the New Testament, it is Christ Who constitutes the full manifestation of God’s light. His Resurrection defeated the power of the darkness of evil forever. With the Risen Christ, truth and love triumph over deceit and sin. In Him, God’s light henceforth illumines definitively human life and the course of history: “I am the light of the world”, He says in the Gospel; “He who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
In our time too, we urgently need to emerge from the darkness of evil, to experience the joy of the children of light!
