Homily of Pope Leo XIV at Lourdes

 

 

“In the Gospel, Jesus looks with truth and deep sorrow upon hearts that have remained closed, “you did not repent” (Mt 21:32). Why does this wound

the heart of Christ? Because God does not want his children to be lost”.

 Pope Leo XIV

  

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF POPE LEO XIV TO FRANCE
AND VISIT TO THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION
FOR EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND CULTURE (UNESCO)
25-28 SEPTEMBER 2026

 

HOLY MASS

 

HOMILY OF POPE LEO XIV

Prairie of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes
Sunday, 27 September 2026

 

___________________________________

Brothers and sisters, pilgrims from France and from throughout the world, in seeing you gathered here this morning in our Mother’s home, I see the universal face of the Church.  Some of you have crossed continents, traveled far, and brought your joys and burdens to this sacred grotto.  What a joy it is to be together, as one heart and one family.

 

I would especially like to greet the pilgrims who have come from every province and diocese of France.  Today you stand on this blessed ground that has received so many graces.  May this pilgrimage rekindle the flame of faith in your homes and parishes.  Take the consolation of Lourdes back to your neighbors, your loved ones and the whole French people.

 

This Sunday’s readings touch on a central part of the message that the Virgin Mary entrusted to Saint Bernadette: the call to conversion, both tender and urgent.  In the Gospel, Jesus looks with truth and deep sorrow upon hearts that have remained closed, “you did not repent” (Mt 21:32).  Why does this wound the heart of Christ?  Because God does not want his children to be lost.  The prophet Ezekiel reminds us, “When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he shall die for it.”  However, since “he considered and turned away from all the transgressions which he had committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die” (Ez 18:26, 28).  This is why the call to repentance runs through Sacred Scripture and the preaching of the Gospel down the centuries.  Its gravity reminds us of the urgency and necessity of conversion.  It is today, not tomorrow, that we must repent.  

 

Indeed, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation (cf. 2 Cor 6:2).  God wants us to live, to open our eyes and return to him.  To repent is to leave the paths on which we lost our way, and to follow the way of life, opening our hearts to the sole joy that never passes away.

 

Jesus himself is quite direct in calling us to repentance.  As Saint Luke tells us, “Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Lk 13:5).  But he also extends our horizon beyond this earthly life to the horizon of eternal life.  For while happiness in this world is fleeting and relative, and sadly sometimes out of reach for some, true happiness is promised to everyone in hope, and this is what we should seek above all else, in all our efforts and choices.  Did not the Virgin Mary say to Saint Bernadette, “I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the next”?

 

This promise, made right here, has a particular force in this land of France, and it challenges the way we think today.  

 

In an age and society that seek progress and material wellbeing, but can sometimes forget the horizon of eternity, Mary comes to remind us of the greatness and richness of our calling to life, to eternal life.  In the face of current trends that seek to redefine the value of human life in illness, suffering and old age, the grotto of Massabielle stands as a place of Christian hope.  Here, no one is turned away due to their frailty.  Your crutches, your wheelchairs and your hidden tears are not obstacles; instead, they are the very place where you are fully respected and welcomed, and where you can experience a transforming encounter with the infinite love of God.  Lourdes is blessed as a place for professing the beauty and sanctity of life, for life is welcomed here as a precious gift from God, and is called to flourish for ever in the love of the Father.

 

“I promise you!”  Indeed, eternal life is a firm and certain promise that the Lord makes to us.  He has already won it for us by his death on the cross and his resurrection, and through the grace of baptism he is bringing it to fulfilment in us each day.  It is within our reach, but we must freely welcome it, take hold of it and not stand in its way.  For the obstacle to grace and eternal life — the only obstacle to this love — is sin, whereby we turn in upon ourselves, refusing God and shutting ourselves up in our own darkness.  Our personal responsibility therefore comes into play, and a great responsibility it is.  God has made us free, since freedom is necessary for love; no one can be forced to love.  We must therefore use our freedom to say yes to Christ, relying on his grace, like Mary.  This is a yes that we renew until our final breath — “now and at the hour of our death” — as we say in the Hail Mary.

 

We hear the same urgent call to conversion in the words which Mary spoke right here, “Penance! Penance! Penance!”  She repeats the word three times.  And she asks Bernadette to perform certain acts of penance.  Why?  Are we slow to understand?  Do we too easily think of ourselves without sin?  Do we not practice penance enough?  The Virgin asks us to do penance not only for ourselves, because we too need it, but also “for sinners,” for a world that is going astray.  How can our hearts not be moved by the conflicts that are spreading and destroying so many innocent lives?  Yet the evil of our time comes from the human heart.  God is not responsible for it. As he says to the Israelites, “Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (Ez 18:25).  It is therefore human hearts that must change, beginning with our own.

 

Penance is an act of love, carried out in solidarity with the human family. It is an act of love for God, because we want to make amends for the wounds our sins have dealt to his heart.  It is also an act of love for those brothers and sisters of ours who do not heed this call to conversion, and whose sins lead them towards death.  This call to conversion also concerns the Church herself as she makes her earthly journey.  She must have the courage to begin with herself.  In order to heal the deep wounds, infidelities and painful errors that have occurred within her, we must humbly place ourselves under the Lord’s purifying gaze.  Recognizing our own faults is essential to our spiritual growth.  As Saint Augustine wrote, “Do not be content with what you are, if you want to become what you are not yet” (Disc. 169, 15, 18). Our Mother’s reminder of our duty to pray and repent fills us with great hope, because she shows us that the way to change the course of things is by uniting ourselves to the passion of Christ.  

 

Dear friends who are sick, so many of you here in Lourdes are familiar with suffering.  You can live your trials and pains in this spirit of offering, and so take part in the redemptive work that the world so greatly needs.  In this way, you are truly at the heart of the Church, and your role is irreplaceable.

 

Pilgrims, brothers and sisters, you will not leave Lourdes as you arrived.  You will leave as missionaries of hope.  Indeed, the miracle of Lourdes is that it can awaken the joy of hope in the very midst of suffering and hardship.  The Virgin Mary heals our outlook and changes our hearts, giving them peace.  In your countries, dioceses and families, become living witnesses to this divine strength and tenderness, which help us to persevere towards our goal.  Sustained by the prayers of the sick and the love of our Mother, walk with confidence into the future.  Do not be afraid of the storms of the world, for the holy Mother of God watches over your journey, she shelters the Church beneath her mantle of tenderness and, as the radiant Morning Star, guides your steps, so that with joy she may bring you to new birth in the very life of her Son Jesus.  Amen.

 

Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s shocking endorsement of Teilhard de Chardin

 

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Damien F. Mackey

“The whole world is ascending towards Christ the King, even the irresistible surge of the ocean tides under the Pull of the moon and sun . . . His [Teilhard de Chardin’s] fundamental orientation was to attain heaven through the fulfillment of earth. Christify matter”.

 Fulton J. Sheen

  

For some of my highly unfavourable views concerning père Teilhard de Chardin (d. 1955), see e.g. my articles:

 

Teilhard de Charlatan

 

(5) Teilhard de Charlatan

 

Teilhard de Chardin a “giant gnostic snake”

 

(5) Teilhard de Chardin a "giant gnostic snake"

 

Teilhard de Chardin’s genocidal eugenics ideas

 

(5) Teilhard de Chardin's genocidal eugenics ideas

 

Reading Teilhard de Chardin has led to a great loss of faith amongst teens

 

(5) Reading Teilhard de Chardin has led to a great loss of faith amongst teens

 

Now, I was aware that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, about to be beatified (today, in fact, 24^th September, 2026) – and whom I have greatly admired for many years – had flirted with Teilhardianism.

 

Here the Kolbe Center recalls just how serious that regrettable situation was (September 19, 2026): Archbishop Sheen and the Teilhardian Deception – Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

 

Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,

 

Pax Christi!

 

Our Lord Jesus Christ warned that toward the end of the world, many false prophets would arise and seduce many:

 

And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come (Matthew 24:10-14).

 

This Thursday, September 24, Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen will be beatified at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Archbishop Sheen is rightly revered for the many contributions he made to the life of the Church, most especially through his promotion of daily Eucharistic Holy Hours for priests through retreats that he gave all over the world. For the honor and glory of God, however, we believe we are obliged to use this newsletter to show how even a man as gifted and devout as Venerable Archbishop Sheen was deceived by the arch-deceiver Satan through his chosen instrument, the anti-theologian Fr. Teilhard de Chardin—may God have mercy on him! We trust that the Venerable Archbishop would be the first to want us to bring his deception to light, as a warning to all of us to be on our guard against the seductive errors of theistic evolution.

 

The Young Fr. Fulton Sheen Rejects Theistic Evolution

 

Archbishop Sheen’s eventual embrace of Teilhardian errors is all the more astonishing in view of his earlier writings in which he thoroughly rejected them. As a young theologian, he wrote an extensive review of modern philosophy which had seen “the birth of a new notion of God”:

 

It is God in evolution . . . God is born by successive creations. As the world progresses, He progresses; as the world acquires perfection, He acquires perfection. [Moreover,] man is a necessary step in the evolution of God. Just as man came from the beast, God will come from man.

 

In one of his early works, Love One Another, Sheen mocked the notion that one could derive the great commandment of Christ to “Love one another as I have loved you” from an evolutionary struggle for existence over millions of years:

 

“Man came from the beast; therefore, he ought to love his fellowman.”

How silly that sounds! Everyone knows that the law of the survival of the fittest can never evolve into love, nor can the struggle for existence develop into human brotherhood. If we come from the beasts, then we may appropriately be expected to act like beasts.

 

After completing a 300-page survey of modern philosophy, the young Fr. Sheen concluded:

 

The wisdom of the ages and the epitome of our experience is given in the simple truth understood by the simple and forgotten by many a philosopher, that we are not “God-makers but God-made.”

 

Archbishop Sheen and “Evolution’s Greatest Triumph”

 

Archbishop Sheen’s “conversion” to theistic evolutionism must be understood as part of what the German anatomist and Darwinian apologist Ernst Haeckel called “evolution’s greatest triumph,” the conversion of the Catholic intellectual elite to the conviction that they had to reconcile the microbe-to-man evolutionary hypothesis with the Catholic Faith—in spite of the clear condemnation of the thesis that “evolution can be reconciled with Christian doctrine” by the Congregation of the Index in 1878, the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission upholding the special creation of Adam and Eve and the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-3, and the condemnation by Pope St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane in 1907 of the proposition that the condemnations of the Congregation of the Index could be taken lightly.

 

Darwin had argued that similarities in structure among diverse life forms proved that they had all evolved from a common ancestor. According to Haeckel, the existence of similarities in embryos of various kinds of organisms proved that the higher life forms “recapitulated” their evolutionary history before birth and that they had all descended from a common ancestor. To make this “proof” more compelling for his contemporaries, Haeckel doctored drawings of the embryos of fish, salamanders, chickens, turtles, rabbits, pigs, and human beings to exaggerate their similarities and minimize their differences. Although Haeckel’s fraud was discovered and exposed during his lifetime, the evolutionary hypothesis demanded common descent, and the concept of embryonic recapitulation continued to exert a profound influence on the study of embryology for many decades. In the United States, the renowned scholar Fr. John Augustine Zahm at Notre Dame University, devoted more pages of his influential book Evolution and Dogma to “embryonic recapitulation” than to any other “proof” for Darwin’s hypothesis.

 

When, on the centenary of the publication of Origin of Species in 1959, the world’s leading evolutionist scientist Sir Julian Huxley pontificated that “embryology” as displayed in Ernst Haeckel’s drawings provided “the most striking proof of evolution,” his evolution-believing colleagues had enjoyed control of almost all of the universities and research centers in the Western world for more than half a century. Yet “embryonic recapitulation” was, by his own admission, the best proof that they could come up with.

 

In 1950, Pope Pius XII in Humani generis had exhorted Catholic experts to “examine” the evidence for and against the evolutionary hypothesis, but it was apparent that hardly any Catholic scholars subjected Huxley’s pontifications to rigorous examination. For example, in Germany pro-abortion activists:

 

skillfully exploited the disunity of the German Catholic intellectuals to bring their demands for the legalization of abortion to the legislature. … Karl Rahner, who was in the forefront of the fight over [the loosening of] paragraph 218, wrote in Naturwissenschaft und Theologie (brochure 11, page 86, 1970):

 

“I think that there are biological developments which are pre-human, but these developments are still aimed in the direction of man. Why cannot these developments be transferred from phylogeny to ontogeny?” (emphasis added)

 

With these words, the most influential Catholic theologian in the German-speaking world formulated an Haeckelian evolutionary rationale for abortifacient contraception and abortion by affirming that human beings passed through all the stages of evolution in their mothers’ wombs. To this day, biology textbooks all over the world argue that similarities between embryos of fish, amphibians, reptiles, humans and lower mammals constitute evidence for the evolutionary hypothesis. Typical of examples too many to cite is the caption that accompanies drawings of embryos of various life-forms from a widely used American biology textbook published in 2002. Entitled “Embryonic development of vertebrates,” it states:

 

Notice that the early embryonic stages of these vertebrates bear a striking resemblance to each other, even though the individuals are from different classes (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals). All vertebrates start out with an enlarged head region, gill slits, and a tail regardless of whether these characteristics are retained in the adult.

 

The statement gives the impression that human embryos—as members of the vertebrate phylum—possess gill slits. But this is patently false. The pharyngeal arches in human embryos have no connection with gill slits whatsoever but develop into the outer and middle ear, and into the neck bones, muscles, nerves, and glands. Moreover, after the discovery of DNA, confidence in the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis led many evolutionary biologists to predict that similar body parts in diverse organisms would be controlled by the same genes. This, however, proved to be false, as embryologists have discovered that the realization of the same body plan—such as five digit extremities—in diverse organisms (such as whales and humans) is controlled by different genes and is achieved through totally different embryonic pathways. In spite of the fact that the myth of “embryonic recapitulation” had no scientific basis, however, it would appear that Archbishop Sheen was as badly deceived as Fr. Rahner—because we find him eight years after Humani generis rhapsodizing confidently about Teilhard’s writings on the evolution of life from non-life:

 

For Teilhard there is a continuity between an animal seeking food and a magnet pointing to the north; between a male and a female uniting in the act of generation and two atoms uniting to form a chemical compound. The meaning is not the same in each instance, but there is more than a mere figure of speech in this unification. Atoms are not alive, it is true, but they have what might be called pre-life.

 

The Deadly Deception of Archbishop Sheen

 

Without knowing all the inner workings of Archbishop Sheen’s mind, it is easy to see that his conviction that molecules-to-man evolution was no longer an absurdity but a “fact of science” must have had terrible consequences. His apparent belief that the Church’s traditional doctrine of creation could be replaced by theistic evolution in light of the new “science” of evolution certainly helps to explain his enthusiasm for the ideas of John Courtney Murray at the Second Vatican Council and for the replacement of the traditional vision of a Church-centered Catholic society with the ideal of religious liberty as practiced in the United States.

 

In reality, it is no more possible to “evolve” the ideal of American-style religious liberty with its separation of Church and state from the traditional ideal of the Catholic union of Church and state than it would be to evolve the life of a one-celled organism from the “pre-life” of atomic particles.

 

Writing in 1967, Sheen echoed and embraced the Teilhardian vision of matter evolving to the Omega Point. He wrote:

 

The whole world is ascending towards Christ the King, even the irresistible surge of the ocean tides under the Pull of the moon and sun . . . His [Teilhard de Chardin’s] fundamental orientation was to attain heaven through the fulfillment of earth. Christify matter.

 

An elderly priest friend of mine whose life overlapped with Teilhard’s commented on Fr. Teilhard’s reputation for kindness, and it is true that a belief in the Christification of matter might motivate a person to show kindness to all people and to all things because of the divine element within all of them. But this is a false kindness if it fails to acknowledge the divinely-created hierarchy of goods in the universe—the transcendence of God; the creation of man in God’s image and likeness; man’s dominion over creation; the infinite superiority of supernatural goods to natural ones; and the moral imperative to do good and avoid evil.

 

In Teilhard’s system, as revealed in his pivotal spiritual experience as a young man, when he encountered “a presence” he described as “the combined essence of all good and all evil,” the divine energy drives all of the activity in the universe, thus making it impossible to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, the good and the evil, insofar as Teilhard’s divinity manifests through them all.

The conflation of the order of grace with the order of nature occupied so central a place in his “new Christianity” that the kindly Teilhard forgot his manners when Dietrich Von Hildebrand cited the writings of the Doctor of Grace, St. Augustine, against his evolutionary doctrine. “Don’t speak to me of that unfortunate man,” he protested violently. He “spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural.” True to their master, the Teilhardians of today find the “divine element” even in pagan religions and in immoral sexual behavior which objectively separates souls from communion with the living God. Yet Archbishop Sheen was so convinced of the fact of molecules-to-man evolution and of the credibility of Teilhard’s doctrine that he predicted the eventual elevation of Fr. Teilhard to the honors of a Doctor of the Church by 2017:

 

It is very likely that within 50 years when all the trivial, verbose disputes about the meaning of Teilhard’s ‘unfortunate’ vocabulary will have died away or have taken a secondary place, Teilhard will appear like John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, as the spiritual genius of the twentieth century.

….

Marx and the Devil

 

Kengor cites Marx’s poem, “The Pale Maiden,” written in 1887:

“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited. I know it full well. My soul, once true to God,

is chosen for hell”.

 

 

Karl Marx Was Obsessed with Satan: The Deadly Truth - Charisma Magazine Online

 

Karl Marx Was Obsessed with Satan: The Deadly Truth

 

By CBN News  Oct 13, 2025

 

Almost two-thirds of Americans under 30 now hold a favorable view of socialism.

The frontrunner to become the next Mayor of New York City proudly calls himself a democratic socialist, and Zohran Mamdani says he wants to ban extreme wealth, telling NBC’s Meet the Press, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.”

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also helped boost the popularity of democratic socialism. They will tell you they want to help people, but the socialist principles they espouse come through a very troubled man, who, say historians, if he was not a Satanist, was obsessed with Satan.

 

Dr. Paul Kengor, the author of The Devil and Karl Marx, says Marx was also a playwright and poet, and his writings included many references to Satan and Hell.

Marx’s Fascination with Beelzebub

 

Kengor cites Marx’s poem, “The Pale Maiden,” written in 1887: “Thus heaven I’ve forfeited. I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.”

 

In “The Fiddler or The Player,” in 1841, the same decade when he wrote the Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote, “See the sword. The Prince of Darkness sold it to me. For he beats the time and gives the signs ever more boldly. I played the dance of death.”

 

Kengor says Marx would tell his children stories about a toymaker who sold his soul to the devil.

 

Marx’s father said that his son’s heart was “governed by a demon,” and Marx was, by all accounts, a terrible husband, father, and provider who sponged off his relatives.

 

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

….

 

Karl Marx Was Obsessed with Satan: The Deadly Truth About Socialism

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2wFCjEu0GI

 

See also Damien Mackey’s article:

 

Fatima seer warned that U.S. could potentially turn Socialist

 

(2) Fatima seer warned that U.S. could potentially turn Socialist

 

“Does this mean,” [Professor William Thomas] Walsh then asked, “in your opinion, that every country, without exception, will be overcome by Communism?” And Sister Lucia answered: “Yes.” As the translator of this interview, Father Manuel Rocha, was later to reveal, Walsh then asked explicitly about the United States of America, adding: “and does that mean the United States of America, too?” Whereupon Sister Lucia responded once more time with “yes.” (1946 interview)

 

Two Contemporaries. Two Gospels. Two Tombstones. One Choice.

Two lives. Two legacies. Two world views at battle today.

 

Karl Marx and D.L. Moody. The contrast between these men could not be greater. They made similar promises—promises of freedom and a better world. Yet the lessons they left behind are as divergent as night and day. One sought to liberate people but ultimately enslaved them. The other preached forgiveness from sin and set people free.

 

These two men represent opposing worldviews that have competed throughout history—views that are very much alive today. Marxist ideas are surfacing all over the world, infiltrating even the most unlikely places here in America. Pastor emeritus of The Moody Church Erwin Lutzer, along with historian Dr. Gregg Quiggle, reveals the seduction and impact of Marxist ideology. Marx and Moody showcases the difference between a man-centered worldview and a God-centered worldview, critiquing Marxism through the lens of the Bible while exploring the nature of God, humanity, and the consequences of ideas.

 

In this in-depth analysis, this book compares the impact of Karl Marx with D. L. Moody's ministry and highlights what our lives should be centered on during these turbulent times in history—the joy of sharing the good news of the gospel.

 

Two different belief systems. Two different legacies. Two different destinies. Two very different eternities. Marx and Moody is an essential book for our time—contrasting the danger and destruction of Marxism with the power, salvation, and true freedom found in Jesus Christ.

 

 

Finding the Child Jesus in the Temple

 

“The evangelist Luke pointedly captures this reality when he describes how

Mary and Joseph searched “anxiously” for their Son, employing a word he uses only one other time in his Gospel, when describing the fiery anguish experienced

by the rich man in hades (see Luke 16:24-25)”.

 Clement Harrold

 

 

Taken from: Science of the Cross: Edith Stein's Theocentric Humanism | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame

 

Science of the Cross: Edith Stein’s Theocentric Humanism

by Clement Harrold August 09, 2024

 

….

Finding God Within: The Science of the Cross and the Fifth Joyful Mystery

 

Although Stein only touches briefly on Luke’s story of the finding of the child Jesus in the temple (see Luke 2:41-52) … the Gospel vignette nevertheless offers a helpful lens through which to understand the way the science of the cross functions in the life of the Christian. Certainly Stein accepts the biblical notion that the human person is a temple in which God dwells … a concept she sometimes expresses in the language of sanctuary: “Human beings are called upon to live in their inmost region. . . .

 

The angels have the task of protecting it. Evil spirits seek to gain control of it. God himself has chosen it as his dwelling.” …. Given Stein’s conviction that the essential task of the scientist of the cross is that of discovering God within the sanctuary of the self, what lessons might she then draw from the fifth joyful mystery?

A few thoughts will suffice.

 

When Mary and Joseph finally discover their beloved Son after three days of searching, theirs is the relief not only of finding their child again, but also of discovering that their experience of profound pain and loss took place for a reason: Jesus knew what he was doing all along. Yet we know that the dark night preceding this joy was an agonizing one. Presumably Mary and Joseph had already experienced various nights of the senses, whether in the ordeal of the Bethlehem birth, the tragedy of the Holy Innocents, or the forced flight into Egypt. On the occasion of losing their Son, however, night was to be far more painful, far more extreme: a night of the soul, not of the senses, where God himself is removed from their midst. The evangelist Luke pointedly captures this reality when he describes how Mary and Joseph searched “anxiously” for their Son, employing a word he uses only one other time in his Gospel, when describing the fiery anguish experienced by the rich man in hades (see Luke 16:24-25). This points us to a startling truth: for Mary and Joseph, the three days of searching were hell on earth. In their ultimate act of theomimesis, Jesus’s human parents were rewarded—albeit passively, and certainly not through their own choosing—with a taste of the same abandonment which he himself would experience on Calvary.

 

 

Yet the abandonment does not last forever, and it gives way to a deeper discovery of self. For this reason, to view the finding in the temple as nothing more than a bizarre anecdote speaking of the need for parental vigilance is to miss the point entirely. After all, it is not some failing on the part of Mary or Joseph which causes their Christ to go missing, but rather a deliberate decision on his part. Christ consciously allows his human parents to feel the loss of his presence in order that they might discover themselves more intimately in him. This reality finds symbolic expression in the temple itself, which in the Christian tradition (as Stein herself points out) at once represents the human being and the person of Christ. It is in the temple that Mary and Joseph discover Jesus, and it is in the temple of our souls that we discover that same Christ-child who permits our pains for a time, but always for the deeper purpose of love.

 

Transformation in Charity

 

In a profound way, the finding in the temple points to that lived experience of charity which forms the apotheosis of Stein’s science of the cross. Consider the question on the lips of Mary and Joseph when they are finally reunited with their Child: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Luke 2:48). It is a question which echoes down the ages in the heart of every believer who has ever experienced intense pain; in the midst of grief, loneliness, trauma, and hurt, our cry to Jesus becomes no less spirited than that of his human parents: “Why, Jesus, why have you treated us so?”

For Stein, through the science of the cross, it is love which stands as the answer to this question. Love is why he has treated us so, and our final transformation in charity is the reason he asks us to suffer—and to discover ourselves in him. Commenting on Christ’s cryptic response to his parents (“Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?”), Stein cites from John of the Cross in his own commentary on these first-recorded words of the Savior:

 

Nothing else can be meant by that which is the eternal Father’s business than the salvation of the world, above all the salvation of souls, since Christ our Lord applied the means foreordained by the eternal Father. . . . But what is most wonderful and divine is to cooperate in the conversion of souls and in bringing them home; for in this God’s own activity is reflected and this imitation is the greatest glory. That is why Christ, our Lord, called this the work of his Father, the business of his Father. It is also an evident truth that sympathy with the neighbor grows the more, the more the soul is united with God through love. ….

 

The Son is about the Father’s business: namely, the salvation of sinners, and the proliferation of love. For Stein, as for John of the Cross, the soul encounters God within the deepest recesses of her soul, and that encounter cannot leave her unchanged. A metamorphosing union now takes place: a union manifested in charity and in the soul’s “supernatural transformation” in God. ….

 

It now becomes evident that the science of the cross is precisely for the sake of that “transforming union through perfect love that divinizes the soul.” …. To be sure, union with God is the primary goal of the science, and Stein is careful to highlight Christ’s insistence that his followers “seek first the kingdom” (Mt 6:33). …. From this thoroughly theocentric point of departure, however, a horizontal dimension of charity also begins to emerge, and the science of the cross completes its cruciform structure.

For Stein, worship must indeed precede ethics; love of God ranks before love of neighbor. At the same time, the two maxims are not competitive in her thinking, but rather complementary. Love of God is incarnated through the love of neighbor; theomimesis is ever a communal affair. Stein is emphatic: “Self-fulfillment, union with God, and laboring for the union of others with God and for their self-fulfillment belong inseparably together.” …. Through the power of the cross, the people of God are gathered into one and bonded together in perfect charity. In their shared participation in Christ’s sufferings, the body of believers discover themselves in God and in one another: “And all the holy souls together form on their part a garland, which the bride-Church weaves together with Christ the Bridegroom.” ….

 

Conclusion

 

The finding in the temple is illustrative of the painful but life-giving role which the science of the cross must play in the life of the Christian. It is suggestive, too, of a distinctively theocentric humanism which is the hallmark of Stein’s thinking, and a possible interpretative key for unlocking her theological vision. Stein’s profound reflections on the cross present a challenge to modern man to ponder anew that mystery of mysteries: almighty and transcendent God nailed naked to a tree. For Stein, it is by taking this reality to heart that our conception of the human person is unalterably elevated. As such, an authentic humanism must begin and end with the divine; only then can the dignity of the human person be secured: “So the bridal union of the soul with God is the goal for which she was created, purchased through the cross, consummated on the cross and sealed for all eternity with the cross.” …. Divinization through suffering—theosis through kenosis—is the promise Christ extends to all mankind, and one in which we are invited to share. Herein lies Stein’s science of the cross, and the only reliable seedbed for an authentically Christian humanism.

….

 

Holy Trinity’s feminine aspect

 

“Yes—every time the Holy Spirit appears in the Hebrew text,

the word used is feminine. The Spirit who breathes life is not “male” or “female”

in human terms, but the feminine voice of ruach echoes through scripture.

To remember this is not to diminish the Father or the Son,

but to recover a fuller vision of God’s embrace—

a God who fathers, who mothers, who loves without boundary”.

Kevin David Kridner

She Was There at the Beginning:

The Feminine Resonance of the Holy Spirit

 

Ruach HaKodesh—the Breath of the Holy One, fierce in power, gentle in love.

 

Kevin David Kridner

Sep 08, 2025

 

For the Heart

Top of Form

 

She hovered at the dawn—
brooding over the deep,
a mother bird warming a world not yet awake.

 

Her breath moved through dust,
and Adam opened his eyes.
Her whisper rushed through prophets,
and fire leapt from their tongues.

 

We have long called God “He,”
but in the beginning
She was there,
wind, womb, whisper,
Ruach HaKodesh—
the Holy Spirit,
feminine in tongue,
fierce in power,
gentle in love.

 

Do not fear this tenderness.
Do not shrink from her embrace.
For the Breath of the Holy One
is not bound to our pronouns.
She is the kiss of God upon creation,
the Comforter who pulls us close,
the Flame who sets us free.

 

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For the Intellect

 

The Feminine Form of Ruach

 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for spirit—רוּחַ (ruach)—is grammatically feminine. Every time the Spirit of God appears in Hebrew, the form is feminine:

 

• Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) in Genesis 1:2
• Ruach Adonai (Spirit of the LORD) in Isaiah 11:2
• Ruach Kodshecha (Your Holy Spirit) in Psalm 51:11

 

Hebrew nouns have gender, so this does not mean the Spirit is biologically female. But it does give the Spirit a feminine resonance in the very language of scripture.

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The Shift in Greek

 

When the Scriptures moved into Greek (the Septuagint and later the New Testament), the word used was πνεῦμα (pneuma), which is neuter—neither masculine nor feminine. This created a linguistic shift: the Spirit could now be referred to with neutral pronouns.

 

Yet in John’s Gospel, another title is given: παράκλητος (paraklētos, Advocate/Comforter). That word is masculine in Greek grammar, and so masculine pronouns sometimes accompany it.

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The Latin and English Legacy

 

In the Latin Vulgate, spiritus is masculine, and so in English tradition the Spirit became “He.” Centuries of patriarchal theology cemented this. The feminine undertones of Hebrew were largely forgotten in the Western church.

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Theological Implications

 

1. Metaphor and Mystery – God transcends gender, yet scripture uses gendered metaphors. To honor the Spirit’s feminine form in Hebrew is to honor the fullness of God’s self-revelation.

 

2. Maternal Imagery – The Spirit is often described in maternal terms:

 

• Brooding like a mother bird (Genesis 1:2; Deuteronomy 32:11).
• Comforting like a mother (Isaiah 66:13).
• Birthing new life in us (John 3:5–8).

 

3. Balance and Healing – Recognizing the Spirit’s feminine resonance helps correct an imbalance in our God-language. It reminds us that both masculine and feminine images belong to the Divine mystery.

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Conclusion

 

Yes—every time the Holy Spirit appears in the Hebrew text, the word used is feminine. The Spirit who breathes life is not “male” or “female” in human terms, but the feminine voice of ruach echoes through scripture.

 

To remember this is not to diminish the Father or the Son, but to recover a fuller vision of God’s embrace—a God who fathers, who mothers, who loves without boundary.

 

She Was There at the Beginning: The Feminine Resonance of the Holy Spirit

 

In a recent article, entitled:

 

Isaiah fleeing from God and kings

 

(9) Isaiah fleeing from God and kings

 

I included the Marian dimension:

 

….

Similarly, Saint Joseph in the New Testament, typifies God the Father, while Jesus is God the Son, and Mary, the created Immaculate Conception, mirrors the Holy Spirit, the un-created Immaculate Conception (St. Maximilian Kolbe):

Maximilian Kolbe and the Immaculate Conception — School of Faith

 

St Maximilian was captivated by the fact that at Lourdes, in 1858, Mary stated her name in a unique way saying: I am the Immaculate Conception! For Kolbe, since these words came out of the mouth of Mary, they must indicate accurately and in the most essential manner who she is. This left Kolbe with a burning Question: Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?

 

To answer this, Kolbe began with the Trinity. Who is the Father? What is his essence? Because He begets the Son from eternity … the Father’s essential attribute is begetting. Who is the Son? He is the begotten One; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. And who is the Spirit? He is the fruit of the love between the Father and the Son. Now, the fruit of created love is a created conception. Therefore, the fruit of divine love, the prototype of all love, is the first conception. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the Divine Uncreated Immaculate Conception.