CROWNING WITH THORNS

Loving through Illness: Mental Illness and the Beauty of Suffering - Homiletic & Pastoral Review (October 2025) Suffering Through Mental Illness with God's Love - Catholic Stand - (November 2025) Why do some speak so strongly against mental illness and those who suffer with it? With mental illness as common today as many other illnesses of the body, one questions why there is a negative stigma connected to illnesses of the mind. One's brain is simply another part of the human

"...a priority has to be given to the voices of victims, to listening carefully to all that they have to say, no matter how difficult it may be to hear, and however great the "damage" that their story might seem to do to the image we may once have had of this or that person who, up until that point, may even have been considered a point of reference for the spiritual or religious life. Publishing this book is one way....to say to the victims of spiritual abuse or other aberra

"So I say to you, there shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance. "Before the angels": By this it is plain that the spirits in heaven have a concern for us below, and a joy at our repentance and consequently a knowledge of it. And he said: A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father: Father, give me the portion of substance that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his substance. And not many days after, the younger son

"Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry and fed thee: thirsty a

"I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know that I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you " (John 14:18-20, RHE).

"Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee....

"Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me" (Matthew 19:21, RHE).

"Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell, the lamps thereof are fire and flames. Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it: if a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he shall desire it as nothing" (Song of Solomon 8:6-7, RHE).