Five Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today

1. Visualizing new cardinals:

Pope Francis is reshaping the geography of the College of Cardinals http://t.co/1DD8G3mpY6 pic.twitter.com/zuYzhlkUbz

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) January 8, 2015

2. A papal Jeepney for the Philippines.

3. Russell Shaw: “How Catholics Caved to LBJ on Birth Control.”

4. From the pope’s morning homily today: Only the Holy Spirit opens our hearts to love.

5. In preparation for Sunday’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord: St. Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth-century bishop (via Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen):

Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with him, and rise with him….

Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honor to the body that is one with God.

Today let us do honor to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received — though not in its fullness — a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.