Explanation of the Four Precepts:

• Be attentive:

  This refers to the initial stage of experience, where we are open to the world and its stimuli.

• Be intelligent:

  This involves understanding and interpreting the experiences we have, seeking to grasp their meaning and implications.

• Be reasonable:

  This is the stage of judgment, where we evaluate the information gathered and arrive at conclusions.

• Be responsible:

  This is the final stage, where we act on our judgments and decisions, taking accountability for our choices. 

Significance of Lonergan's Transcendental Precepts:

Lonergan's transcendental precepts are not simply guidelines for individual actions but are believed to be essential for personal growth, understanding, and ethical action. They provide a framework for engaging with the world in a way that supports both intellectual and moral development. 

For example, in the context of education, applying these precepts can help students learn not only factual information but also how to think critically, make informed judgments, and take responsibility for their learning. Similarly, in interactions with AI, Word on Fire says these precepts can help us to navigate the complexities of AI systems ethically and constructively. 

Lonergan's transcendental precepts emphasize the importance of intellectual and moral development, suggesting that a truly authentic life is one that is lived in accordance with these fundamental principles of conscious functioning. 

Ecological impact of AI

Here is the official prayer from the Carlo Acutis website for his canonization:

Oh God, Our Father,
thank you for giving us Carlo, 
a life example for the young
and a message of love for everyone.

You made him become enamoured with 
Your Son Jesus, Making of the Eucharist 
his “Highway to Heaven”.
You gave him Mary, as a most loving Mother, 
and, with the Rosary, you made him 
a poet of her tenderness. Receive his prayer for us.
Above all, gaze upon the poor, 
whom he loved and helped.
Grant for me too, by his intercession, 
the grace that I need . . .

And make our joy fulfilled,
placing Carlo among the Saints 
of your Church, so that his smile 
may shine again for us in the glory of your name.
​Amen

Pater, Ave, Gloria
(“Our Father”,“Hail Mary”, “Glory be to God”)

A husband says to his wife, “My life is no longer about me; it’s about you and the children we will have.” And the wife says the same thing to her husband: “My life is not mine anymore; it belongs to you and our children.” 

Some might expect Jesus to have a soft or relativized teaching on divorce, but later in Matthew’s Gospel he firmly declares, “What God has joined together, no human being must separate.” The husband and wife, who become one flesh, are brought together not just by their mutual attraction but by God. Their union is ingredient in God’s purposes. And this is why it cannot be undone. God doesn’t go back on his word. “

Our culture, argues India, runs on doubt. The “it will never work” message continues to be peddled by companies (advertising on social media) who want to keep the problem alive in order to sell us a solution. What else could keep us hooked on dating apps, dubious “medical” solutions, AI-driven machines with all the answers? But it’s also shared by everyone in this culture who is feeding off the doubt. We not only doubt ourselves: We doubt whether objective morality exists or even whether anything matters at all. She describes the modern disposition: “doubt that it would matter if you threw it all away.” -

How to Fight the Culture of Doubt and Obsession with Experience

Kerri Christopher 

Is it possible that “the pillars of faith, marriage, and children” have been emptied out precisely by the emphasis on experience? How can a generation who has grown up with nothing but doubt about the possibility of lifelong marriage, about the need to die to self in order to truly live, about the joy found in service to neighbor, find hope? to Fight the Culture of Doubt and Obsession with Experienceu

For two thousand years, the Church—in all its Marian language and poetry, doctrine and devotion—has been teasing out this dynamic, which Charles Williams called “coinherence.” The Triune God and the Virgin Mary coinhere with each other—through, with, and in Christ. This is the great love story into which we have been caught up as Mary’s children, and Christ’s brothers and sisters.

This is why Mary matters—not because Christ doesn’t matter, but because he does. Her identity, her humanity, her femininity—all of it is given to him, and assumed to the Father with him. And the Church is called to follow her in following him. 

His body is swaddled head to foot, 
but his face is a window: one small pool of light. 
This nakedness, that even Adam would not cover, 
is a tender dish of listening, hunger 
in the nuzzling nose and petal mouth, a sense 
of all in the here and now—and dizzy distance, 
like that one star announcing the expanse 
of night. Lady, see the depths of his dark eyes. 
This locked gaze is what keeps God and man 
together. It is true prayer: he holding fast 
to your face like a constellated sky; you tumbling 
softly into him with no lights but those eyes.

Here's a breakdown of the key elements: 

• The "window" and "light":

  The child's face, despite being swaddled, is described as a window, a source of light. This suggests vulnerability and openness, but also a clear view into the child's soul.

• Intimacy and connection:

  The phrases "tender dish of listening, hunger" and the "nuzzling nose and petal mouth" paint a picture of deep physical and emotional intimacy.

• The "locked gaze":

  The image of the child's gaze holding "God and man together" elevates the connection to a spiritual level, suggesting a profound, almost religious, bond.

• "Dizzy distance":

  This phrase juxtaposes the immediate closeness with the vastness of the night sky and a single star, highlighting the simultaneous experience of intimacy and the infinite.

• "Tumbling softly":

  The mother's response to the child's gaze is described as a soft, gentle "tumbling" into the child, further emphasizing the reciprocal nature of their connection.

and to us. The origin of that sense of purpose, of mission, is intimately connected to who we are as a person, to our own

particular gifts, talents, and sources of contentment expressed in the service of others in the world.

The notion of vocation is intrinsically entwined with a relationship with God. The word vocation comes from the Latin, vocare,

and means ‘to call’. For the teacher, this vocation has “an extraordinary moral depth and is one of [a person’s] most excellent

and creative activities, for the teacher does not write on inanimate material, but on the very spirits of human beings”.37 Catholic

educators who respond to God’s call can bring out the skills and talents and draw forth the dignity and possibility in each

student.

By Matthew Biddle, 16 July 2025

By Tijana Surec, 16 July 2025

https://rmhealey.com/homilies/07c-23-feb-2025/

Message by: Fr Richard M Healey

OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

ON THE CALL TO HOLINESS IN TODAY’S WORLD

https://rmhealey.com/resources/documents/pope-francis/

I would like to dwell again on the distinctive feature of a Christian’s professional life. In a word, it means bearing witness to Christ in the world by showing, through your example, that work can be a very positive setting for personal development and not primarily a means of making profit. Your work enables you to participate in the work of creation and to serve your brothers and sisters. Acting in this way, you will be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”, as the Lord asks of us. In daily life, put into practice the preferential option for the poor, whatever your position in society, in accordance with the spirit of the Beatitudes (cf.Mt 5:3-12), so as to see in them the face of Jesus who calls you to serve him (cf.Mt 25:31-46).

“May the memory of the great witnesses who gave their lives in service of the Gospel and the common good, or for the defence of truth and human rights, be kept alive and faithfully recalled”. For the saints are the true stars of our life, those “who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by — people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way.”

The phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon, and with the water and the fire, occurs of course in his famous poem called the Canticle of the Creatures or the Canticle of the Sun. He sang it wandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his The phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon, and with the water and the fire, occurs of course in his famous poem called the Canticle of the Creatures or the Canticle of the Sun. He sang it wandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his own career, when he was pouring upwards into the sky all the passions of a poet. It is a supremely characteristic work, and much of St Francis could be reconstructed from that work alone. Though in some ways the thing is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. Notice, for instance, the sense of sex in inanimate things, which goes far beyond the arbitrary genders of a grammar. It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. Remember that St Francis was neither encumbered nor assisted by all that Greek and Roman polytheism turned into allegory, which has been to European poetry often an inspiration, too often a convention. Anyhow St Francis was, as it were, the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen and his witches from his wizards. In short, he had to make his own mythology; but he knew at a glance the goddesses from the gods.

This fanciful instinct for the sexes is not the only example of an imaginative instinct of the kind. There is just the same quaint felicity in the fact that he singles out the sun with a slightly more courtly title besides that of brother; a phrase that one king might use of another, corresponding to “Monsieur notre frère.” It is like a faint half-ironic shadow of the shining primacy that it had held in the pagan heavens. A bishop is said to have complained of a Nonconformist saying Paul instead of Saint Paul; and to have added, “He might at least have called him Mr Paul.” So St Francis is free of all obligation to cry out in praise or terror on the Lord God Apollo, but in his new nursery heavens, he salutes him as Mr Sun. Those are the things in which he has a sort of inspired infancy, only to be paralleled in nursery tales. Something of the same hazy but healthy awe makes the story of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit refer respectfully to Mr Man.

…For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend, calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.

‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ The Lord’s command that if any wishes to follow him he must deny himself, seems hard and difficult. But after all, it is not hard and difficult seeing that it is the command of him who himself aids in the carrying out of what he commands.

For what is said to him in the psalm is true, ‘Because of your command I have followed the hard road.’ True, too, are his own words, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ In a word, whatsoever in the precept is hard is made easy by love.

What is the meaning of ‘Let him take up his cross’ ? It means, let him bear whatever is vexatious: on that understanding, let him follow me. For when he begins to follow me in my character and my teaching, he will have many to contradict him, many to forbid him, many to dissuade him — and that takes place actually among those who are the companions of Christ. The people who wished to deter the blind man from calling out were at that time walking with Christ. Whether therefore it is a matter of threats or flatteries or any kinds of prohibitions, if you wish to follow, turn to the cross, endure, bear up, and refuse to surrender.

And so in this world, which is holy, good, reconciled, saved, — or rather in the process of being saved, but at present saved by hope, — ‘for in this hope we were saved’ — in this world, that is the Church which follows Christ in her totality, he has said to all men at once, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself.’

This is not a case where virgins ought to hear the exhortation and married women not, where widows ought to hear and young wives not, where monks ought to hear and married men not, or clerics ought to hear but not the laity, but rather let the universal Church, the universal body, all her members divided and distributed in their several offices, let them all follow Christ.

Let her follow in her unique unity, let her follow as the dove, let her follow as the bride, let her follow, ransomed and endowed by the blood of her spouse. There the innocence of virgins has its place, there the chastity of widows has its place, there the purity of marriage has its place. own way, follow Christ; let them deny themselves, that is, let them not be presumptuous; let them take up their cross, that is, endure in the world for Christ whatever the world has brought on them. Let them love him who alone does not deceive, who alone is not cheated, who alone does not cheat. Let them love him because his promise is true. But because he does not give immediately, faith is shaken. Endure, persevere, bear, put up with delay, and then you have borne the cross.

Let all those members which have their place there, each in their natural kind, each in their own place, each in their

I often think about the simple irony of Norma’s prayer when I pray over the Transfiguration. How easy it is to be all that Jesus asks of us when the day is fresh and we’ve yet to make a mistake. All three synoptic Gospels tell this remarkable story of Jesus being wholly transformed. His closest friends watched as he conversed with their spiritual heroes. Given this foretaste of heaven, Peter spoke from his humanity. I would have done the same. Surely, some part of Peter wanted to stay atop that mountain forever. He, James, and John had witnessed Jesus transfigured, but then they, too, were forever changed.

It’s often easiest for me to “listen to Jesus” in church. Having heard the Word and been fed by the Eucharist, I long to linger quietly in the sanctuary. The silence, sacred art, and lingering taste of Jesus’s presence are tangible there. But like James, John, and Peter, I must come down from the mountain and back into the real world. As Norma’s prayer reminds me, it’s outside of my comfort zone that I must listen most carefully to Jesus.

—Excerpted from Jesus Every Day, Jesus Every Way
by Lisa M. Hendey