Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

The Passion

O most charitable Jesus, you desired to enrich us, and so you first gave us your blood to wash us so that, having been purified, we might be able to receive the gifts you offer. O my dear Savior, you…

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The Anointing

by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

As his time came near, Jesus came forth from his retreat at Ephraim and returned to Bethany, to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, just six days before the Passover. He came for a feast at the house of his friend Lazarus….

The Silent Wonder of Mary and Joseph

by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

We have beheld the shepherds coming in from their fields glorifying God and bringing all who heard them to glorify him too. Yet here is something still more marvelous and edifying: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her…

The First Proclamation of the Gospel

by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

The beginning of the Gospel is in the angel’s words to the shepherds: “I bring you good news of a great joy,” the good news of the birth of a Savior. (Luke 2:10) What news could be better? When he…

Bossuet’s Carême du Louvre at 350

by Christopher O. Blum

To begin well was a grace not given to Louis XIV. King before his fifth birthday, rudely shocked by the Fronde uprising as a mere child, and first seduced—the story goes—by a lady-in-waiting at the French court while still a…