Before dawn on a crisp November morning several years ago, I woke up, quickly got dressed, and headed outside. My Dad and I drove a short distance to a nearby field and got out of the car. He told me to walk slowly and quietly through the marsh until we arrived at our destination. We [...]
We all know the dangers of too much noise, the dissipating distraction of too much chatter. Yet not all silence is good. There is a painful silence when a conversation has died because no one knows what to say. Even worse is the silence that follows a quarrel. But of course, silence can also be [...]
Is Psalm 81 false? Will God not help us at once? Is God really helping us when we surrender to him if following the Lord so often involves trials? What if God assists us precisely by afflicting us? With the Sacred Scriptures as its principal source-text, each Lectio Divina (“Sacred Reading”) essay offers a prayerful [...]
The book of Revelation says that the martyrs “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14). The first letter of John states that “if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son [...]
St. Gregory the Great once observed that we would all immediately read a letter sent to us by an earthly emperor, but most of us ignore the Scriptures even though they are personally addressed to us by the divine emperor. What kind of response, though, is due to the Scriptures? Under the Gaze of the [...]