Thomas Aquinas’ cosmology and doctrine of the soul are vitalistic. Everything has a particular soul to it, and these souls have particular life-forces destined for particular ends. As a whole, the cosmos is meant to reflect and embody the graces of God: his beauty, love, and goodness. Such is to what all things are ultimately [...]
The “Aeneid” was only possible because the Roman people had the memory and consciousness to make it possible. It is up to us to ensure that its living well of memory doesn’t dry up. Without it, the “Aeneid” will pass into the dustbin of history like the corpses of Priam and Pompey. The grandest image [...]
Augustine passed on to us, and all posterity, prescient words of wisdom: that even in the most disconcerting and dark of times, beauty, compassion, truth, love, and happiness abound. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the city that had taken the world captive had fallen into captivity. The event was a transformative moment in [...]
No work of Christian theology has left such an impact on the world and biblical interpretation and understanding as St. Augustine’s “City of God.” We who read the Bible do so, often unknowingly, through the eyes of the bishop of Hippo. In 410 A.D., the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. Rome was [...]
Richard Wagner’s grand operatic drama The Ring of the Nibelung is rightly celebrated as one of the finest accomplishments of modern art. The story that Wagner tells, with the unfolding music meant to convey a primordial sense of enchantment forever lost to us, is about the tension between love and lust; the sacred and profane; [...]
The real claim of Christmas, for Christians, is that Truth and Love penetrated the cosmos. Christmas is a warm, loving, and tender season precisely for this reason. That warm fire, or bright sky, or joyful company, is made possible only because that God which ever lives and loves—to which the whole creation moves—entered the creation [...]
Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” wrestles with the death of the poet’s closest friend, a death that pushed Tennyson into a bout of depression and an immense wallowing sorrow. But the poem is also an attempt to draw near the transformative power of love—a love that turns the cold and bleak midwinter into the high noon of [...]
In “The City of God,” Augustine systematically lays bare the empty ideology of the city of man and the Roman empire in a breathtaking counter-narrative that remains remarkably modern and relevant for today. In contrast to the city of man, the City of Love, Augustine argues, is the godly city to which Christians belong and [...]
Baseball has an essence that mirrors the heavenly city and the precision of creation better than other sports. Its calmer nature also embodies that sense of tranquility which the restless heart seeks. The baseball season has arrived. America’s pastime sport returns, like Persephone from her bondage in Hades, to signal the return to life that [...]
The poetry of John Keats is a window into the mad genius of the Romantics: their lusts and hopes; their ambitions and ignorance; their radicalism and fantasies. In reading Keats, one is simultaneously scandalized and sympathetic to the longing of the Romantic heart. “The best things we have come from madness.” John Keats died only [...]
Eating together, as a social event, is meant to be time-consuming because it is meant to be an intimate experience where friendship—true friendship—is experienced, rekindled, and love stands at the center of the dinner table. It is, in its own way, a call to sacrifice. Aristotle identified man’s eating habits as one of the cornerstones of civilization—one [...]
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is many things: several stories, some bleak, some uplifting, ranging from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. Yet in its most fundamental form, his epic love poem of many stories reveals deep truths in its poetic proclamations of the transformative power, and spirit, of love. Ovid was one [...]
Every time I hear the music of Beethoven, the spirit of Christmas touches my heart. Because Beethoven is bound up with love, Beethoven is bound up with Christ. During Advent, Christians everywhere are reminded of the great testament of Love becoming incarnate. Beethoven keeps pointing us to that reality. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in [...]
It is undoubtedly true that our first and primary loyalty is the love due to family rather than the state. Even if it brings death, the choice of love rather than power is the most heroic thing a human can choose. Aristotle in the Poetics defined the heart of tragedy as the imitation of admirable [...]