The Major Oak, like Robin Hood and Maid Marian, has died. Its death is felt even more deeply because of what it signifies. Its death seems to signify the death of England itself. Imagine for a moment that you are in Middle-earth. Imagine what you would think or feel were you to be told that [...]
Politics and even the goods of society do not complete us; even the wonders of a harmonious community do not define us. Deep down, we are called to something greater and more sublime for we have here no abiding city. Mark 12: 13-17 contains two stories in one: the story of how Jesus’ enemies tried [...]
Having severed himself from God, man was not empowered but disempowered, not expanded but crushed, not liberated but enslaved. What was needed at that point was not only a Saviour who could repair what no human could fix, but also a teacher who could enter into the inner darkness and chaos in the human soul [...]
There is only one fictional character who embodies the American spirit in its essence and its entirety, and who is real enough that it seems he should have existed: Indiana Jones, the swashbuckling American archaeologist. A people, a civilization defines itself largely through the heroes that it adopts and celebrates. These heroes may be entirely [...]
It was love at first sight—or hearing—for me with Josef Suk’s Scherzo fantastique, a lively 15-minute composition that bears a stylistic resemblance to my other faves, Khachaturian’s Masquerade waltz and Saint Saëns’ Danse Macabre, not to mention elements from Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which I wrote about HERE. But only when I started delving deeper into research for an essay on Scherzo fantastique (note: [...]
Please enjoy this video lecture on Benjamin Franklin by Gleaves Whitney, the Executive Director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. […]
We need to pursue with dogged fidelity the same reality again and again, going deeper every time, the repetition being the honour human weakness pays to the imitation of the inimitable one: Jesus, in whose image we are remade by grace that the love with which the Father has loved the Son may be in [...]
Honor the vision of your founders. Don’t be the generation that cuts itself off from its parents and that disinherits its children. Never be afraid to speak to and for the soul of this nation of which, by good fortune and God’s grace, you are privileged to be part of. In 2012, I had the [...]
John 17: 1-11 is one of the most mysterious, one of the most dazzling, passages in all of the New Testament. In it, we enter into the Sacred Heart, as into some vast cathedral where the soaring vaults carry both the thunder of the organ and the whisper of many prayers. It is hard to [...]
Franz Joseph Haydn composed the Mass in Time of War, his tenth setting of the Roman Catholic Mass in 1796, in the city of Eisenstadt, Austria, where he was the composer-in-residence-for Prince Esterhazy. At the time of its writing in August and its premier in December, French Revolutionary were winning victories in Italy and Germany [...]
What can our poor prayers—so broken like ourselves—do for if not echo constantly the very petition Jesus has made known to us? Nothing else will matter in eternity. John 17: 20-26 continues the priestly prayer of Jesus that we have been listening to throughout the week. Again, we hear its simple but sublime themes rehearsed: [...]
Listening is of the essence of obedience, the obedience of the Son to the Father and of the disciple to the Son. This is the first condition of joy: that it begins in an open obedience, an obedient openness to the Eternal Word, spoken in the communion of God’s love and shared with us through [...]
The mid-twentieth-century opera, “The Trial at Rouen,” tells the story of the final days of St. Joan of Arc, her imprisonment, and trial for heresy. Composer Norman Dello Joio employs themes of conscience, belief, and spiritual motivation; he makes us think about the consequences of institutional corruption and the power of individuals to rise above [...]
Let’s not let our consciences be deceived about how fragile our settlement with Jesus really is; how we need the living occupation of the Prince of Peace in our hearts for He came to make His home with us. Then and only then can we belong to the flock that He holds so that nobody [...]