The Other Side of Bleakness: On Winter and the Nativity

By |2023-12-21T12:30:48-06:00December 20th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Imagination, Literature, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

Winter, for many of us, signals the end of the year. It is a time when we reflect on our labor, what we’ve achieved, what we haven’t achieved, what we will do better or make right. But how much of this reflection is focused on the joy and mystery of the Nativity? “Census at [...]

“O Sapientia”: An Advent Antiphon

By |2023-12-17T20:25:08-06:00December 16th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Audio/Video, Christianity, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

The poem I have chosen for December 17th in my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word is my own sonnet “O Sapientia,” the first in a sequence of seven sonnets on the seven great ‘O’ antiphons which I shall be reading to you each day between now and the 23rd of December. You [...]

“Advent 1955”

By |2023-12-10T14:32:25-06:00December 9th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Christmas, Poetry, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The Advent wind begins to stir With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir, It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea, And in between we only see Clouds hurrying across the sky And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry And branches bending to the gale Against great skies all silver pale The world seems travelling into [...]

Whatever Happened to Saint Nicholas?

By |2023-12-05T19:48:16-06:00December 5th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Dwight Longenecker, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Let us remember this day in Advent as a reminder of the true spirit of Saint Nicholas—a valiant defender of the faith, a tender-hearted lover of the poor and a kindly, generous soul, who saw that the true message of Christ’s nativity was that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the [...]

“The Miracle of Saint Nicholas”

By |2023-12-05T19:50:28-06:00December 5th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Audio/Video, Christianity, Christmas, Music, Timeless Essays|

French composer Guy Ropartz wrote Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas in 1905, based on a text by René Avril. From the Naxos recording of this work: This legend in sixteen scenes introduces the story, familiar to the people of Lorraine, of St Nicholas bringing back to life the three boys murdered and pickled by the [...]

Advent and Melancholy

By |2023-12-02T20:54:45-06:00December 2nd, 2023|Categories: Advent, Catholicism, Christianity, Christmas, Glenn Arbery, Great Books, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

Nothing breaks through melancholy like a baby. During Advent, we wait for that moment of absolute newness that we need within but cannot muster, that moment when the whole of the divine nature, the whole meaning of universes beyond number, lies helpless before us. On Monday of this week, students met with me in the new [...]

“O Emmanuel”: A Final Antiphon and More Music

By |2022-12-22T16:36:25-06:00December 22nd, 2022|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

In my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word, we come to the last of the Seven Great O Antiphons, which was sung on either side of the Magnificat on Christmas Eve, O Emmanuel, O God with us. This is the antiphon from which our lovely Advent hymn takes its name. It was also this final [...]

Pull Down Thy Vanity

By |2022-12-17T17:06:00-06:00December 17th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Character, Christian Living, Christianity, Conservatism, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virtue, Wyoming Catholic College|

This Advent season does not center on our achievement; it is not the time of puffing ourselves up, but of waiting for God to reveal, as only God can, the new thing under the sun that breaks the great cycle of vanity. The greatest things are born from humility. There is something essentially comic about [...]

Apocalyptic Advent With Benson’s “Lord of the World”

By |2023-09-15T19:32:41-05:00December 15th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Catholicism, Christianity, David Deavel, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Robert Hugh Benson's "The Lord of the World" is a cracking tale of science fiction and alternate history, but the lessons it teaches have to do with spiritual facts fitting for your Advent preparations. It will also help you get ready for the end of the world. Did you know that “Dies Irae,” the hymn [...]

A Military Chaplain’s Sermon for the Occasion of War at Advent

By |2022-12-06T17:07:58-06:00December 6th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Timeless Essays, War|

The challenge for the soldier at Christmas is to question his agency, and to reflect upon the birth of the Christ child as both the pronouncement of demise for those who intend to make war, and of salvation for those who suffer its symptoms. In the beginning, God. In the beginning, God created. In the [...]

A Patient Madness

By |2022-12-02T13:45:06-06:00December 2nd, 2022|Categories: Advent, Catholicism, Christianity, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

As our culture seems increasingly to reject its own hard-earned wisdom, it is good to remember that we wait in hope. It was disconcerting this week, reading Plato’s Phaedrus with my section of freshman at Wyoming Catholic College, to realize once again that the sophisticated Athenian world of the 4th Century BC was a glittering [...]

Advent in Uncertain Times

By |2023-12-25T10:02:09-06:00November 26th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

In these uncertain times, we are constantly being urged to historicize Christ, as though He were merely a symbolic figure in a moribund and culturally discredited system of thought. But Advent reminds us of the deep promise of the Nicene Creed. He was, He is, and He is to come. In this Advent, we await [...]

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