We must open our heart to the mystery of love which comes from God, which is given by Him in whom this love is a “theological virtue." It is this mystery in which grace allows us to share. It is by this mystery that faith lives. We must cling to this mystery if we wish [...]
Tell me, when you’ve “had words” with somebody, isn’t there usually a chance, before the next time you go to confession, of saying some kind word, doing some trifling service, which will obliterate the memory of your quarrel without the need of referring to it? That is what Jesus Christ wants you to do. Pastoral [...]
Our modern urbanised arrangement of vast groups of human beings—in which the city is master and the country servant—organized through tokens (money) rather than through realities—are undeniably the proximate occasion of war. Old Principles and the New Order, by Vincent McNabb, O.P. (224 pages, Cluny Media) “Jesus…seeing the city wept over it saying: If thou [...]
No survey of contemporary literature can call itself complete today which ignores Catholic literature. And this not only because of the promise it holds out for a complete renovation of the arts, but also because of its many distinguished writers and its not inconsiderable critical and creative work in all departments of literature. The Catholic [...]
The kingdom of heaven would not appear before the eyes of men with a crash of thunder and a blaze of lightning. It would begin, in itself and in each man’s heart, humbly, almost insignificantly, as small as the mustard seed. Only Son, by Walter Farrell, O.P. (226 pages, Cluny Media) “And His mother and [...]
Education follows the same law as the physical universe, which is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation. Education has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. A Benedictine Education, by John Henry Newman (160 pages, Cluny Media) As the physical universe [...]
Catholic literature, when we discover it coming into being in the mid-nineteenth century, is a literature of protest against the course being followed by European society. Its writers were not very numerous, nor did the typical Victorian man see any particular significance in their opposition to Liberalism, the anti-intellectual Romantic aesthetic, scientific naturalism, and the [...]
If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain. Let us therefore send our hearts to heaven by sending our wealth there. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by Thomas More (248 pages, Cluny Media) XIII. Concerning the wise [...]
Sigrid Undset understood how experiences of joy alongside unfulfilled longings can break the spell of modernity and open a window into the spiritual life. "The Wild Orchid" explores the possibility of spiritual awakening in society that has grown bored with the Christian faith and is seeking new ways to re-enchant the natural world. In Sigrid [...]
People who read books of this kind usually expect the author to answer the question: “Why did you become a Roman Catholic?” I am not trying to explain it, but I must try to illustrate it by an example. It was as if I had been a man homeless and needing shelter, who first of [...]
God is the complete satisfaction of our need to know and to love. He is all Truth, utterly lovable. But God must be known for what He is, else an appropriate response to Him cannot be made. Philosophy and theology tell us, but not so effectively as does Dante, who has made us see what [...]
The question I should like at least to open is whether G.K. Chesterton had not both the deeper and greater mysticism, a mysticism closer to that of the saints, and a message far more valuable for the millions whose place is on the plains of daily effort and not on the mountains of asceticism and [...]
Sigrid Undset’s writing takes its place as one of the truly remarkable phenomena in the literature of the twentieth century. She is, wrote a Swedish critic in 1927, the year before she received the Nobel Prize, one of the very few contemporary authors of whom one may well use the adjective “great.” That is no [...]
Josef Weiger is called, as are not many, to speak of Mary—to speak of her from the depths of his heart, knowing well her greatness to be unique. He is called to speak of her in that sober recollection of Christian Truth which, as St. Teresa demands, shall picture our Lady’s life only as it [...]