I had not seen my former student, Adam, for a decade or so after his graduation from Hillsdale College when I ran into him and his young family at the supermarket. "You once asked me" he said, "for what purpose was the soul of man made. I had little in the way of an answer [...]
As institutions crumble around us, our constructed selves are stripped away, and we are more and more reduced to the most basic and existential thing: namely our relationship to God. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's method for “practicing the presence of God” consisted of keeping up a continuous dialogue with Him in one’s heart. Brother [...]
As we rise for our labors each day, the dawn wakes and revives us. But our God needs none to rouse him. If you long for him, it is not to stir him to your aid. It is because he has awoken you. Awake, lyre and harp. I will awake the dawn. (Ps 57:8) It [...]
Making the spiritual ascent into God is rather like trying to run up a downward escalator. The moment you stop moving steadily forwards is the moment when you start moving steadily downward. Going forwards means finding daily time to do what St Peter told his listeners to do when he was the first to announce [...]
God’s perfect love casts out all fear when we hand ourselves over to him in hope. Why tremble? Why hesitate? When all that can be desired is offered by the one who is powerful to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine. Change is scary. Between the unknowns we can foresee and those [...]
Even if we don’t climb to the height of holiness, or enjoy mystical contemplation to the point that our whole lives become suffused with it, we can strive to be more prayerful than we are, and we need to do nothing else but to give ourselves to God throughout the day to accomplish it. One [...]
The problem of authority is not merely a political problem or even simply a problem of faith. It instead requires a gathering up of the whole of life, indeed the world in all of its rich multitude of aspects, in relation to its meaning-granting center. Anxious about trends he was witnessing in the ’60s and [...]
Sexual difference is a symbol of one’s relation to the world, the whole of reality, to all others (and even to oneself), and ultimately to God. Initially, it may seem that the answer to the question that forms the title of this brief reflection would depend on the way one chose to define the first [...]
The absence of beauty in education robs students of their natural curiosity, intuition, and creativity. Beauty provides direction, order, and harmony. Humans are made to desire and perceive beauty, which itself is the mystery of God. Professor Margarita Mooney of Princeton Theological Seminary and the Scala Foundation is a dear friend and brilliant academic. Five [...]
All play is an attempt to approximate to the Creator, who performs his work with the divine seriousness which its meaning and purpose demand, and yet with the spontaneity and effortless skill of the great artist he is, creating because he wills to create and not because he must. Man, according to Plotinus, is a [...]
The Psalmist has some harsh words for idols, those who make them, and those who worship them. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they [...]
The vast majority of human beings of all races and in every place and at every time have understood that there is such a thing as the miraculous, that strange things do happen, and that our materialist explanations do not explain everything. Some time ago a friend of mine told me a miracle story. He [...]
Believing is something radical, that is to say, different at its roots from “forming an opinion,” or “forming a conviction,” if you like. To make a judgment based on particular knowledge and inferences is a very important and, in innumerable areas, indispensable intellectual activity: but “believing” is a different process. In its content and unfolding, [...]
Day in and day out, Mario sat begging for alms. Whether in the heat of a Roman summer or during the humid wintry days, he would sit patiently outside the seminary gate atop the Janiculum Hill. Every morning as I left for class, the routine was the same: “Buongiorno, Mario. Tutto bene?” With a kind [...]