Christ has called us each in a particular way to labor in his vineyard here and now and witness to the truth of the gospel in our daily lives. To live that call—that vocation—our hearts must be open to the grace that Christ is offering to us in the circumstances of his providence. In two days, my [...]
The essence of the attitude of the believer lies in the obduracy with which he approaches the real, and in the firmness of his determination to keep up the struggle. If faith is still developing, there comes a time when the believer considers his faith as the most securely anchored reality of all, sure to [...]
The love that continually flows out of the Risen Lord to fill us now, is the same love that flowed into him throughout his life on earth. It is the same love that was brought to perfection after his death, and the same love that reunited him with his Father, enabling his Father to send [...]
Might certainly does not make right, but it does not make wrong either. There are times to reject the allure of power, especially when it involves dominating others, and there are times when the right course is to take up arms and fight unreservedly against the forces of darkness. Indeed, Tolkien suggests, there are times [...]
Not surprisingly, J.R.R. Tolkien never finished "The Notion Club Papers," but they present a critical insight into his own view of the Inklings—not only mythologizing, but celebrating, them. Dear Reader, the following—a discussion of Tolkien’s unfinished novel, The Notion Club Papers, comes from chapter six of my forthcoming book, Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of [...]
My rather simple contention is that AI is essentially duplicitous. The duplicity is built into the thing, and cannot be any other way, regardless of how much I may remind myself that this is just a bunch of plastic, metal, and wires. When we use it, we cannot but attribute to it supra-human powers, and [...]
Ours is the first nation under God which makes no real provision for God in its public life, owing to a great and sundering wall of separation between Church and State, religion and politics, faith and life. We live in a country whose citizenry have been, almost from the beginning of the Republic, carefully coached to [...]
James Matthew Wilson judges American poet John Martin Finlay “practically the only contemporary writer to practice a genuinely metaphysical poetics.” A sinner and a man of imperfect ear, trite phrasing, and occasionally wayward philosophical judgment, Finlay was nevertheless a man whose pursuit of God who is Truth and Love demands our admiration. The Wayward Thomist: [...]
Scripture speaks of childhood, not merely as a passing biological phase, but as the very heart of what it means to be human. The child also reflects the mystery of Christ, and in the child we glimpse something of the divine reality. Recently I was talking to a mother of two young children, who explained [...]
If we wish, like the disciples, to be taken to the eternal banquet, we had best look like we have a taste for wine (love and salvation), "woman" (Mary's obedience), and song (the return of love for love received). Indeed, we should indulge as frequently as we can! John 2: 1-11 gives us that classic [...]
Lent is a time of abstinence, fasting, and almsgiving, in which we can release the baggage of the lesser goods that we have accrued. But it is more primarily and fundamentally a time of prayer and of growth in our attraction to the one goodness—Goodness Itself. It is somewhat ironic that Lent, the season in [...]
It is not only the beginning and the end of our history that consist in actions on a cosmic scale. The central point is also a creative act, the resurrection of Christ, himself the Word of God, by whom all things were made, who is to come in the fullness of time to make all [...]
By 1741, George Frideric Handel had fallen deeply into debt, and was even threatened with debtors’ prison. Instead, he departed to Ireland for a sabbatical, where he wrote his "Messiah" in just twenty-four days. While Handel’s Messiah is, for many, an annual Advent spectacle, in the Classical Girl household, the 1741 oratorio gets pulled out during [...]
Who would not get depressed when it seems you are unable to pray anymore, and the Scriptures that meant so much before move you no more, and your moral behaviour seems to be deteriorating with each passing day? It is essential that, at a time when it is so difficult to find a competent spiritual [...]