Waiting with Our Lady for the coming of Our Saviour, we will meditate each day of Advent on a different aspect of the circumstances of His birth, the moment of The Incarnation amongst us. Reflection: CREVICES You must block every crevice in the walls of the stable, so that the wind and cold don’t enter [...]
Waiting with Our Lady for the coming of Our Saviour, we will meditate each day of Advent on a different aspect of the circumstances of His birth, the moment of The Incarnation amongst us. Reflection: THE ROOF The roof of the stable needs to be in good condition, so that the Holy Family is protected [...]
Waiting with Our Lady for the coming of Our Saviour, we will meditate each day of Advent on a different aspect of the circumstances of His birth, the moment of The Incarnation amongst us. Reflection: THE STABLE The stable is your heart. Ask Jesus to make His home in your heart as He will soon [...]
Waiting with Our Lady for the coming of Our Saviour, we will meditate each day of Advent on a different aspect of the circumstances of His birth, the moment of The Incarnation amongst us. Reflection: THE WELCOMING INNKEEPER Let the compassion and generosity of the Innkeeper be your example by finding an opportunity to offer [...]
Waiting with Our Lady for the coming of Our Saviour, we will meditate each day of Advent on a different aspect of the circumstances of His birth, the moment of The Incarnation amongst us. Reflection: ARRIVAL AT BETHLEHEM GATE On arriving at the gate of the city, share Mary’s joy at reaching her destination. Pray [...]
If snow falls where you live – or if in warmer climes, you reach for your jacket – read "Ethan Frome" to mark the season, for winter hangs over the novella. Though many readers regard Edith Wharton's tale as one of a man tormented by the social tyranny of his New England community, it is, in [...]
What’s unnerving about Guillermo del Toro’s "Frankenstein" is that it embraces and glorifies the creature in ways that remind me, on one hand, of the Romantic valorization of Milton’s Satan, and on the other, of our contemporary headlong development of artificial intelligence. Like Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (not a great play), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (not [...]
Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.—Romans xiii 11. Awake—again the Gospel-trump is blown— From year to year it swells with louder tone, From year to year the signs of wrath Are gathering round the Judge’s path, Strange words fulfilled, and mighty [...]
Depart from me, Lord. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Why have you come to me? Why have you called me? You know me. You’ve searched me . . . And so you already know there’s nothing that you will find in me. I have nothing to offer you. Only weakness. Weakness and [...]
We come now to a feast of Ends and Beginnings! This Sunday is the last Sunday in the cycle of the Christian year, which ends with the feast of Christ the King, and the following Sunday we begin our journey through time to eternity once more, with the first Sunday of Advent. We might expect [...]
As a literary scholar, C.S. Lewis’s principal concern in his "Reflections on the Psalms" is to vindicate the Psalms as poetry and, therefore, vehicles of beauty, delight, and even (as he boldly puts it) “mirth.” These are things which, Lewis says, modern humanity needs badly. One of the great constants in my life has been [...]
Heeding Shakespeare’s insistence that we need to heed the wisdom of the fool, it shocked me that a recent production of "King Lear" at a local Christian university had excised most of the key speeches of Poor Tom, which enunciate radical Christian wisdom, thus eviscerating Shakespeare's profound moral vision. For the wisdom of this world [...]
The Great War destroyed much the Inklings had held true, personally and culturally. Each lost friends, and each felt the guilt that any survivor of a war feels. Many of them refused to talk about their own experiences, for good or ill. J.R.R. Tolkien, perhaps, provides the best example. Though not the best-known Inkling, Adam [...]
Can acts of seemingly pure self-sacrificial love be morally reckless? F. Marion Crawford’s dexterous handling of such questions in "The Heart of Rome" marks the novel as deserving a place in the canon of great twentieth-century literature. Having just finished writing a fifty-part series for Crisis Magazine on “Unsung Heroes of Christendom”, I’ve been spending [...]