What service and work has God entrusted to you? You have your mission: It’s to assist in the Church’s mission of soul-saving and cultivating the earth, just one house and one day at a time. Through your service and your mission, you are given a share in the Church’s work and, for that matter, God’s. [...]
Pope Leo’s educational vision aligns directly with the Catholic understanding of God’s creative goodness: He sees education as proceeding from our foundation as made in God’s image, which sees us as more than mere passive recipients of being, but cooperative causes in its creation. “The authentic teacher arouses the desire for truth” is found early [...]
In the present polarized climate, there is a constant battle between two ever-more irreconcilable sides. I think this is a good trend since the two parties do not live the fiction of getting along when the points of division are so great. I applaud any effort that results in moral clarity. It clears the air [...]
When a lover of poetry as sensitive and intelligent as C.S. Lewis provides us a translation of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” we should pay attention. C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, edited by A.T. Reyes (184 pages, Yale University Press, 2011) Every poetic translator worth our attention is, as it were, a secondary artist, one [...]
Jesus Christ is the perfect image of the invisible God. He is the perfect self-portrait because he is not just a representation of God, he is God himself. We no longer try to guess at the Artist through his works. Instead, we are brought into a real relationship with the Artist himself. For from the greatness [...]
Netflix’s Death by Lightning dramatizes the brief but important presidency of James Garfield. Outlined in Candace Millard’s 2011 book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, this fine, but flawed production charts Garfield’s unexpected rise to the White House and the tragedy of his assassination by the [...]
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 [...]
To the ordinary human eye, St. Charbel is simply an oddity, one who embraced a life already slightly weird (monasticism) and took it to the next level (hermit). But it’s such radical Christians who transcend their age because they listen always to the Voice telling them of the essence of the moral law within. This [...]
I encourage those who smoke to light a cigar in solitude or with a band of brothers. Recite a poem out loud or in the confines of your soul. Rejoice, reflect, and ponder over the mystery of our faith in Jesus Christ. What is a cigar to a man if not a sacred companion? Never [...]
At first, contemplation is called dark or confused contemplation because our heart’s desire needs to be purified and refined in many months, if not years, before the Love of God becomes tangible. Then, renewal is on the way as the Holy Spirit comes to those whose patience and perseverance in adversity enables them to receive [...]
Following the example of St. Thomas, in addition to performing corporal works of mercy, we should not neglect the spiritual works of mercy. Like Thomas, we must counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, and admonish the sinner. “It is better to give alms than to treasure up gold. For almsgiving delivers from death, and it [...]
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 [...]
The Articles of Confederation were doomed by their perceived structural weakness. Yet defenders of the Articles at the time correctly pointed out that this early constitution, drafted under intense pressure at a critical time in the country’s history and intended to deal foremost with the exigencies of war, had been remarkably successful. The Declaration of [...]
God did not provide us with something to offer, but someone. In Christ, our offering becomes pleasing. In Christ, the act of perfect worship is accomplished. When it comes to the worship of God, we quickly realize how little we are and how little our offering is in comparison to God’s greatness and majesty. In his [...]