God is always there, searching us out, and he is always saying, “Where are you?”, not because he does not know where we are, but because we do not know where we are, nor where we are going when sin and shame make us run from the only One who can heal us. Could have [...]
In every age, the Lord raises up preachers and prophets to courageously oppose the errors of their times and proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ. The problems that Fulton Sheen diagnosed in the middle of the 20th century have only continued to fester. This is part of a series entitled, “Preaching: Feeding Fellow Beggars.” Read [...]
It’s almost the end of the year, and almost your last opportunity in 2024 to support The Imaginative Conservative. Our journal is now more than fourteen years old. Perhaps you have traveled with us since that day in 2010 when we embarked on our mission to preserve the transcendentals, the “permanent things” that constitute the glory [...]
Plato argues that music is a moral law that gives soul to the universe and wings to the mind. And that music gives flight to the imagination, charm to sadness, gaiety to life and is the essence of order and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful. Is Plato right that musical [...]
If Christmas is anything, it is a revolution of the heart against the tit-for-tat of this world, against the demands of this world for balancing the scales and righting every wrong with a hard justice. Ultimately, if this world is saved, it will be mercy, not justice, that saves it. I. When the Outlandish Is [...]
I look out my cell’s window as dawn breaks upon the priory, but the autumn leaves that used to reflect the morning rays have all fallen away. We had a long fall in DC, but I would not have it longer, even though the winter brings its melancholy. We grow weary of the seasons. Winter’s [...]
Could the Duhare of North America have been the descendants of Irish explorers who ventured across the Atlantic long before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria set sail? Maybe it's the Amish in me, but there’s an ornery streak that delights in eccentric theories, provoking the establishment, undermining the accepted narrative, pondering alternative [...]
Arcangelo Corelli was a giant of the Baroque era of Western music and, though it might be easy to forget today, one of the most historically important and popular composers who ever lived. His "Christmas Concerto" has endured as his most popular work and one of the great classical pieces for the Christmas season. [...]
The birth of a child is not a completely new beginning but it changes everything. It is a revelation that transforms us. The baby existed before, but now we can see its face. In this case, the unique case of Jesus, it is the face that God turns towards us, and also the face that [...]
There are several attitudes towards Christmas, Some of which we may disregard: The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), And the childish — which is not that of the child For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel Spreading its wings at the summit [...]
Any discussion of Christmas and literature brings to mind instantly the miserly figure of Scrooge and the ghosts in Dickens’ Christmas Carol. It is not likely, however, that such a discussion would bring to mind the medieval classic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Yet this epic of the Middle Ages, written by an anonymous [...]
Man may not live by bread alone, but a goodly baked bread goes a long way to rendering us joyful and content. Bread-making is both a sensual and spiritual experience. It satisfies a yearning for deeper bonding among friends and family, and it restores us to a less stressed, more thankful awareness of life. Many [...]
The man in the shop was very old and broken. When I put down the money, he pushed it feebly away. “No, no,” he said vaguely. “I never have. We are rather old-fashioned here.” “Good heavens!” I said. “What can you mean? Why, you might be Father Christmas.” “I am Father Christmas,” he said apologetically. [...]
In my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word, we come to the last of the Seven Great O Antiphons, which was sung on either side of the Magnificat on Christmas Eve, O Emmanuel, O God with us. This is the antiphon from which our lovely Advent hymn takes its name. It was also this final [...]