Category: Christianity

Miracles And Faith

     A few days ago, I mentioned two “candidate miracles” that recently occurred on this continent. One was a case of Miraculous Multiplication; the other was the incorrupt body of a deceased nun. As I’m already a Catholic and serious about it, these don’t “prove” anything to me, though they say that God continues to …

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Gifts

     Not long ago, I encountered the following passage in a secular novel:      “Things should make sense. If they don’t, there’s no point to anything. It wouldn’t even be worth trying to figure things out any better. Why would our universe make sense with rules that make things like this ship work among other …

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Human Institutions

     They’re imperfect – all of them. Every now and then, a reminder is useful.      The Acts of the Apostles contains a pair of segments that make many things plain – indeed, plainer in some ways than the Church would like us to know. The first of them is in Chapter 2:      And …

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A Brief Announcement

     Someone who gave the name of “Mike Bizzaro,” along with a strange-looking email address, just wrote to inform me that “[my] soul has been removed from Christianity.” He also provided a link to one of the ugliest web pages I’ve had the dubious pleasure of visiting. It is extremely important that anyone who agrees …

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Faith, Doubt, And What Lies Apart From Them: A Sunday Rumination

     [I wrote the essay below five years ago, in ruminating on another Divine Mercy Sunday. Having reviewed it, I find that it still serves the occasion — FWP] ***      Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him: …

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As He Said

     In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the …

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Good Friday 2023

     On Good Friday, Christians commemorate – not “celebrate” – the Crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a day for thinking about ultimate things. The Church is constantly at pains to remind us that no matter how our temporal lives may run, every one of us will face “the last things:” death, judgment, and …

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Rising Voices

     Most of the time they whisper, inaudibly but clearly all the same. But now and then their whispers become sounds. Sometimes they’re louder than anything else in your world, even your four decade-long tinnitus. If you’re alert to them, you know you’re in danger. If you’re not, the danger is incalculably amplified.      My …

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The Wager

     Nothing is certain but uncertainty. – Pliny the Elder      Here it is, that grand day that cometh but once a year: April Fool’s Day, on which the only certainty is that someone is planning to make you look like a credulous idiot. Wait: can you really be certain of that? Well, maybe not, …

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Demonstrator

     [A short story for you today. As it’s Passion Sunday, on which Catholics read from the Gospel of John about Jesus’s final miracle before He went to Jerusalem, I thought a related tale might be appropriate. – FWP. ***      The last of his perceptions dimmed and winked out. He found himself without sensation …

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The Most Obscure Beatitude

     Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3      Have you ever pondered the first of the Beatitudes, Gentle Reader? Were you uncertain about what it might mean? Perhaps, given that the Sermon on the Mount is deemed an indispensable roadmap to living a Christian life, …

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Christian Conundrums

“The best of questions have no answers. The best of answers need no questions.” – David Cousins –      If you’re blessed / cursed with my sort of thought process, you’re also likely to find yourself pondering abstruse questions for which definitive answers are lacking. Such questions abound, especially for one who has embraced faith …

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Necessities

     Not that the count was a drone. At last reports, he had been involved in some highly esoteric tampering with the Haertel equations—that description of the space-time continuum which, by swallowing up the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction exactly as Einstein had swallowed Newton (that is, alive), had made interstellar flight possible. Ruiz-Sanchez did not understand a …

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An Epiphany Story

     I’m fairly sure all my Gentle Readers know the story of the Magi and their gifts to the Christ Child. Today – the first Sunday after New Year’s Day – is the day when Catholics celebrate the Epiphany, which includes that momentous visit to the Holy Family from three of the most learned men …

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Appreciation And Gratitude

     It has been written, and truly, that among the things that make happiness possible, the greatest of all is gratitude. I’ve written about that several times here at Liberty’s Torch. But a free-floating, generalized state of gratitude is a difficult thing to create and sustain within oneself. It’s a lot easier to be grateful …

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Names

     [My Christmas story. Someone – apart from Joseph and Mary – had to be first on the scene. But who might that have been…and what did he take from being first to lay eyes on the Christ Child? – FWP] ***      Census has always been an irritant. There are many — I am …

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Fanfares

     There’s an old gag about the importance of avoiding anachronisms in fiction:      The error of anachronism was once enshrined by an amateur playwright. He had a French obstetrician leave home in the early hours of numbingly cold dawn to attend a delivery. When he returned home exhausted, his sympathetic wife gave him hot …

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Things You Can Rely On Part 2

     Just as “environmentalists” (who should really be called “anti-humanists”) are reliable in their opposition to anything that supports and enriches human life, vocal “diversity” activists are absolutely reliable about certain things. Most prominent among those things is their hatred for any manifestation of Christianity or practices associated with it:      This happened in Dedham, …

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TITS Up!

     Here we are: Gaudete Sunday, when Advent transforms from a season of spiritual preparation to an anticipation of joy. We’ve been here before, we Christians. We know the Savior is coming. We know that He will be born of a virgin in a rude stable, placed in repose in a manger surrounded by animals; …

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A Light In The Darkness

     Quoth Neil Oliver:      I love Christmas … always have and always will. In every conceivable way, Christmas is light in a time of darkness and for many of us, that light has never been more welcome and so can’t come soon enough.      Especially since the festival is once again under attack by …

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