Today’s Gospel reading includes one of the most disturbing, even ominous, of all Jesus’s statements: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” This passage resonates with particular power in the aftermath of viewing Nefarious. For in that remarkable movie, the demon made its …
Category: Christianity
Aug 13 2023
Schisms
I was minded to take the day off, but I started thinking about St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Brothers and sisters: I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my …
Jul 07 2023
People Of Hope
I recall recommending The Hope Line as a worthy charity earlier this year. Unlike most other charities, it doesn’t offer material or financial help to those who come to it. Rather, it offers a sympathetic ear and voice. Its workers will talk to you about anything, but an emphasis on…drum roll, please…hope. Within that …
Jun 04 2023
Love And Suffering
With today, Trinity Sunday, the liturgical year continues into “ordinary time.” That’s a misleading title for this period. It’s intended to mean that we’re beyond the special season of Easter and have not yet entered the special season of Advent. Yet any part of the year in which believers practice the Christian faith is …
May 31 2023
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 …
May 28 2023
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 …
May 07 2023
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 …
May 05 2023
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 …
Apr 16 2023
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: …
Apr 09 2023
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 …
Apr 07 2023
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 …
Apr 02 2023
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 …
Apr 01 2023
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, …
Jan 29 2023
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, …
Jan 22 2023
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 …
Jan 15 2023
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 …
Jan 08 2023
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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