Joshua Whitfield
April 2, 2021
That he still bore scars is what I’ve always thought so beautiful. It’s what’s intrigued me more than almost anything else all these years about the story so many celebrate at Easter all over the world, believers, half-believers, unbelievers too. The story of resurrection, the idea of it, the hope of it.
April 1, 2021
Brutal are the reminders of our creatureliness, our frail nakedness.
April 1, 2021
A democracy fighting for its life, a body politic trying to survive: that’s what we’re seeing in Myanmar.
January 5, 2025
Preaching, centuries ago, on this feast of the Epiphany, St. Augustine ended his sermon with a rhetorical flourish.
December 24, 2024
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian, said once that the Christmas homily should be brief—shorter than normal.
December 22, 2024
Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker, said once that “The Shekinah is between beings.”[1] Now the word Shekinah is sometimes translated “glory,” yet it is not some ordinary glory but the glory of the presence of God, the dwelling of God; the idea is kind of synonymous with the “word” of God or even the “face” […]
December 15, 2024
Close readers of Luke will recall that the question we hear asked today, the question—“What then shall we do?”—which is found in Luke 3:10, is the same question found in Acts 2:37.
December 1, 2024
As the beginning of Advent, the lesson each year is to watch, the question is, Watch for what? To cut to the chase, to be as brief and simple as possible, the question the Church asks this first Sunday of Advent is always something like that.
November 4, 2024
They are the poets that help me—when I have no other way to make sense of it—to feel my way through death: to the love hidden underneath tears, when common words do not help. It’s not that they heal at all—what these poets say—instead, they help me feel. Which is I think the first thing we […]