Homilies
March 11, 2019
In his 1942 memoir, Austrian writer Stephan Zweig tells of hearing Hitler’s voice on the radio while riding a train in Texas, of hearing in real time about bombings and atrocities from all over the world, an experience which was new in human history and not altogether welcome. “Thanks to our new methods of spreading news […]
March 3, 2019
“What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.” These are the words of Charles Péguy, instigator, poet, soldier, Catholic. And they’re words which, for me, come to mind as we begin our Lent again. He was talking about those habits which control us, shape us, which although small by themselves, together can define […]
February 28, 2019
My wife and I, we have four children, all younger than 7. Ours is not a quiet house. A house of screaming and a house of endless snot, it’s also a house of love, grown and multiplied every few years. In a house of little sleep, my hobby these days is simply to sit down; fellow […]
February 19, 2019
What passes for Christianity, what people see and mistake for Christianity, that’s what’s wrong with it. That Christianity — the phenomena, not the faith — has been eclipsed by parody; it’s why so many dismiss it. Because what’s laughable and incredible isn’t genuine Christianity, but rather a counterfeit too often misconstrued for the real thing.
January 25, 2019
It was the hat, you see, that smile, that smirk. Julie Irwin Zimmerman, writing for The Atlantic, called it a Rorschach test, which is the best way to think of that viral scene involving students from Covington Catholic High School and Nathan Phillips. Proving true what C.S. Lewis wrote: What you see and hear depends upon your point […]
January 26, 2020
A rhetorical question, it was very much meant to sting. Paul to the Corinthians: he asked them, “Is Christ divided?”[1] It was a question which called into question everything; it was existential.
February 9, 2020
In the novel An Accidental Man by Iris Murdoch there’s a scene at the beginning of the death of the matriarch of a well-to-do middle-class family in London. The nearly-deceased was not really loved, or at least there was little positive affection in a family comprised of members so benignly self-centered. They were awkwardly present at […]
February 23, 2020
To listen to this homily click here! At the beginning, he made us in his image.[1] And he made us, it says in Genesis, for the simple purpose of companionship. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God said.[2] So it was that in that paradise place there was shared a love between […]
March 1, 2020
Simone Weil, that strange and beautiful philosopher, simply called it “attention.” That was the key to the heart of things for her; “attention,” the mark of genuine Christianity, genuine philosophy, genuine religion. It was, for her, the only way to open oneself to the divine, everything else being something of a sham. “The quality of attention […]
March 8, 2020
It’s a common custom, among some, to take up a little extra reading in Lent—something different, something spiritual, something to open the mind and the heart. I do this; I try at least to read something good for the soul, something different, something I’ve not read before or not for a long time. It’s good for […]