homily
May 30, 2019
Truth is a writer’s first responsibility. To conquer the lie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said.
May 22, 2019
Maggie Whitfield interviews Melanie Newman of the Salem Red Sox…
April 22, 2019
It is hard to describe the loss of Notre Dame. When the poet Rainer Maria Rilke lived in Paris, each evening on his way home, he stopped as he crossed the Siene on the Île de la Cité to watch the sun set over Notre Dame. The darkening ancient towers silent against the new, awakening, electric […]
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 […]
March 14, 2020
Just before his death, so the story goes, Saint Augustine excommunicated himself.
March 20, 2020
It may make you feel better to know that even the great Saint Augustine thought this gospel reading a bit long.