On the Square Today

Patrick J. Deneen on the destructive life of George Bailey :

One sees a dark side represented by George Bailey himself: the optimist, the adventurer, the builder, the man who persistently hates the town that gives him sustenance, who craves nothing else but to get out of Bedford Falls and remake the world. Given its long-standing reputation as a nostalgic look at small-town life in the pre-war period, it is almost shocking to suggest that the film is one of the most potent, if unconscious critiques ever made of the American dream. For George Bailey, in fact, destroys the town that saves him.

Also today, Leroy Huizenga on God being with us every day :

Is God still with us today? The longstanding Christian answer is that God is with us not only in our hearts, or in the person of the Holy Spirit, but in the Eucharist. In the same homily Benedict encouraged Christians to “ask the Lord to grant that we may overcome our limits, our world, to help us to encounter him, especially at the moment when he places himself into our hands and into our heart in the Holy Eucharist.” Indeed, the Incarnation is the ground of all sacraments, the sacrament  par excellence .