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Boundless Prayer

A colleague of mine is extraordinarily productive: reams of articles, books, editing duties, institute-leading, fundraising. It’s the kind of performance his peers envy, all the more because lurking behind his energies and accomplishments are the realities of a troubled family: spousal . . . . Continue Reading »

St. Nick Saban

When our exterminator, Ervin Humes, showed up at the house back in September 2023, he and I did what Alabamians do: We talked football and Jesus, the two forms of Alabamian religion. Ervin enthused over Paul’s hymn to Christ in his epistle to the Colossians, we lamented the state of the world, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Free the Children

In the first Petrine epistle, Peter exhorts his readers, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” His instruction presumes that our hope is visible, even startling or foolish in the eyes of the world. Christian hope provokes questions and . . . . Continue Reading »

Milton’s Apple and Ours

Why did Eve bite the apple? Milton puts this question at the center of Paradise Lost, the greatest long poem in English. Why did Eve listen to Satan, pluck the apple from the tree, and take a bite? This temptation bears on us now. Satan always hides in plain sight. So it’s no surprise . . . . Continue Reading »

Cardinal Fernández Misleads

Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, stepped down from the papal ministry in 2013. But before he did, he began drafting an encyclical on the nature of Christian faith. His goal was to finish his ongoing thoughts on the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Nourishing Mystery

This book, by the late Jesuit theologian Xavier Tilliette, discusses how philosophers from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries—including Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Fichte, and Hegel, as well as a number of minor figures—engaged with the doctrine of the Eucharist. It needs to . . . . Continue Reading »

Late April Snow Storm

The land is all alight with Easter colors,Tulips in pink and orange bending overThe clumps of daffodils just past first flowering.Even the tips of lilacs, rough and brittle,Begin to round themselves with pregnant green.But all this sinks, today, beneath new weightAs sudden blooms of white descend in . . . . Continue Reading »

An Easter Celebration

And so, we’ve come to this,a new beginning in an end,and celebrate the way we didjust days ago, gathered closein that small room, what wedid not then know—that He would go, but come again,this morning, when we’d lostalmost all hope. We’d bowedour heads, confessed to sin,determined to go . . . . Continue Reading »

Abundance

Clear water on a Catskill stream spills,flowing down a smooth rock faceinto a pool shaped like a cup held withinhigh rounded walls. A Chinese painting,think of that, fine brush strokes formingfissured cracks from which green fernsunfurl lace while light falls featheredthrough new leaves as I stand, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Ends of the Earth

The wind shears through hardwoods,       then rain brings down the leaves      here, eight thousand miles east oftheir archipelago of service,     maplike now in its remoteness. Woodsmoke censes the air in the hermitage       they . . . . Continue Reading »

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