Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

On the Threshold: Part II

It was at this point, at the very end of the Church year, inspired by a tremulous confidence and the irresistible attraction of first love, that I established the habit of going to daily Mass. Every day at noon when the bells of St. Mary’s were ringing out the Angelus over New Haven, I drove into . . . . Continue Reading »

On The Threshold

“I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry. . . I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Mark Bauerlein’s account of the English department’s decline in “Truth, Reading, Decadence” (June/July) makes for good reading. It is true to my experience in the field of literary study and helps give the tragedy our discipline has undergone intelligible structure. For those unfamiliar with . . . . Continue Reading »

My Confessions

A few years ago, in the middle of the journey of life—in modern terms, having a midlife crisis—I read St. ­Augustine’s Confessions for the first time since I was eighteen. I’d loved the work when I was young, but in what was hardly an original discovery, I found that I . . . . Continue Reading »

The Cross and the Machine

We must have been fifteen or sixteen when we discovered the church visitor’s book. It was an old church, maybe medieval, and I would pass it with my school friends on our way to the town center. I’m not sure what possessed us to go in; it might have been my idea. I’ve always loved old . . . . Continue Reading »

Filter Tag Articles