Articles
Friendship with God is the Basis for All Friendships
The imagery of friendship is present in the first half of John’s narrative, but it comes into sharpest focus in the second half of the Gospel, particularly during the Last Supper, when Jesus refers to his disciples as “friend...
The Dramatic Double Vision of the Catholic Imagination
For the Catholic imagination, the world is fallen but redeemable. It is not parked firmly in either heaven or hell.Using Metaphors to Teach Prayer
Scriptures pulse with metaphorical phrases and images (“The Lord is my shepherd . . .”). Jesus’s description of the Kingdom of God is a metaphor. The National Directory for Catechesis [NDC] urges catechists to recognize...
Restoring Sacramental Magic
This summer, I attended the biennial congress in Leuven, Belgium of Societas Liturgica, an ecumenical gathering of liturgical historians, theologians, and musicians from throughout the world. The congress’ theme…
Things I Received at the Fordham Catholic Imagination Conference
When I received this treasure of practical writing and reading advice I also received a deeper awareness of God at work.The Confused Catholic Imagination
It is commonplace to assume that the imagination is opposed to reality. This is not the prevailing understanding of the imagination in contemporary theory and theology. Let’s start with the following classic rock lyrics to clarify ...Agrarian Insights on Ecological Conversion
Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ posed a tremendous challenge for the Church and the entire world. Although the encyclical letter was seen widely as an intervention on climate change negotiations, it in fact offered much more ...
St. Maximilian Kolbe and the War Against Indifference
More than one concentration camp survivor has remarked that one would need the pen of Dante to describe the horrors that afflicted the “great army of unknown and unrecorded victims.”[1] Hell is that abyss that skews vision an...
The Hope of the Assumption
Glorious things are spoken of you, O Mary, who today were exalted above the choirs of Angels into eternal triumph with Christ (Entrance Antiphon, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) Elite athletes exist at the edge of the possibl...