The Faith
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I’m never really sure what to make of these, but this one at the Catholic Herald UK is one of the more remarkable ones I’ve read: “It became painful, because I saw that when I did bad things, I knew that it caused Jesus and the angels actual pain. It hurt them….” “It became evident that the…
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A Few Simple Commands Thursday was the Feast of the Assumption, and I made my way across town to St. Mary of the Visitation, where our little Anglican Use congregation was having Mass at 12:15. I was having an extremely busy day at work, and had trouble getting away. Then the drive took a little…
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Blessed With a Dark Turn of Mind Some girls are bright as the morning Some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind –Gillian Welch Some boys, too. As far back as I can remember I've been troubled by an inability to get very dark things out of my mind, or to keep them…
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"Because you really do love God," [Caryll] writes to one friend, "your suffering, bitter though it is, is healing the world's sorrow. Don't think of it in terms of what is unbearable to you, but when a specially bad hour ends, even in sheer weariness, think, 'That is a drink of water to someone dying…
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The best swimmer cannot rescue the drowning man unless he is in the water with him. He may be pulled under, he is taking a risk, but he must be there. –Maisie Ward, from her biography of Caryll Houselander
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Thanks to Janet Cupo for pointing out this post to me. I don’t agree with everything she says, and obviously working “for a better world,” as the saying goes, is a good thing to do, indeed an obligatory thing to do for Christians, but nowadays that tends to be defined as political activism and debate.…
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The New Testament speaks terrible things about something translated as "the world." Again and again we hear of it as a society of liars and killers, of brainwashed and arrogant men who parrot the gibberish and lurch into the snares set for them by demonic powers. The resulting picture is of a great, roaring machine…
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A Beautiful Mass A couple of weekends ago I attended Mass at a parish which I will refrain from naming, in a city on the other side of the continent. I know I’ve mentioned more than once here that after a long period of struggle I eventually became reconciled to the normal American Catholic liturgy.…
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When praying for someone else, I often find it hard to know exactly what to pray for. I pray for the other's salvation, of course, and that whatever is going on in his or her life will bring him closer to God. And surely it's okay to leave it at that. But sometimes I want…
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Nobody knew better than Christ that people to whom everday things like holding a job or interacting with another human being are never-ending sources of torture and anxiety are exactly the ones most in need of healing. A guy who hung out with lepers, paralytics, the possessed: this is someone I can trust. We don't…
Light On Dark Water 