…that modern emancipation has really been a new persecution of the Common Man. If it has emancipated anybody, it has in rather special and narrow ways emancipated the Uncommon Man. Continue reading MODERN EMANCIPATION IS THE NEW PERSECUTION
Pray for our country. Pray for those who have protected us who are now under attack. Ora Pro Nobis. Continue reading St. Joseph: Ora Pro Nobis
“It was in the season of Christmas that I came out of my little garden in that “field of the beeches” between the Chilterns and the Thames, and began to walk backwards through history to the place from which Christmas came. Continue reading THEOPHANY!
why we are seeing the uptick in so many betrayals We used to be satisfied at making a decent living, … Continue reading GOOD MONEY
this is also a journey that paradoxically has an end in our Feast Day, but never comes to an end for each Christian in their faith journey. It is a satisfying mystery within the Great Mystery of the Church! Continue reading EPIPHANY! (traditional)
the beautiful poetry is somehow or other left out… Continue reading JOURNEY TO EPIPHANY CONTINUES
Chesterton reminds us in his poem about the wise men’s journey , something startling is needed for an epiphany that leads to a revelation and a repentance that is lasting Continue reading JOURNEY TO EPIPHANY
For it is the paradox of that group in the cave, that while our emotions about it are of childish simplicity, our thoughts about it can branch with a never-ending complexity. And we can never reach the end even of our own ideas about the child who was a father and the mother who was a child. Continue reading THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD
The most holy name of Jesus is the mystery of the divine personality. And during Christmas, we are brought to this realization in all the Christmas controversies. Continue reading THE MOST HOLY NAME OF JESUS
Christians today owe a great deal to these two bishops and doctors of the Church. And during Christmas we remember them with their own day. They stood firm in the face of bodily threat for the truth. Continue reading MEMORIAL OF STS. BASIL AND GREGORY
Do you want to feel the same heart-pounding excitement? Do you want to feel new in this new year? Then you and I must allow God to help us recapture what it is like to be a child who retains wonder at the astounding Good News He has given to us! Continue reading SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Continue reading HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The first “peace-time” pope in the reign of Constantine, St. Sylvester took part in two very important negotiations: the Arian heresy and the Council of Nicaea. Continue reading FEAST OF ST SYLVESTER
But the great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why. Continue reading DISCOVERING CHRISTMAS
what this Saint of the Church did on its altar by accepting a martyr’s death at prayer gave strength to successive generations to stand in obedience to Peter’s words. A riddle for history, indeed! Continue reading FEAST DAY OF ST THOMAS BECKET
Chesterton wrote about Herod and his atrocity upon the children of Bethlehem from two vantages: First, in a biting satirical way, where his pen was used as sword, both as artist and writer, and then again, 5 years later, with deep mourning in his masterpiece, The Everlasting Man. Continue reading Because his crime is tragic, his punishment is comic…
That is the paradox of love. If we love God first, we are then able to love others best. Then we are holy and our families can be a holy family as the Holy Family was and is holy. Continue reading FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY
We can dream of white Christmases as well as a world finally at peace. We don’t have to understand everything to believe and trust God that such things that are beyond our control are possible. And most importantly, it is He who brings them about and not we ourselves. Continue reading ST.JOHN’S DAY
Stephen’s witness was so powerful, that Chesterton, years later, makes mention of what he did by the name of the place he saw from the window of his hotel in Ireland, recalling to mind Jesus’ own testimony about the power of witnessing for the Church: Continue reading ST.STEPHEN’S DAY
“The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.” Continue reading CHRISTUS NATUS EST!
We need not wander more but enter with our gift;
Our gift of finest gold,
Gold that was never bought nor sold; Continue reading WE NEED NOT WANDER MORE
the god in the cave Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. – G. K. Chesterton It hardly seems … Continue reading THE HANDS THAT HAD MADE THE SUN AND STARS
If we, like the angels, received nothing personal from it, but were bystanders looking on with hearts swelling, learn to sing together in what Chesterton calls “the primeval duty of Praise” we will know then that we are at last what God meant for us to be – Sons of God. Continue reading THE GREATEST OF ALL REVOLUTIONS
This Advent at no time more than at the present highlights that traditions, both scriptural and of heritage are under attack. Its two opposing visions in conflict, like two worlds colliding with each other. Chesterton saw the beginnings of what is happening in our day. Continue reading WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
The paradoxes of the Bible are a wonderous, beauteous and astounding collection of the truth. And one of the most intriguing is what Chesterton calls “the paradoxes in favor of peace.” Continue reading Advent: Paradoxes in favour of peace…
“While Chesterton was seen as a generally happy man, some scholarship indicates that he may have battled a depressive mood now and again. Certainly he wrote about the afflictions of his mind while a young man,.. Continue reading A PRAYER IN DARKNESS
The Christian, I repeat, puts the mystery into his philosophy. That mystery by its darkness enlightens all things. Once grant him that, and life is life, and bread is bread, and cheese is cheese: he can laugh and fight. Continue reading KEEPING MEN SANE
They are all alike in waging with secular weapons what is still really a spiritual war. Continue reading A CRUSADE AGAINST THE CROSS
What has this Advent revealed to you? Hopefully that in the midst of world coming down around us, there is always hope. Because no matter what, God wins. God wins in the end. And if we follow Him through it all, up and down, we win, too! Continue reading JOY MAKES US BLESSED FOOLS FOR THE FAITH
During Advent do you have feelings that seem at odds with each other? Perhaps this Advent in particular with the country’s division over so many things including the election, these conflicting feelings have intensified even more for you. If so, we can find our help yet again from the man known as both the Apostle of common sense and the Prince of Paradox, G. K. Chesterton. Continue reading FOR THE PURPOSES OF FAITH AND REVOLUTION
The third Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, brings us into our own “philosophy of light” – how far does our desire to request from God the strength to carry on and realize how close we are to Him now? Is it strong enough to bring light to the ever growing darkness? Continue reading Advent: The Philosophy of Light…
The lightning awoke and the tree fell and the sea gathered into mountains and the ship went down, and all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. Continue reading A CONSPIRACY OF GOODNESS AND MERCY
When he considers the ‘ideal postman’, rather than excusing us to a lower sink of living, Chesterton is calling us to see the heroic virtue in the everyday being of real men and women living humbly. Continue reading A FORGIVING CONCEPT OF OUR CHARACTER
The absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith is largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds Continue reading THE NEED FOR FAITH, HILARITY, AND TURNIPS
There are two equal and eternal ways of looking at this twilight world of ours: we may see it as the twilight of evening or the twilight of morning; we may think of anything, down to a fallen acorn, as a descendant or as an ancestor. Continue reading REALIZING OUR ANCESTRY
This Advent, listen to the prayers of children, perhaps reciting the rosary before Mass as some parishes do and join with them in the trusting timber and cadences of their beautiful voices appealing to God and honoring Mary… Continue reading A New Universe; A New Man
To become our best selves, to remain who we were meant to be, we must also pass the test of offered power and refuse it in order to reflect God’s goodness in the lives of others by quietly doing good to others for their sake. And part of that doing good is preaching the good news, not to gain attention for ourselves but to gain attention for Christ. Continue reading the object of religion
Chesterton takes us back to the biblical understanding of repentance when he says reform has to include the original form – not just of things, but of ourselves and what we have given our word to.
It is futile to talk of reform without reference to form.
-G. K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, The New Witness, 1920 Continue reading Advent: Without Reference To Form
The Spirit or Christmas is experienced by guarding the “quite clear black line” of Advent time that Chesterton says protects this wonderful moment that wasn’t there before and then suddenly and magnificently bursts upon us out of the darkness of the world with joy and lights! Continue reading a quite clear black line
We prize wonder in this world. And yet we seem to experience so little of it. Wonder is the “ability to be curious to know something, to feel surprise mingled with admiration over the inexplicable”, to even feel doubt that acknowledges mystery that keeps us sane. Why is it that real wonder seems missing from our present society? Chesterton made a startling connection between gratitude and wonder as to the reason why: Continue reading to wonder at not wondering
Is your Advent journey not what you expected? Do you feel the same about your life journey? Continue reading to travel deliberately
Christmas was a very important season to Frances. It was her personal hopes that guided her on her own journey toward Christ through the Advent time. Her hopes as a Christian for the return of Christ and her personal hopes that she might be blessed with a child of her own were very connected. Continue reading pitfalls we find on the journey
Everyone is talking. People are gathering in groups and talking. And as they talk, divisions arise. Gaps widen. Family. Friends. Talking does not seem to bring people together as it used to. What is being said is being said openly or in secret. Under a lamp-post or in darkness. But what is said carries in its conversation a great commotion about light and darkness. Continue reading the value of light
Some say it is wrong to take sides but the Holy Scripture is telling us the opposite. All of our existence comes down to it. There are numerous scriptures about taking sides, and how God himself does and we must. Dating back to Moses putting the choice between the malediction and the blessing. And he asks: “who is on God’s side? To me!” (Exodus 32:26) And that sets the whole tone ever there after for the Christian. We are all given that choice: Light or Darkness. And we must choose a side. Continue reading everyone must choose his side
That “abyss of light” is the Imago Dei in this season of Advent and it invokes in us a subconscious substance of gratitude in us to the one who is Light! Continue reading a subconscious substance of gratitude.
These are the days when saying the word ‘REPENT’ is like watching an actor in a vampire film hold up … Continue reading When it should be a relief…
We have two laws, one very old, and one very recent, but they illustrate a point Chesterton had made, once … Continue reading But peasants are so credulous…
How do you present an image of false or “inhuman mercy” as Chesterton calls such and reach the viewer with … Continue reading After all that inhuman mercy…
“And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the … Continue reading The Slowness of Men In Realizing Its Goodness…
