A pandemic is a very physical experience, a sharper and more precise experience from which to view society around us. A dying holiday, less so. But there is a connection between the two. Continue reading COVID, CHRISTMAS, AND CHESTERTON’S SHOP OF GHOSTS
“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 CHRISTMASTIDE: THEOPHANY!
As we warm the lives of others with our Christmas spirit, we warm our own. As Chesterton points out: He is a “winter fire for the unfortunate.” Continue reading CHRISTMAS GOES ON IN OUR HEARTS
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 CHRISTMASTIDE: EPIPHANY! (traditional)
As we journey to the Epiphany that is coming tomorrow (and the Christmas that goes on to Candlemas on February 2) what has God revealed to us? To what wonderful and terrible gift has he opened our eyes and heart? Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: JOURNEY TO EPIPHANY
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 CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: DISCOVERING THE MYSTERY OF 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS
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 CHRISTMASTIDE: ST.JOHN’S DAY
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 CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY
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 CHRISTMASTIDE: 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 ADVENT: WE NEED NOT WANDER MORE
He is the only gain we have and we need. He creates all things. He restores all things. He makes all things new! When He comes again, there will be a new restored earth like the heavens all ready restored in which there will be no pain, nor crying, not death anymore! Continue reading ADVENT: THE HANDS THAT HAD MADE THE SUN AND STARS
If we, like the angels, receiving nothing personal from it, but as it 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 ADVENT: CREATION – THE GREATEST OF ALL REVOLUTIONS
Chesterton did not mince words: he rightfully recognized that we are in the midst of a religious war, a war we cannot afford to lose for it means the soul of every citizen of the earth; it means our own soul. Continue reading ADVENT: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
The paradoxes of the Bible are a wonderous, beauteous and astounding revelation 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…
These harder times simply enlarge our perspective on life in this fallen world to a greater depth, increasing our compassion for others and echo to us those words from the Salve Regina: To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; “To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” Continue reading ADVENT: 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 ADVENT: KEEPING MEN SANE
They are all alike in waging with secular weapons what is still really a spiritual war. Continue reading ADVENT: A CRUSADE AGAINST THE CROSS AT CHRISTMAS
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 ADVENT: JOY MAKES US BLESSED FOOLS FOR THE FAITH
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 ADVENT: 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 ADVENT: THE VALUE OF LIGHT
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…
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 ADVENT: A FORGIVING CONCEPT OF OUR CHARACTER
Chesterton believed that the absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith was largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds. Continue reading ADVENT: 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 ADVENT: REALIZING OUR ANCESTRY – A HUMILIATING SPLENDOUR
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 ADVENT: A NEW UNIVERSE; A NEW MAN
On this day of Advent we honor the woman chosen by God to carry His Son, Jesus – Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anna. We do so upon the special point that she was conceived free from original sin by the virtue of Christ for the purpose of Christ being born into the world. Continue reading ADVENT: SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
The object of religion is to be ‘good’ as Chesterton noted in his book Heretics. But in this we are presented a dilemma: only God is good yet the desire of the righteous, a desire that the Holy Spirit puts in us, is to be good. Continue reading ADVENT: THE OBJECT OF RELIGION
Whatever we know about St. Nicholas, what he has been most associated with in the minds of children of all ages, is the giving of presents, representing the greatest giver of gifts, God, and his greatest gift to the world, that of His Son, Christ Jesus! Continue reading ADVENT: THE FEAST OF SAINT NICHOLAS
Protecting 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 ADVENT: A QUITE CLEAR BLACK LINE
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. Continue reading ADVENT: WITHOUT REFERENCE TO FORM
We prize wonder in this world. And yet we seem to experience so little of it that is not manufactured and artificial. How can we get real wonder back again? Continue reading ADVENT: TO WONDER AT NOT WONDERING
What is that staggering piece of optimism that this Advent and all Advents teach us as we journey to Christ? That none of our present problems, none of the problems to come are without an answer. Continue reading ADVENT: A CONSPIRACY OF GOODNESS AND MERCY
This Advent as the country’s division continues over so many things, 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 ADVENT: FOR THE PURPOSES OF FAITH AND REVOLUTION
What do you and I expect of this Advent? What preparations are we making along the way to be ready for Christ’s birth? Continue reading ADVENT: TO TRAVEL DELIBERATELY
All of our existence comes down to it: taking sides. God himself does and we must. Continue reading ADVENT: EVERYONE MUST CHOOSE HIS SIDE
An abyss of light and under all our grumblings, a subconscious substance of gratitude. Continue reading ADVENT: FIRST SUNDAY
Have a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving! Continue reading THANKSGIVING
Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat Continue reading Feast of Christ the King
a man is not a man without his body, just as he is not a man without his soul. Continue reading All Souls Day
Today the Church honors all those who are with God, the innumerable men and women, the “great cloud of witnesses” who chose fidelity to Christ Continue reading All Saints Day
Reforming the Line 