A Momentary Taste of Being

A kind friend gave me the gift of an Kindle copy of Fr. Stinissen's magnificent book Into Your Hands Father.   Being a Kindle edition, my highlights and notes are made available online (another fact that I owe a great debt to my friend for making clear to me.) Having my highlights available online makes it so much easier to write and comment about the book.  One of the point that Stinissen makes is that God speaks to us in the ordinary events of life, even those events with which we are not so pleased. from Into Your Hands Father Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen If God is the creator of heaven and earth and the great director guiding the drama of the world and mankind, then I can encounter him everywhere. He pours out his love upon me in and through all that happens. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Ps 81:10). I do not need to consider when it is wise to open my mouth and when it is better to close it. I will always have my mouth wide open. I live in a land where...

And for my own commonplace book: “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda or even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that  one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist .” -- Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard , Archbishop of Paris 1940-1949

Science gets there, well after Chesterton

Further considerations of the Supernatural from a Catholic viewpoint

In this House of Brede reviewed Superb film, I haven't gotten to the book yet--at least I don't think so.

The Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas and it's good to remember one of the most essential but most often neglected facts regarding St. Thomas.  Toward the end of his life, he is noted as saying "All I have written is as straw. . ."  an astounding act of abject humility which can be variously interpreted--from everything is meaningless, to the much more profound, 'I didn't make a dent in the subject area."  I think what he was saying comes closer to the latter along with a sense of "And even if I did, it isn't what really matters anyway."  I think the mystical St. Thomas had come to the understanding that understanding is simply the prelude to love and when love is in the ascendant, understanding sets itself in the proper light of necessary antecedent.  That is, one in love doesn't really seek so much to understand as to love better.  When one had gone so far down the path of understanding, it would be more evident that understanding can only t...

St. Francis de Sales The difference between love and devotion is just that which exists between fire and flame;—love being a spiritual fire which becomes devotion when it is fanned into a flame;—and what devotion adds to the fire of love is that flame which makes it eager, energetic and diligent. . .

Full of Grace Judith Dupré Random House; New York, 2010 November 2, 2010 release date Complementary Review Copy I arrived home Friday to find myself greeted with an entirely unexpected gift. Full of Grace: Encountering Mary in Faith, Art, and Life by Judith Dupré is a strange sort of book.  Part commonplace book, part art and art history, part personal reflection, it is a book that explores the person and idea of Mary from multiple viewpoints, and ends up giving a very interesting, sometimes enormously satisfying portrait and insight into that most enigmatic of Saints. I was a little concerned by some of the publicity material that accompanied the book, in one quotation Ms. Dupré says, "I wrote the book for people like me--who embrace a religious tradition but don't hesitate to respectfully question it--and for those who aren't particularly religious but year to find meaning in their lives."  As any one who has read much in Catholic literature, the first p...

Prof. Myers looks at the recently beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman as a literary figure.  One whose "Dream of Gerontius" inspired a lovely oratorio/opera by Sir Edward Elgar.

I think of Jessica Powers An excerpt from "The Kingdom of God" Jessica Powers Not towards the stars, O beautiful naked runner, not on the hills of the moon after a wild white deer, seek not to discover afar the unspeakable wisdom,- the quarry is here.

Freedom of Relgion and Freedom of Worship and the enlightenment worldview And thanks to Tea at Trianon for the link.

Father James Martin's (S.J.) The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything provides some interesting perspectives and insights into the spiritual life.  In the excerpt posted below, taken from another writer on Jesuit spirituality, Martin highlights the importance of desire in the spiritual life. from The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything Father James Martin, S.J. The Energy of Life Itself We tend to think that if we desire something, it is probably something we ought not to want or to have. But think about it: without desire we would never get up in the morning. We would never have ventured beyond the front door. We would never have read a book or learned something new. No desire means no life, no growth, no change. Desire is what makes two people create a third person. Desire is what makes crocuses push up through the late-winter soil. Desire is energy, the energy of creativity, the energy of life itself. So let's not be too hard on desire. --Margaret Silf, Wise Choices W...

What We Mean When We Say God is Father If you're interested or inclined to, please join me as I entertain this question in a systematically unsystematic fashion.  At least I'll start and we'll see where we get.