I am writing this to help my students, and I thought I’d share: The Mass of the Holy Spirit begins the academic year at nearly every Catholic college. It is fitting, after all: the Spirit is the one who gives wisdom and zeal, the one whose gifts animate the life of the Church. The Spirit is the breath (ruach, pneuma) of God, filling Adam’s lungs (Gen 2:7) and raising Christ from the dead (Rm 8:11). And we of the universities,... Read more
For whatever reason, I always thought I had to live up to the extreme and miraculous circumstances of my birth. I was born twelve weeks early, weighed two pounds, almost died but didn’t. Could have been profoundly impaired (physically, mentally), but wasn’t. My mom always said that God kept me alive for a reason. She’s right. It’s hard to question mothers about these matters. “All things are subject to divine providence, not only in general, but even in their own... Read more
I keep reminding myself, sometimes every hour of every day: forgiveness takes time. Forgiveness is change, and change takes time. And time is the measurement of change (Aristotle). My sister and I do not get along. She is right to be angry with me, though not right to take it out on me. (That’s just doing what I did.) Why she’s angry is hers to keep, so I’ll not mention it here. But really, we haven’t gotten along in years,... Read more
The following is an excerpt from Harry Crews’s essay, “Fathers, Sons, Blood.” — I picked up a magazine not long ago in which a man was writing about his children. In the very beginning of the piece, he said, “The storms of childhood and adolescence had faded into the past.” He would be the poorer for it if that were true. But it is not true, not for him or for any father. The storms don’t fade into the past,... Read more
What follows is an excerpt from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence. — But what if sin lives in the Church herself, if sin anchors itself most securely precisely where the Church is most vulnerable–in her hierarchical structure? What if the horror occurs that the face of Satan should begin to glimmer in the very heart of that trinitarian image, which is the relationship of ecclesial obedience? An since holiness cannot cease being holy, in this case the man... Read more
Metaxu. The between. It’s an idea from philosophy, ancient and modern. It as an attempt to assemble the various ways that we are not fully ourselves and yet that we are ourselves. That we are, that the world around us is, metaxu. Between. Or, to put it another way, that we are all becoming. “What does it mean to be? … We might say that this question rouses itself in us, struggles to shape itself into saying.” (“What is Metaphysical Thinking?” in The William... Read more
I don’t much like explaining why I am a Catholic. As if I made some kind of decision at some point, specific and clear, and could then describe that moment and its reasons to others. As if that’s how it works. And of course it doesn’t work that way, but this doesn’t mean I never made a choice or never had reasons. I am a cradle Catholic, which means that I have had the privilege and problem of growing into a... Read more
So, I wrote this book called Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Risk of Art and Being. It is essentially a scholarly exploration of Balthasar’s theological “style” or method, and I proceed through his oeuvre in order to indicate a relatively basic thesis, though one quite difficult to perform: Balthasar conducts theology under the strictures of philosophy and the arts. In other words, he has two modes of theology that he flickers between and often writes in simultaneously: the metaphysical and the “poetic.” I... Read more
We live in a modern word that bears very modern interests, and theology – well – isn’t. It isn’t. It is the clash between the two that I want to explore for a moment. We are marked by a 21st century keenly aware of the hallowed identities of people, of their differences, of their uniquenesses. Theology, meanwhile, breathes with the ancient life of Jewish and Hellenistic lands; it bows with reverence for the one God and for the love of wisdom. These worlds are expected to... Read more
That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God. G.M. Hopkins — “You did not need this,” my therapist said softly. I stared off to the side, weary and numb. “After so much time alone,” he continued, “and hurt. Now this, and it feels like no one will support you. No one will be with you. Not even your intellect, not even your religion.” I said nothing. — Everything flickered fierce and... Read more
The Rule and the Raven
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