Homily by St. Augustine on John 7
Already He signified what He is to do with the quick and the dead.
In Illo Tempore: 1st Passion Sunday
From the pre-Lent Sundays onward, Holy Mother Church has led us into a liturgical dying. First there was the silencing of the Alleluia and the Gloria. Violet appeared on Sundays as a herald of the coming fast. Then Lent itself deepened the deprivation day by day, save for the interruption of the greater feasts. Flowers…
In Illo Tempore: Laetare Sunday, 4th in Lent
It is a fact of human nature that when our senses are incessantly struck by the same impression, we begin to dull. Noise that never ceases is no longer truly heard. Color without contrast becomes flat. Images, especially wicked images, can first disturb and then stupefy. For this reason deprivation has a place in a…
In Illo Tempore: 3rd Sunday in Lent
The Roman Station for the Third Sunday of Lent is the Minor Papal Basilica of St. Lawrence outside-the-walls, San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. The Station is often the crowbar by which we pry open the Mass formulary. If we attend to place, structure, memory, and rite, the somewhat intricate Gospel from Luke 11 begins to…
What Philosophy Truly Is — the School of Divine Wisdom
The root of the notion “philo-sophia” (“love of wisdom”).
In Illo Tempore: 2nd Sunday of Lent
Each worthy Communion becomes a moment of transfiguration within the communicant’s soul.
In Illo Tempore: 1st Sunday of Lent
The sacred Forty Days open at Rome’s Cathedral, the Papal Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran, the “Mother and Head of all the churches of the City and of the world.” The Roman Station anchors our Lent in a concrete place, as it…
In Illo Tempore: Sexagesima Sunday
What unifies the Mass of Sexagesima is neither its obvious placement between Septuagesima and Quinquagesima, nor the recurrence of penitential purple and the suppression of the Alleluia, but rather a demanding question posed by Holy Mother Church to her children as she stands at the threshold of Lent. Are you prepared to be drawn into…
Is Aquinas the Universal Authority in the Church?
If St. Thomas divides instead of unites, this is contrary to Thomism.
In Illo Tempore: Septuagesima Sunday
We stand now nine Sundays out from Easter, poised at a hinge in the liturgical year where memory, expectation, and discipline converge. Context is decisive. The Church does not move through time as a mere sequence of dates but as a pedagogy of salvation, a slow schooling of the soul by repetition, anticipation, and restraint.…
In Illo Tempore: 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
This year we enjoy a rather brief span of Epiphanytide, that verdant stretch of the liturgical year in which Holy Church lingers over the manifestations of the Lord’s divinity before the purple veil of Septuagesima descends. The calendar itself catechizes. Some years Epiphanytide is fleeting, almost abrupt, curtailed by an early Easter. In some years…