No Sweaters

The Caps had a great season. Let’s not dwell on the playoff curse… …Five years ago this month, the Lord gave us Pope Benedict XVI. I remember the moment with enormous fondness. When the new pope stepped out onto the St. Peter’s loggia, I wept with delight. I was deliriously happy. I kissed the then-80-year-old [...]

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Doorman

I enjoyed reading this little essay about New York City doormen. –Not just because I would have been perfectly happy to live out my earthly life as a doorman, if God willed. –Not just because the essay’s line of argument recalls King Lear’s ‘reason not the need’ speech, my favorite speech of all time. But [...]

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“It is better for you that I go.”

(John 16:7) From Article 1 of Question 57 of Part III of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: Objection: The Son of God took human flesh for our salvation. But it would have been more beneficial for men if He had tarried always with us upon earth; thus He said to His disciples (Luke [...]

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Looking for a Cheerful Thought?

…If so, you have come to the wrong place. Do we live on “in memory” after we die? When I visit my dear father’s grave, I also visit the graves of my great-great grandparents. They are buried next to my father. Their graves are well over a century old. They were dead before my father [...]

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Hopkins Kind of Afternoon

If you are with me, you know that this is the time for a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem: Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice The dappled die-away Cheek and wimpled lip, The gold-wisp, the airy-grey Eye, all in fellowship— This, all this beauty blooming, This, all this freshness fuming, Give God while worth consuming. Both thought [...]

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Say It Ain’t So, Greg Monroe

Leaving Georgetown after just two seasons? Two seasons full of potential, full of excitement about the future. Two seasons that were ultimately–dare we say it?–disappointing. This makes DaJuan leaving last year look like good news by comparison. He mailed it in his last year anyway. But Monroe? Gosh. You sure know how to hurt a [...]

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Resurrection Lists

After the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, He remained on earth for forty days. His friends got to see Him again. We can only begin to imagine what it was like for the disciples to see Christ after He rose from the dead. When we get to heaven, please God, we will see Him, [...]

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Enough

Pope’s 83rd birthday! May he live to be 100!! …As I lit the Easter candle this morning for the fourteenth time this Easter season, I thought to myself: What if the Lord had given His Church only one ceremony to manifest Her faith? What if the only Catholic observance were the procession with the Paschal [...]

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Another Banner Day

Beautiful pro-life billboard–right here in my humble ‘hood! Thank you Prolife Across America! (On display at 9th and G Streets, N.E.) …How fired-up are we for the Caps? …Call me obtuse, but I have always found this parable difficult to understand: No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst [...]

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Me, God’s Priest, and God

His mercy endures forever. (Psalm 118) The Solemnity of Easter lasts for eight days–a week and a day, from Sunday to Sunday. It is the biggest feastday of all, too big for just twenty-four hours. On the eighth day of Easter in the year 2000, Pope John Paul II declared that this day is ‘Divine [...]

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