Category: Advancing the Kingdom

This phrase was recently part of a liturgical prayer in which grace is requested to foster in us a deepening awareness of the sacred. By themselves, however, the two words standing alone offer a beguiling ambiguity – one having to do with the grammatical anomaly…

It is understandable how the adage ‘virtue is its own reward’ has fallen into desuetude. (Indeed, the word seems to have been supplanted by its ubiquitous but impoverished substitute: ‘value’).  For the most part the expression would be irrelevant in today’s zeitgeist where the only…

A tenet that typifies the mindset of today’s zeitgeist is ‘seeing is believing’. Unless something can be physically touched, empirically attested or scientifically affirmed it is not credible. The ‘unseen’, the ‘untouched’ – these cannot be ‘true’. They are ‘unreal’ for they do not pass…

Readers may recognize this phrase from O Salutaris Hostia, the eucharistic prayer composed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. It translates as immortal Godhead, one in three. Isn’t it astounding how the one word, unitrinoque, enshrines one of the greatest mysteries of our…

Given all that is happening today it is easy to succumb to despair. However, if we shift our view from the limited focus on the roiled present and widen it to the broad expanse of history we will find an inherent dynamism propelling us forward…

Recently I conducted a review of the thousands of distributions the National Catholic Community Foundation has made on behalf of our donors since our inception twenty-five years ago.  It comes as no surprise that the majority of the organizations – both domestically and internationally –…

 So as not to embarrass him I will not identify Mr. H. other than to state it was he who several decades ago impressed upon me the richly varied significance of the Incarnation. If he reads this column perhaps he will agree that his instruction…

Classical education in popular terms is induction into the presence of the celestial triumvirate, the Truth, Beauty and Goodness. More specifically, classical education is the development in students of the ability to discern and pursue these three realities. It is the discipline of the pursuit.…

We’re all familiar with the expression ‘method in his madness’. It implies an ordered purpose underlying the apparent insanity of a given activity, or a logical effort underway despite appearances to the contrary. Madness here is not anger. It is craziness, the destructive condition of…

John Milton coined the phrase ‘pandemonium’ in “Paradise Lost” in 1667 to identify a specific location in Hell. As its etymology implies it refers to the widespread presence of evil spirits. The ongoing turmoil in Eastern Europe is an overwhelming manifestation of pandemonium, one which…