When an inspiring Scottish friend recently teased me with a trenchant quote from John Henry Newman’s sermon, entitled “Religious Cowardice,” I deployed my resourcefulness promptly to find, if I could, the entire homily and to read it. Gratefully, I did. … Continue reading
“Wonder is the beginning of knowledge,” said Professor John Senior, “the reverent fear that beauty strikes within us.” Professor Senior built his life around wonder – he reveled in the mysteries of this universe, and in the Mystery – that … Continue reading
It is often the case, well known to the close readers of Hilaire Belloc’s varied essays, that he surprises us with some of his profoundest reflections and most memorable formulations in those lighter essays of his so full of banter … Continue reading
As we ourselves gratefully remember Hilaire Belloc this year, especially on the 60th Anniversary of his death, let us first consider “Courtesy,” his brief and evocatively allusive poem of seven short, rhymed stanzas (six four-line ones, and a final three-line … Continue reading
In 1927—some twenty-three years after the Menshevik Revolution and a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia—Maurice Baring published an anthology of his earlier writings, entitled What I Saw in Russia. Lenin had died in 1924, and Stalin was on … Continue reading
On this manifold Sacred Feast Day, we propose to offer a perhaps unexpected, but quite illuminating contrast with the honored historical figure of Saint Joan of Arc, Virgin—who was killed by the English at nineteen years of age in 1431. … Continue reading
In 1932, four years before his death and only ten years after his having entered the Catholic Church, G.K. Chesterton wrote a vivid and capacious book on the medieval Catholic poet, Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400). With his characteristic modesty, his book … Continue reading
On How to Develop a Catholic Sense Without a Catholic Culture To restore to his people a true memory Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accepted almost unspeakable sacrifice and loss, and especially the cross of patience. Solzhenitsyn has attempted to draw his … Continue reading
When Hilaire Belloc was a rumbustious young man in his mid-thirties, and only a few years after he had completed his journey afoot to Rome, he wrote an essay entitled “The Idea of a Pilgrimage,” which first appeared in his … Continue reading
When Hilaire Belloc was a vigorous forty years of age, and three years before his life was shaken and shattered by the death of his wife Elodie on Candlemas 1914, he wrote an intimately evocative essay, entitled “On a Great … Continue reading
His birth in time transpired thus At Beth’lem’s midnight manger Where Joseph’s toil made all things well, Kept maiden spouse from danger. He forth from blessed womb did come As light through crystal streaming, Sans blight on Virgin’s radiance, True … Continue reading
Phaeton his father’s fiery chariot could not guide, But reckless, hapless, frenzied, destructive, set earth aflame. He, light from light and living Fire from His Father leaping, Brightens minds, kindles wills, and glorifies God’s holy Name.
With Pope Saint Pius V’s reform of the Roman Rite in 1570, many liturgical Sequences that sprung up in sundry dioceses of western Christendom were expunged from the Roman Missal. Four were kept. They were the Victimae Paschali Laudes of … Continue reading
Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear, O my God. Take from this soul what is wild and untame. Gently lead me from the paths that I’ve trod. Place in my heart a great awe for Thy Name. I do … Continue reading
To Lady Concupiscentia O Lady, you are beautiful, yet cruel, As haughty dames in courtly love songs are. You draw me by your charms and I, a fool, Race quick to you, though virtue would me bar. Icarus-like I flew … Continue reading
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