I’ve tried to imagine what it was like for the Virgin Mary to see the resurrected Christ. It’s a thoroughly hidden moment, either not important to the Gospels or too important for words. (I’d guess both are true.) That doesn’t stop me from trying to picture her first sight of the him after the Resurrection. She’d have been so different from the others who saw him, and still so like them. I imagine Mary throwing herself into her son’s arms.... Read more
What’s it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the question itself stills me with sharp pain. A needle through the skin. I do pray. I also, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, “practice the absence of God.” If we cannot “practise the presence of God,” it is something to practise the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till... Read more
I don’t want to ruin everyone’s day. I feel like that person who got cajoled into going to the party who maybe should’ve been left at home. Now I’m moping in a corner, one hand stuffed in my pocket and the other resentfully holding some water. You told me to have a drink, and I’m having water purely to spite you. Yeah, I’m that person at your party. Because I don’t want to talk about Amoris Laetitia, “The Joy of Love,”... Read more
“You theologians speak completely differently than us philosophers,” the graduate student said. He beamed with excitement about his field, and delighted to be a part of a specialized group of people. I scowled: “No. There is consonance between philosophy and theology.” I meant the word in a technical, precise way. Consonance means a harmony or agreement, which means that philosophy and theology are not the same, and also that they agree with one another. Consonance is also a literary device, often used in poems,... Read more
My mother was about to fly to hers, fly to her mother’s deathbed, to pray the rosary at her side. My mom spoke to me more than once about this, about needing to do this for her mom. She shared her quiet worry that no one else nearer to her mother would do it. And my mom, who so very perfectly bears religious wisdom for which she has no words, could only say, “Someone needs to pray.” She didn’t get... Read more
Now is the week when all the statues in churches are veiled. Crucifixes covered over. Saints look on only in outlines. I always imagine a stark moment in a ballet or a play, when a woman raises her shawl from her shoulders – stretching it wide like wings – and closes it over her head, grave in mourning. The silent collapse of what might have been. I can’t fathom where I got the image. Something about Gregory of Nyssa’s commentary... Read more
A bunch of people I know are defending their dissertations soon. It reminds me of mine, and mine follows me like a shadow. It was, um…different, you could say. They said it was the most-attended defense in Marquette University history. I’m sure that’s impossible to actually know, and I’ve decided that some other defense way back in the whenever had the most. I do remember the crowded room. We had to get more chairs. The place was jammed with rows... Read more
Yes or no, does human life make sense, and does man have a destiny? I act, but without even knowing what action is, without having wished to live, without knowing exactly either who I am or even if I am. This appearance of being which flutters about within me, these light and evanescent actions of a shadow, bear in them, I am told, an eternally weighty responsibility, and that, even at the price of blood, I cannot buy nothingness because... Read more
When we say that Catholics don’t know the Bible, I am more and more convinced that the terms of the evaluation are inherently unfair. What Catholics actually don’t know is a specific way of knowing the Bible. We are also horribly educated, strained by confrontation with modernity, and needlessly factious. But all that doesn’t mean we don’t “know” the Bible. It depends on what we mean by knowing. This theory of mine is perhaps the result of being a cradle Catholic in theology, often... Read more
My Lord and my God, Where the fuck are you? I know, Father, that you are everywhere and you are nowhere. Nothing can contain you, which is how all things can bear you. And I know that these things, all of these things, bear you to me. Gregory Nazianzus says that you are to us like the reflection of the sun on water: we cannot look upon you directly, but we can see you indirectly. In all that is. Because... Read more
The Rule and the Raven
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