Follow my daily (I hope) short readings from Thomas Merton’s The Living Bread over at my Suburban Hermit blog The short reading from Merton’s book will  be followed by a few of my thoughts on his work. Go here to read today’s entry. A second post at Suburban Hermit asks What is True Contrition? Read more

What do you really want? Today’s Lent post at the Suburban Hermit makes you think… My brother in law is an artist and a wise man. He is fond of saying, “Every person, everywhere will always do whatever they can to get as close as they can to what they perceive as love.” During the Lenten season do you see yourself and other people chasing all sorts of things that you know and they know will not ultimately satisfy? We... Read more

In today’s gospel Jesus says we must take up our cross and follow him. The Anglican Church–ever on the lookout for a new way to be trendy, relevant and cool has suggested that we take up our cupcake instead. Across the water Fr Ed Tomlinson reports that the Anglican Diocese of Leicester distributed cupcakes to people on Ash Wednesday instead of ashes. I thought this was a silly rumor, but it seems to be true. The Diocesan website gushes about... Read more

What do you say when presented with the bad example of bad Catholics? My latest blog post for National Catholic Register thinks about it. Father,” said the middle aged man,  “When I was ten years old I was a faithful altar server and I turned up one day to serve wearing sneakers and the priest told me I couldn’t serve because I was wearing the wrong shoes.” Then with an air of indignant self righteousness he declared, “And I’ve never... Read more

My latest article for National Catholic Register explains why we fast and how our prayer connects with the will of God. It is posted today here. In the fourth century, Anthony of the Desert and his fellow hermits retreated into the wilderness to live in caves. They practiced vegetarianism, extreme fasting and mortification of the flesh. In Syria, the desert monks were even more extreme. St. Simeon Stylites first imprisoned himself in a tiny space, locked himself in a hut... Read more

T.S.Eliot was baptized in 1927 and turned away from a life in the wasteland of modern atheism, decadence and despair His new found Christian faith inspired his great poem of repentance–Ash Wednesday. Go here to read the poem, and even better, click on the window on the top right to listen to Eliot himself reading the poem. The poem, like most of Eliot’s work, is not easy. The way to read it is not to worry too much about the... Read more