Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not the newspaper, of…
Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre. –G. K. Chesterton, from his…
on “Finding Your Book”
To become Christian is, fundamentally, to perceive that it isn’t just others who have scapegoats. And note that the two greatest Christians, the founders of the Church, Peter and Paul, were two converted persecutors. Before…
And how dare you say to your brother, “Let me take that splinter out of your eye,” when, look, there is a great log in your own? –The Gospel of Matthew, 7:4
A certain brother inquired of Abbot Pastor, saying: What shall I do? I lose my nerve when I am sitting alone at prayer in my cell? The elder said to him: Despise no one, condemn…
The more those thinking about throwing the first stone perceive the responsibility they would assume in throwing it, the greater the chance they will let their hands fall and drop the stone. ––René Girard, I…
And then a new light, less dazzling, no doubt, than that other illumination which had made me perceive that the work of art was the sole means of rediscovering Lost Time, shone suddenly within me. …
Great novels always spring from an obsession that has been transcended. –René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure
We named our firstborn after Maximilian Kolbe, because naming one’s children after saints is what Roman Catholics do. We believe doing so wins the newborn the patronage of the saint in heaven. But there was…