Reciting by Heart
When I use my memory, I ask it to produce whatever it is that I wish to remember. Some things it produces immediately; some are forthcoming only after a delay, as though they were being…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Today’s One-Liner (#257)
Let me tell you, my God, how I squandered the brains you gave me on foolish delusions. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
The Hourly Battle
With every vice, virtue becomes more difficult, but still possible. With every virtue, additional virtue becomes less difficult, but vice is always still possible. Life is spiritual warfare, and both sides are very much alive….
Today’s One-Liner (#256)
“My daughter, ask for nothing other than the cross, and that, in fact, without consolation; for that is perfection.” –Saint John of the Cross to María Machuca, cited in Edith Stein, The Science of the…
Change Is Possible
Therefore whenever you see evil, look for the good behind it, the good that it is perverting. When you see a parasite, look for its host. When God saw the hate-filled persecutor of Christians, Saul…
Today’s One-Liner (#254)
Sin consists in the loss of order in the soul, just as sickness consists in disorder of the body. ––Saint Thomas Aquinas, in Josef Pieper, The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas, #299
Seeking the Wise
In a touching essay, Professor Ralph McInerny recalled listening as a young man to the last lecture the French Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain gave one autumn night in 1958 at the Moreau Seminary on the…
Today’s One-Liner (#252)
Start off now, but look, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. –The Gospel according to St. Luke, 10:3.
In One Word, Live as a Saint
So is all said at once. Virtue is the link of all perfections, the center of all the felicities. She makes a person prudent, discreet, sagacious, cautious, wise, courageous, thoughtful, trustworthy, happy, honored, truthful, and…
Today’s One-Liner (#249)
I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruits. –The Gospel according to Matthew, 7:20