Before Their Conversions
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…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Today’s One-Liner (#195)
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
Receive Peace
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…
Today’s One-Liner (#194)
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…
Naming
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…
Today’s One-Liner (#192)
The great benefit to be derived from reading pre-modern authors is to come to realize that after all, we [moderns] might have been mistaken. –C.F.J. Martin, quoted in Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the…
What Makes Man Human: An Easy Essay by Peter Maurin
1. To give and not to takethat is what makes man human. 2. To serve and not to rulethat is what makes man human. 3. To help and not to crushthat is what makes man…
Stay with Christ
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous dictum that he would stay with Christ even if he were proven scientifically wrong suggests no more and no less than a belief in the primacy of moral values over theoretical knowledge….
The Talmud Jew
The Talmud Jew doesn’t kill. He doesn’t take part in wild orgies. You don’t have to fear him in the woods or on a lonely road. He doesn’t carry a gun. He doesn’t scheme to…
Today’s One-Liner (#188)
Hillel said, Separate not thyself from the congregation; trust not in thyself until the day of thy death; judge not thy fellow-man until thou art come into his place and say not anything which cannot…