Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Today’s One-Liner (#308)

We boast that we are the descendants of the Prophets, but we are really the descendants of the Jews who stoned the Prophets. –Amos Oz, in Robert Alter, Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

Riveting

It’s good for me to be the citizen of a state in which there are eight and a half million prime ministers, eight and a half million prophets, and eight and a half million messiahs….

Chaos of the Now

Yet of Plutarch, the Ancilla to Classical Reading says, “He has indubitably had more European readers than any other pagan Greek and has been the greatest single channel communicating to Europe a general sense of…

Clarity

One ought to be clear about at least a few matters — war, capital killing, aborting the unborn!  Isaiah invites such clarity, and in a sense, leaves to us the conclusions, the details, the issues. …

Never Out-of-Date

Cicero lived some five hundred years before Augustine. He himself sent his own son to Greece to study philosophy. Cicero wrote to his son a famous letter, the famous On Duties, which attempted to explain…

Today’s One-Liner (#306)

The best place to begin for any young man or woman today can be stated in two steps: 1) the step of self-discipline and 2) the step of a personal library; both of these together…

Avoiding and Embracing

Any line of behavior that fails to quicken the divine in man should be eschewed, no matter how enticing it might appear; but any that helps to awaken man’s inherent divinity must be resolutely adopted,…

Today’s One-Liner (#305)

Whoever, on the other hand, frees himself of all attachment to temporal goods attains to magnanimity, liberty of spirit, clarity of reason, deep rest, peaceful confidence in God, true homage of God, and genuine submission…

Four Questions

How many hours do you think you waste every week complaining about things that happened to you that are out of your control? How much time do you spend worrying about things that might happen…