The graced adventure of simplicity
“The graced adventure of simplicity” by Fr. Thomas for Texas Catholic. The future is not simply an adventure; it’s the adventure, according to the Latin roots ad, “to, toward” and ventura, “what will come.” While many students eagerly anticipate the start...
Mortality and weakness: A Father’s Day meditation
This is not a typical celebratory Father’s Day meditation; no Hallmark card will feature such apparently dour reminders to Dads of their limitations, weaknesses, and mortality. But the privileges and challenges of imitating both St. Joseph and the eternal Father of Jesus Christ make fatherhood an awe-inspiring vocation.
Mary, mother of every beloved disciple
“Mary, mother of every beloved disciple” by Fr. Thomas for Texas Catholic. Mary is never named in the Gospel of John. In the only scenes featuring her, the beloved disciple refers to her simply as “the mother of Jesus.” Those two episodes act as bookends...
The plea of an atheist for biblical beauty
The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, declared in a book of prose that “the Scriptures constitute the common good of believers, agnostics, and atheists.” For Milosz, whose life was scarred by the Nazi and Communist takeovers of his native land, the moral authority and literary beauty of the Bible was a refuge against the lethal and banal propaganda spewed forth from those godless governments and armies, even though he could not bring himself to believe in God.
Exile and home in the human condition
A curious pattern of exile is evident in the endings of several Old Testament books. After God promises Abram the land of Canaan, the patriarch must immediately flee to Egypt because of a famine (Genesis 12); his descendants, the sons of Jacob, repeat the expedition for the same reason (Genesis 42-47). The final word of Genesis, “Egypt,” ominously foreshadows the drama of slavery and liberation narrated in the second biblical book. The conclusion of Deuteronomy features Moses dying before he can lead the Israelites across the Jordan River (Deuteronomy 34:1-12). The Pentateuch, therefore, finishes with the Israelites, having sojourned for 40 years as the entire generation who left Egypt perishes in the wilderness, outside the land.