Like the farmer who lets the field lay fallow and refrains from sowing seed, celibacy brings to bear up on the life of the Church the witness of the rest of the seventh day, of the seventh year, of the seven Sabbaths of years. It speaks prophetically to the Church Militant of the Church Suffering and Expectant.
He loved them to the end, bending down in humiliation before them to wash their feet. He loves them—and you and me—to the end, bending down in humiliation and death into the very heart of the earth—his blood shed to cleanse and wash away the sin of the world, his body given and broken that we would be healed and made whole.
A year ago, there, The sanctuary hallowed and barren. Ash Wednesday, ‘Repent and die.’ The sackcloth and the ashes. Nothing but dust. A year ago, here, A refuge of another kind. Valentine’s Day, love and sex. The drunk old man next to me Told me everything. The woman onstage — Tall and shy and awkward. …
Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet gentle he came, gentle he went, Born of the virgin meek and mild. Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet gentle he preached, ‘Blessed, blessed, Blessed be the …
I have recently picked up again Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. I started reading it a few years ago after a friend gave it to me when I moved to the Hudson Valley of New York. It tells the story of Susan Burling Ward who, upon marrying her husband Oliver, leaves behind her home, family, …
The U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Department of Homeland Security, along with administration officials at the White House, have recently acknowledged the implementation of a new “zero tolerance” policy for families arriving at the U.S./Mexico border. This policy is being used by the current administration to separate families. We declare that this policy separating …
Continue reading "Statement on Separation of Families at the Border"
Friendship is a thousand Unfinished conversations Left off mid-sentence Forgotten until "next time" Picked up again but Then it's too late. Friendship is a thousand Wounds borne in love.
It happened on a summer afternoon when he was twelve. Eager to be like the rest, to belong, he was determined to go through with it. And aftwards, nothing. Except the loneliness that comes from getting what you want. A mistake of youth. [The same feelings he would feel years later in a baptism of another kind.] The old preacher had closed his …
Tell me the story of a heart that bleeds, but can never bleed. Tell me the story of a heart that loves, but can never love. And I'll tell you the story of a tender heart, become as stone. *I was rummaging through an old notebook and came across this poem I had written …
But what if celibacy can actually point to a more comedic vision of the Christian life? What if celibacy points us to the deep comedy of the gospel?
Christian Reviews of Ideas and Culture
Catholicism, (homo)eros, and everthing else
"To live, to love is to be failed, to forgive, to have failed, to be forgiven, for ever and ever." Gillian Rose
Thou Art Lightning and Love 