Download or Stream this Episode St. Paul is at once one of the most familiar literary voices and one of the most perplexing.  An early convert to the Jesus movement…

Zephaniah 3:14-20  • Isaiah 12:2-6  • Philippians 4:4-7  • Luke 3:7-18 Once again, reading the text of the Bible carefully reminds me why these blog posts do me at least as much good…

Baruch 5:1-9 or Malachi 3:1-4  • Luke 1:68-79  • Philippians 1:3-11  •Luke 3:1-6 Everyone loves the Magnificat, and I don’t blame them.  The faithful with a traditional theological bent can exult in the…

For most American Evangelicals, monasticism is a closed book, little understood, and appreciated even less. Yet throughout most of Christian history, East and West, and even today, monasticism has been…

Jeremiah 33:14-16  • Psalm 25:1-10  • 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13  • Luke 21:25-36 As I publish this reflection, I will have been an ex-preacher for almost eleven months.  I deliberated on whether I should…

Download or Stream this Episode To work with wood changes the formal character of the matter, shaping what once was a tree into a house here and a table there;…

In the early second century, Pliny, the governor of the Roman province of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote a letter to his emperor, Trajan, about Christians who “were accustomed to meet…

“Feed my sheep,” Christ commanded Peter, and Peter passed on that command to others: “shepherd the flock of God that is among you … [so that] when the chief Shepherd…

After the New Atheist Debate By Phil Ryan 196 pp. University of Toronto Press $22.95. Of all the books written regarding the “New Atheist” (hereafter, NA) phenomenon, this the first that I’ve…

Download or Stream this Episode Marie Hause, Kristen Filipic, and Victoria Reynolds Farmer recap and respond to the recent “Why Christian?” conference held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis…

Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia The Heavenly Thesis Defense Dante’s ascent through Heaven’s catechism culminates, as do so many of our educational experiences, with an oral examination.  There’s…

Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Unexpected Company There’s a certain mindset among progressive-minded folks that one or two significant points of difference, especially on moral questions, means that…

Download or Stream this Episode For folks like me, born in the mid-seventies, abortion has always been standing judicial precedent, always the stuff of political elections, always a reality of…

Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Analogy and Allegory More than in the first two Canticles, Dante spends a great share of his lines in Paradiso telling us, the…

Intros Knowing A brief biography Katherine’s writings and historical importance Reading Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII Why this chapter is important to us…