Lessons from Fasting Failure

This year for Lent, I took on the discipline of fasting before the Eucharist. It doesn’t quite rank up there with St Antony of the Desert’s heroic efforts of asceticism, but my spiritual director felt that they would be a good discipline for me. My tendency is to want to take on more, do more, accomplish more, and so any discipline of letting go, of self-denial, is going against the grain for me – and is...

The Spiritual Disciplines: The Wings of Prayer

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: these are the three essential disciplines that every Christian must practice if we are to have any hope of resisting evil. Our Lord himself in the Sermon on the Mount commends these disciplines to us....

Hope and Love on the Way of the Cross: The Transfiguration of Jesus

Jesus’ Transfiguration reveals in all its fullness the mind-boggling nature of his voluntary act of self-sacrifice.  This voluntary act of self-sacrifice has a name — and that name is Love....

Beauty at Christmas

Why do we decorate our homes at Christmas? Should we? It’s an easy shot to mock the Puritans for attempting to abolish Christmas festivities: what a bunch of kill-joys! Nevertheless, the impulse for a plain Christmas is honorable: to call our attention to our sinful state, to remind us that this is the day that God Himself deigned to be born among us, to share our joys and sorrows and ultimately to die for...

Advent and Christmas Poetry 4: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”

After the anticipatory and penitential season of Advent, we come to Christmas. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14) Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh....