There is something deeply sacred about walking through a cemetery on Memorial Day. Nothing is rushed or distracted.There is no scrolling through headlines, advertisements, or noise. Just rows of stones beneath an open sky. The American flags flutter softly beside military markers. Fresh flowers rest against granite worn smooth by rain, wind, and generations of … Read more
I recently came across a beautiful idea found among some Native American traditions. In certain tribes, those entrusted with remembering the stories, histories, genealogies, and sacred memory of the people were sometimes referred to as firekeepers. The image has stayed with me ever since. A firekeeper was not merely someone who tended literal flames. The … Read more
There are moments in life that cannot be explained neatly. They can only be remembered with reverence. For me, one of those moments happened in November of 2020, during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was on a ventilator, in a coma, fighting COVID and bilateral pneumonia. I was not aware of … Read more
There is something almost unsettling about seeing an old photograph in color for the first time. A face you have only known in black and white suddenly seems closer. Skin tones emerge. Jackets and work shirts acquire texture and warmth. Eyes that once looked fixed in another century seem to belong to people who might … Read more
The road to Emmaus is not a triumphant road. It is a retreat. In Luke 24:13–35, two disciples are not heading toward mission, or clarity, or even hope. They are walking away—from Jerusalem, from the Cross, from everything they thought they understood. They had believed. And now they are disoriented. “We had hoped…” That line … Read more
There are songs that entertain, and there are songs that uncover something older than memory—something planted deep in the soil of the human heart. Christ Has a Garden by the Hillbilly Thomists belongs to the latter kind. It feels less like a composition and more like a recovery, like stumbling upon a path that was … Read more
There is a silence that follows Good Friday—a silence not of peace, but of waiting. The work of Salvation is finished, and yet something remains undone. Christ has died, but the world has not yet seen what His death will accomplish. It is into this silence that Sister Mary Ada’s poem “Limbo” speaks with remarkable … Read more
Good Friday has a way of stripping away our illusions. It confronts us not with sentiment, but with reality: suffering, sin, mortality, and the terrible cost of redemption. Few modern poets enter that reality with the theological depth and severity of T. S. Eliot. In East Coker IV, the fourth movement of Four Quartets, Eliot … Read more
And so begins another summer, barbecues, parades, vacations, and relaxation. Yet before the festivities begin, we pause to remember. Taking time to once again stroll over the sacred ground where our loved ones, our heroes, and countless other unknowns lie sleeping, waiting in perpetual hope. We bring flowers, stones, and flags, recounting timeless stories and … Read more
Pope Leo XIV and the Augustinian “Restless Heart” Through the ,now, more two millennia of Roman pontiffs, there are names that continue to resound through the centuries, think St. Peter, St. Gregory the Great, and St. John Paul the Great, and names that have silently fallen into oblivion, Agapetus II, for example doesn’t often surface … Read more
