Luceat!

Last week, Student Health Services along with a feminist student organization at the University of Illinois sponsored an event called “Sex Out Loud,” a so-called “sexual health fair” held in the Illini Student Union. Upon entering the room, one was aware of the driving-animalistic beat of the latest dance club favorite emanating throughout the […]

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I am tired today, well, most days.  It is not that I don’t love my job or that it doesn’t make me come alive, but it does take a lot out of me.  I find myself often caught in a paradox.  This paradox I find explained well by one of my heroes, GK Chesterton.  He […]

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At George Mason we are fortunate to have some bright, curious young Catholics that meet each Thursday to discuss sundry philosophical topics. Recently, we turned our examination to the foundations of a universal morality. I posed the question listed above as the title to this post: Can there be any binding moral law […]

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Recently I have been partly intrigued, yet generally disgusted, by the attention that global warming has received in the press. What is it about our post-Christian culture that is so intrigued by the earth warming a degree or two and possibly running out of oxygen far in the future? Why are we so […]

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That archetypal dad, St. Joseph, has been portrayed in various stages of adulthood: the young laborer in his workshop, sweating to provide for his holy family; the middle-aged man silently observing a conversation between Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin; the elderly man on his death bed, accompanied by a youthful Christ and a twentysomething […]

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Greetings from the frontline! I hope to write some short letters in the next few weeks entitled “From the Heart of a Missionary.” These letters will consist in my own experience as a missionary living on the frontlines of the new evangelization. I live among our future, our hope: Today’s university students. […]

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The King of the Universe invites you, individually, to meet Him every Sunday in a profound encounter. He extends not merely a ring to be kissed, but His very self to be consumed by you, His creature. The Sunday Mass is His courtroom and He is attended by myriads of guardian angels singing His praises and looking with awe at the privileges He grants this group of motley human beings who do not even seem to be interested in the liturgy of Love unfolding before their eyes.

Now consider, we are creatures of body and soul. Our exterior actions affect our interior disposition and vice versa. This is a profound, though simply stated, truth when looking at the various aspects of Catholic culture.

When we enter Sunday Mass, the highest liturgical celebration of the week, how does our exterior dress reflect our interior disposition? Do we don our “Sunday best” in the traditional sense?

What we wear has cultural implications. When we are seen in public on a Sunday dressed up, people notice and realize that to some people, this is still a sacred day. Totalitarian regimes that tried to stamp out religion knew that an initial step was to forbid clerics to wear their collars and nuns to be seen in habit. It was a sign that religion was still alive and well. We have never been called to “fit in” to the culture or to blend and not shake the lukewarm out of their habitual, lazy attitude toward Our Lord and His Church. Rather, we each have a divine calling to use our actions and occasionally our words to witness to the Truth we hold and to call others to a higher standard.

I challenge you to dress with care, modesty, cleanliness, and a consideration of the fact that you are entering the court of the Most High when you go to Mass next Sunday. May you be a beautifully adorned tabernacle, ready interiorly and exteriorly to receive and be filled with the physical presence of your Lord.

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Open the pages and suddenly, you find yourself in the midst of a world at once familiar and unfamiliar, a world torn between a group of scientific purists and religious idealists.  Your friends are Mark and Jane, ordinary and unhappily married individuals, each trying to find place and purpose in the humdrum of daily life.  […]

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