In what feels like many lifetimes ago, at the age of eighteen, I started my novitiate as a Benedictine Monk in the most enchanted of places: a red-bricked fifteenth century monastery, adorned with frescoes by Sodoma and Signorelli, surrounded by the “crete senesi”, a striking Tuscan landscape south of Siena, marked by rolling clay hills, […]
Sermon Topic: Sin (Disobedience)
Called to Eucharistic Life
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Given the growth and spread of Christianity throughout the last two millennia Given Christianity’s status as a world religion Given its presence and its position in our culture, As well as the privileges, perils and problems that appertain thereunto […]
The Antidote to Guilt
After Rome, one of the cities I miss most is Oxford, in the UK. Nowhere else I have seen the same hue of golden light reflected by the lime stone of its colleges at sunset, or been restored by more peaceful walks than those afforded by its meadows. I remember with equal fondness even the […]
Should We Still Talk About Sin?
I must begin with a confession–I am not a very good fisherman. I wish I was. I try to be. Perhaps stereotypically, every man in my family is a good fisherman. But, I am not a good fisherman. And the last thing a bad fisherman wants to hear from another fisherman is: “Did you catch […]
God, Be Merciful to Me, a Sinner
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We have a way, when we relate to each other, We have a way of managing and curating ourselves for each other. Now this is no great revelation, I’m sure: Insofar as there is a social dimension to who […]
The Shape of Love
“For God so loved the world…” Without question that has to be the best-known Bible verse in the world. John 3:16 – you see it on billboards, in stadiums, in tracts and on bags. You hear things like, God is love or God loves you. People say this love is what Christianity is all about. […]
Love What is Good, Hate What is Evil
In last week’s gospel we heard the account of Jesus asking his disciples who they believe him to be, and how Simon confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus praised Simon for that bold confession of faith, and rechristened him, Peter, the rock. Peter’s solid, fundamental confession that Jesus […]
Not Peace, but a Sword
I was talking to my father on the phone recently, and he revealed to my brother and me that he has recently started a garden in his backyard. The idea is that he will grow the usual garden vegetables: tomatoes and watermelons, cucumbers and zucchini, that kind of thing. He has been working hard on […]
The Joy of Ash Wednesday
People who do not have very much experience with the Church can find it a little bit strange that Ash Wednesday is one of the most popular days of the year at the parish. Here at Saint Thomas and elsewhere, people show up one after another after another, throughout the day, to receive the imposition […]
How to Understand the Chastening of the Lord
The second of Dorothy Sayers’s great Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries bears a title adapted from the epistle to the Hebrews: Clouds of Witness. In that book, there are many suspects for a murder, but in the end it turns out there was no murder. It is my opinion that a good mystery story cannot help […]
