You know not on what day your Lord is coming.

Jesus’ depiction of the coming “of the Son of Man” stands in pretty stark contrast to popular ideas of how things might end, or at least of how the race my move into a new kind of future. We largely live among the “don’t worry, be happy” crowd – many of whom do not believe a word of the testimony concerning the last things, while others of them accept some notion of Divine judgment and some version or another of eternal or “heavenly” life, but who are at least implicitly and often explicitly convinced that such eventualities are of no real consequence, o...

Gerry Dullea: May 24, 1943 – July 29, 2018

My uncle Gerry Dullea died last Sunday night. He was 75. As is too often the case, it didn’t end well for Gerry. Details aside, he was breaking down all over the place. His body just disintegrated – in the literal sense of no longer functioning in an integral and integrated fashion. He’d been living alone since his wife died ten years ago, and had spent much of that time either ill or seriously ill. Gerry was pretty much a mess. I’ve lost ten uncles during my lifetime; Gerry was the last one. I feel differently about losing Gerry than I have about losing...

O Clavis David

“O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of Heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.” (O Antiphon for Dec. 20th) The antiphon today focuses on the authority of Christ: The Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and closes and no one opens Revelation 3:7 (HCSB) No small part of a genuine faith in Christ must be the hope that His authority is real and actual. Admi...

Why MaybeToday?

I was listening to a lecture by Peter Kreeft a while back, and he observed that time is the stuff of which life is made – time is life. People often say that time is money, but that’s an understatement. Kreeft is right: time is life. This isn’t meant to suggest that time is a metaphysical necessity, or that there can be no such thing as eternal life. Rather, it means that the life we each possess – our life – is ultimately a very precise allotment of time, and that each sunrise brings us one day closer to death. Time is really all we have, and the ...

O, Key of David

“O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of Heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.” (O Antiphon for Dec. 20th) The antiphon today focuses on the authority of Christ: The Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and closes and no one opens Revelation 3:7 (HCSB) No small part of a genuine faith in Christ must be in the hope that His authority is real and actual. I...

O, Adonai

O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free. (“O Antiphon” for December 18th) I must admit: it is hard, in my circumstances, to relate meaningfully to the desire to be set free. I guess I have it pretty good. Freedom is, ostensibly at least, the fundamental principle of modern democracies. We not only don’t lack it, we could hardly get away from it. One could make, I think, a convincing argument that we h...

The Great Gig in the Sky

Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died Monday at his home. He was 65. Rock stars die all the time, and I never really knew anything about this quiet guy, but news of Wright’s death set me to reflecting quite a bit yesterday on my youth, on the role of pop music in the lives of youth, and on the fate of those whose lives turn them into rock stars. I hope the title of this post isn’t overly corny – and I’m sure I’m not the only one to whom it will occur to use it. It refers, of course, to the title of what is my f...