The Blindness of Babylon
You chose a topic that you believed was common ground, but found that it had no effect in waking them up. They were not conscience-pricked by paying less attention to the Fourth of July than to Ukraine or Juneteenth. The new holiday and the war are, in their opinion, more important, and nothing you could have said would have changed those opinions, because they stem entirely from an appeal to sympathy.
Wise and Foolish Artists
No artwork, done for its own sake, is worthy of a Catholic artist. Only that which is dedicated to the glory of God, and which deepens our own virtue and relationship with Him is worthy of our time, for everything we create here will pass away, even if it is the greatest artistic achievement of all time! And yet, your soul will not pass away. I do not mean you must become a Doctor of the Church, writing only of mystical and doctrinal truths, but that even if you are called to fashion a countertop for your neighbor’s kitchen, the activity and completion, when done in humility and obedience, must bring you deeper into the service and love of God. This progress you can only achieve interiorly, and it will not be visible to others. To others you appear to be nothing but a songwriter, a carpenter, or an author like anyone else, but within, you are daily and humbly growing your heart for God…
“I Must Provide for Myself”
The way the Lord created men and women to live is radically different from the current systems of the world. Because it is so radical, He does not call everyone to live in it, all at once, immediately eschewing the paths of the world. This would lead to overwhelm and collapse.
Rather, He desires to shift the world into a fuller and richer system, doing so gently, even as He guided the early Christians into the establishment of Christianity. That shift was both radical, and a natural process, with stages and steps.
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