The following is from the coda of Wesley Hill’s magnificent book, The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father, pp. 99-101. It’s taken a couple of years for me to realize how much looking at [Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son”] hanging over my kneeler has affected the way I pray […] In […]
Another Week Ends: WEIRDos in the West, Feigning Wack-Jobs, the Twittering Machine, Enduring Work, and Lana Del Rey Talks to Jesus
1. A happy ending for a recovering alcoholic who was rescued from drowning by Paulist priests sailing by on a tiki bar pontoon. Not everything about 2020 is awful, folks! 2. In the first of two book reviews for your consideration this week, Judith Shulevitz reviews The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West […]
The Top Theology Books of 2019
Farewell 2019! Lots to love about the books that came out this past year. Several of these are instant classics I’ll be paging through for years to come! As always, feel free to let me know in the comments if I’ve missed a deserving book! I’m always on the hunt for a good read… In […]
The Lord’s Prayer as Portrait of Jesus
I rarely said the Lord’s Prayer growing up. My ministers, suspicious of any swish of ritual, took it as a template and taught me to ad lib to Our Father. I’ve learned to value that emphasis on spontaneous communication and individual requests. Although I now recite Jesus’ formula more often, I decided to do so […]
Another Week Ends: Time-Wasting Projects, Serotonin, Destination Funerals, the Hope of Children, the Languages of Love, and Jesus is King
1. Ear Hustle is a podcast about incarceration. It shares stories about life in San Quentin prison and the reintegration into life that follows a sentence there. The final episode of the recent fourth season is a hard story of reconciliation between a police officer and the man who shot him and went to jail […]
The Strange Kingship of Epiphany
How better to mark the first day of Epiphany than with a contribution from the esteemed Wesley Hill, who was kind enough to send us the text of the homily he is preaching today on Matthew 2:1-12. One of the reassuring things about the new Star Wars movie—which I confess I’ve only seen twice—is how […]
