The Narthex

I was on my early morning walk to preempt our record heat in San Diego when I spotted an elderly man and woman sweeping their metal detectors over a children’s playground. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and one knee pad. Stopping beside the woman, I asked, “Find anything?” “Little stuff…

When Soviet troops arrived at the Auschwitz complex on January 27, 1945, bewildered prisoners greeted them with tears and embraces, kissing the flaps of their overcoats and hugging their knees. Confused and surprised by the wretched conditions of the camp, the soldiers gruffly asked, “What are you all doing here?”…

Every act of faith, including prayer, terminates not in a proposition or an abstract concept but in the living God. We pray to Him. (In contrast, recall how in the secular realm we often hear, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” or we are exhorted to give thanks on…

In 2008, while I waited in traffic, I heard a horn beep and looked to see a "thumbs up" by a young driver. She was praising the sticker posted on my rear window: One Man, One Woman for Life. That was when Proposition 8, banning all homosexual marriages, was approved…

The number seven seems to have special status, as seen in mathematics, engineering science, natural history, psychology, and elsewhere. Our civilization counts seven continents, seven seas, seven wonders of the ancient world, and seven heavens. Western musical scales are composed of seven distinct notes that Pythagoras (c. 500 BC) studied…

The 13th-century invention of the mechanical clock dramatically changed the pace of civilization. "There are few greater revolutions in human experience," historian Daniel Boorstin writes, "than this movement from the seasonal or 'temporary' hour to the equal hour. Here was man's declaration of independence from the sun, a new proof…

I had recently finished reading Father Ian Ker’s biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (who was beatified in 2010 and canonized in 2019) when a review in the Wall Street Journal of a book on the existence and nature of God by a professor of law at Yale caught my…

Many saints, performers of wondrous deeds, fortified themselves with silent, prayerful contemplation of infinite Truth -- all in their small, simple cells. Researchers and scientists like the famous inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla also embraced privation, risk, and sacrifice. Much like the saints, they demonstrated the great faith that…

In the early church, reports of Christians healing the sick and raising the dead by prayer were accepted without skepticism or disbelief. In his five-volume series Against the Heresies, St. Irenaeus (c.130-220), Bishop of Lyons, writes, “Some persons that were dead have been raised again and have continued among us…

One of William Wordsworth's best poems is an ode with the somewhat daunting title Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. It's a reflection on the progress of human life from infancy to maturity. He thinks of children as natural believers, born with an inherent sense of awe at…

The need for sacrifice exists in every theater of nature. Life cannot exist and persist without some sacrifice of its components. Stars explode in supernovas to provide gaseous dust and minerals for newborn stars and their offspring in planetary systems. A forest's fallen timbers donate their substance to newly sprouting…

A new military weapon is now revolutionizing warfare as did the machine gun and the atomic bomb. Miniature killer drones are inexpensive, more efficient, and silently effective compared to guided missiles that cost 20 times as much. This is not futuristic fiction. The Army is now in Phase III development…

The archeological record of ritual burial practices indicates widespread belief in the afterlife, around the world and across time. The oldest evidence of prehistoric belief in the afterlife was discovered in the 1960s near Sungir, Russia, at a 34,000-year-old burial site of a middle-aged man. He was laid to rest…

It is a remarkable thing that the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem are held in trust by a Muslim, Adeeb Joudeh al-Husseini, who is a member of a family that has honorably maintained the holy places there for centuries. Christians and Muslims have had a…

One morning this spring, I noticed my backyard lawn had an esker, a row of fresh dirt mounds. Each pile had a horseshoe shape, and I soon learned how they came to be. A gopher was tunneling underground. This rascal was pushing dirt to the surface from its nesting constructs.…