The Narthex

Ideas for essays are sometimes like grace: they come from the most unexpected places. Today’s comes from Facebook, in a post by Scott Hahn about failure. Hahn posted a passage from St. Josemaría Escrivà’s rich book of spiritual aphorisms, The Way. The excerpt (no. 405) deals specifically with failure. “So you…

Last Sunday’s Gospel for the Solemnity of Christ the King is Matthew’s Last Judgment account. I have to admit I’m partial to that text because, prior to the 1969 Calendar Reform that inserted Christ the King as the last Sunday of the liturgical year, there was a kind of eschatological…

Thanksgiving is, for most Americans, a long weekend. Almost all children get out of school on Wednesday and don't return until Monday. Most institutions other than stores and commercial enterprises all take the long weekend. At some point Thanksgiving became something of a segue into the "Christmas season" and --…

This morning I left for work a little after the sun had risen -- not unusual with days shorter and clocks turned back one hour. As I walked across my parking lot, a couple of squirrels were busy on the old oak tree, about whose acorns pelting my window pane…

Nat King Cole sang about “the falling leaves [that] drift by the window/the autumn leaves of red and gold.” Drifting autumn leaves suggest a quiet, peaceful sweep outside one’s casement. Last weekend was anything but. Fall was at its peak in Virginia and Saturday was a gloriously sunny day. As…

In the wake of California Senator Dianne Feinstein's burial, op-ed writers have been scribbling away on why America’s leadership class is so dominated by octogenarians (with a few septuagenarians as junior officers). Writing in The New York Times (Oct. 8), David French picked up Ross Douthat’s most recent hobby horse:…