Prayers in Winter

O Lover, In last week’s post pondering Your presence decades ago in the hearing of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Hodie Christus natus Est I failed to accentuate a theme which has since refused to go...

[Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958), Hodie Christus Natus Est (solos/choral/orchestral cantata in 16 movements).] O Lover, It was thirty-seven years ago this week. I was driving truck in what would become in retrospect the seam...

[“Day by day / Day by day / Oh Dear Lord / Three things I pray / To see thee more clearly / Love thee more dearly / Follow thee more nearly / Day...

O Lover, In an era of metastasizing capitalism it is not surprising that commodification is widespread. Whether in the arts and culture, data and knowledge, or values and morality, efforts are expended to monetize...

O Lover, Amid the silence of morning prayer I recently found myself unusually at rest in Your Presence. In that brief interval I was not thinking or petitioning, yearning or striving, but simply at...

[“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Mt 22:37-8).] O Lover, Having experienced...

[“The mystery of the Word’s descent is meant to ‘amaze’ the Soul into loss of self and perfect obedience to the Father’s will” (Bernard McGinn regarding Marguerite of Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Annihilated...

[“Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again . . .” (from “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon, 1964).] [Barbara Dent, My Only Friend Is Darkness: Living the...

O Lover, A landmark theological question debated in the late Medieval and Renaissance periods was this: if  human’s “fall” had not occurred, would the Incarnation of the Christ have taken place? In other words,...

[“I am the vine that fills your cup with joy” (from “Take and Eat” by Fr. Michael Joncas [b. 1951]).] O Lover, One of the richer images in biblical writings is that of wine....