Angels and the City
According to Scripture, our first explicit encounter with the holy angels was after the expulsion from Paradise. At what should have been its welcoming gate, we found ourselves face-to-face with
So Much We Don’t See
Before talking about angels, we should be reminded that a consideration of invisible realities need hardly be arcane, or the subject-matter as “supernatural” as one might suspect. Reflect, for a
Melchizedek and the Magi
Two seemingly peripheral figures in the pages of Scripture look somewhat enigmatic when viewed separately, but begin to glow with meaning when considered together. I refer to the figure of
On the Meticulous Ritual of New Year
Even in my adopted country of Brazil, where a massively endemic unpunctuality rules the land, nearly every soul will be awake, seconds before midnight on Dec. 31, glaring at a
Feast of the Restless Family
Each time we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, I am reminded of my trip to Egypt, several years ago, and the visits I paid to a few of
The Silent Night of Fecundity
Easter is dramatic, and the narrative from Palm Sunday to the Ascension is laden with more twists and turns and ups and downs than anything Aeschylus or even Shakespeare could
Leaving Troy (rev.)
The northwestern corner of “Asia Minor” (today’s Turkey) represented to the ancient world the westernmost cusp of the huge, heaving landmass of Asia, stretching behind it all the way to
Is the Universe God’s Selfie?
The short answer is: no. A somewhat longer response, however, will give a measure of legitimacy to those at first beguiled by the notion. Genesis and the Abrahamic faiths insist
The Tool of Tools and the Form of Forms
The so-called “logical” works of Aristotle have been grouped together since his first major editor, Andronicus of Rhodes, assembled them in the 1st century B.C. It seems Andronicus – or
On the Cenoscopic and Idioscopic – and why they matter
After a year of pondering and rewriting, I have completed my text on Peirce’s (and Deely’s) distinction, not yet fully recognized in the academy. One can only hope it finds
On the abused, the corrupted and the exceptional
Abusus non tollit usum. Corruptio optimi pessima. Exceptio probat regulam. These three Latin adages have helped me to stay sane more perhaps that the thousands of pages of philosophy I