The Alexandrian | Essays

Learning to Love God

Sunday, 25 July 2010 09:45

fall10_06 The house stood empty, still and silent. The ticking of the wall clock filled the living room. I stopped a metre or so from the grey piano in the living room. A flimsy picture rested against the piano’s music stand. The picture portrayed Christ as a king wearing a regal cloak and crown of red and gold against a background of golden rays. I stared at the picture and wondered how different artists portrayed Jesus in different ways. Sometimes He looked welcoming and friendly, sometimes powerful and regal, and sometimes hurt and bloodied.

Is

Sunday, 25 July 2010 09:23

“I am who am.” What an odd sentence! Whatever did it mean? It’s not really a sentence at all, she suspected, as it didn’t make sense. There was nothing concrete in it — no substance, she might have said. Scripture did not usually make such complete nonsense to her child’s mind, for Scripture usually was story, or at least image — something graspable by the mind. What kind of ridiculousness had God set in His holy books, and what kind of a name was that? Imagine having a sentence for a name!

Guilt and Human Freedom

Sunday, 25 July 2010 09:14

Do men ever have real ultimate responsibility for their actions? This question can motivate a more fundamental debate about human freedom. By looking specifically at the human experience of guilt, however, we can argue for an answer to this question. In common practice, we treat guilt as though there are two distinct possibilities: either it is justified, and we are truly and ultimately responsible for some bad result to one’s actions, or it is unjustified and we are not responsible for what happened.

Love

Sunday, 25 July 2010 09:03

There are no greater fools in the world than those who believe in love. And none are more to be pitied than those who pass their life in its pursuit. Man as such is bewitched by the madness of the poets and confused by the very things he feels from within himself. Helplessly lured away from reality by some inner longing, they say: can anything be more senseless than to believe in something in which the senses themselves cannot sense?

Caritas in Veritate: A Message of Unity for Our Times

Friday, 23 July 2010 16:26

Caritas in Veritate, "Charity in Truth," the title of Pope Benedict’s recent social encyclical, is the key the Holy Father presents our times in the turmoil of its societal and personal crises as well as in the aspiration found in its efforts at progress. Caritas in Veritate is the kind of encyclical that opens horizons and builds foundations for a fully-human worldview with which any Catholic may approach the world regardless of his profession or calling in life.