I didn’t check on the saint of the day last week so I missed Saint Benedict ... until I went to Mass and the priest was discussing his life. Saint Benedict is foundational to western civilization so missing him was stupid. I am trying to do better today! Anyway, Franciscan Media has a nice write [...]
Category: Dante
Who is the Saint for today?
I went to look for the saint of the day and Saint Helena was listed for today, June 20th, on a particular website. I happily wandered down the rabbit hole called, Google Saint Helena and get the island where Napoleon was ultimately imprisoned. I didn’t bother reading anything about him, but found an enchanting video [...]
A very manly Heaven? End of year thoughts
I've been thinking about parts of the Divine Comedy recently. My brain circles past various topics over time, checking in and moving on. Without going back to read it, I started thinking about Dante's picture of Paradise. He begins with a scientific discussion about the composition of the moon. (This was a hot topic in [...]
Getting through Purgatory according to Dante
I’ve been thinking about Purgatory, at least, with respect to Dante’s ideas of what it might be like. My art history friend claims that, although the Church has always taught that Purgatory exists, Dante was the first to use his poetic imagination to consider exactly how a soul might be purified there. Pictures of his [...]
More about Notre Dame cathedral …
Header image Wandrille de Préville, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons I read an article on the internet about the Parisian fire-fighters and their efforts, back in 2019, to save Notre Dame cathedral. https://strangesounds.org/2019/07/notre-dame-fire-collapse-save-paris.html (I found it through this blog https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/ which I have linked to in the past.) I had not paid full [...]