That You Might Be Perfect

My brethren, count it all joy, when you shall fall into various trials: knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience, and patience hath a perfect work: that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing.

This has not been our year.

The Feast of Love

Love. Luv. Like. Αγάπε (agape). Έροσ (eros). Φιλία (philia). Στοργή (storge).

What's love got to do (got to do) with it?

Everything.

I was thinking (dangerous, I know) about love, and I've finally come up with a good thing about the English language's lack of differentiation in the word "love." I didn't think it was possible! I mean "love" is my favorite English whipping boy, my go to example of why the language is terribly deficient (which it is).

But there I was, thinking about Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est raising the question about eros, and if eros can be purified, and is it really different from agape, and...

Ecce Homo

How far from the Animal is Man,

• and how close?

He walks, he talks, he sits on command.
A thin veneer of civility...

• scratch the surface and see him implode.

Yet how noble?

• A hair's breadth from exalted orations.
• A hair's breadth from depraved ravings.

Wrestling with God while angels and demons whisper at his shoulders.
Running before he can walk,

• it is a wonder he stands at all.

How sad is a life wasted?
How beautiful is a life well spent?

See him chip and shatter.
See him weather storms.

Behold the Man.