Note: While I suppose I could also spend some time arguing for the importance of reading; if you’re reading this, you’re on Substack, and thus I feel you at least have a basic understanding of the importance of reading. On with the list. :)

1. Reading is a muscle - When you go to the gym, you don’t go straight to the bench trying to max out on your very first rep every day of the week. That’s a terrible idea, and a good way to either hurt yourself or make you hate lifting. The same philosophy applies to reading I think: it’s a muscle, which means it takes time to build up a good habit of it, a good rhythm of it, and a good way to quickly grasp a story or fact from a book. This doesn’t mean you can’t read long books: rather, it’s about cultivating an awareness of the depth of material you’re going to be reading, and engaging with it appropriately. If you haven’t been reading for a while, are motivated to begin reading again, and pick up The Brothers Karamazov to do so: that’s all well and good, and admirable, but don’t expect yourself to be able to get through 20 pages in one sitting, and even if you force yourself through it, don’t expect yourself to remember the plot points in those last 5-10 pages except in a strange haze. Be gentle with yourself, and enjoy it. When you see someone reading faster than you, who cares? Whoever wrote that book would probably much rather you think critically about what they’ve written than to simply breeze through it in record time: though, maybe one day you will be able to read a 500 page book in a week and retain it well. Again, reading is a muscle, it works both ways. Once you build up the habit, the muscle will strengthen and you’ll be able to read faster, comprehend more of the writing, and retain more of the ideas.

2. Get excited about what you’re going to read - Whenever I’m about to read a new book, especially when its fiction, I look up the most positive reviews I can find on the book, whether on YouTube or GoodReads or Amazon or wherever else I can find them. Why? When you’re about to try a new food, it does you no good to picture it tasting horrible before you even take a bite: if you imagine that it will taste horrible, tell yourself continually as you put the bite into your mouth that it will taste horrible, when you bite down you will most likely find your suspicions confirmed. Rather, if you convince yourself it will taste good, or at least decent, you’ll be much more receptive to the bite and might be pleasantly surprised. You may be unpleasantly surprised as well, but that’s the fun of the game. The same idea goes for reading. If I approached every book dreading reading it, it would instantly become a slog before I even gave it a chance. If you hear someone raving about a book somewhere on the Internet, imagine that they’re right across from you at a coffee shop, putting the book between the two of you, and telling you that they believe, firmly, that this is one of the best books they’ve ever read and they specifically think that you should read it next. A good book can be an incredibly rich, deep, and meaningful encounter with culture and tradition, so put yourself in the position to receive such a thing. Read in scenic places if that’s what it takes to get you excited for reading, or read with your glass of wine on Tuesday nights when you finally have your winding down time, or as you sip your morning coffee in your favorite part of the day. Whatever it takes, you should try to put yourself in the best possible mental state to receive a work. You might ask, “But, what if it’s not good? What if my excitement is overrated, and I just don’t get it?” Great question! And onto rule three…

3. Don’t be afraid to surrender on a book - There will be, in your reading journey, books that are simply not enjoyable for you. They might even be frustrating. Reading should be a leisurely activity, cultivating a deeper encounter with yourself, with knowledge of the Truth, with culture, etc. I think that’s much more important than reading books you’re displeased with simply to say I did it. Reading is a treat, not an Ironman. I’d much rather someone tell me that, even though The Tale of Desperaux is a children’s novel, they found themselves profoundly moved by it and began recommending it to people, than for someone to tell me they read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics or one of Kant’s Critiques and look like they’ve just walked off Utah Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944. There are good challenges in life and bad challenges. Bad challenges are the challenges that just aren’t worth your time and could be better spent elsewhere. We’ll get to good challenges in a moment, but what I’m referring to are bad challenges. I was first becoming interested in theology when I read Augustine’s Confessions: once I got to his discourse on memory, I put the book down and still haven’t gone back to finish it. I plan on doing so soon, having put a few years of distance between myself and it, as well as a few philosophy courses, but it just wasn’t right for me at the time, so I threw my hands up in the air and walked away. I’ve had to do that with The Lord of the Rings, my favorite fiction book of all time, when I just wasn’t in a space to actually engage with the material well. If you wrestle with something for a bit, find its not worth your time, great! Set it down with confidence, knowing you at least tried, and maybe someday you’ll come back to it on the right day and at the right time. But, be sure you don’t get to this point too quickly.

4. Don’t be afraid to read a tough book - “Tough” here can be taken in two ways: 1) something that is literally (as in, pertaining to the literature) tough, such as something by Shakespeare, Dumas, or McCarthy, where you have to wrestle with the writing itself in order to comprehend the work, and 2) something that is mentally or emotionally tough, challenging you in your moral life in ways that you didn’t expect, weren’t ready for, or that hit at some deep pain in your life. In the first sense, a literally “tough” book can strengthen your reading skills. Grapple with it. If it’s Shakespeare, maybe try reading it out loud to get a sense for Shakespeare’s rhythm. If it’s The Count of Monte Cristo and you’ve lost track of who betrayed who and did what, maybe draw out a little plot diagram of all the characters. Push yourself beyond the limits of what you think you can understand and comprehend. A book written in the 19th century will have some different vocabulary than we might use today, but don’t let that stop you: expanding your vocabulary is an inestimably beneficial, though occasionally odious, cause to put one’s higher faculties to task. In the second sense of “tough” it would be best to simply receive it. Whether it be getting emotional, taking a walk around the house, or simply pausing and reflecting on the passage that hurt you, possibly even praying with it, don’t move on too quickly. Those moments are what reading is, I think, all about. The first time I read The Brother’s Karamazov, I remember getting frustrated with Dmitri’s character: every time he would enter the scene, I would get noticeably frustrated with the book. Then, I realized that I was frustrated with him because he reminded me of me. The aspects of his character that I didn’t like were simply the aspects of myself I didn’t like, as my conscience cried out to me like the prophet Nathan to King David, “You are that man!” Then, I was able to change my own actions, so that I might be more of the man I wanted to become. Or, in reading The Great Divorce, there were multiple moments where I simply stopped and paused, shocked at Lewis’ point on some aspect of human nature and sinfulness, and said a small prayer.

5. Don’t be afraid to read a few books at a time - At least ten books of mine have bookmarks in them currently. Not all of them are being “actively” read by me, but regardless I have different samples going of books I’d like to read and then I select the one where my interest, my life circumstances, and the Lord’s Will (if He exhibits a strong preference) align. They range from devotional prayer books to theological treatises and from science fiction to historic non-fiction. I am convinced that the benefit to this is the same benefit as having a few options for lunch in the refrigerator. I could choose the chicken fajitas, but I’m more in the mood for an Italian sandwich. Reading, just like eating, is meant to be a pleasurable activity, and just like with food, sometimes I have preferences for what I want to read. So, I like to keep a three book spread at most times of a devotional book, a philosophy or theology book, and a fiction book that I’m reading. If I want adventure, then I’ll read the fiction. If I want to think, philosophy or theology. If I need to pray, the devotional book. People say they can’t do it, but I guarantee that you can: if you can keep track of multiple work tasks you have to do at once, reading a few different books at a time shouldn’t be too difficult.

6. Never miss a chance to read - The battle that reading has to fight in most people’s lives in 2026 is with the phone. You always have your phone with you, and it always wants you to look at it, and suddenly you find yourself with “no time to read.” I take a book with me everywhere. Sometimes it’s only a paragraph that I’m reading on a lunch break, or waiting for my order at Chick Fil A, or waiting for a friend to show up. Regardless, it’s another paragraph or page read of a book, and it’s allowing me a deeper moment to experience my own human dignity than simply scrolling on a social media app designed to turn my brain off.

These are my thoughts. I’ve said enough, and this article has gone on for far longer than I initially thought, and I’m quite ready to read with all this talk about reading. So, I hope you might want to read more too. Cheers.

Here, at this moment, silence reigns. Expectation and anticipation. Pews creak, one or two kneelers hit the ground with a boom that breaks this sacred noiseless noise - you can feel it, can’t you? Even when the family or the couple behind you keeps whispering, even that moves something in your soul…this isn’t the space for that, not now. Something is about to happen…

Perhaps it’s already happening. Perhaps it’s been happening for centuries: an endless circle of action surrounding one singular Moment, one singular Act, which has been carried out like a standard before a grand army and proclaimed generation after generation, falling on eager hearts and deaf ears alike, yet incessantly continuing, seemingly without regard for life or death. Life comes and takes its place in this circle; life ends, and it takes its place in this circle. Perhaps even, this here, this silence, this sacred noiseless noise, is reminiscent of another time. Perhaps, once, there was a time where a Woman, a people, a race, and all of Heaven held its breath. Something is about to happen…

What is it? What is it waiting for? This bated breath, this anticipation, this silence, it waits for something; it is not endless, nor is it purposeless. Some invitation has been made, some announcement; why would you have found yourself here otherwise? Can’t you see that it all takes its place in that circle? The tension is like water behind a small crack in a dam: the crack widens slowly, until it bursts open with spectacular force, washing away everything before it and changing the landscape forever. Here too is the crack, mimicking that moment long ago: the crack from Heaven unto Earth, when an angel went to a simple woman, alone, and asked a question: Will it be you? It is ready…He is ready…yet He waits for you. Heaven and Earth alike, every creature and living thing from all eternity can look back at this moment and sense some eternal tension: Why does He ask…will she say yes? Perhaps too that is what this tension is, today: the clock strikes the top of the hour, and the tension is rising; something in you asks the same question: He is coming, will we say yes? The Woman answers as we should: Yes.

Heaven and Earth explode: noise, choirs, music, organs, chant, all is struck up in celebration, for He is coming. We stand: it is subconscious; we do it because even our bodies know it is right to do, even if our hearts do not perceive it. Hopefully we are like the Woman, hopefully we have said yes, and we understand what this all means, what this moment is. Maybe we are like the common folk instead: we did not pay attention to the signs, we did not heed the warnings, we simply focused on the things of this world.

No matter, He has come to change this world, and at this moment He breaks in on your own thought and mind, His church filling your ears with music, filling your nose with incense, filling your sight with His people, your voice with His words, and His standard, His terrible and glorious triumph, His Sign marches forward, stopping at nothing, leading the way like a great King who leads his forces into battle and will not stop for any foe. He has come. Everything has changed, and it has begun. Boys carry the various signs of His: the Word of the Prophet, the incense of the Priest, the candles of the King of the Light. And there, behind all of them, walks a man. He is a man, just like you, except here he is different. Here this man truly lives, truly fills his duty, truly fills his sacred office. Priest you call him: in this moment, he is more. He carries within him, in a different way than every other one of his people, Him: the One, the Christ. They say that he is in persona Christi: can we even fathom what that means at this moment? This procession of the King, His glorious servants, today glorified and serving the highest call that they will ever have, finally reaches the altar. Here, and here alone, does it all stop. Christ knows that for which He was destined by having come, and kisses that bloody triumph, proceeding with love: He knows His fate. This priest, this man, goes to the altar, and kisses it: he knows his fate. He raises his head again and takes his place: he accepts his fate. He knows the call, and he knows what he must do, because he loves his people; because He loves His people, and they must be shown that.

Now, finally, it begins. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Mass of St. Basil, Pierre Subleyras

Note: This essay/article/musing was originally written to and submitted to an online Catholic publication and turned down. While I’m more than happy to share it here, with however many of you reading it, I would humbly ask that you pray that an article or essay of mine be published soon, as the life of someone working in ministry is not one of financial affluence. Should you be moved even further than that, I’ve set up a subscription to this Substack. Please, only give if you are able and only as much as you are able: your prayers will make much more of a difference, and are priceless to me. Thank you, and enjoy.

I used to hate St. Thomas Aquinas. When I shared that with someone recently, they said in reply, “What do you mean? How? What?!” I think that’s a perfectly justifiable reaction. To put it briefly, until about a year and a half ago, when I was finishing my undergraduate studies, my mind, heavily influenced by the romanticized, sentimental culture in which we live, on encountering Aquinas, found absolutely no repose for my emotions, feelings, and sentiments. Instead, I faced a very straightforward, seemingly dry, and rational arrow that shot right through my sentimental-emotional views to address my intellect directly. It was terrifying. Now, a year or two after learning to encounter Thomas, coming to love him and his thought, and now serving as a campus minister at a Newman center, I see this same sentiment sometimes exhibited by some of the students that I serve. There’s a conviction that Aquinas “doesn’t see me” or that his writings “rationalize my relationship with God.” While I see this most explicitly in my own generation, possibly as a sort of reaction to the Thomistic revival, I see it throughout the Church as well, most likely because of the same romanticized culture in which we are indoctrinated. So, I will set out to do three things in this essay: (1) Prove that St. Thomas Aquinas has a heart, as the name of this essay suggests, for any who might doubt it; (2) To show that Aquinas’ approach to the emotional life is far better than our modern society’s approach; (3) Through both previous points, give my formal apology to St. Thomas Aquinas, who hopefully doesn’t hold my previously held sentiments about him against me.

The first thing we must remember in considering the “heart” of St. Thomas is that he is a saint. While that may seem like a redundant point to begin with, I think it’s a critical point to remember. Remembering that he is a saint means recognizing that, more than any of his philosophical or theological writings, his religion and devotion to the Lord mattered the most to him.

This is the man who, at the end of his life, compared all his writings to “straw” and refused to write anymore after having an intense mystical experience. He is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, not of Aristotle’s academy. This means, necessarily, that he was deeply immersed in the love of Our Lord, and thus deeply loved others (cf. 1 Jn 4:12) through Him. When, in a vision of Christ, asked what he desired, he famously responded, “Non nisi Te, Domine” - “Nothing but You, oh Lord.” If he loved the Lord as much as these stories tell us he did, then surely he also desired to bring souls to Christ.

One of the best examples of this is Question 38 from the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologica, entitled “The Remedies of Sorrow or Pain.” Reading this Question for the first time was the turning point of my perception of Aquinas; after this, I realized I had never encountered a more human man. Not only does he seem to want to bring you to knowledge and love of God, but he wants to care for you and love you while he’s at it, and make sure that you get there in one piece, at peace in Him.

His first recommended remedy for sorrow is tears. Not just tears; in fact, he writes much more viscerally: “Tears and groans.” Continuing, listen to his desire to comfort and shepherd in his words:

To say that this man does not care for, or desires to rationalize to death, the human person is an unjust charge. If that’s not enough to prove his humanity and his tenderness, in Article 5 of the same question, he recommends, as a remedy to sorrow, sleep and baths. Why? “Such remedies, from the very fact that they bring nature back to its normal state, are causes of pleasure…The normal disposition of the body…is itself a cause of pleasure, and consequently assuages sorrow” (Ibid, a.5). Truly, here is a man who cares to teach us how to truly be human.

I think, though, we can take it a step further. While we can see his love for the common man through this Question, we can see something much more important: we can see that his approach to emotions is far better than the approach of the sentimental culture in which we live. A sort of antidote to the common experience of modern man, especially of young modern man. Our culture is constantly commanding us to feel, through the next short, clip, or reel that we see. The songs that fill our speakers and streaming apps constantly appeal to our emotions, and they typically appeal to the worst ones at that: anger, sorrow, and despair. Popular recording artist Noah Kahan, in an interview after releasing his newest album, said, “If something’s going wrong in your life, and it’s raining, I recommend [the album].” This isn’t a good approach to our emotions: we shouldn’t endlessly stir them up in some maelstrom of negative feelings, as our culture is happy to do. Noah Kahan isn’t the only artist who does this: countless artists write music that seems to be exclusively about or aimed at bringing about negative or depressive emotions in the listener. Modern culture seems not to aim to propose remedies for sorrow, but sorrow as a remedy (which is a fairly terrible remedy).

Aquinas points out the simple correction that society is missing: sorrow, along with other negative emotions, is meant to be remedied. Our emotions are not something to dwell on; they are something to be kept in check by our reason, in order to bring us to true fulfillment and happiness. Man naturally desires to be happy, and modern culture, through a sort of Disney-ification of happiness, has turned the ideal of happiness in life into a picturesque “happily-ever-after” where we are in a sort of perpetual, unrealistic bliss. Instead, Aquinas points out that our greatest pleasure doesn’t come from “feeling” good, but that “the greatest of all pleasures consists in the contemplation of truth…therefore in the midst of tribulations men rejoice in the contemplation of Divine things and of future happiness” (Ibid., a.4). Truth, along with Goodness and Beauty, and the contemplation, the deep consideration, of these bring us happiness in this life, not indulging our emotions to try and “feel” some kind of way. Aquinas isn’t trying to stifle our emotions: he’s trying to get us out of our emotions, to what really matters in this life. And, by focusing on and contemplating those things that really matter — the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, reaching their height and summit in God — we can rest in a much deeper and richer happiness.

In conclusion, for anyone who may be concerned or feel frustrated by his writings, Thomas isn’t a robot. While his writing may feel dry and tiresome at times, it’s because he is, in some sense, doing the dirty work for us. He’s paving a highway, with guardrails on either side, not so that we might be constrained, but so that we might reach Christ more easily, and more authentically, than we might have on our own accord. To use another analogy, he’s drawing an outline of God, like in a coloring book: not to show God as a colorless set of lines, but rather that we might come along, see where the lines end, be guided to a more complete vision of Him, and do the coloring ourselves. Aquinas has built a cathedral of reason to protect the Tabernacle, Christ the Word, and we must walk inside it. So, in the words of Pope Leo XIII,

Typically, up to this point, I’ve been very stressed, my mind circling with a thousand different scenarios and possibilities and calculations about whatever in my life may be causing me trouble, or that I might be occupied with, and the second he says that, my mind says, “Yes Father…I remember exactly what the Lord says to Martha; I just don’t want to hear it right now because I know you’re right.” And then I take one deep breath, and he says (knowing me well enough to know what’s going on in my head), “He tells her, not that it’s bad to be thinking about and doing many things, but He reminds her that only one thing is necessary; Him.”

Yesterday (at the time of writing this essay) was the feast of Sts. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and I smiled as that memory flashed through my head at Mass. It’s a situation I find myself in quite often, and I figured I would write to simply ask the question: how does one choose the better part? As a fair warning, this article is going to be much more “armchair philosophy” in style, as in I am writing what comes to my head, in my own opinion and takeaways, and not necessarily citing or appealing to any specific sources or interpretations of the verse. In other words: a true blog post.

“Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,” Johannes Vermeer, 1654-1656.

Certainly it’s not wrong to do many things for the Lord: that would disqualify most of the saints immediately. If it’s bad to do many things, any Saint who was a Bishop, let alone a Pope, would be screwed. Many of the Saints had plenty of things to do, in fact much more to do about than we have today. We have to pay the next phone bill; the Apostles had to try not getting arrested, brutally tortured, and executed. Which puts things more into perspective, I think.

If the “many things” bit of Luke 10:41-42 is not the problem that Jesus is referring to, then it really must be our being “worried” and “distracted” about them that’s the problem. Now, that’s obviously a loaded statement, and easier said than done. Personally, I think it’s the kind of loaded statement that ranks right up there with Jesus asking us to be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Matthew 5:48); one of those things that makes you say “Oh thanks Lord, how simple. How’s that supposed to work?”

What is it about “worrying,” though, that makes it so bad? Jesus doesn’t tell Martha that she is “screaming and enraged” about many things; He doesn’t call out something obviously wrong. If Martha was a serial killer, a psychopath, or a spiteful person, the verse wouldn’t be nearly as provocative; we’d be much more likely to sit back and agree. It’s quite easy to justify being worried or distracted about many things, actually. Especially if they’re good things, right? Isn’t it good to be worried and distracted about getting the house ready for people coming over for dinner? Isn’t it good to be worried and distracted about some project that you might have at work that you need to submit? That shows you care, right? After all, if you get that one thing done right, then everything else will turn out all right. Surely, everyone else understands; yet for some reason, Jesus doesn’t quite seem to. There are two possible implications that I can see from this in my armchair philosophy thoughts (though, if you see more, do let me know :) ).

The first implication: Jesus cares about us too much to even let us be worried and distracted. That’s an incredible thought. We’re not saying that Jesus cares too much about us for us to not die; no, that wouldn’t be radical enough for Him. Instead, He, through the hand of St. Luke, wishes us to know that He’d rather us not be anxious or worried as well. This necessarily implies that He truly does love us and wishes us good. He really did come that we “might have life, and have it abundantly” (cf. Jn 10:10). He wishes us to be at peace, to be able to be with Him, and not to be overly burdened in our minds with other things. He wants to provide that sigh of relief that we take when we realize it’s all going to be alright, not the tension in our chest when we picture all the ways things can go wrong.

The second implication: on the negative end, there is in fact something that isn’t good in being worried or distracted about other things. There is something incorrect, possibly an injustice, in that. I do think injustice is the right term here. If justice, at its core, is rendering to someone or something what is due to them, and having an ordered relation to someone or something, then in worrying or being distracted by other things we do in fact go wrong, in two ways. First, we do a disservice to whatever we are being taken away from by that worry: surely, while hosting dinner, it would be much better to be present to the guests than to ignore them. You will never get that opportunity to be with them again; the same goes for the coffee with your friend that you haven’t seen in months. Surely it would be better to actually be present to them instead of not reverencing their presence and being concerned with things in your own life, when you have a gift of something new right in front of your eyes: a person. And how much more precious is this gift when it is the Person, the God-Man, Christ Himself? Second, speaking of Him, perhaps we render an injustice to whatever thing it is that we are being worried about or distracted by. Typically, when we are worried about something, let’s say finances, we are not necessarily concerned with the lack of money as such; we are concerned with a lack of means to some greater end. I’m not necessarily worried or distracted by my bank account when it runs low, and I’ve accounted for it. But when I suddenly reach for my wallet because it is needed for something, then I am worried and distracted by my lack of finances, as I cannot perceive how I might get whatever perceived good or end that I want. I think to myself, “If only I had more money, then surely I would get whatever thing it is that I want, and everything will be ok.”

This, I think, is the root problem that the Lord is pointing to, more serious than the first injustice posed by being worried or distracted. In that mentality of being worried about something, which we all, especially people like myself, can fall victim to, we subconsciously presume a certain amount of control over our lives. If somehow I could control obtaining x, of which there is currently some current or potential lack, I would receive y; y being some mix of happiness, comfort, relief, pleasure, or contentment. There are two faulty bits of this equation, however; I cannot control obtaining x, at least certainly to the degree I think I can, and the obtainment of x will not bring me y. There is only one person who can do both…and it’s Christ. He is all we need; and He is Lord of all. Thank goodness we’re not; we’d probably get it wrong anyway.

It’s a lot easier to live and to manage life once we accept that we don’t have control over it all; in fact, we only directly control a minuscule amount of things. At the end of The Hobbit, Gandalf sits down beside Bilbo and points this out, saying, “You are a fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” And I think that the Lord simply wants us to respond by saying, like Bilbo, “‘Thank goodness!’ said Bilbo laughing.”

Pop culture loves mystery. It comes in two main types.

First, there are the solvable ones. Think of Knives Out or Sherlock Holmes. We, as the audience, enjoy the delectable tension of not knowing who might have committed the crime. We delight in the tension of piecing together the entire puzzle bit by bit, clue by clue, fingerprint by fingerprint. We love watching the characters slowly put it together, all for that ecstatic “Aha!” moment when we feel like we solved the puzzle, even though it’s really the characters doing all the work.

Second, there are the unsolvable ones. The cold cases. There are no answers, but that’s sometimes even more exciting than the ones that do give us the answers. Instead of a laid-out narrative from start to end, we can interpret the facts for ourselves, to try to piece together the puzzle for ourselves. At the end of the day, we know that we can’t gather the answer, so we’re left in a suspenseful tension, wondering whether or not the truth might ever come out.

But…when it comes to God, we reach a problem. God doesn’t quite fit into either type of mystery. We can’t say “Aha! We have solved God! We know who He is, and what He has come to do, and His plans!” That doesn’t work logically; we have finite minds and finite knowledge, thus we cannot fully know infinite things, like God. On the other hand, we can’t say “Well, we’re not quite sure what happened, just that these events occurred in and near Jerusalem in about 33 A.D., and we’ve pieced together the rest.” God taught us, through Himself in Christ, exactly what He came here to do, what His plan was, and where He was going. So in that aspect, it’s not quite an unsolved mystery either. In fact, Christ quite plainly says,

Someone might say, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t look at God as a mystery; perhaps that’s the wrong word.” If so, then they have a much bigger problem to reckon with: Christ Himself uses the word mystery. In that line from Mark 4 that I just quoted, the word “secret” is translated from the Greek word musterion, meaning “mystery.” Not only that, we use the term mystery for a whole genus of teachings in the Church. Every time we go to Mass (in the Roman Rite), we proclaim the Mysterium Fidei, the Mystery of Faith: “When we eat this bread, and drink this cup, O Lord, we profess your Resurrection, until you come again.” The Eucharist in itself is a mystery according to the Church; we talk about the “Paschal Mystery” every Easter. And, most famously (or perhaps infamously if you’ve ever sat through a lecture on it), is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. So, what kind of mystery pertains to God?

Now, you might say, “What does any of this matter?” Well, I think it matters quite a lot. See, if you take the Trinity, the Eucharist, or the Paschal Mystery to be an “unsolvable” kind of mystery, a “cold case” if you will, you will very quickly find people tempted to (as many already do today) resign themselves to knowing nothing about it. Someone might say, “If it’s a mystery that we cannot solve, there’s no point in troubling myself needlessly over something I’ll never know.” This is a tragedy. Every day, on our phones, we encounter dozens, if not hundreds, of various ideologies, opinions, statements, claims, and postulations from people throughout the world, all seemingly having educated reasons for these opinions and postulations. How foolish do we make the Church, and ourselves, look if our answer to these claims of the world is simply, “I don’t know, and it’s not something we can know.”

Our Lord prayed at His Last Supper that the Father would ‘sanctify them in the Truth; Your Word is Truth” (John 17:17). By all accounts, Christ seems to want us to work out the Truth for ourselves, not simply throw our hands up in the air and walk away from learning about Him. He was called “Rabbi” after all; He teaches us rationally, with an end in mind, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Taking Christ at His word (which is generally a good practice), He seems to command that we can, and must, come to know Him, regardless of the mystery of it all.

We now reach a crossroads with our current definitions of mystery: either, on the one hand, God is not a good God. What kind of God who proclaims His goodness and love would order His followers to try and follow a command that they simply couldn’t? On the other hand, like we said earlier, God cannot be God if we can truly know and comprehend Him entirely, as that would contradict the laws of logic. It’s safe to assume here that there must be something that we’re missing.

What if there was a third kind of mystery? One that we could comprehend and know at one level, and yet be drawn ever deeper into the depths of it that we cannot comprehend? If that doesn’t make sense, that’s ok, it will in a moment. There’s a common area of life that we can use as a reference to understand this third type of mystery: that common area being art.

Consider looking at this icon, Rublev’s The Trinity, written in 1425.

At first glance, we see the three angelic figures around the table. Looking again, and a little deeper, more details start to show up. They all look the same, but are dressed differently. There’s a tree in the background, and a house of some sort. The middle figure and the figure on the right are bowing their heads towards the one on the left. Then you might remember that this icon is commonly called The Trinity, and consider the relevance of that to the piece. A glance deeper again, and you realize that maybe that’s why all the faces are the same, suggesting one nature, but all the garments are different, suggesting three distinct Persons.

Suppose you went to a recital of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. On first hearing, you may be moved by the various melodies up and down the piano. The second hearing, you may realize that it’s alternating through all the major and minor keys of music, giving you a full appreciation of how the piano might be played as few other pieces can. The third time, you may appreciate the varying movements through the preludes to each key and the fugues, noticing the various rhythms that Bach uses to communicate an almost entirely different sentiment through each section. And so on.

The same is true, analogously, of the mysteries of God. We are called to know Him; He desires for us to learn about Him, to set our minds upon Him in an ever greater desire for understanding of His ways and Himself. And yet, we will never come to fully know Him, as He is Eternal. He is Knowledge and Truth itself. Every time we consider that we know that Christ died for our sins on the cross, we might stop and consider how much we don’t know that He died for our sins on the cross. Each time we consider it, we are called to consider it on a deeper level. There will never be a point in our lives, either here or in Heaven, where we can lean back in our metaphorical chairs and say, “That’s it: I understand the Paschal Mystery.” This is a “great mystery,” (Ephesians 5:32) St. Paul says. This mystery, the mystery of God, will enwrap our entire existence in the life to come. Whatever we can learn of Him here is absolutely necessary, though: we will need it to know Him on the Other Side.

Above all, here in this life, this third type of mystery, the mystery of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, the mystery of God Himself, is the most satisfying kind of mystery. In this mystery, we are faced with facts that we can never fully solve or comprehend; the tension never unwinds, and there’s always another piece to the story. But, piece by piece, the mystery gets ever more lovely, joyful, hopeful, and Good, the closer that we get to Him. Why would you not want to learn more about that mystery?

Someone said something to me recently that piqued my thinking. He said that one of the things that always struck him about Catholicism is that it glorifies this world. I was hesitant to agree with him at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him. And actually, I think he may be really on to something. I think it’s something that should maybe strike us more often about the faith.

Let’s do a little compare and contrast. In Greek mythology, the natural world was created in a long series of affairs amongst the gods. Affairs of love, infidelity, incest, envy, and war formed the world. Mountains were remains of walls that the Titans used as fortresses against the gods. Plateaus were areas that the gods had picked up some mountain to hurl at their enemies, or at each other. And so forth. In the Gnostic and Manichean heresies of the early Church, the physical world was shunned for the spiritual. They rejected physical realities in preference for the spiritual, saying that only in being separated from the corrupt physical bodies and realities that were holding them down would they be able to attain to salvation. Even in sects like Buddhism, the practitioner is encouraged to enter into a semi-nihilistic state of rejection of the natural world to reach “nirvana.” Protestant sects also embrace a kind of Puritanism, a shunning to some degree of the modern world, with some not allowing technology, others not allowing any drinking, and others not allowing any dancing even…if you’re in Footloose.

But, for us as Catholics, the narrative changes. We see that God made the world because…He thought it was good. He encouraged Adam to steward and keep the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2 because the plants and the animals were good. Not something to be cast aside and abandoned, not something to be an obstacle to our relationship with God, but instead a conduit, as it were, a reminder that behind these good things was Someone infinitely greater.

Time and time again, God uses the natural world to communicate something to us, and not only that, but to care for us. In Exodus, He sends down manna from the heavens and brings forth water from the rock in the desert. In 1 Kings 19, He sends an angel to Elijah to feed him. In Tobit 6, the Archangel Raphael, disguised as Brother Azariah, tells the young Tobias to use the liver and gall bladder of a fish to drive out a demon. In the Gospels, nearly all of Jesus’ parables have an immediate relation to the natural world. He tells us of mustard seeds, vines, branches, and pearls of great price. Even in multiple Resurrection accounts, Christ, in His risen Body, eats with the apostles.

We can take all of this for granted, I think, as just God doing what God does. But I think it’s quite worth it to slow down and consider just how remarkable it is that this world, time and again, is shown entirely to be something good throughout the entire Scripture. And if this world is good, then it is meant to be enjoyed. And…it’s good to enjoy it. Even the great ascetics of history in the Church recognized that they were abstaining from one good to converse and have a union with God, the highest good, Good in itself. We can easily skip over the first part of that sentence and forget that they did, in fact, regard the things of this world as good too.

Now, someone might stop me here and say that it’s obviously not good to enjoy the world too much, to eat too much and drink too much, as then we become obsessed merely with the world and its goods and not the highest good, being God. And, after all, those turn into sins of gluttony and drunkenness. I completely agree, even more so, I think, than most people who might argue that point. I think actually that, contrary to the modern world’s thought, the Catholic way is the only way to actually enjoy the world. Can you really say that you enjoy a pizza after you’ve stuffed yourself, feel bloated and sick, and can’t eat anymore? Can you really say that you enjoy a drink, when you can’t even taste it, let alone manage to take a sip?

The Church, in her wisdom, finds the middle ground between the Manichean shunning of the world and the hedonistic life of indulgence. We taste, and enjoy, but enough to simply content ourselves. We hold back on those desires that want more because, at the end of the day, those desires don’t know what’s best. Temperance isn’t some mere restraint; it’s properly enjoying things as they were created to be. That’s why we have a patron saint of beer (St. Arnold of Soissons, if you were wondering). That’s also why Aquinas, in discussing remedies for sadness, says that we should…take a nice bath.1 The greatest mind of the church, and the simplest answer.

Now I’ve gone on for quite a bit about heresies, the Bible, wine, beer, and baths, so I’ll cut to the final point. The point of all this is that creation, in itself, is fit for the glory of God. That’s why it’s important to enjoy it properly; so we can maintain our own ability to see God in it. Why can we say that creation is fit for the glory of God? Because, God Himself “became flesh and lived among us.” He ate, He drank, He bathed, He walked, He hiked, and He built, because this world is good.

And the cherry on top is just this: not only is creation, in itself, fit for the glory of God, but also creation is fit to become a dwelling place for God, turning mere bread and wine into His own Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, because they are good, and He, the good God, has made them so.

In St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, one of the ideas that he discusses is the idea of the “Original Solitude” of Adam. In Genesis 2, we see that Adam was created and worked the Garden before God created Eve. And John Paul points out…we have no idea how long that time lasted. Here’s a little reflection on that this Friday morning.

Alone. We can’t even grasp the depth of Adam’s loneliness. While we may have had many a lonely day, evening, night, weekend, or even season of our life, this loneliness (though perhaps loneliness isn’t the best word to describe it) was something much deeper. Even in those moments in our lives, we have dozens of little daily interactions with other people. We order food at a restaurant, catch someone’s eye at the grocery store, hear other people’s conversations at a coffee shop, or see people driving by in their cars. But imagine, for a moment, that there was none of that. No human interaction, even in the most limited sense, let alone any concept of human interaction. There was simply a gazing into the empty and simplistic eyes of the beasts that Adam took care of with no interaction and no engagement to move into any kind of intellectual discourse. He was alone.

Peace. And yet, Adam was not alone in some negative sense. He was not in darkness or despair in a way that we would comprehend such isolation. He was completely entrapped, enraptured, and euphorically known and loved by God in a way that we cannot comprehend. This is why Adam was in Solitude, not loneliness; he was deeply at peace. He walked in a communion deeper than our minds can comprehend in this fallen world. Truly this man was alone, but never lonely. Loneliness seems to be based in some despair of a lack of company and companionship; here is a man who is truly aware that though he has a lack of physical company and companionship, he has an ever-greater company and companionship in his Creator, and certainly every logical reason possible to hope against all despair in that Creator’s love.

Desire. Surely though, Adam’s heart felt a strong, perhaps inarticulate, desire for homousion, a Greek word that conveys an idea of “likemindedness.” Literally it means “of the same mind.” There was an awareness that God, while inexplicably perfect and good, was not of the “same mind” as Adam. And neither were any of these animals and creatures. How many times must he have stated into a set of blank eyes, pondering and wondering at what it must be like to have a pair of eyes staring back at him, seeing and knowing like him, and loving like him? This desire wasn’t a mere grasping, a childish begging for attention or help for some perceived good; this was a deep, genuine, soul-encompassing desire that was deeper than words could express. Instead of raging fire, it burned like white coals.

And finally, one day it erupted as Adam, waking up, looked at Eve and, looking in her eyes, cried aloud, in an explosion of that desire and said “At last!”

So…imagine my surprise (and delight) to see that, in 2025, for the first time since 1983, vinyl sales in the US topped $1 billion.2 Yes, that’s right. One billion dollars. And, in case you’re like me and wondering if this was just some “flash in the pan” event, vinyl sales have actually been on the rise, performing better year over year, for the last 19 years. This is…weird. Look, anyone who knows me knows that I love vinyls, and that I love nothing more than collecting them and putting Billy Joel’s The Stranger on while friends are over as opposed to just Blutoothing some playlist. I didn’t account for the fact that I was part of some mass cultural movement; I just thought that I was weird and old-fashioned.

First, I don’t think we can just write this event off and not stop and think about it. Just for the sake of comparison, the hot sauce industry sold $1.5 billion in 2024. Hot sauce is a perfectly practical and everyday item that most people have in their seasoning cabinets. Vinyl records, which have been technologically eclipsed three to four times over, almost sold as much as that in 2025. What? Also, what’s even crazier is that not only are vinyl records selling more year to year, but digital sales went down by 15% in 2025.3 Once again, what? And maybe, in one last chance to write it off, you might say that in 2025, Taylor Swift released her album, and that probably is the only thing that pushed it over the edge. Allow me to blow your mind again by pointing out that the sixth and seventh highest-selling albums of 2025, beating out multiple artists’ new releases, were Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and Thriller by Michael Jackson.

Let’s agree, this is weird, at least logically speaking, and think about it. There is absolutely no reason that we should do this. Vinyl doesn’t have the perfect or near-perfect sound quality that streaming does. A vinyl record can sound like a Rice-Krispies cereal bowl sometimes, with that snap, crackle, and pop of the needle on the record. A vinyl record might come scratched, which means that you might well miss your favorite part of your favorite song and never be able to get it back on that vinyl. Most vinyl players, even, don’t actually play a record at the right pitch; they’ll play it a few semitones higher or lower than the recorded version.

To sum it up: vinyl records are imperfect And yet, seemingly, we seem to be turning back to them. Maybe there’s something deeper here. Maybe we prefer the imperfect option over the perfect option.

We’re surrounded by things that are designed to be perfect, clean, sublime, and precise. Everything is designed to be as convenient as possible. And yet, we all have to admit, it’s a little unnerving. That feeling when that person you’re talking to is just a little too nice to you. When your browser knows a little too much about the Amazon shopping you’ve been doing. When that song just sounds a little too good. We feel almost a little too cramped in by perfection, by pristine-ness, by the shiny, glossy, clear-cut world that surrounds us.

We long for a little bit of imperfection, to free us up to be ourselves again, to take a deep breath and let that burden of perfection slip right off our shoulders. Why? Because imperfection is human. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”4 Everything is a little off-kilter in this world, and trying to set something up the right way ourselves just ends with it looking even more off-kilter. Perfection made by humans is fake, fraudulent, and fabricated. We’re not perfect, so we can’t make something that’s perfect. That’s just good old-fashioned logic right there. So when we hit that point of seeming perfection, of course, we’re going to turn back to imperfection. Because there’s something deeply satisfying to that snap, crackle, and pop of a vinyl that you just can’t beat. It sounds more raw, more honest, and more human.

All in all, my point is that there’s something to the psychology of reaching for a vinyl record instead of reaching for your phone. We want something tangible, real, honest, imperfect, and a little messy, because that’s what we are. It’s like a little mirror into our own souls, except the mirror works through our ears and into our hearts as opposed to through our eyes. So, go get a record player, get an old used vinyl, and listen to the snap, crackle, and pop of authentic humanity come into your living room.

Hope y’all enjoyed some of my curious thoughts this Sunday evening. Cheers.

Glory to Jesus Christ.

I don’t have many words to write about Good Friday. Who could? But I have this small poem that I wrote. The story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, in Genesis, is a prefigurement of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Like Isaac, Christ has to carry a bundle of wood up a mountain, to be sacrificed, or at least allowed to be sacrificed, by His Father. His only Beloved Son. So many times, on Good Friday, it’s easy to disassociate and compartmentalize Christ’s sacrifice. We simply see it as an event that happened for everyone.

The truth is that it’s a deeply personal experience. Mysteriously, Christ sacrificed Himself for all of us individually and universally, for all people as a universal and for every individual as a particular. It was done with a specific intent, and that intent was you. And not just for the sake of your salvation, but for your redemption and recreation as well. That you might follow Him.

Christ has gone to the Cross, and, called to imitate Him, we must follow Him there. We have an opportunity, today of all days, to unite our sufferings to His. To stand beside Him on the Cross, and give Him our sorrows, pains, and sufferings. And to have faith that there is a Resurrection.

This is a little poem from the perspective of Abraham, in the story of his sacrifice of Isaac. Maybe you relate to Abraham, called to give everything you love to follow God. Putting everything on the line. You might look at your life, at some memory, at some situation, questioning how God could let this happen, how He could give this burden for you to bear. And yet, you must give it to Him.

“My Isaac” - Genesis 22

My God, You have asked, and I have answered.

You have led, I have followed.

You have demanded, I have given.

Your demand is terrible. Darkness fills the world.

How could this be? You have asked for everything, for my heart.

I climb the mountain, looking for Light. None comes.

I ready the altar. My God, I know You are good.

Somehow, You will provide. You must. Surely.

I stare at the thorns and branches of the wood. They pierce my heart.

I raise the knife. My own heart lies before me.

I look at the heavens. This is faith.

A tear rolls down, and a knife plunges into the abyss.

Then, there was Light.

Do not be afraid.

The Little Things:

People find joy and beauty in grand things,

Like castles, cathedrals, concertos and Caravaggio

I think that’s fine but I find joy in beauty in

The Little Things

In a deep joyful laugh with a friend

A slow dance in the kitchen

A country song by a camp fire

A cold Shiner on a hot night

A good smoke and good company for it

Those big things are great and I’ll always love em

But if it weren’t for the Little Things we wouldn’t know those big things when we see them

So here’s to the Little Things, the every day joys, comforts, and beauties that make even the hard days just a little easier and the good days sweeter than honey.

-BP

“Our body’s a temple, and a temple needs incense.”

That’s what a Franciscan priest told me on July 4, 2022, while handing me my first cigar, and it’s a phrase that I’ve often repeated to people asking about my smoking. I’ve always loved the simplicity of it, and it’s pretty funny. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good smoke. I’ll smoke a pipe and contemplate my life, or light up a cigar with a good buddy and ask each other the real questions.

Now, I’ve obviously gotten many looks, shaking heads, and “You know that’s bad for you, right?” comments over the last couple of years as I’ve taken up smoking cigars and pipes. Those opinions matter a little less to me, as that’s just people making a quick value judgment on my actions. Every once in a while, though, someone will stop and ask, “Why do you smoke?” They take an extra step. That's right, I have read and am aware of all the anti-smoking advertisements and commercials, and yet I choose to still smoke anyway. Why? This article is for those people who want to actually understand why I choose to smoke despite those warnings. Let me be clear, I’m not trying to convince you that smoking is good for you, or get everyone to smoke. I’m just inviting you to consider a different opinion.

First, I want to clarify what I mean by “smoking”, then I’ll dip my toe in the water of the medical research on smoking and why it should be taken with a grain of salt, and finally, I’ll be ready to set out my true defense of smoking.

1) What kind of “smoking”

This is the most important point that I need to clarify with people who ask me about my smoking. I don’t mean that I smoke cigarettes. I don’t smoke cigarettes; they’re not good for you, and it’s just a plain waste of good tobacco. I don’t have anything against people who smoke cigarettes; I just personally don’t smoke them and think it’s a little ungentlemanly to smoke them. What I mean by smoking is pipes and cigars. To be even clearer, I try to only smoke cigars that are hand-wrapped, and I only smoke traditional brands of pipe tobacco. You’ll see why this is important in a minute.

2) What about the medical statistics?

Ah, yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Remember, I’m not talking about smoking cigarettes. Cigarettes contain over 600 added ingredients to the normal tobacco leaves inside of them and are purposefully designed to be as addictive as possible.1 Cigarettes are bad for you. They’re incredibly damaging to your bodily health, and they are intentionally designed to be so. The research is there to show it, clear as day. But the research isn’t detailed on whether smoking cigars or pipes is bad for you, because the research that is there is bad. I don’t want to get into it too much, because I’m not a medical expert, or anything near a scientist, and I don’t want to claim to swim into deeper waters than I really can.

Almost all studies on cigar and pipe smoking involve former cigarette smokers, who inhale what they’re smoking. Most people who only smoke cigars and pipes simply puff what we smoke; we don’t inhale it, and if we do, it’s by mistake. And, there’s a significant portion of cigar and pipe smokers who didn’t just hop over from cigarettes, but who got into cigars and pipes for their own sake. Essentially, the majority of studies that have been done have bad sample populations. So whenever you see people claiming that cigar and pipe smoking have the same effects as cigarette smoking, take it with a healthy tablespoon of salt.

3) The Defense

People say that cigar and pipe smoking isn’t “healthy”. But what does “healthy” even mean? The modern world is incredibly rationalist and scientist in its thought, which isn’t always a good thing. All that matters, according to that philosophy, are the measurable material benefits or detriments of a certain thing, and depending on which outweighs the other is the one that we go for. But it was not always so. Nor is that actually how we live our lives.

The claim of the modern world narrows down the essence of what it means to be human to simply our body. This is a massive error that’s been addressed since Aristotle; we are body and soul. This hyper-concern with our body and its health in our society today is, in a way, a hyper-attack on an entire half of our human essence. The body is exalted above all else, and the soul goes by the wayside. Let’s look at some Aquinas.

First, let’s address the modern obsession with the health of the body. Aquinas says that actually,

“It is impossible for man’s happiness to consist in the goods of the body…for man’s being consists in soul and body…all goods of the body are ordained to the goods of the soul, as to their end. Consequently, happiness, which is man’s last end, cannot consist in goods of the body.”2

So while, obviously, bodily health is important, it’s not the only thing that we have to worry about. We can’t even enjoy the fact that we’re “healthy” except by way of having a soul, that is, an intellect and will, to recognize that we are healthy as opposed to unhealthy, and that we have chosen by some means to get to a state of “health”. So we have to factor in the good of the soul, too, which is, at some level, more important than the good of the body.

A note: I’m not saying that we are only souls and that we shouldn’t pay any mind to our bodies. We absolutely should. Hence, why I don’t advocate for something like a cigarette, which is maximally designed to damage your body. I’m saying that modern society overlooks the good of the soul for the sake of the body. :)

Let’s put some flesh on these philosophical ideas. We all live like this already, you just don’t realize it. For example, alcohol is a toxin. Strictly speaking, it’s not good for your body to consume alcohol. It can damage your liver, your brain cells, your sleep schedule, your cognitive function, and more. But we don’t see massive anti-drinking movements, unless I haven’t been paying attention. So why do we drink? To have a good time! To enjoy the company of a friend or celebrate some occasion, because enjoying a drink or two together and feeling our insecurities and inhibitions loosen up a little bit to engage more authentically with the world we’re interacting with. A partial, or a tangential, good of the body can be a vehicle for a good of the soul. When we get drunk that line has been crossed; it’s no longer good for the body because we get sick and have a hangover, and it’s no longer good for the soul because we can’t use our intellect or will properly.

So, if there’s more to health and goodness for humans than just bodily health, and if the good of the soul is actually more central to our good than mere bodily good, what’s one of the goods for the soul? We can extrapolate from the drinking example that authentic community is one good for the soul; remember Genesis 2:18,

Is that the highest good of the soul, though? Not according to Aristotle, who says that

“Contemplation is at once the highest form of activity, since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects with which the intellect deals are the highest things that can be known.”3

Slowing down, thinking, considering, and wondering: all things that rational and scientific modernity don’t talk about when it talks about our “health”. This contemplative action “surpasses all human delight…because spiritual delight is greater than bodily pleasure,”4 according to Aquinas. This contemplation doesn’t have to be rocket science; you can contemplate your day, the sunset, a piece of music, or any plethora of things. The basis of contemplation is just an act of slowing down and considering the meaning of the things in life.

Now that we’re done with a philosophy lesson, what in the world does this have to do with smoking? Well, if we hold that goods of the soul are more important than goods of the body, that authentic community is a good of the soul, and that contemplation is the highest good of the soul, then smoking a cigar or a pipe as a means to an end of reaching that space of authentic community or contemplation is a fairly defensible action.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes about smoking, coined by one of my best friends: “Cigars are for conversation, and pipes are for contemplation.” I’m not saying that smoking is the only way to access these goods of the soul. But I am saying that if you find yourself enjoying thinking and chatting about the deeper things in life over a cigar, a pipe, and even a pint, maybe you’re doing something that’s more “healthy” than the person who has secluded themselves in their body-positive health palace. Like I said at the beginning of this article, my aim isn’t to convince you that cigar and pipe smoking is an infallible good of human life; it’s just to point out that maybe there’s another way of looking at activities like this. Whether it’s drinking or smoking, or some other activity, just worrying about how it’s going to affect your body isn’t fully human. Ask how it’s going to affect your mind, heart, and soul as well.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go enjoy a smoke.

This leaves us with the seemingly eternal question of human existence: “Why?” Why does all of this happen? Why does all of this evil exist in the world? Anything from the large-scale evil of something like Nazi Germany, to the small-scale evil of a broken heart from love. All of these and everything in between nudges this existential question inside of us. Philosophers and theologians for millennia have been wrestling with it. Much more importantly, common people have been wrestling with it for millennia. Why does suffering exist, and, more importantly, in a post-Christian world, how could there be a good God who allows such suffering to exist?

There are lots of different answers throughout history. To knock the first one out of the way, which I think honestly is the easy way out; A good God who allows suffering cannot exist. That’s the easy answer. Don’t wrestle with how God could actually allow this to happen; simply throw your hands up and say that He must not exist. This solves nothing and, rightly so, leads people to hopelessness and despair. And, it gets us nowhere.

Moving on to an actual argument, St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, argues two main points:

1. We cannot and will not, this side of Heaven, understand why God allows evil and suffering. We just won’t fully grasp it.

2. The best answer we can come up with is that God only allows evil so that He might work a greater good from it. This, of course, climaxes in allowing the ultimate evil of Sin and Death in order to conquer it with Himself in Christ.

Now we’re getting somewhere. People often take refuge in the second answer, and rightly so. But humor me; for this article, let’s dive into the first one. That we just won’t understand it, and yet we still must believe that God is good. St. Thomas doesn’t take the easy way out here; if anything, he takes a more daring approach, I think. In this first point, he claims that God’s goodness doesn’t depend on our understanding and experienced reality; God’s goodness transcends our own thoughts, perceptions, and understandings of the world around us.

It’s precisely in this lack of understanding that we find true faith and dialogue with God. And it’s here that I want to dive into the great book of the wonder of suffering in the Bible, the book of Job.

If you’ve never read it, G.K. Chesterton wrote an incredible introduction to the Book of Job. It’s free online if you want to go look it up, but truly, it’s incredibly moving, and I think it captures the real essence of what Job is about. I’m using it in the background of my mind as I continue this article, because Chesterton points out the real meaning of the Book of Job. The Book of Job isn’t meant to be a historical text; it’s meant to be more meaningful than literal, which doesn’t at all take away from its validity as a text. If you want more about my thoughts on the power of a good story, check out the last article that I wrote.

Obviously, the Book of Job isn’t exactly the most “happy-go-lucky” book in the Bible. It’s pretty devastating and depressing, actually. Great Lent read. Job loses his property, his crops, his animals, and his children. Oh, and then he gets deathly sick and gets covered in boils. But what happens to him isn’t necessarily the point of the book. The crux of the Book of Job is not the pain or the event that caused the suffering; it’s actually the suffering itself, and how Job, or, more broadly, man, deals with it. Going back to Job 1, we see this clearly in Satan’s wager with God that Job is only faithful to God insofar as God blesses him; if God didn’t bless him, Job would curse God and abandon his faith. Isn’t this the heart of so much suffering in today’s world? Popular thought and opinion only trusts God and loves Him insomuch as He does x for them. Everyone loves John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son”, but a much smaller portion of the population loves Matthew 10:34-36,

So the heart of the question, then, is: how does one suffer well? We can all understand the suffering that we cause ourselves, and we’re ready to admit, for the most part, that we don’t always know the best way to go, and we make the wrong choice sometimes; this is a kind of consequential suffering. A much deeper question is how to put up with myself, and reality as a whole, for that matter, when I don’t know why I’m being hurt. This is a passive suffering, a suffering that simply happens to us. How do we wrestle with that suffering, specifically?

The Book of Job, for the most part, plays out a lot like a work of Plato. It’s a back-and-forth series of questions and statements about the definition of suffering, why suffering happens, and how one suffers well. Job’s “friends”, and I think that Job 2 is bold in calling them his friends, sit with him and try to identify the cause of his suffering. They keep coming back, time and time again, to the point that Job must have done something wrong, as God rewards the righteous and punishes the evildoers. And if He gives the evildoers anything, it’s only to take those things away from them in a grander fashion.

Chesterton’s Introduction to the Book of Job points out, rightly so, that these “friends” of Job’s, in an attempt to give some optimism to him, are really pessimists. They’re small-minded. They can’t fathom how God would act in any other way besides a simple reward-punishment system. They go back to the simple, easy option that we talked about earlier. God must be good and reward those who are good to Him, or else He couldn’t possibly be God. By their logic, Job has gotten what he deserved, and his despair and questioning of his suffering only go on to prove that he’s so unrighteous as to question God and deny his own culpability. They’re not the ones suffering, so they’re not in the wrong.

Job, on the other hand, Chesterton calls the “exasperated optimist.” Job fully, time and again, states that he believes that he hasn’t done anything wrong, and at the same time doesn’t doubt God or his goodness. He questions it, but he never doubts it. Instead of a mindset of “You have allowed this evil to happen to me, thus you are not good”, Job maintains a mindset of “You are good, and yet You allowed this to happen to me; why?”

This gets us to the fundamental question that we began with, the great “why?” of human existence. We’ve all, at one point or another, or perhaps at multiple points, found ourselves asking that question. Job never backs down from that question, and I don’t think we should either. For about 35 chapters, Job doesn’t back down from this question, and we’re wrapped in an intense discussion about it. And finally, in Chapter 38, God shows up to answer...with more questions?

Well, that seems fairly pointless, said younger me, his first experience reading Job, that’s about as anticlimactic as it can get. As I have since realized, if something seems strange in the Bible, it’s probably because you don’t understand what it’s saying, not that the Bible is wrong.

Chesterton hits the nail right on the head here by making the distinction that God’s questions are not like Job’s questions; Job’s questions are small, on an earthly scale, and God’s are infinitely bigger, on a cosmic scale. God shows that, however deep Job wonders at the meaning of suffering, there are infinitely more preposterous things to ponder in the world that He has made. Instead of asking why there is suffering, God asks in return why is there anything? But this isn’t something meant to rebuke and beat down Job; if it were, then it makes no sense that Job is then rewarded for withstanding his suffering at the end of the book.

God’s questions in return aren’t meant to be close-ended; they’re meant to be open-ended, to propel us beyond the question. If there is something rather than nothing, then maybe there’s something deeper and greater here than whatever evil I am facing, or that I observe in the world. Chesterton puts it perfectly,

So, the why of our suffering is a valid question to ask. But maybe, if we feel like God is silent in that suffering, we’re missing the point. Maybe we should be more astonished that God has done anything in the first place, and trust in that infinitely greater and deeper question. Even though we can only wonder at the meanings of our suffering, how much of a greater wonder is it to consider why God would make anything? Why did God make cool spring days, the smell of rain, sunrises, sunsets, Italian cappuccinos, beer, wine, bourbon, and this great Peterson pipe tobacco that I’m about to smoke after finishing this? Fill in those things with whatever you find most delightful in the world.

But maybe…just maybe…He did it all because He loves you, and He wanted you to enjoy existing. And that is deeper than suffering.

“Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring.” - G.K. Chesterton

Yours,

A Pilgrim.

So, following Chesterton, here’s why you should read more fiction.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love The Lord of the Rings. It’s my favorite book series, and it’s my favorite movie trilogy. It’s not just because it’s got beautiful cinematography, or a moving soundtrack, or incredible acting, or the incredible sets and scenes of the movies, or the incredible depth and detail of the books, or the incredible development of the characters. All of these things pertain to my love of these movies and books, accidentally, but it’s not the actual reason. I love The Lord of the Rings because it’s a great story, and a great story is powerful.

Now, as a brief aside, I do understand the irony in bringing up a movie series in an article that’s supposed to be about books. First, the movies are based on the books. Second, the book makes the same points as the movie, but the movie is easier to quote here. Third, yeah, I’m a bit of a hypocrite, but so what? We all are :).

Sometimes I think a great story encounters us, as opposed to us encountering it. What does that mean?

We humans, live as subjects in an objective world. There are events and experiences that objectively occur around us, which we encounter with our subjective view of the world. To simplify this so it doesn’t sound like I’m writing a philosophy book, picture me and you sitting at a table together. I set a cup down in the middle of the table. Let’s say it’s a cup with an image on it, and that image is facing me. Objectively, that cup has an image on its side, whether you like it or not. Subjectively, you might not be aware of that logo’s existence on the cup, because you can’t see it from your perspective. Typically, this is how the object-subject relationship works: the subject comes into contact with some objective reality, and the subject understands that objective reality in some unique personal way based on his or her experiences. Hopefully, I didn’t lose you there.

Every once in a while, though, when we encounter something truly moving and great, something different happens. Our subjective reality gets, in a sense, rearranged by the objective reality based on its terms, so that our own subjective perception is changed. A great example: do you remember the first song that rocked your world? That you didn’t just enjoy listening to, but that you legitimately felt in your bones, that spoke to your soul, and became a sort of expression of yourself? That’s the experience that I’m talking about, where our inner self encounters something outside of us that actually rearranges the way that we see the world. That’s what beautiful art does. That’s what truth does, when we hear it and really know it. And that’s what a good story does.

A good story brings something that’s objectively true to your subjective perception, and sometimes that truth is so powerful that you feel like you see the world differently after reading it. Now sometimes that’s in a negative sense: it teaches you a lesson of something you shouldn’t do or be. To take a simple example, the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” story teaches us some form of prudence and judgment in what we say, when we say it, and that our words have meaning. Now, while that is true of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf,” I’m not quite sure of anyone ever saying that that story encountered them in such a deep way internally that it rearranged their perception of the world. If you disagree, let me know.

So we’ve established that truth lies in stories, but what actually constitutes a good story? Or, better yet, a great one?

In The Lord of the Rings, there comes a point in the second book/movie where Frodo and Sam, two of the main characters, are at their wits’ end. They’ve spent all of their energy, Frodo carrying the One Ring, this physical embodiment of all evil and malice in the world, and Sam helping (and eventually carrying) Frodo, across Middle Earth. After a massive battle and a seeming dead end in their quest, Frodo almost kills Sam, overcome with the weight of evil around his neck in the Ring. As Frodo slumps back, seemingly having given up all hope for the quest, Sam launches into one of the most marvelous monologues ever written.

Sam makes the connection: he realizes that all those stories that have the most dire circumstances, when all hope seems lost, when everything seems at its end, then suddenly turn for the good, that is the greatness in a story. The great stories, the “ones that really mattered,” are the ones that pick your eyes up over the horizon to see hope, even if just a glimpse, in the midst of evil. That there’s an end to the dark cloud that you might feel like you’re under, no matter how painful or dreadful it may be. In the end, good wins. The Ring is destroyed, evil is defeated, and hope prevails.

If a great story is something that reminds us that there’s hope, that inspires us to keep pushing forward through the darkness, and that “a new day will come,” it is only because such a story is based on a great fact. Good has won, Evil will perish, and this shadow too shall pass, because Christ has defeated death and risen again to new Life. The Gospel message is no mere story; it is a fact, and by that fact, gives all the great stories something that, without it, would just make them wishful thinking. It gives them a truth to proclaim, in the midst of themselves, that actually exists in our life, not just in “Fairyland” or Middle Earth.

So, in closing, go encounter great stories. Go read a great book, something that proclaims hope, even through the most dire circumstances, because that hope is true. Learn from it, think about it in your own life, and put yourself in the shoes of these characters. Which ones do you like and relate to? Which ones don’t you like, because you relate to them? What scenes remind you of events in your own life? These are all things to consider when you engage a great story, so you can learn from what it teaches you. Finally, don’t pass great fiction by just because it’s fiction; in actuality, that fiction might actually be more true and factual than whatever “real” book you’re reading.

Yours Truly,

A Pilgrim.

We all naturally want to get out of ourselves and do something. I think this is easy to argue, just look at our experiences in life.1 Look at social media. We see different social initiatives all the time, raising awareness for one cause or another, and we share, send, repost, or put it on our story. Why? We want to go out of our way, even just a little bit, to show that we go out of our way for others. And we’re not just satisfied with doing it once either; there’s an endless amount of things in a year that we’ll share and repost, just to show others that we care, that we go out of our way, that we want to make life a little less easy, that we love something. I’m not saying this disparagingly, I think it’s a good step, really. A seed, if you will. But, there’s a truth there:

Love makes life less easy - less “grey.” And we, despite society’s best efforts sometimes, want to love the hard way.

I’m currently re-reading a book that I read a year ago and, admittedly, stuggled with: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov. Briefly, I will add that a second read through is going much better than the first, and I’d highly recommend the book. Early on in the book, there’s a scene outside of a Russian monastery, where the Elder of the monastery, Elder Zosima, is blessing and giving counsel to some of the locals who seek his holy advice. An exchange happens in this scene, regarding love, that I think sums up a lot of this “greyness” of the modern world. One of the characters, a widow, after saying that she struggles with faith, is told by the Elder that she can be conviced

That’s a bold claim. That the real conversion, is found through love, through stepping out of ourselves into the unease. Now, like we’ve just said, we all seemingly want to take steps of love towards others, but also only as long as we keep doing what we’re doing and love everyone around the world through these initiatives, through these movements, these posts, we’re doing a good job, and we’re loving as we should. Perhaps we’d relate to the widow’s response to the elder. She begins with talking about how much she loves humanity, that she dreams of loving humanity, of helping all, she says “No wounds, no festering sores could frighten me. I would bind them with my own hands.” All good so far. And then, a turn. She says, and I’m paraphrasing slighty,

That, I say, is the American culture of 2026. We love mankind in general. We love the initiatives for the homeless, the poor children in far off countries, the marginalized communities, and those suffering. That’s easy. A few button clicks, and we’ve changed the world. And yet, when that one family member who’s annoying comes to us looking for help, we turn them away, or receive them in a masked cynicism. When our friend keeps wanting to ask for advice on a certain struggle, we get frustrated with them and give them the shortest answers that we can to be rid of them sooner. When our coworkers keep making the same mistake over and over again, we complain to others and talk behind their backs. “Why are they troubling me, why can’t they figure it out, if only I didn’t have to put up with it” are questions we ask ourselves.

Now, important note: for those who don’t know me, I’m a devout Catholic, and not just a cynical 23 year-old. I write this just as much, and first of all, for me, and for you. :)

Love is to will the good of the other, for the sake of the other.2 This means that, regardless of inconvenience to us, we go out of our way for someone else, just for their sake. Not to get anything out of it. Just for someone else, in the particular. This is radical: there is a huge chasm between “love” towards general humanity, and loving those around us by going out of our way for them, for them. Instead of calling my friend just for the sake of conversation, for the sake of what I might get from him, I call him because I want to see how he is. To help him for his own sake. I might not get anything out of it, and that’s ok. We must shake ourselves out of loving in general, and take the infinite leap of discomfort into loving the individuals that are around us. As Christ shows in the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, the one whom we are called to love, our neighbor, might just be the person who we don’t feel so inclined to help, yet desperately needs it. This love gives color to the world, it gets us out of ourselves into a real, lived, life.

Wouldn’t it make more of a difference in the world if, instead of giving to a charity to benefit people with anxiety, we actually went to sit down with our anxious friend or family member? What if, instead of going to a fundraiser for people who are homeless or poor, we give the homeless guy on the side of the street a water bottle? What if, when you feel most annoyed by a parent, spouse, or significant other, and want to push them away, you do something for them anyways, for their sake? That is love.

And, I think, we long to do it. Something in our hearts longs to be the self-sacrificial hero for a cause. Who doesn’t love the story of some veteran who runs a marathon to raise money for disabled veterans? I’m sure we can think of plenty of stories like that from the news. These are good stories; truly. They inspire something good in us, and that is good. It’s almost like that desire was put there, something deep and primordial, something that we were almost made with. Where does this desire come from?

Fra Angelico, The Crucifixion.

Christ, the Son of the Living God, perfectly blameless, sinless, and totally good, gave His life for yours and mine, of his own will. He is The self-sacrificial for a cause; he sacrifices Himself for our cause, simply for our good. For the sake that we might be saved, and come to know Him, in the Trinity. As I’ve already said, our experience tells us that our hearts, deep down, want to give in love. So do it. Love Christ, and Love with Him. Love those around you in the particular. Instead of the easy sedation of the world and its easy, colorless love for general humanity, in Christ you will find the strength to love the individual. Real love. And doing this, you will find yourself. Just like Elder Zosima says, by active love, we will come to believe. I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes, from the Second Vatican Council,

Our supreme calling is Christ. And Christ loved with His entire being. Let’s follow Him.

Yours truly,

A poor sinner.