The Waters of the Font
One of the things we do here at Sacred Beauty, our small Association of the Faithful, is the composing of liturgical music, drawn largely from sacred texts of the saints, fathers, and doctors of the Church, in the hopes of...
Author: V. J. Tarantino
A Moment of Remembrance
“I tried to shake him awake, but there was nothing. The child was stiff, blue, dark blue in color from the cold.” I read today in the New York Times of how Jumaa al-Batran, three weeks old, died of hypothermia overnight in his...
Reflection The Golden Nights of the O Antiphons, Part III
This final section of the O Antiphon literary meditation is the true destination, where the joy and hope are realized and the most beautiful citations from the saints are to be found. (Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.)...
The Golden Nights of the O Antiphons, Part II
The first installment of this literary meditation was posted on Tuesday; this second installment deals thematically with art and beauty, and with their true power. The conclusion, with its promised light and joy, will follow soon. As was the case with...
The Root of Jesse’s stem
A Brief Meditation on Today’s Mass Readings Today’s Gospel passage is nested in a literary configuring which itself tells a story: the first two chapters, alone among the pages of Luke, recall a genre specific to early Judaism, known as a...
The Golden Nights of the O Antiphons, Part I
[Author’s note: This piece explores, through the lens of my own experience, humanity’s need for salvation, with all our impulse to creativity and self-determining possibility for good or for ill. The piece requires patience, as it is not until the...
A Rainbow, an Arbiter of Peace — Sancta et Immaculata
Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a dogma the full implications of which are perhaps too little considered. From the first moment I heard it sung, I fell in love with the medieval chant Sancta et Immaculata, “Holy and Spotless...
A reflection on the Eschaton for the Last Day of the year
But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. — Matthew 24:36 A week or two ago, I received an email with a question from someone I deeply...
The Silent Voice of Being: Dilexit Nos and Modern Philosophy
[Author’s note: The following post, especially the first half, is more technical and challenging than my previous posts on this site. I do find this material exceptionally important, and I believe that persistence in reading will be rewarded with a...
The Wounded Stag
The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is one of my favorites on the entire calendar. This feast, generally (and rightly) seen as ecclesial in its meaning, bears a mystical and eschatological significance which strikes me yet more...
Dilexit Nos: The Heart of God
In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis reinforces the Church’s conviction that the central axis of the cosmos is a heart at once human and divine. This wisdom, already present in two earlier encyclicals on the Sacred Heart (Pius XI’s Miserentissimus Redemptor and Pius XII’s Haurietis...
Dilexit Nos: A revolution of tenderness
In this truly beautiful encyclical, Pope Francis offers the theology specific to the “revolution of tenderness” for which he has so often and so insistently called. In one sense, I see contemplation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the...
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