James K.A. Smith (via Alan Jacobs):

When I suggest we need more Christian politics rather than less, I can imagine my secular progressive neighbor getting anxious, as if theocracy is around the corner. But in fact, the opposite is true. All should hope for a more Christian politics. What currently passes for Christian politics is a sub-Christian syncretism that prays to a vaguely moralistic god who plays favorites, a deity of our making whom we trot out to license nationalism and self-interest. This politics shows no signs of being disturbed by the cross, the ascension, or the eschaton. It is concerned only with winning, revenge, and resentment. In other words, our so-called Christian politics have been captivated by the liturgies of the earthly city rather than the city of God.

A more robust Christian political witness would be a gift to a pluralist society, even if it is also a prophetic challenge. Christian citizens will bring a life-giving imagination to our public life when they are nourished by Christian formation in the polis that is the church. Christians, of all people, should be the least inclined to treat temporal political allegiances as ultimate—which is precisely why we should resist demonizing our political adversaries. As O’Donovan provocatively puts it, “the most truly Christian state understands itself most thoroughly as ‘secular’”—not a godless, atheistic state but a politics that understands when we are, in the meantime of the saeculum.

This sort of eschatological orientation to time changes our expectations, not our goals. The work of public life—building institutions to organize and administer our shared life, collaborating to maintain libraries and economies—all of this is part of our creaturely calling to unpack and unfurl the possibilities of creation itself. That creaturely calling is renewed and directed by the cross and resurrection, and the biblical images of the kingdom of God in the prophetic texts are sketches of what flourishing looks like revealed by the One who made us.

Deus, qui beátum Ioánnem Henrícum, presbýterum, lumen benígnum tuum sequéntem pacem in Ecclésia tua inveníre contulísti, concéde propítius, ut, eius intercessióne et exémplo, ex umbris et imagínibus in plenitúdinem veritátis tuae perducámur.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.

A. Bartlett Giamatti:

It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

David Bentley Hart:

Ultimately, baseball’s philosophical grammar truly is Platonist, with all the transcendental elations that that implies. This is most obvious in the sheer purity of the game’s central action. In form, it is not a conflict between two teams over contested ground; in fact, the two sides never directly confront one another on the field, and there is no territory to be captured. Rather, in shape it is that most perfect of metaphysical figures: the closed circle. It repeats the great story told by every idealist metaphysics, European and Indian alike: the purifying odyssey of exitus and reditus, diastole and systole, departure from and ultimate return to an abiding principle.

What could be more obvious? The game is plainly an attempt to figure forth the “heavenly dance” within the realm of mutability. When play is in its full flow, the diamond becomes a place where the dark, sullen surface of matter is temporarily transformed into a gently luminous mirror of the “supercelestial mysteries.” Baseball is an instance of what the later Neoplatonists called “theurgy”: a mimetic or prophetic rite that summons (or invites) the divine graciously to descend from eternity and grant a glimpse of itself within time.

David French:

“Francis tells American Catholics to vote as their conscience dictates. John Paul II sees the individual conscience as a route to knowing God. To respect a person’s conscience isn’t to show weakness or embrace moral relativism. It’s to recognize that God is at work in all human hearts and that existential humility doesn’t contradict religious conviction.

It is a vital aspect of the Christian faith.”

1. Reckon from one of three fixed days in each month: Kalendae (Kalends), Nonae (Nones), Idus (Ides). The Kalends are always the first day of the month. In most months, the Nones are the fifth and the Ides are the 13th. In March, May, July, and October, the Nones are the seventh and the Ides are the 15th.
2. Always reckon days leading up to the Kalends, Nones, or Ides.
3. So, today (May 15, 2024) is the Ides of May, or in Latin: Idus Maiae [Idus is a fourth-declension plural feminine form.] Tomorrow, however, will be the 17th day before the June Kalends (counting, as the Romans did, inclusively).
4. The year, in Christian reckoning, is anno Domini (ablative of annus = “in the year”, genitive of Dominus “of our Lord”), and then the ordinal number for the year, i.e., bis millesimo vicesimo quarto or MMXXIV.
5. Full form of today (the May Ides): Id. Mai. A.D. MMXXIV (or, without abbreviations: Idus Maiae anno Domini MMXXIV, but use the ablative of Idus Maiae to indicate that something is happening, etc. “on the May Ides”, so Idibus Maiis.
6. Full form of tomorrow (17th day before the June Kalends): a.d. XVII Kal. Iun. A.D. MMXXIV (unabbreviated: ante diem septimum decimum Kalendas Iunias anno Domini bis millesimo vicesimo quarto)

https://buttondown.email/agbeer/archive/the-clarity-of-spiritual-beauty

A couple months ago, I started a new project, a website I call Daily Collection. The website displays the Latin Collect prayer for each day, and then the Gospel lection—hence daily collection. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there is an option to subscribe to receive daily posts in your inbox.

https://buttondown.email/agbeer/archive/the-facts-about-artifact/

https://buttondown.email/agbeer/archive/fighting-the-good-fight/