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/

Several months ago I was contacted by a writer working on a piece about Catholic Great Books schools. My answers didn’t make the cut for the piece—possibly because I sent them too late. Not having anywhere else to send them, I post them here:

Why study the Great Books? Don’t more modern books have more to say to contemporary readers?

I like the answer Prof. Alan Jacobs gives in his recent book, Breaking Bread with the Dead. Studying great works of art is “our chief means of breaking bread with the dead”. That’s a quote from the poet W. H. Auden. The full quote, from a lecture Auden gave in 1967, goes: “Let us remember that though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.” Studying great books is valuable because it makes us companions to the dead. It introduces us to their company. And sharing company with the dead enlarges us as human beings. It enables us to live a more complete, more generous, more humane kind of life. It also makes us more resistant to the blooming and buzzing confusion of present ephemera. We find a secure standpoint. We can take a broader view. We can stop, and think.

What is it about Christendom College’s Great Books program that speaks to this?

I can see why you might call our college a great books program—we certainly have a lot in common with such programs—but I like to say that we’re a Catholic—Liberal Arts—College—and that each of those three elements is important.

First, being Catholic means enjoying a special kind of membership—in the sense of being a member of a body. Being a Catholic, or simply a Christian, is to be a member of the Mystical Body of Christ—a communion that transcends the bounds of time and space and so already realizes the kind of communion with the dead that makes a fully human life possible.

But we are a special kind of Christian community. We’re different in important ways from a parish church or religious community. St. Paul writes to the Philippians: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Think about these things. Thinking about what is true, honorable, just, etc. is the special vocation of a Christian liberal arts college. But to carry out that vocation, we need help—not just from teachers and colleagues, but from the dead who lived this same kind of life before us. The life of liberal learning is deeply traditional. But we should remember that tradition means “to hand on”. We first receive ways of thinking about what it means to be a human being—these are the different liberal arts—and by pursuing those ways of thought with others, we hand on what we have received. And so, St. Paul continues to the Philippians: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Finally, we are a college. Our entire focus is upon the education of young men and women seeking a bachelor’s degree in a particular liberal art, while completing a core curriculum that introduces them to the diversity and unity of the various forms of liberal learning—the various ways of breaking bread with the dead. Every member of our body is engaged in this common pursuit. We are a company of fellow learners engaged in a distinctive kind of communion with the dead—and moved by the good hope that someday others will likewise seek our company.

Josef Pieper:

What matters to us, beyond mere existence, is the explicit confirmation: It is good that you exist; how wonderful that you are! In other words, what we need over and above sheer existence is: to be loved by another person. That is an astonishing fact when we consider it closely. Being created by God actually does not suffice, it would seem; the fact of creation needs continuation and perfection by the creative power of human love.

On Love (in Faith, Hope, Love, Ignatius, p. 174)