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The First and Final Say: James Finley, Thomas Merton, and the Love That Named You (Lectio Divina)
How could you ever come to know a love you didn’t put there yourself? James Finley, echoing Thomas Merton, suggests that even our attempts to pray are already evidence of something moving in us before we ever reach for it. This reflection sits inside that unsettling possibility — that we are not the ones…
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The Today That Never Ends: Christ, Our Eternal Jubilee (Lectio Divina)
The Jubilee promised freedom for a year — debts cancelled, captives released, land restored — and then it ran out, and the world’s ordinary bondage crept back in. St. Ambrose read something stranger in Christ’s proclamation of “the acceptable year of the Lord”: a day that never becomes tomorrow. What does it mean to…
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Grace Receiving Grace: John of the Cross and the Gift of Contemplation (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to receive the gift of contemplation — and why can we never force our way into it? Drawing on St. John of the Cross’s teaching that contemplation, the highest wisdom and language of God, can only be received in a spirit that is silent and detached from discursive knowledge and…