MY RELATIONSHIP with Catholic novelist Walker Percy has been evolving during the last few years. At the end of a course last semester at St. John’s University, I gave an assignment to students that they had to read one of three novels by Walker Percy and write a reflection on what they read. The essays were quite good and actually led me to admire even more a writer whom I had already admired so much that I had written a book about him.
Arts and Culture
Fr. Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University and the author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).
A New Level of Freedom
While reflecting on God’s wonderful gift of freedom to us in my last series of columns, I was reading with the students in my class on personalism at St. John’s University the book by Seymour Cain, “Gabriel Marcel.” Except for Thomas Aquinas, my favorite philosopher is Marcel. When as a young priest I first came upon Marcel’s philosophy, I was stunned by its depth and beauty.
The Direction of Life
In writing these five columns about the mystery of human freedom, the marvelous mystery that God has given us along with our existence as persons, I have intended to encourage awe and wonder at God’s love for us, a love that we will never comprehend completely. Because we are free, we can say “yes” to God’s self gift and offer ourselves back to God. St. John of the Cross expressed our destiny perfectly: ”In the evening of our lives we will be judged on how we have loved.”
Life Commitments and Freedom
I believe that the more of oneself that one offers in a free action, the more free someone becomes.
Called To Be Free
Third in a series WHAT HAS BEEN on my mind as I have been writing this series of columns about freedom is that freedom is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. If we study the evolutionary process leading up to the appearance of human beings, we do not find freedom. When human beings appear, […]
More on Freedom
Ever since I began reading existentialist thinkers when I started teaching at a four year college seminary many years ago, the mystery of freedom has fascinated me.
Resurrection – Making All Things New
Writing this series of columns based on the insights that Father Ronald Rolheiser has offered in his “The Passion and the Cross” (Franciscan Media, 2015) has been a wonderful experience for me. I feel as though I have just taken a course in theology. Better, I feel as though I have just taken a course in Christian spirituality.
A Moral Union
There is a section of Ronald Rolheiser’s The Passion and the Cross (Franciscan Media, 2015, pp. 112) that I have returned to several times. What Rolheiser has written in this section I think is very important but I have never encountered the ideas the way he has expressed them. He is writing about what he refers to as moral loneliness and moral union. I think what he is referring to is what I would call the deepest center of the self.
Jesus Redeemed Us: He Did Not Rescue Us
Fourth in Lenten SeriesRE-READING “The Passion and the Cross” (Franciscan Media, 2015) by Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., I find that insights into the Christian mystery seem to leap off the page at me. Reflecting on this book and writing this Lenten series has been a grace in my life. If the series moves readers to pick up Father Rolheiser’s book, then I will judge the series a success.
The Cross and God’s Unconditional Love
Before sitting down at my computer to write this particular column, I re-read a section of Father Ronald Rolheiser’s book, “The Passion and the Cross” (Franciscan Media, 2015). One reason was that I wanted to make sure that I understood what Father Rolheiser was saying. The other was that the section so beautifully presented the meaning of God that I wanted to savor it and use it as an antidote to the unfortunate images of God that I have received at different times in my life.