My initial encounter with the 17th-century Spanish painter Juan de Valdés Leal’s Pietà came at an auspicious moment in my spiritual journey. After having...
Art
My junior year of college, a friend of mine decided to change his major from biology to theater and pursue a strong nagging desire to become an actor. When he...
When I was little, I was very shy. Once I went with my cousin Kathy to her friend Linda’s house. We knocked and walked into the kitchen, where Linda’s mother...
Kelly Latimore first started painting icons while living with the Common Friars, an Ohio-based intentional community whose concern for the earth has been...
The first biography of St. Francis of Assisi, written by fellow friar Thomas of Celano, recounts an event in the Italian town of Greccio in 1223 that continues...
“In the beginning was the Word,” wrote St John. “He is the image [ikon in Greek] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” wrote St. Paul. We meet...
I remember the following from the life of 14-year-old me: A search for something larger and more meaningful than the place and time I occupied A voice that...
When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440 in Germany, everything changed. For the first time, words didn’t have to be meticulously hand...
The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World begins by underscoring the church’s humanity and empathy: “The joys...
On a mild December evening in 2015, a red pickup truck inched past an Islamic center in Philadelphia, just as the city was giving way to darkness. On its...
