The One With All the Links

The Rector’s Digest 2023:01
14 July 2023
Feria

Greetings from a steamy NYC!

Wow — It’s been a minute since I’ve posted on here! And it’s not that I don’t think about it — I do. I keep a running list of things to share on this site, but I’m not meticulous in planning to sit down and write, so somehow I never quite get around to it. Hopefully I’ll do better in the months to come. But in the meantime, this is a Digest of stuff that’s captured my imagination of late, so I just need to dump the queue of links I’ve been saving to share with you folks. Let’s let this installment just be that. Here goes!

• My favorite writer died last month. Rest easy, Cormac. Just yesterday, a friend asked me “Was McCarthy a Christian?” and I said “I can’t say that he was” (although he was baptized Roman Catholic, and the baptismal waters are mighty, indeed). Here’s the Hedgehog Review’s reflection on his work. Regardless of what you may think of the man, he was my Hemingway, and I see God peering ’round the edge of every page he writes. As J. C. Scharl wrote for the Acton Institute: McCarthy’s “world is truly God-haunted: haunted by the ghost of God, God the Creator, God the Judge, God the Victim.”
• I’ve been reading a lot for work of late — you know, churchy stuff. Being summer and all, it seems I should read something fun, and I’m finally picking up Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s been on my shelf for ages, following me from Boston to Nashville to New York, silently judging me for neglecting it, but a while back I read this post by Alan Jacobs (currently in my top 5 of people I’ve never met that I’d like to have drinks and dinner with) that re-piqued my interest. I love Alan’s piece because not only does it critique the eschatological idea of the “Rapture,” an idea I once endorsed but no longer do after my time at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, but it also calls all Christians to practice “repair.”
• If you’re around me much at all, you’ll hear me say St. Mary’s, where I’m currently serving, “deploys beauty” to better love and serve New York City. I’ve been on this kick for a few years now, and I’m deeply indebted to the work of Bishop Robert Barron, Makoto Fujimura, and many, many others. In support of a dream of deploying beautify to Christify the world, I’ve been delighted to discover my friend Fr. Wesley’s podcast series on beauty, as well as these pieces that came across my desk recently:
  • The Trinity Forum conversation with Makoto Fujimura and Dana Gioia, “Can Beauty Save the World?”
  • The Being Known Podcast is starting a mini-series on “Confessional Communities: Forming Outposts of Beauty and Goodness”. How wonderful to dream about how we can “practice for the New Jerusalem” in Times Square!
  • And something from close to home — Dr. Dennis Raverty, associate professor of art history at New Jersey City University, recently published an article in the July 9 issue of The Living Church entitled “The Quiet Alchemy of the Ordinary,” which discusses Rheingold by G. Roland Biermann, an art exhibit on display at Saint Mary’s through mid-October. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop in and see it!

So that’s it for this installment. Back with a theme next time, I hope. In the meantime, I pray you have a blessed month of July, and I’ll leave you with some words from the pen of Rev. Sebastian White, O.P., Editor-in-Chief of Magnificat, a monthly booklet I get as a guide to daily prayer and the mass. Reflecting on these lines from poet George Meredith:

Blue July, bright July,

Month of storms and gorgeous blue;

Violet lightnings o’er thy sky,

Heavy falls of drenching dew.

he writes:

This month, amidst whatever sufferings and challenges we may be facing — the storms and lightnings and drenchings life may have thrown at us — we recall that even the brightest and most gorgeous blue sky of a perfect summer day is merely a hint of the glory of heaven — a day of infinite beauty that will know no end.

Amen, Brother Sebastian.

Blessings to you from the Rectory in Times Square —