Friday, January 19, 20180200The Greek word scholē originally denoted a state of leisure or spare time, and gradually came to describe conversations held within a time free of specific duties. The word moved into Latin, and eventually was employed to define a group of people engaged in leisurely discussions, or even the place itself where those discussions were...
Thursday, December 14, 20170181
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
Sight is the most divine of our spiritual senses. In the beginning, “God saw all that He had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31), and the human being is created to image God (Genesis 1:26-27). Because we are the only beings created in the image and likeness of...
Friday, November 3, 20170131St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante are the most famous among the many theologians who have speculated about the nature of Heaven. While they certainly could not speak from personal experience while standing on this side of death, they rightly emphasized that our perpetual vision of God must be based on our capacity to receive that infinite...
Thursday, October 5, 20170140
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
October is the month of the Rosary in the Roman Catholic tradition. Dedication to this devotion, and in particular its faithful recitation in October, is due largely to the victory of the Catholic Western powers over the Ottoman Empire at the naval battle of Lepanto on Oct....
Wednesday, July 26, 20170200
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
My noble efforts at maintaining a tranquil, stoic temperament fail miserably whenever I hear one particular response to the topic of reading the Bible. It comes in several variations, but they all seize on a common theme—or excuse. “Reading the Bible? C’mon, dude. I...
Thursday, April 27, 20170199The basilica of San Clemente in Rome features a stunning apse mosaic depicting the cross of Christ as a tree trunk bearing immense fruit in the form of circling vines and flowers. The radiant colors and decorative forms make visible an idea cherished by the early theologians of the Church: that the cross is truly the tree of life, from...
Friday, March 31, 20170158
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
Among the myriad treasures of Sacred Scripture, one of the most neglected has to be the Letter to the Hebrews. It receives relatively little attention in the liturgy, and I imagine few people would be able to recall any recognizable theme or passage from the book. Many might...
Friday, March 3, 20170171Life can bear the stamp of a perpetual Lent for many people, believers and non-believers alike. The desert is the dominant symbol for the church’s annual preparation for Jesus’ Passion, death and resurrection, joining our meditations and mortifications to the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering and Jesus’ own 40 days of temptatio
Tuesday, January 10, 2017092For the philosophers among us, the question of why clothes both express and conceal some aspect of our body-soul unity would be an intriguing topic of secular conversation. From the theological point of view, garments are featured at some of the most crucial moments of salvation history narrated in the Bible. The feast of the Epiphany...
Wednesday, November 16, 20160251The designation of Christ as “King of the Universe” can sound a bit fantastic to a secular or cynical mind. The title, so simple in concept and yet audacious in claim, could easily be applied to a mythological hero or a comic book character, fictional greats who have seemingly usurped the role of models worthy of imitation by...
