Good morning, Digital Neighbors! Blessed Sunday and Resurrection Day to you, fellow disciples of Jesus the Christ. While every day is grounded in gratitude and watered in hope, Sunday is especially the day of fruitful praise and heartfelt love for the unmerited gift of it all—the unmerited gift of life, the unmerited gift of mercy, and the unmerited gift of Redemption. This does not mean total passivity on our part. We begin with contrition and then live the life of discipleship—not in order to earn the gift of Redemption, but as those who have received it, treasured it, and are being transformed by it.
After a week of proverbs, it seems fitting to turn to a reflection on wisdom. I have been fascinated by Malcolm Guite ever since he was interviewed by Matt Fradd on Pints with Aquinas. He was unknown to me at the time, but his vibrant, imaginative, and joyful faith is intoxicating. Who doesn’t love discovering more wonder and awe, more surprise and delight in life? It can happen on its own, of course, but when we encounter someone whose eyes and heart are already attuned to it, a whole torrent of enchantment and wonder is unlocked.
This morning’s reflection comes from Malcolm Guite’s Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year. “O Sapientia” (O Wisdom) is the first in his sequence of seven sonnets responding to the traditional “O Antiphons” (the Great Antiphons) of Advent—those ancient liturgical prayers used in the final days before Christmas. Blessed Sunday dear neighbors!
I cannot think unless I have been thought,
Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.
I cannot teach except as I am taught,
Or break the bread except as I am broken.
O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,
O Light within the light by which I see,
O Word beneath the words with which I speak,
O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,
O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,
O Memory of time, reminding me,
My Ground of Being, always grounding me,
My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,
Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,
Come to me now, disguised as everything.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
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The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
