Archive for the 'Faith' Category
Posted by Eric (February 28, 2006 at 7:01 pm)
You’ve got to love a religion that has a feast called the “Sunday of Cheesefare.” Cheesefare Sunday—so called because it is the last day to eat cheese and other dairy products before the beginning of Great Lent—was the day before yesterday for most Eastern Catholics in the U.S. Other Eastern Catholics will celebrate Cheesefare Sunday next week, along with the Orthodox.
For Cheesfare Sunday I baked some four-cheese vegetarian calzones (no meat; we ate the last of that a week ago on Meatfare Sunday). The four cheeses were ricotta, parmasan, mozarella and pecorino, the last three of which I picked up at Trader Joe’s on Saturday. It was a mournful moment there in the dairy aisle, bidding farewell to my cheesy friends.
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Posted by Eric (February 22, 2006 at 5:02 pm)
I am (or was) an English major, which means I can take any two subjects, however remote they may appear to be, and weave them together into some kind of coherent thesis—or at least a thesis that will seem reasonably coherent for as long as it takes a graduate assistant to grade my paper. So today I’m going to link up those little Sudoku puzzles with divine revelation.
If the connection between the two is not already obvious to you—in other words, if you are not an English major—allow me to explain. (more…)
Posted by Eric (February 20, 2006 at 5:00 pm)
Yesterday I bought a small icon of St. Isaac of Syria. I didn’t know anything about St. Isaac, but I was impressed by the words on the scroll to which he was pointing:
This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it in vain pursuits.
Could there possibly be a sentiment more out of step with our times? It must have been a challenging statement in the seventh century as well, when St. Isaac lived, or he wouldn’t have bothered to say it.
We didn’t invent vain pursuits, but we’re the only culture since the late Roman Empire—which by Isaac’s time had passed away—to so devote our culture to them.
But I didn’t buy this icon in protest of contemporary culture, nor did I decide to write about it here to offer a social commentary. If such were my purpose, I would be missing St. Isaac’s point entirely; that would indeed be a vain pursuit. (more…)
Posted by Eric (July 7, 2005 at 12:00 pm)
I set up this blog a couple of months ago when the world was watching the final days of Pope John Paul II. I’d wanted to start a blog for years but never got around to it. I figured the opportunity to reflect on the life of John Paul and the personal influence he had on me as a young Catholic, an apostate, and finally as a “revert” was a good reason to start blogging. But I didn’t have the time then either.
Now I’m finally writing my first entry. We’ll see if I ever find the time for a second. But the inspiration for this one is the birth of my daughter, Mary Macrina. She is my fifth daughter in a row, after my two boys. We were expecting a boy. I was sure she would be a boy. I was praying for a boy. But God gave me another girl.
She’s adorable. I just spent most of the last hour holding her at the hospital, where her mother, my wife April, is recovering from the unexpected C-section required to deliver her. The honest truth is that I’m disappointed not to have a boy. I’m a little sad that my dream of my two sons—Nate (13) and Sam (11)—getting to play with and mentor a little brother will never be fulfilled; even if we were to have another boy these two would be teens by then.
But I am not disappointed that Mary Macrina is a girl. Does that make sense? I’m delighted that she is who she is—a sweet, adorable, calm, tiny little creature that God in his great mercy has deemed me worth to father.
May God grant her many years!
