The Nature of Marital Happiness in “Pride & Prejudice”

By |2023-07-18T13:06:45-05:00July 23rd, 2019|Categories: Character, Great Books, Happiness, Jane Austen, Literature, Marriage|

In “Pride and Prejudice,” Elizabeth Bennet is vehement that the character of the person must be determined in order to make a good choice. While spouses may change over time in superficial ways, the essentials remain constant. While one may hope for the conversion of a scoundrel or a fool, it is not worth banking [...]

Saving Our Souls by Rejecting Technology

By |2023-08-22T19:14:40-05:00June 4th, 2019|Categories: Community, Culture, Happiness, Wisdom|

Alas, we can’t un-invent digital technology. Pandora’s box can’t be closed once it’s opened. The 20th century gave rise to no end of technologies that mankind has come to acknowledge as absolutely evil and yet that we can’t eradicate completely. For those brave and willing few, however, I urge you to join me in taking [...]

Euripides’ Advice to Us About Change

By |2019-09-10T11:57:38-05:00April 2nd, 2019|Categories: Happiness, Imagination, Letters From Dante Series, Louis Markos, Senior Contributors, Tragedy, Wisdom|

Our lives are marked by reversals and recognitions for which we are rarely prepared. That change will come is certain, whether on the stage or in your home. The only question is how you will receive it when it comes. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, [...]

The Explorer and the Cardinal: Two Views on Silence

By |2019-03-02T15:29:17-06:00March 2nd, 2019|Categories: Books, Christian Living, Happiness, Michael De Sapio, Modernity, Senior Contributors, Wisdom|

Solitude takes us out to deep and spacious waters where we see that silence is one of our greatest gifts and blessings, in which we discover not only ourselves but God as well. It’s striking the number of books coming out recently on the subject of silence; it must be a felt need in our [...]

A Postcard From Venice

By |2019-11-21T11:47:42-06:00February 20th, 2019|Categories: Culture, Europe, Happiness, Heaven, Joseph Mussomeli, Love, Senior Contributors|

I had always thought it nonsense to believe in love at first sight. But that sophomoric conceit sank with that setting sun over the Venetian church spires that summer day in 1973. And with it was washed away that companion conceit that falling in love was something that could only happen between two humans… The [...]

Music and the Education of the Christian Soul

By |2023-07-27T22:41:56-05:00January 5th, 2019|Categories: Antonio Vivaldi, Audio/Video, Beauty, Christianity, Culture, Happiness, Heaven, Mother of God, Music, Sainthood|

In a world ringing with noise and suffused with the more or less artful idolizing of passions divorced from objective goods, where are we to find melodies capable of penetrating our hardened hearts with spiritual truths? In Plato’s Republic, Socrates leads a group of ambitious young Athenians on a search for the best way of [...]

On the Meaning of “Be Yourself”

By |2022-07-18T20:12:53-05:00January 4th, 2019|Categories: Culture, Happiness, Modernity, Philosophy, Virtue, Wisdom|

It may seem paradoxical to find out that one of the great clarion calls of individuality, modernism, and liberality—“Be yourself”—turns out to be a profound declaration of classical ethics. “Stay true. Be you.” “Stay true to yourself.” “Be who you are.” “Just be yourself.” “You do you.” These slogans are part of the fundamental fabric [...]

The Steam Bath Gathering

By |2018-12-07T09:24:27-06:00December 6th, 2018|Categories: Community, Compassion, Happiness, Hope, Wisdom|

How is it possible to feel happy and sad at the same time? Recently I tasted that bittersweetness as I walked the campus of a college I attended almost 30 years ago. The landmarks of warm memories were still there: majestic buildings, the elegant gym, the cozy dining hall. Then I came to a place [...]

The Fisher-Price God: A Call to Childlike Play

By |2019-08-15T12:51:19-05:00October 20th, 2018|Categories: Christian Living, Happiness, Josef Pieper, Philosophy, Wisdom|

Play is a deeply spiritual activity because play is primarily about community. The joy present between two that are playing together is a shared joy. It is neither the possession of one nor the other… But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task To prune these growing Plants, and [...]

Finding Refreshment in a World of Endless Work

By |2019-09-02T10:09:17-05:00October 3rd, 2018|Categories: Happiness, Information Age, Josef Pieper, Labor/Work|

It only took a moment. The smartphone was somewhere in the grass, forgotten. Our hands and jeans were covered in smears of purple and green sidewalk chalk. My two-year-old daughter and I were busy drawing roads and buildings on a square of pavement—here a library, there a post office, with our house around the corner. [...]

Our Unknown Neighbors & the Fate of Community

By |2019-07-23T12:51:09-05:00September 27th, 2018|Categories: Community, Friendship, Happiness, Social Institutions|

The last Saturday morning in August, my wife noticed that some of our neighbors had a moving truck outside their home. After watching with the kids for a minute or two, she acknowledged that she had never seen the people before. I recognized the man, though I had never spoken to him—he seemed to purposefully [...]

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