Tony Woodlief | Author

God

Walking vices

From Anthony Esolen’s “Filthy Rich: The Unnoticed Gift of Trickle-Down Decadence:” “The poor teach us what our vices mean, because we have not the self-knowledge to see through the disguises we ourselves have given them. When we see the poor doing what we would not, let us not say, ‘There but for the grace of …

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The weeping Christ

From David Bentley Hart’s First Things article, “Tsunami and Theodicy,” rightly called once again to our attention, in light of recent disasters, by Civitate: “I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with …

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Hospital, not courtroom

“Did you commit sin? Enter the Church, repent for your sin, for here is the physician, not the judge. Here, one is not investigated; one receives remission of sins.”  (St. John Chrysostom)

On miracles

“A miracle is not the breaking of the laws of the fallen world, it is the re-establishment of the laws of the kingdom of God…”  (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer, p. 71-2)

Of God and Baal

The great division within man is rooted not in ideology or religion or tribe, but in darkness and death, counterposed against light and life, which comes not from man but is placed within him. The line separating dark from light is the battleground of the soul, and it runs, as Solzhenitsyn said, through the heart …

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Be it resolved

I read once that the historian’s admiration for authority affects his assessments of civilizations past — that oppressive regimes, with their monuments to state power, will draw his eye and his imagination more readily than a nation of citizen farmers. That’s probably true for most people; we can’t help but watch the parade’s prancing exhibition of the …

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Stumbling

You yearn for a holy place because, in the time between waking unable to recall where you are, and drifting again into the half-sleep that is all you’ve known for the longest time, you stand in the darkness of your sterile hotel room, peering into a mirror to see that you are nothing like what …

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Past the words

This weekend I lived at beautiful St. Fidelis Church, situated unexpectedly on the Kansas plains. Oddly enough, I never went inside the church proper, but I’m told there’s a large mural behind the altar, of Fidelis being butchered by Calvinists. It made me wonder how many people have been dispatched to the merciful arms of God …

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