What can great works of art teach us? How do they speak of the joys and trials of our everyday lives?
There is so much to recommend about Giuseppe Mazzotta’s Yale course on Dante in Translation that it’s difficult to know where to start. So, why not start at the beginning?
In the opening chapter of Mazzotta’s Reading Dante, a revised transcript of the lecture series, he traces a vision of Dante’s masterpiece as a kind of encyclopaedia, or ‘circle of knowledge’, that follows the path of a human life.
A photograph of me taken in Switzerland, June 2017. Photograph: Jennifer Whitney.
On this day in 2017 I had a conversion experience that changed my life. I was listening to a consultant during a routine cardiology appointment when suddenly everything came into the sharpest focus. In one powerful, convicting moment, I knew I was no longer an atheist. I was a Christian.
St Patrick’s, Soho, London. Photograph: Rhys Tranter
On Saturday, I took a train to London to attend Summit 2026 at St Patrick’s church in Soho. Centred around the theme of Freedom of Heart: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life, the day offered a rich lineup of talks, reflections, and Q&As across topics like hope, inner freedom, and applying spiritual principles to active life in the world.
The plenary speakers began the day with two morning presentations. We heard from Bishop Erik Varden—who recently delivered the Lenten Spiritual Exercises for Pope Leo XIV in Rome—and Fr Jacques Philippe, a cheerful, popular author of books on prayer who draws deeply from the Carmelite tradition. Among the afternoon sessions were talks by two sharp and energetic Dominican nuns, Sr Carino Hodder and Sr Lucy Cahill, whose candid approach to the Rule of St Augustine was entertaining and inspiring. Archbishop Richard Moth was also in attendance for part of the day.
Today the Vatican has published Magnifica Humanitas, the first Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIV.
It has been released on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which was a rallying call to safeguard human dignity at the height of Industrial Revolution.
The new document calls for a careful and prudent approach to our current digital revolution in order to “safeguard the human person in the time of artificial intelligence”:
Even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history.
In a conversation that touches on a range of contemporary political topics, Joseph Tulloch talks to scholar James K. A. Smith about the enduring influence of St Augustine as a theologian and philosopher.
Towards the end of their time together, Tulloch asks Smith, who shares an alma mater with Pope Leo XIV, what kind of influence Villanova University may have had on their thinking:
“It is precisely this German and French milieu that kept returning to the thought of Saint Augustine in the 20th century. I mean, it’s fascinating. People like Heidegger, Camus, Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard – the last three of whom, by the way, are all connected to Algeria in some way. Born in Algeria or working there as adults, they became intellectual stars in France in the middle of the 20th century, and they all had occasion to return to the thought of Saint Augustine. So that is the philosophical milieu which would have shaped part of Pope Leo’s training.”
Fr John Nepil, To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. Photograph: Rhys Tranter
Taken from Fr John Nepil‘s To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail:
“Creation felt symphonic Everything from the wildflowers below to the stratus clouds above spoke of order and design. The ancients had a word for this-one that would in time become intensely meaningful for Christians. They called it logos.
Some words are impossible to translate and logos is to be counted among them. Polyvalent in its essence, logos can be defined as ‘word, speech, discourse, thought, reason, and meaning’. Rooted in the verb legein (‘to gather, bind, link, or unite’), logos was employed by the Greeks to describe the unifying link of all creation. First described by Heraclitus around 500 b.c., logos was more than a principle of unity; it was the idea upon which the wise man lived. Plato would develop this intuition of logos as the mind, distinguishing it as the agent of creation that he called the demiurge. Stoic philosophers such as Cleante and Seneca saw in it the harmony of the universe, governed by the divine spirit. And at the end of the pre-Christian era, the great Jewish philosopher Philo would see the logos as the first power emanating from God, calling it ‘the bond of the universe’.”
While packing for a trip I pick up an old book I haven’t read for a long time. It’s a 1976 edition of Henri Nouwen’s The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery.
It documents a sabbatical year that the Dutch-born priest and teacher spent at the Cistercian Trappist Abbey of Genesee on New York State, immersing himself in a life of silence, prayer, and manual labour.
The book is enjoyable for its many humorous observations about Nouwen’s daily life, and also for its psychological clarity on the issues he struggles with in this environment.
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