Happy New Year! As has been my practice for over 17 years, today is the day I take to reflect on the past year of reading, list my favorite books of the year, and look forward to the year ahead.

As I look back on 2025, I see a change in my reading habits due to two separate factors. First, I made the deliberate decision to move away from an annual reading goal based on number of books read, and instead began a more intentional focus on reading more slowly and deeply. This is part of a larger goal to live a more contemplative lifestyle, savoring the present moment and appreciating things in more detail. In other words, to live more deeply and less hastily. In the case of reading, what this means is summarized beautifully by Mortimer Adler: “It’s not how many books you get through, it’s how many books get through you.” As 2026 begins, I will not be making an annual goal on Goodreads to finish a certain number of books. In fact, I will not be using Goodreads anymore to track reading progress or books read. For years I have used both Goodreads and LibraryThing, and I have decided to simplify things by only using LibraryThing. In April I will be celebrating my 20th year using LibraryThing to catalog my books, and it has everything I need to organize my reading life. So, farewell Goodreads and the self-imposed pressure of trying to read a certain number of books per year.

The second factor that had an impact on my reading was a major job change. After seven years as a school administrator, I have returned to the classroom as a high school theology teacher. I love teaching, and it is so fulfilling to be back in the classroom in direct contact with students. The transition, however, has required a lot of preparation outside of the school day, and this has heavily impacted my available time for reading. But I am confident that as I move through the rest of the school year the impact will decrease and I will once again have the time I need for the kind of deep reading that is so crucial to my well being.

Even with those two changes in my reading in 2025, I still had a very productive year. According to LibraryThing, I read over 9,000 pages, which averaged out to 25 pages per day. That gives me a good sense of how much time to carve out each day in order to prioritize reading. And when I look back on the books I read in 2025, I wasn’t disappointed in their ability to inspire, inform, and transform.

Favorite Reads of 2025

When compiling my list of favorite reads, I primarily consider those books that moved me the most in this particular year, rather than which ones I think are of the highest quality. The two criteria often intersect, but not always. With that in mind, here are my top ten books of the year:

1. Roots by Alex Haley
2. Metamorphoses by Ovid
3. Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls
4. He Leadeth Me by Walter J. Ciszek
5. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
6. The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. King Henry V by William Shakespeare
9. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
10. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Looking Ahead to 2026 – The Year of Tolstoy

I am very excited for the coming year in reading. I am calling 2026 the Year of Tolstoy. A few years ago I hosted the War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-Along, and since then I have wanted to delve more deeply into Tolstoy’s body of work. That’s one of the reasons that I am hosting the 2026 Leo Tolstoy Chapter-a-Day Read-Along, featuring the books Anna Karenina and Resurrection. I look forward to savoring these books slowly, taking them one chapter a day. But that’s only the beginning. In addition to the read-along, I will also be reading the following by Tolstoy:

• A Calendar of Wisdom: This is a sort of daily devotional edited by Tolstoy that collects “the wisdom of the centuries in one book.” In his introduction to the English translation of the book, Peter Sekirin writes, “It was [Tolstoy’s] own favorite everyday reading book, a book he would turn to regularly for the rest of his life.” Each day it features several quotes by the world’s most profound thinkers, organized around a particular theme, and which includes commentary by Tolstoy. I will be reading this book daily in 2026 in parallel with Anna Karenina and Resurrection. If you’re curious about its contents, check out the online version created by Rory Flint.
• What Is Art?: I have just started this book that Tolstoy wrote in 1897, one of his last works. In it, I hope to better understand Tolstoy’s own view of art and how it might shed light on his other works.
• Collected Shorter Fiction in 2 Volumes: This boxed set from Everyman’s Library contains most of Tolstoy’s short stories and novellas. Notable stories include “God Sees the Truth, but Waits,” “What Men Live By,” “Where Love is, God is,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” and “Hadji Murad.”

In addition to the Year of Tolstoy, I am also looking forward to participating as much as possible in the Hardcore Literature Bookclub schedule of books for 2026, especially the following:

• Ancient Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
• The Idiot by Dostoyevski – Should make for interesting comparison to Tolstoy
• The poetry of William Blake
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• The Bhagavad Gita – Especially interesting to me because of Thoreau’s interest in it
• Volumes One and Two of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
• Confessions by St. Augustine
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Beowulf
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• The annual secret Dickens novel

This is an ambitious list, and I may not get to all of these, but these are the titles I am most interested in.

Finally, I am aiming for a slight change in the format of the books I read. I am going to experiment with reading more of my Everyman’s Library and Britannica Great Books of the Western World volumes this year, rather than trade paperback editions like Penguin Classics. I will also be mixing in some Kindle editions, too, to see how that affects my goal to read slowly and deeply.

I hope 2025 was a good reading year for you and I wish you a Happy New Reading Year, along with many blessings to you and your family!

Today is Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday.
We light the rose colored candle.
We hear words like rejoice and be glad.

And yet, maybe many of us arrive here a little tired.
Advent days are dark. The world is loud.
This season that’s supposed to be joyful
is often when things feel the heaviest, the most stressful.

Which makes today’s readings comforting.
Because every one of them speaks to us right where we are.
Not to people who have it all figured out,
not to people whose lives are all put together and perfect;
but to people who are waiting, struggling,
and wondering how God really is at work in our lives.

Isaiah is speaking to a weary people in exile
who have been disappointed too many times.
The Israelites are in Babylon,
uprooted from their homes,
900 miles away from the Promised Land,
wondering why this is happening to them.

James writes to a suffering community under strain,
and says—not “be cheerful,” but be patient.

And John the Baptist, Advent’s great prophet,
is sitting in prison with time to think—and doubt.
John sends messengers to Jesus with a very human question:
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

This is not a casual question.
This is the question of someone who worked tirelessly for God—
and now finds himself imprisoned,
and unsure of what has happened to him.
And I think that’s where many of us live,
as we look at the events of our lives.

There’s an old story that captures this experience perfectly.
It’s something I use with my freshman Old Testament classes,
and it goes like this:

There once was a wise old farmer who owned a horse.
That horse was his entire livelihood.
One day, the horse escaped its corral and fled into the hills.
“Bad news,” his neighbors said.
“Bad news, good news—who can say?” the wise old farmer replied.
The next day, the horse returned, leading back ten wild horses.
“Good news!” the neighbors said.
“Good news, bad news—who can say?” the wise old farmer replied.
The next day, the farmer’s son was thrown by one of the wild horses,
and broke his leg.
“Bad news!” the neighbors said.
“Bad news, good news—who can say?” the wise old farmer replied.
The next day an enemy attacked the village
and took away all the able-bodied men.
The old farmer’s injured son was left behind.
This time the neighbors said nothing.

This story reminds us that we don’t see the whole arc of our life
as we’re living it,
and we do not know how everything turns out.

The Advent Scriptures are full of these moments.
Think about Zechariah, who hears from an angel
that he and Elizabeth will have a child in their old age. Good news!
But then he is struck mute. Bad news.

Or think of Joseph, excited about his engagement to Mary. Good news!
Then he hears that she is pregnant.
Bad news.
Then he finds out that she has been chosen as mother of the Messiah.
Good news!

John the Baptist himself is in a similar situation today.
He has prepared the way for the Messiah.
He preached courageously. He baptized Jesus. Good news!
And where does that faithfulness lead him?
A prison cell. Bad news.

From there, John asks himself:
Did I misunderstand the story?
Did I think this was good news,
only to have it turn out to be bad news?
He can’t say.
He recognizes that he does not have the perspective
to know how this will all turn out.
So he turns to Jesus and asks him,
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
Jesus doesn’t answer John with explanations, but offers signs:
The blind regain sight.
The lame walk.
The poor hear good news.

In other words: yes, God is working—
but not according to our timelines
or our expectations.
Good news, bad news—who can say?

That’s also what the letter of James says to us today:
“Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.”
Patient doesn’t mean passive.
It means trusting that God is at work even when outcomes are unclear.
Patience says, “I don’t yet know what this will mean.”
Patience says, “I will not rush to despair—or false certainty.”

That’s deeply countercultural.
We live in a world that demands instant judgments and quick conclusions.
Advent trains us differently.
It teaches us how to live in the middle.
In the space where we don’t yet know
whether something will turn out the way we hoped—or not at all.
In the space where faith is less about answers and more about trust.

This is why Gaudete Sunday matters.
We rejoice—not because everything is resolved—
but because God is faithful in our unresolved places.
The prophet Isaiah doesn’t promise immediate relief.
He promises strength for feeble hands and firmness for knocking knees.
He promises that God comes—not always quickly, but always truly.

Some of us, maybe most of us,
are carrying questions this Advent that have no quick answers.
We’re waiting for clarity.
We’re waiting for healing.
We’re waiting for reconciliation.
We’re waiting for something to make sense.
And the wisdom of Scripture today is very gentle, but very clear.

It says: Stay awake. Stay faithful. Stay patient.
God’s story with you is not finished yet.
And that’s why Gaudete joy is quieter than Christmas joy.
It’s the joy of someone who knows that God is near—
even when they can’t see the ending.
It’s the joy of trusting in the slow work of God.

Jesus is our model of patient trust.
The Son of God came into this world. Good news!
He was put to death on the cross. Bad news.
But he rose again on the third day. Good news!

In just a few moments,
we will come forward to receive Christ in the Eucharist—
hidden and humble.
He is the same One who comes into our unfinished stories.

When we leave this church today and face the week ahead—
with its mix of reliefs and disappointments—
let this be enough to help us rejoice on this Gaudete Sunday.

Not because everything is perfect,
and not because we have all the answers,
but because God is at work in every chapter of our story.
We rejoice because the Lord is close.
We rejoice because Christ is already healing,
already coming, already saving.
We rejoice because the deepest truth of our lives is not our hardships,
but God’s faithfulness in the middle of them.
So maybe this week, when life brings us something unexpected—
something that feels wonderful, or terrible, or confusing—
maybe we can pause and whisper a little Advent prayer:
“Good news, bad news…
Lord, only You can say.”

Did you hear about the treasure buried in the Spokane area?
About a month ago I was driving out in the valley
and I saw a big billboard that said
there was a $10,000 treasure chest buried nearby.
The billboard gave a web address,
and each day a clue was posted to help lead you to the treasure.
You could even see a livestream of the big X on the ground
where the treasure was buried.
Now before you go out looking for it,
the treasure has already been found.
It was real.
There really was $10,000 buried in ground just outside Rockford.
A father-and-son team found it after about five days of searching.

I mention that because in today’s gospel Jesus talks about treasure and money bags.

Money has been part of the human condition for a long time,
in many different forms.
First people would barter—trading livestock or sacks of grain—
but that was bulky, heavy, and hard to carry.
Then came metal coins,
easier to store but they could still weigh down a purse.
Paper money made our treasure even lighter,
and checkbooks meant you didn’t have to carry cash at all.
Plastic cards made it even easier.
And now digital payments let us access our money from our phones,
protected by passwords and fingerprints.
And what the heck is cryptocurrency?

As money has evolved, so have the various ways we work
to make our “money bags” more and more secure.
In the old days Pirates buried treasure in the ground on remote islands,
and apparently we still like searching for the X that marks the spot.
People hid money under mattresses.
Nations built vaults like Fort Knox.
Now that our wealth is mostly digital,
we have things like two-factor authentication.
Whether it’s the kinds of money we have,
or the ways we’re trying to secure it,
we’re constantly thinking about our treasure.

My friend Larry was a guy who thought a lot about treasure, too.
Larry was a colleague of mine,
and he was in charge of all the assets at his organization,
all of its treasure, you might say.
It was one of his primary responsibilities.
But one day there was a hostile takeover at the top,
and the new boss was ruthless.
He got rid of all the higher-ups.

Then he demanded that Larry hand over everything to him.
All the assets.
Every piece of property.
Every last coin.
He wanted all the treasure, you could say.
That treasure was his sole focus.
But as we hear in today’s Gospel,
“…where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
His heart was on all of that treasure.

Which brings us to the questions Jesus invites us to consider today:
“What do I treasure most?”
“Where is my heart right now?”

Jesus tells us, “The Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.”
An “inexhaustible treasure.”
He says, “Get a bag ready, a bag that will not wear out.”
Why a bag that will not wear out?
Because God keeps giving and giving and giving,
and you don’t want to miss any of it.

God’s treasure is given constantly.
Every new day is a treasure.
The oxygen we breathe.
The warmth of sunshine, the food on our tables,
the love and support of friends and family,
the work we’re able to do,
the roads we travel on, (even during construction season!),
and countless other blessings we barely notice–
all of these are part of God’s treasure for us.

And God’s treasure doesn’t only arrive in bright, happy packages.
Some of the deepest treasures come wrapped in challenges,
in moments that stretch us,
in times when we can’t see the whole picture yet.
God is present in both the sunlight and in the rain,
in the gentle breeze and in the stagnant or smoke-filled air.
The treasure is there for us,
we just need to open our “money bag” to receive it,
to gather it in.

One practical way to do this is to make a regular practice
of reviewing each day in prayer,
noticing what treasures God has given you lately,
how he has “filled your bag.”
You’re probably familiar with one of the most popular of those practices,
what St. Ignatius of Loyola called the Examen.
If you’re not familiar with the Examen, not to worry.

As most of you know, I am an educator,
and school is approaching,
so I feel it is my moral obligation to give you some homework.
When you leave here today,
I invite you to take a handout of instructions for praying the Examen.
Or you can also look up an Examen online
or in apps like Hallow or Pray As You Go.

Now, I have no way of checking your homework,
but God will know.

Doing a practice like this daily will help us
when our heart gets locked on other treasures,
and when we miss out on seeing the real treasure.

But that’s not what happened to my friend Larry.
Larry’s heart was right where it should be.

When the new boss asked for all the treasure,
Larry asked for three days to gather it up,
and the new boss agreed,
after all, he wanted everything.
So Larry went to work.
He gathered up all the assets,
but instead of giving them to his new boss,
Larry did something else with it.

Larry gave it away to those who were in need.
All of it.

And on the third day,
Larry returned to his boss.
The boss was ready, greedy, impatient.
“Where is the treasure?” he demanded.

Larry stepped aside,
and through the doorway they came:
the poor, the blind, the sick, the suffering.
Larry pointed to them and said,
“These are the treasure.”

Well, of course the boss was furious,
and he had Larry axed.
Literally.
Well, not axed exactly,
but placed on a grill over coals
where he died a martyr’s death.

For Larry was St. Lawrence, Deacon of Rome in the 3rd century.
As deacon, Lawrence was responsible
for all the material goods of the Church in Rome.
And it was the Emperor Valerian who had come to power,
and ordered the deaths of all bishops, priests, and deacons,
and who had had Pope Sixtus killed,
and who had demanded all the treasures of the Church.

And St. Lawrence knew that the treasures of the Church were the people,
especially the most vulnerable.
St. Lawrence refused to give the material treasure to Valerian,
and he paid for his defiance with his life.
This weekend is the feast of St. Lawrence the Deacon, August 10,
the anniversary of his martyrdom, his heavenly birthday.
Valerian might have taken Lawrence’s life,
but his treasure?
His real treasure?
Safe.
Where no thief could reach or moth destroy.

Today we are called to check that our bags are prepared
to receive the treasure that God has in store for us,
and to look at where our heart lies.

March is a restless month.
One day it feels like spring,
the next, winter comes roaring back
with a sudden snowstorm, like this weekend.
Across the country, the weather has been wild:
tornadoes, windstorms, wildfires.

In many ways our world feels like a storm right now.
The headlines change by the hour—
inflation on the rise, financial markets dropping,
people being detained,
protests in the streets, arguments online.
Some are afraid of what’s happening,
others don’t mind so much,
and still others just feel exhausted by it all.

And in the middle of this storm,
we gather here, in this church,
on this Second Sunday of Lent,
and we hear this Gospel—
this mysterious moment on the mountaintop
when Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John.

At first, this scene might not seem to have much to say
about our world today.
But actually it speaks to us precisely because we are feeling shaken,
uncertain, and divided.
Because in the middle of all the dazzling light
and the appearance of Moses and Elijah,
there is one voice that breaks through the noise,
through the dark cloud.
The voice of the Father, saying:
“This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”

The world is very loud right now.
There are voices from every side telling us what to believe,
what to fear, who to blame.
Some voices say we should be outraged.
Others say we should be celebrating.
Some voices cry out in pain and fear.
Others dismiss those concerns.
And if we’re honest with ourselves, really honest,
most of us don’t just hear the noise—we add to it.
We argue, we react, we post, we judge.

It’s easy to get caught up in the storm,
to pick our side, to raise our voice,
to believe that if we shout loud enough,
we can fix the world or win the argument.

But today, on this mountain,
God the Father speaks through the noise and tells us:
Listen.
Not to the politicians.
Not to the media.
Not to the voices of fear or anger or division.
Listen to Him.
Listen to Jesus.

And what does Jesus say?
A quick review of the Gospel reminds us:
He tells us to love our enemies.
To welcome the stranger.
To care for the poor.
To seek the lost.
To be peacemakers.
To take up our cross.

That is not the voice of the world.
That is not the voice of social media.
That is not the voice of power or ideology.
But it is the only voice that will lead us through this storm.
Listen to Him.

Listening sounds simple.
But it is not.
Because real listening changes us.
It forces us to put aside our own assumptions.
It humbles us.
It makes us slow down when we want to react.

We see this in Peter today.
Peter, who always has something to say.
Peter, who, at this moment, is so overwhelmed
that he just starts talking:
“Let’s build three tents! Let’s stay here!”
He’s doing what we all do
when we don’t know what to do—
he fills the silence with words.
But God the Father interrupts him.
“This is my Son. Listen to Him.”
Stop talking.
Stop reacting.
Just listen.

That’s a hard thing to do.
Because sometimes listening to Jesus
means hearing things we don’t want to hear.
Forgive that person.
Let go of that resentment.
Trust me even when you’re afraid.
Speak truth even when it costs you something.
Choose love when anger feels easier.
This is hard to hear.
But this is the Gospel.

And the only way to hear those things
the only way to listen to Jesus
is if we make space for silence.
For prayer.
For reflection.
If we’re constantly filling every moment with noise—
scrolling, talking, reacting—
we may never hear the voice of Jesus at all.

This moment on the mountaintop
is a glimpse of clarity before the road gets dark.
The disciples don’t know it yet,
but soon Jesus will lead them down from the mountain
and begin his journey to the cross.
The Transfiguration is not an escape from suffering—
it is a preparation for it.
Jesus gives Peter, James, and John this moment of light
so they can hold onto it when the darkness comes.

And we need that, too.
Because no matter where you stand politically,
no matter how the headlines make you feel,
the truth is that we are all walking forward into an uncertain world.
And we have a choice.
We can let the noise and the fear and the division define us.
Or we can listen to Him.
We can listen to the one who calls us to be different.

To be people of peace in a world of anger.
To be people of compassion in a world of cruelty.
To be people of mercy when the world only offers justice without love.

There’s a story about the great composer Beethoven.
Near the end of his life,
he was completely deaf.
He could no longer hear the music he wrote.
But he would sit at the piano and press his ear to the wood,
feeling the vibrations of the notes as he played.
He couldn’t hear the music with his ears,
but he could still sense it.
Think of how much time and effort and energy and patience that took.

Do we have that kind of commitment to hearing the voice of God,
that kind of time and effort and energy and patience?
Because the world is loud,
and it is easy to let all the other voices drown out the voice of Jesus.

This week, can we take an honest look at what voices we listen to?
Who gets our attention?
How much time do we spend scrolling through the news,
social media, podcasts, TV?
How many hours do we give to voices that make us anxious,
angry, distracted, or just numb?
And then,
How much time do I give to Jesus?
Not only in church,
but in dedicated, quiet moments of listening.
Beethoven longed so much to hear his music
that he pressed his ear to the wood of the piano.
Can we press our ear to the wood of the Cross?
Because if we focus our hearts on Him,
if we listen—
not only in church but all throughout out days—
then even while the storm rages,
we will still hear His voice.

So that’s the challenge this Lent.
Not only to give up chocolate.
Not only to pray more.
But to listen.
To listen in Scripture.
To listen in prayer.
To listen to the voice of Christ
in the people who are hurting, afraid, or in need.

And then, to come down from the mountain—
not to stay sheltered, not to isolate ourselves,
but to carry what we’ve heard into the world.
Because the world doesn’t need more noise.
It needs people who have truly listened to Jesus.

This week I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, through the Hardcore Literature Book Club with Benjamin McEvoy. This will be my first novel of magical realism and my first real foray into Latin American literature. It’s refreshing to have this new literary territory to explore.

My initial plan is to simply let the novel do its work on me, without giving in to the temptation to analyze everything, but to simply enjoy and savor it. John Gardner says that a true work of fiction “creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind.” I am going to try to abandon myself to the fictive dream that is One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Ben often recommends complementary readings to go along with the novels we read, and one of the things he suggests for beginning to appreciate the Latin American literary tradition is to read the short story “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. I read it last night and, wow, what an experience. I don’t want to say much about the story in case you haven’t read it, but it touches on books, knowledge, chaos, meaning, and infinity, to name a few of its themes. I came away from it grateful for a world in which stories like this exist. But at the same time it made me a bit melancholy as I thought about how many great books there are that I will never get to read because of the brevity of life. “So many books, so little time,” right? But it’s not only books: there is so much to experience in this world and so little time to experience it. “The Library of Babel” serves as both a celebration and a reminder of the vastness of creation, prompting us to appreciate the moments and encounters of our lives while acknowledging the infinite possibilities we will never fully explore. In the end, it’s the journey itself—through stories, experiences, and understanding—that makes life meaningful.

Welcome to 2025, and a new year of reading. Before moving forward into a new year I like to reflect on last year’s books, looking for patterns, appreciating blessings, and choosing my ten favorite reads.

As I look back over the books I read in the last twelve months, what stands out more than anything else is that, for me, 2024 is a testament to the value of rereading. Half of the books I read last year were rereads. And among my top ten books of 2024 are several books I initially didn’t connect with when I first read them years ago, but which I now love. The rest of the top ten is filled with a mixture of old favorites and new favorites.

First, the old favorites that continue to claim a spot in the library of my heart include Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Aubrey/Maturin series. These books are old friends, and I never tire of reading them.

New favorites include books on spirituality: The Ignatian Adventure by Kevin O’Brien and Immortal Diamond by Richard Rohr; a book on mindfulness: Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn; and the Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.

But as I mentioned earlier, I reread three books last year as part of Benjamin McEvoy’s Hardcover Literature Book Club that I was previously lukewarm toward, but which now I love: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. Why do I appreciate them so much more now than when I first read them? To begin with, I am a different person today than I was then. Next, I was already somewhat familiar with their stories, so I could concentrate more on the writing than on the plot. Third, I took my time and gave the books more of a chance to work on me. And finally, Benjamin McEvoy’s lectures for each book helped open up them up in new ways. It is such a blessing to be able to see the beauty of a finely written book that I had previously overlooked. Rereading is a sheer joy, and I encourage all readers to make it a regular practice.

And so, here are my favorite reads of 2024, counting down to my favorite read of the year:

1. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
2. Immortal Diamond by Richard Rohr
3. Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
4. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
5. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, with a special nod to The Last Battle
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
8. The Ignatian Adventure by Kevin O’Brien
9. The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian, books 16-21: The Wine-Dark Sea, The Commodore, The Yellow Admiral, The Hundred Days, Blue at the Mizzen, Twenty-One
10. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

I have to mention another book that I began in 2024 and which is still having a profound effect on me, even though I have not finished it yet. It will likely take me years to read it, since I am savoring it as much as possible. And after I finish, I will likely turn back to page one and start right back into it. I am talking about The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman from Penguin Classics. I have read quite a bit of Whitman’s poetry over the course of my life, going all the way back to high school, but I have never read a book of his poems from beginning to end. I started the book in January of 2024 and am only about a quarter of the way through, but it has been a profound experience so far. Whitman’s poetry is so full of life, and each poem begs to be read aloud with the energy of the wind. As an example, here are the glorious final two stanzas from the poem I read most recently, “A Song of Joys”:

O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses,
To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

“A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.” — a perfect description of Whitman’s poetry. As I look toward 2025, I still hope to continue savoring this collection from Penguin.

I am also looking forward to several of the books scheduled for the Hardcore Literature Book Club, especially these titles I have never read:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez – I am excited to read my first novel of Magical Realism and explore this genre
• Metamorphoses by Ovid
• Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

And of course, I am super excited about the American Masterpieces Chapter-a-Day Read-Along! Today we started Roots by Alex Haley, and I am already hooked by the first sentence:

“Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of the Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte. Forcing forth from Binta’s strong young body, he was as black as she was, flecked and slippery with Binta’s blood, and he was bawling.”

To participate in the read-along, visit ChapteraDayReadAlong.com, where all future read-along posts will be published.

I hope you had a great year of reading in 2024 and I wish you a Happy New Reading Year, along with many blessings to you and your family!

I am rereading Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and this line jumped out at me today as Thoreau was describing the house he built for his time at Walden Pond:

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long…

Ten feet wide by fifteen long.

150 square feet.

I got curious about how big that was, so I measured the room I am in right now, my home office/library. It measures twelve feet wide by thirteen feet long, or 156 square feet — more or less the same size as Thoreau’s home for two years. That realization moved me more than I can express. Walden is one of those books that has had a profound effect on me, as it has for millions of others. And Thoreau wrote it in a one-room cabin about the size of my home office.

Even though I live in a nondescript house in a nondescript city that looks out onto a nondescript front yard, I almost feel, in this moment, that I have my own house on Walden Pond. As Thoreau himself wrote, it is not the architectural style of a house that makes it interesting, but the life of its occupants:

The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling.

This room, this “suburban box” I am sitting in right now, is the place where I do my praying, reading, contemplating, and writing. Here is where I journal in the dark each morning while the world sleeps; here is where each day unfolds and where I try to open my heart to the Divine in solitude and silence. In this room the spirits of authors like Henry David Thoreau whisper their wisdom to me from within the pages of their books and I whisper back to them. For over twenty years this room has been my Walden Pond cabin, though I am only now realizing it.

150 square feet.

So tiny and yet so boundless.

Do you have your own Walden Pond cabin? Leave a comment and share your story.

The 2025 Chapter-a-Day Read-along has been announced at its new home! Be sure to visit ChapteraDayReadalong.com to get all the details about the 2025 American Masterpieces Chapter-a-Day Read-Along.  It’s going to be epic!

The Chapter-a-Day Read-Along has a new home! After seven years of hosting the read-along here at One Catholic Life, I’ve decided to give it its own home at ChapteraDayReadAlong.com so that people can find it and follow along more easily, especially considering that the 2025 Chapter-a-Day Read-Along will be announced soon.

ChapteraDayReadAlong.com will be the new main hub, and you can always find the latest reading schedules and articles there. I’ve transferred all the past read-along articles from One Catholic Life to this new website, so everything is now in one dedicated place on the web.

The new Chapter-a-Day Read-Along logo!

Once the 2025 Chapter-a-Day Read-Along begins, I will be posting daily quotes to various social media sites, as I have in the past.  However, these will be much easier to follow from now on, because I have set up dedicated read-along accounts, instead of using hashtags. I encourage you follow Chapter-a-Day Read-Along at any of the following services:

• Chapter-a-Day Read-Along on Instagram
• Chapter-a-Day Read-Along Facebook Page
• Chapter-a-Day Read-Along on Threads
• Chapter-a-Day Read-Along on Bluesky
• Chapter-a-Day Read-Along on X (formerly known as Twitter)

I have some great reads planned for the 2025 read-along, so stay tuned for the big announcement coming VERY soon! And be sure to visit ChapteraDayReadAlong.com and subscribe!

Maybe it’s just me,
but this autumn seems to have been especially glorious:
colorful, vivid, bright, and seemingly lasting forever.
Lately the trees have lost some of their color,
what with the rain and the wind,
but overall it’s been a beautiful autumn.
I notice it most when I am commuting back and forth to work.
To get to St. John Vianney School in the Spokane Valley
I usually take 29th Avenue to Carnahan,
Carnahan to 8th Avenue, 8th to Park and so on.
It usually takes about 15 or 20 minutes, depending on traffic.

But this year, because of the beautiful autumn,
I have been taking the back way more often.
I start by driving south up Freya and catch the Palouse highway,
and drive across the Palouse through Valleyford,
and then on to Highway 27, where I turn left and go through Mica
and then left onto Dishman-Mica Road.
It adds about 15 minutes to my commute,
but it has been so worth it.

The farm fields have that golden glow that is so magical this time of year;
the sky is ever-changing, like the depths of the sea.
Those of you who live up there know what I’m talking about.
It has been absolutely magnificent.
Granted, for the last week or so winter has been rapidly coming on,
so it might not have quite the same character it did a couple of weeks ago,
but if you haven’t been on the Palouse Highway yet this fall,
it’s definitely still worth seeing.
If you take an hour out of your day to drive that road.
you might even find that it touches your soul.

Because that’s what nature does, right?
Whether it’s a beautiful autumn field or a backyard garden;
a snow-covered mountain, or the wild ocean,
nature can touch us deeply.
It speaks to us—to our hearts and to our souls.
And that’s because nature carries inside itself the imprint of the divine.
Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote,
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
Pope John Paul II said that through nature
people can “contemplate the mystery of the greatness and love of God.”

The natural world is a place to encounter the divine,
especially when we take the time to pause and notice and savor.
God speaks to us through nature.

That’s why our church calendar lines up with the seasons.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe,
the final feast of the church year.
Have you ever wondered why the church year ends now, in November,
instead of on December 31?
Why is Christmas on December 25?
And why on earth does the date of Easter keep moving?

The reason has to do with the natural world, with the universe.
Our liturgical year, our Church year, is not an arbitrary calendar;
it is intentionally designed to mirror God’s creation,
where time flows in patterns and cycles.
The liturgical calendar invites us to see spiritual truths
reflected in the seasons of the natural world,
this universe over which Christ reigns as King.
Looking outside at what is happening in nature—
at the sky, the clouds, the trees, the wind, the rain—
all of these natural events complement and enhance
our experience of the sacred in our lives.

As we stand at this threshold—ending one liturgical year
and preparing to enter another—
it is a good opportunity to think about how the natural world
helps us enter into the rhythm of our spiritual lives.

The Church’s year begins in Advent,
a time of waiting and preparation.
Advent always begins four Sundays before Christmas.
During Advent we are invited to think of all the long years
the world was in darkness, waiting for a Messiah.
Outside our windows during Advent,
the days grow shorter and darker and colder as winter approaches,
until we finally reach the winter solstice—the darkest day of the year,
around December 21.
The winter solstice is the day which has the fewest hours of sunlight,
it is the year’s darkest moment.

And this is why Christmas is celebrated on December 25.
Just as the world is at its darkest,
at a time when all seems most hopeless, black, and bleak,
Jesus, the Light of the World is born,
and the light begins to grow.
Each day after Christmas becomes brighter and brighter,
day by day, little by little.
Just as the physical light begins its return,
so too does Christ’s light begin to shine in the darkness of our human condition,
bringing hope to banish fear and sin.

From Christmas, we journey toward Easter.
In the natural world, the light continues to grow steadily,
more and more daylight each day,
but still, there is more darkness than light each day.
We enter the season of Lent,
forty days of trying to overcome the darkness of sin in our lives
through praying, fasting, and almsgiving.
The light slowly makes ground against the darkness
until, finally, we reach the Spring Equinox.
What is an equinox? Do you remember your science class?
The Spring Equinox is that day
when the amount of light equals the amount of darkness.
Easter is always on the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.
Why?
Because after the equinox, there is more light than darkness.
Light has conquered the night.
Easter proclaims that Christ, the Light of the World,
has conquered the greatest darkness—sin and death—through His Resurrection.
For fifty days we celebrate the Resurrection
in a world in which life and light bursts forth:
flowers bloom, trees bud, and nature declares the triumph of life over death.
Just as the universe tells the story of light overcoming darkness,
Easter reveals the truth that Christ is the victorious King
who reigns over all creation.
What a beautiful parallel between nature and salvation!

Our faith teaches us to look at the natural world
not as something separate from God
but as His creation, filled with signs that point to spiritual realities.
Creation is not just a backdrop to our lives but a living testament to God’s glory.
The cycles of day and night, of seasons and years,
these rhythms teach us about the nature of God’s kingdom.
The return of light after the winter solstice echoes the Incarnation,
when God enters our world to redeem it.
The bursting forth of life in spring parallels the Resurrection,
when Christ triumphs over the grave.
Our liturgical year, grounded in these natural rhythms,
reminds us that the Creator is also the Redeemer.
Every moment of the year whispers the truth of Christ’s kingship,
calling us to see His presence in the rising sun,
the changing leaves, and the cycles of life and death.

As we reflect on the power of nature to reveal God’s presence
we are challenged to ask ourselves, “How do I reveal God’s presence?”
After all, we, too, are a part of the natural world.
God created us, just as he created clouds, trees, oceans, and mountains.
I am a part of God’s creation,
you are a part of God’s creation.
In fact, humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creation.
We are made in the image and likeness of God.

Victor Hugo writes,
“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky;
there is one spectacle grander than the sky,
that is the interior of the soul.”

If the stars, the trees, the wind, the rain, the seasons
can help us “contemplate the mystery of the greatness and love of God,”
how much more can we human beings reveal God to others?

Just as creation reflects the glory of God, so too do our lives.
In a world darkened by fear, division, and sin,
we are called to shine with the light of Christ.

As we prepare to enter Advent and begin a new liturgical year,
this is the perfect time to observe and savor the movement of nature around us,
and embrace the rhythm of the Church’s calendar as a gift.
It reminds us that Christ, the King of the Universe,
is present in every season, every moment, and every part of creation.

The story of the liturgical year is the story of light overcoming darkness,
of love conquering fear, and of life triumphing over death.
It is the story of Jesus Christ, our King,
who reigns forever and ever.
Amen.

You might remember the movie The Shawshank Redemption,
the story of Andy Dufresne, a man unjustly imprisoned for many years.
In the course of his time in prison,
he gains the trust of the prison staff by helping with various tasks,
like handling the finances and overseeing the prison library.
One of the most powerful scenes in the movie happens
when Andy finds himself unsupervised in the warden’s office.

He is sitting in the warden’s office in a chair, all alone,
and he notices a crate on the floor.
He notices the crate is full of vinyl records.
He notices that one of the recordings is an opera by Mozart.
He notices that there is a record player in the office.
And he notices that the prison PA system is in the warden’s office.

So what does Andy do?

He locks the door.
He takes the opera record out of the crate and out of its sleeve.
He puts the vinyl record on the turntable.
He connects the turntable to the PA system.
And in clear defiance of the rules,
and risking certain punishment,
he broadcasts a beautiful duet from the opera
to the entire prison.

For one brief moment, the music transcends the walls of the prison,
reaching the ears and hearts of every inmate,
lifting them out of their harsh reality.

For this act of defiance, Andy is put in solitary confinement,
and when he finally gets back to the general population,
his friend Red asks how in the world he survived the isolation.
Andy replies, “It was easy, I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company.”
“They let you have the record player?” Red asks.
“It was in here,” Andy says, tapping his heart.
“That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you.”

That scene captures something profound:
In the darkest, most confining moments of life,
something deeper—a song, a truth, an awareness—
can lift us out of our suffering.
It’s something that no prison, no circumstance can take away.
It is, in the words of spiritual writer Thomas Merton,
the divine presence within us—the part of us that longs for freedom,
for connection, for healing.
And it’s always there, waiting for us to tap into it.

In today’s Gospel, we meet Bartimaeus,
a blind man begging by the roadside.
In his own way, Bartimaeus is imprisoned—
confined by his blindness,
confined by the limitations placed on him by society,
confined by his circumstances.
But something inside him, deep within, longs for more.
He knows there is a presence, a light,
a healing that can lift him out of his suffering.
And so, when Jesus passes by, Bartimaeus cries out,
“Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”

The crowd tries to silence him.

How often do the voices around us,
and even the voices within us,
try to quiet that deeper longing?
They tell us to accept things as they are,
stop hoping for something better,
stay in the dark.

But Bartimaeus refuses to be silenced.
He cries out all the louder,
“Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”
His blindness is real, but so is his faith,
his deep awareness that something greater is possible.

And Jesus stops.
Jesus always stops when we cry out from the depths.
He stops, and he asks Bartimaeus a question that seems so simple,
yet is so profound:
“What do you want me to do for you?”

That question is not just for Bartimaeus;
it’s for all of us.
What is it that you truly seek?
What is the deeper healing, the deeper freedom,
that your heart longs for?
Take some time this week to uncover that for yourself, and tell Jesus.

Healing isn’t always about fixing what’s on the surface.
It’s also about transformation.
The healing Bartimaeus seeks isn’t just about physical sight.
In his blindness, he sees more clearly than the crowd around him.
He knows that the healing he seeks
can only come from the One who is the light of the world,
the One who gathers the broken, the lame, the blind—
just as Jeremiah prophesied in the first reading.

We all have our own form of blindness.
Maybe it’s the blindness of fear, of doubt, of shame, or of distraction.
We live in a world that constantly tells us to look outside of ourselves
for meaning, for healing.
But the answer isn’t out there somewhere.
It’s in here, in the heart that longs for God,
in the cry that won’t be silenced,
in the divine presence that dwells within.
And as Andy says, “They can’t get that from you.”

When we have the courage to cry out like Bartimaeus,
to name our blindness, to ask for healing,
we find that God is already there, waiting for us, asking us,
“What do you want me to do for you?”

It’s not a question that comes from a distant, uncaring God.
It comes from a God who is close, who is always near,
and who longs to bring us to a place of deeper freedom and joy.
“For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Notice that after Bartimaeus receives his sight,
he doesn’t go back to his old life.
His old life was all about sitting by the roadside, alone,
disengaged from the world.
Now, he follows Jesus on the way.
His healing leads to a new journey,
a new way of seeing and being in the world.
It’s a reminder that God’s healing always calls us forward.
It’s not just about restoring what was lost;
it’s about opening us up to something new, something deeper.

And so, the question to meditate on this week
is the question Jesus asks each of us:
“What do you want me to do for you?”

Like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption,
there’s a part of us that longs for something beyond the walls
of our daily struggles—
a beauty so profound it can’t be described,
a love so powerful it breaks through all darkness.

When Andy played that opera duet
and it soared throughout the prison,
his friend Red described it this way:
“I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about…
some things are left best unsaid.
I would like to think they were singing about something so beautiful
it can’t be expressed in words
and makes your heart ache because of it…
It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage
and made these walls dissolve away.”

Jesus is that beautiful song for us.
He comes into our lives
to lift us beyond the prison walls we’ve built for ourselves,
dissolving them with the beauty and freedom of his healing love.
Like Bartimaeus, we only need the courage to cry out
to the divine presence within us that nothing—
not even life’s hardships—can take away.

As Catholic Schools Week begins this year,
today’s Gospel reminds us of a very important truth—
Jesus was a teacher:

“…on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”

Jesus was a teacher.

He taught in synagogues,
he taught in the temple,
he taught from hillsides,
and he taught from boats.
Jesus was a teacher.

Jesus taught in a way that was different from other teachers.
And the people recognized that.

In contrast to the scribes who merely recited laws,
Jesus’ teaching was marked by a connection
to the heart of the Law – love of God and love of neighbor.
His teaching had authority because he was authentic.
He lived what he taught.
And the people could see it,
even though he did not have the title the scribes had.
He was authentic,
even to giving his life on the cross to demonstrate the love he taught.

There was once a teacher named Sharon.
She, too, was an authentic teacher.
One day she became the most famous teacher in all the world,
and she ended up giving her life in the service of teaching.
She was born into a Catholic family and went to a Catholic high school.
Her mother was a substitute teacher
and when Sharon grew up
she became a 7th and 8th Grade teacher.

I was a junior high teacher for over 25 years,
and I can tell you that 7th and 8th graders are experts
in spotting what is false and phony.
To be an effective junior high teacher you have to know your stuff,
you have to be authentic.

Sharon was authentic.
She took her class on field trips,
she brought in guest speakers,
and she “emphasized the impact of ordinary people on history,
saying they were as important to the historical record
as kings, politicians, or generals.”
Her passion and knowledge of her subject matter
gave her the authenticity that she needed to be a great teacher.

I have seen many new teachers who thought that
just because their name was posted outside the classroom door,
or just because they wore a whistle or an ID badge,
the students would automatically listen to them
and do what they were told.
Well, it didn’t take them long to find out
that it takes more than an ID badge.
It starts with being authentic.

And that’s why it’s so important in a Catholic school,
where we teach the Good New of Jesus Christ,
to have an authentic relationship with Jesus.
We need our students to see that our relationship with Jesus is real,
so that there is no phoniness in what we teach.
And that is something that takes constant nourishment.

That’s why at SJV we begin each school year
with a day-long faculty retreat at Immaculate Heart Retreat Center,
focusing on our faith, our relationship with Jesus Christ.
It’s why the teachers gather for prayer every morning
right before school starts.
We read a passage of Scripture,
we meditate on it,
we share with each other what it means in our life,
we offer intentions for ourselves and for the world,
and we end by praying the Prayer of St. Francis.
We do this as a faculty each and every morning
because regular, sustained prayer
is essential in building our relationship with Jesus,
and we must have a real and authentic relationship with Jesus
if we are going to effectively teach about Jesus to our students.

But I’m not just sharing this with you
to explain how we do things at the school.
I share this with you because you are teachers, too.

The call to teach is not reserved for a select few,
but is a universal commission given to all followers of Christ.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he said,
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Jesus was a teacher.
And so, we that dare to call ourselves Christians,
“little Christs,”
are to be teachers, too.

We are all called to be teachers,
sharing the Good News
and instructing others in the ways of love.
It is not easy.
That’s why Catholic schools exist.
The Church recognizes both the importance and the immensity
of the task of teaching the Faith to our children,
and so Catholic schools were instituted to assist parents
in their role of educating children in the Faith.
That’s why we celebrate Catholic schools at this time time each year.
Catholic schools have an essential role in the life of the Church.

This is how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops puts it:

It is the responsibility of the entire Catholic community—
bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and laity—
to continue to strive towards the goal
of making our Catholic elementary and secondary schools
available, accessible, and affordable
to all Catholic parents and their children,
including those who are poor and middle class.

We are convinced that Catholic schools continue to be
“the most effective means available to the Church
for the education of children and young people”
who are the future of the Church (To Teach as Jesus Did, no. 118).

That is why your parish school exists,
and why your support of the school is so important and appreciated.

St. John Vianney Catholic School and all Catholic schools
exist to assist you in fulfilling your call to teach as Jesus did.
Catholic schools play a crucial role in this mission,
but each one of us,
as baptized disciples of Jesus,
regardless of our profession,
regardless of our vocation,
is called to be a teacher.

Opportunities to teach the Gospel abound in our everyday lives.
In our families,
we teach the Gospel by the way we prioritize faith, prayer, and love.
In our workplaces,
we teach the Gospel by the integrity with which we conduct ourselves
and the respect we show to our colleagues.
In our communities,
we teach the Gospel by our acts of service and compassion toward those in need.

Sharon used her teaching abilities beyond just her classroom.
She became a catechist
and taught confirmation classes in her parish.
After all she was a teacher.

Jesus was a teacher.
Sharon was a teacher.
We are teachers.

And that means that each of us also has the responsibility
to teach with authenticity, like Jesus did,
and not like the scribes.
Just as a title or an ID badge is not enough
to be an effective classroom teacher,
so, too, our baptismal certificate is not enough
to be a teacher of the Gospel.

To be an authentic teacher for Christ,
we need to be authentic disciples of Christ,
and not disciples in name only.

We know that if we are not living the life we teach about,
we become like the scribes.

Sharon was not like the scribes.
She lived what she taught.
She had the opportunity to do something no teacher in history
ever had the chance to do,
something that she knew would make her an even better teacher.
She applied for the opportunity along with 11,000 applicants,
and she alone was chose by NASA to be the first teacher to fly into space.
She was born with the first name Sharon,
but she always went by her middle name Christa.
Christa McAuliffe.
She trained for an entire year to be a payload specialist
on the Space Shuttle Challenger.
She went on Good Morning America, CBS Morning News,
and the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Talk about an authentic teacher.
She taught the world.
Many of us remember what happened on this day 38 years ago.
Christa and the rest of the astronauts boarded the Challenger,
and after only 73 seconds in the air, the shuttle broke apart,
and no one survived.

Just as Jesus gave his life
to be an authentic teacher,
Christa gave her life to be an authentic teacher.

During this Catholic Schools Week,
we are challenged to renew our commitment
to our own vocation of teaching.
We are reminded that, in various ways,
we are all called to be teachers like Christ –
not just imparting knowledge
but embodying the transformative love of the Gospel.
As parents, as educators, as friends,
and as members of this faith community,
we share in the mission of making disciples.

Christa McAuliffe used to say,
“I touch the future, I teach.”
Our call is to be able to say,
“I touch eternity, I teach the Gospel.”

When 2023 began, I did not expect that two books I read would become two of my favorite books of all time. But that is exactly what happened. I also did not expect to read so many books, since my resolution last year was to slow down and savor books more deeply. But sixteen of the books I read were plays by Shakespeare as I began an attempt to read all of his plays in the order in which they were written. I was not as pleased as I had hoped with the George Eliot chapter-a-day read-along, but all in all, 2023 was a very good reading year.

Here are my favorite reads of 2023, counting down to my favorite read of the year:

1. Romola by George Eliot
2. Silas Marner by George Eliot
3. King Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare
4. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
5. These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon
6. Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer by Michael Casey
7. The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian, books 10-15: The Far Side of the World, The Reverse of the Medal, The Letter of Marque, The Thirteen-Gun Salute, The Nutmeg of Consolation, and The Truelove (or Clarissa Oakes)
8. A Spring Within Us by Richard Rohr
9. The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr
10. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

One of my favorite reading experiences of 2023 was driving across the United States while my wife Brenda read The Universal Christ aloud to us. She would read a section at a time and we would have deep discussions about what author Richard Rohr was saying, and what we thought about it. We read the book through Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska, as we took our youngest daughter to Creighton University for her first year of college. Reading the book together was a contemplative, deep experience that neither of us expected, but which both of us will treasure for the rest of our lives.

The other book that had a profound impact on me was Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I took my time with this great American novel, reading it over an entire year, from May of 2022 to May of 2023. After spending so much time with it, I can say that it has taken its place among my top novels of all time, joining Don Quixote, Lord of the Rings, Les Misérables, The Three Musketeers, and The Aubrey/Maturin series. I even added it to the collage of book covers on the header of this blog. I look forward to reading Moby-Dick many more times in the coming years.

As I look toward 2024, I still hope to continue savoring my reading by slowing down and not focusing so much on how many books I read. I have a few reading goals for this year, including finishing the Shakespeare Project, hosting the Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Read-along, and completing the fourth and final year of the Aubrey/Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Odyssey.

I also hope to read the following books along with Benjamin McEvoy’s Hardcore Literature Book Club:

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
• The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Inferno by Dante Alighieri
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

I hope 2023 was a good reading year for you and I wish you a Happy New Reading Year, along with many blessings to you and your family!

Today marks the end of our year-long reading of nearly all of George Eliot’s novels. By reading a chapter a day, we finished Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. Looking back over the past year, I have to admit that this year’s challenge was more difficult for me than past years. Eliot is a more challenging writer than I expected, and some of the chapters were a bit too long for a daily reading. Still, now that I have read them all at least once, I feel prepared for a more in depth reading of them in the future. My three favorites were Romola, Silas Marner, and Daniel Deronda. I was disappointed in Middlemarch, mostly because I had looked forward to reading it for so long and I had very high expectations for it. For a book that is so acclaimed, it was a struggle for me to appreciate, and I will definitely have to revisit it in the future at a more leisurely pace.

Thank you to everyone who joined me this past year for one, some, or all of Eliot’s books! I invite you to participate in the Fantasy Classics Read-along that starts tomorrow!

The 2024 Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Read-along begins in just a couple of days and it’s time to get ready to enter our first fantastical world, the enchanted land of Narnia. I hope you’ve been able to track down a copy of The Chronicles of Narnia either in the single volume edition or as a box set of individual books.

Our journey to Narnia begins with The Magician’s Nephew, a prelude to the series that unveils the origins of Narnia and sets the stage for the rest of the series. As we read chapter by chapter each day together, I encourage you to not only appreciate in the magic of Lewis’ storytelling, but also to explore the layers of Christian symbolism woven throughout the narrative.

If you are reading along with children, you might like this Chronicles of Narnia Classroom Activity Guide from HarperCollins. It has background information, discussion questions, and suggested activities for each book.

The Unique Reading Schedule for The Chronicles of Narnia

Remember that in order to fit all our books in this year, we will be reading the first two chapters of The Magician’s Nephew on January 1st. This will also happen with the next four books of the Narnia series. It’s easy to stay on schedule by using the 2024 Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Reading Schedule. But remember, if you get behind or ahead, no worries!

Also, I will be posting a quote each day from the current chapter on Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly known as Twitter) using the hashtag #FantasyReadalong. I invite you to do the same!

Discussion Prompts

Always feel free to leave comments on any read-along posts. Post your reactions, ask questions, and/or respond to other comments. Remember, no spoilers!

To get the discussion started, here are a couple of questions for you to consider as we prepare to begin:

1. What draws you to fantasy literature or what prevents you from reading more fantasy literature?
2. Before diving into the book, what do you know about C.S. Lewis as an author? Have you read any of his other works, and if so, how do you expect The Magician’s Nephew to compare?

Share thoughts by commenting on any of those questions, and then get ready to grab your copy of The Magician’s Nephew and start our journey together on January 1st!

Today we heard the prophet Isaiah say,
“I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul.”
The word “rejoice” is repeated over and over in today’s Gaudete Sunday liturgy,
from that reading of Isaiah,
to the responsorial psalm,
“My soul rejoices in my God,”
and in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians,
“Rejoice always.”

We’re only about a week away from Christmas,
and today we are reminded
that Christmas is a time of rejoicing.

There are many people whose faces shine with that spirit of rejoicing,
and who are filled with Christmas joy.

But I’ve talked with many other people this year
who are struggling to rejoice right now.
They are tired, they are weary.

Some are weary of the situation the world is in:
violence and war, politics and division, natural disasters.
Other people I talk with are struggling to make ends meet,
worried about loved ones,
facing difficult health issues,
struggling with anxiety and depression.
Some people are simply weary from all the busyness of the season:
getting the house ready for guests,
trying to get all the shopping done or the presents wrapped,
tracking down that special gift that is out of stock everywhere.

For many right now, they are too weary to rejoice.

When I think of those who are weary and maybe just a bit beaten down,
I am reminded of one of our most beautiful Christmas carols—
more of Christmas hymn, really, it is so beautiful.

And whether you are struggling to rejoice,
or finding it easy to have a joyful spirit,
I think this Christmas hymn has a lot to offer all of us
as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ.

The Christmas hymn I’m talking about is “O Holy Night,”
and one line that really stands out,
when I think of all those who right now are struggling and tired,
is, “the weary world rejoices.”

If you are feeling weary right now,
then this Christmas hymn is for you.
Even if you already have that Christmas joy,
“O Holy Night” can only increase it,
and it make it that much more real.

“O Holy Night” was originally a poem,
written in French by Placide Cappeau,
and as many of you know,
it begins like this:
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth;

Even though Christmas is still a week away,
let’s visualize Christmas as it was in Bethlehem so many years ago,
the sky filled with stars.

Imagine what is was like in the long years before Christ was born:
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

The Israelites waited centuries for their savior, their Messiah.
They suffered through slavery,
they were exiled to Assyria and Babylon,
they were conquered by the Greeks and the Romans,
and still they longed for their deliverer.

To this day we pine for God
in sin and error.
In our selfishness and in our pain
we turn away from God.

And yet, in all that sin and error,
there is a seeking, a yearning,
a restlessness,
a pining for meaning, for purpose,
for God.

As St. Augustine put it so beautifully,
“Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in thee.”

And so the hymn proclaims,
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

That may be the most beautiful line in the entire hymn.
…he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

He appeared, Christ appeared.
And what happens next?
The soul feels its worth.
The coming of the Messiah makes our soul feel its worth.
The prophet Isaiah tells us today,
“in my God is the joy of my soul.”

With the coming of Christ,
the soul now feels how beloved it is.

Because of the birth of Christ,
we know who we are,
and we know that we are loved.

It is Christ who is the Good Shepherd,
who leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one who is lost.
It is Christ who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah
we heard in the first reading,
when he stood up in the synagogue and read from the scroll:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free…”

He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.

And so I would invite you to ask yourself today,
Do you feel your worth?
It doesn’t matter if you are a slave to addiction, or if you are free;
it doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, broken or whole.
You have worth.
You belong.
You matter.
You are loved,
each one of you.
And each of the people sitting next to you, and across from you,
and each of the people who aren’t here,
for whatever reason.
They, too, are loved,
wherever they are on their spiritual journey.
They have worth.
They have dignity,
they are loved.
Because on Christmas night,
Jesus Christ was born,
and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;

Can you see it now, that new and glorious day?
Can you see beyond the weariness,
beyond the doubts and fears?

There is hope, a thrill of hope, and we can rejoice!

That’s what Gaudete Sunday is about.
It’s about giving us a glimpse,
an early experience of Christmas joy.

And so, in this remaining week before Christmas,
one thing you might do
is find yourself a beautiful rendition of “O Holy Night.”
There are versions for every musical taste: classical, country, pop, jazz,
by musicians as diverse as
Josh Groban, Martina McBride, Mariah Carey,
Ella Fitzgerald, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Faith Hill,
you name it,
there are over 1,000 recordings of this Christmas hymn.
Find a version on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music,
and listen to it every day leading up to Christmas.
Or maybe you could listen to a different rendition each day.

And after prayerfully listening to it,
contemplate that line,
’Til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth,”
and try to feel your own worth.
It’s one thing to know it intellectually:
“Yes, I understand, I am a child of God,
God created me,
I know that.”
It’s one thing to know that in the mind.
It’s quite another things to feel it in our souls,
to be able to say with the prophet Isaiah,
“in my God is the joy of my soul.”

So maybe each day between now and Christmas,
you can take some time to pause in your day,
maybe five, ten, or even fifteen minutes,
close your eyes,
and feel God looking at you with the eyes of love.
A love so great that he became a little child,
that he walked this earth
bringing glad tidings to the poor,
healing the brokenhearted,
going to the outcasts and the oppressed,
and loving them.
Until finally he accepted the cross,
doing all of this so that our soul would feel its worth,
so that we would have a thrill of hope,
and a weary world could rejoice.

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.

Welcome to the official sign-up post for a very special 2024 Chapter-a-Day Read-along! This year we we will be reading some of the most beloved modern classics in all of literature: The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and the entire Harry Potter series. All three series are in the top ten of the PBS list of America’s 100 most-loved books, and are adored by readers the world over. And, since 2024 is a leap year, we get an extra day to read!

Long-time participants will notice a couple of changes to this year’s read-along. First, I normally like to choose books that are in the public domain, so that readers can find them free online. But this year marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Lord of the Rings, and I wanted to mark the occasion in a special way. I also wanted to create a read-along that families could participate in if they choose, and pairing Lord of the Rings with The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books seemed like a perfect fit. Though none of these books are available online for free, they are all so popular that those hoping to save money can probably find them in a local library or thrift store. You probably even already own some or all of them, which brings me to the second change this year.

One of the purposes of the chapter-a-day read-along over the past six years has been to introduce challenging classics to those who might not otherwise read them. The idea has been that by taking these long or obscure classics in chapter-sized bites, they become more readable. This year, however, I hope to encourage readers to re-discover and re-read classics that they might have read when they were younger, or that they only know from watching the movie versions.

So dig through your childhood library, scour the thrift stores, or splurge on some new editions, and join me in reading these enchanting classics. Maybe you could make it a family affair and read a chapter a night with your children or grandchildren. You could read it aloud to them yourself or listen to an audiobook version.

I look forward to my own re-reading of The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, and I can’t wait to read the entire Harry Potter series for the first time ever! I read the first two books to our boys over twenty years ago, and then they finished the rest of the series on their own, so I never finished it myself. I’ve also made it a point not to watch any of the movies past the first two, so this will be a great new adventure for me!

How to Participate in the 2024 Chapter-a-Day Read-along

• Get a copy of any of the books you don’t already own. Get them from the library, your local bookstore, a thrift store, or online. (See below for affiliate links to purchase them online.)
• Leave a comment below introducing yourself, sharing where you are from, and explaining why you are joining the read-along.
• Download the daily schedule: Nick’s 2024 Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Reading Schedule
• Commit to reading a chapter a day, savoring the words, characters, and events of the stories. If you get behind or race ahead, no worries. Life happens.
• It’s purely optional, but I encourage you to join me in posting a quote from the current chapter each day on either Facebook, Instagram, or X (Formerly known as Twitter). I will be posting on all three, using the hashtag #fantasyreadalong. My social media posts will stay on track with the reading schedule, and I only ask that you please respect the reading experience of those who may not know the full stories. In other words, no spoilers!
• You will find the official 2024 read-along graphic next to this list. Feel free to use it on your website if you wish.
• Subscribe to One Catholic Life so you don’t miss any read-along posts throughout the year. You can get updates via email by using the form in the sidebar.

And now, here are the specific details about what we will be reading in 2024!

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

(Purchase the Single volume or Box set)

We begin the year by traveling to the land behind the wardrobe, the magical realm of Narnia. I absolutely love this series, especially because it can be read on several levels. It is a grand adventure, a spiritual allegory, and a feast for the imagination.

This seven-book series was published between 1950 and 1956, and consists of the following titles:

• The Magician’s Nephew (1955)
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
• The Horse and His Boy (1954)
• Prince Caspian (1951)
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
• The Silver Chair (1953)
• The Last Battle (1956)

I have made the decision to schedule these books in internal chronological order. Some fans and scholars would say that they are better read in publication order, but I have chosen this order because C.S. Lewis seemed to approve of it, and because the books appear in this order in the single-volume editions of the series. There are 110 chapters in The Chronicles of Narnia, and we will be reading them from January 1 to April 14.

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

(Purchase the Single volume or Box set)

After our sojourn in the land of Narnia, we accompany Frodo and Sam on their epic journey across Middle-earth. Anyone who knows me or who has read this blog knows how important this work is to me. I have read and reread Lord of the Rings countless times over the last 40 years, and I enjoy it deeply every time. I have previously written about the influence Tolkien and Lord of the Rings have had on my life, and I can’t wait to read it again to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its initial publication. Though Tolkien conceived of it as one large work, for various reasons it was originally released in three volumes:

• The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
• The Two Towers (1954)
• The Return of the King (1955)

The chapters in Lord of the Rings are a bit longer than in the Narnia series, so be sure to set aside enough time to read each day. The entire trilogy has 62 chapters, and we will be reading it from April 15 to June 15.

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

(Purchase the Box set)

I clearly remember the first time I heard about Harry Potter. It was during a school book fair around the year 1997, and our school librarian showed me an article in a trade magazine about a surprising little book that was spreading by word of mouth in England. It was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and children were raving about it. The book was not yet available in the United States, and when it finally arrived it was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Of course, the rest is history. For the next ten years the story of Harry Potter not only dominated the book world, but also the film world, with the final film being released in 2011. You can now visit Hogwarts at Universal Studios, and there are Potterheads all across the globe. How have I avoided reading it for so long? Well, no more! This is the year I finally finish the series, which includes these seven books:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
• Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire (2000)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)
• Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince (2005)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

The Harry Potter series has 199 chapters, and it will take us almost half the year to read them all. We will read them from June 16 to December 31.

Reading Schedule

To recap, here is a broad outline of the reading schedule, along with links to purchase them online (Links are affiliate links):

• The Chronicles of Narnia (January 1-April 14) – Single volume – Box set
• Lord of the Rings (April 15-June 15) – Single volume – Box set
• Harry Potter Series (June 16-December 31) – Box set

Close readers might have noticed that the number of chapters exceeds the number of days in the year, even considering 2024 is a leap year: 110+62+199=371 chapters, which is 5 chapters too many. To fit all the chapters in one year, I have doubled up on chapters at the beginning of each of the first five Narnia books. In other words, for five days this year we will be reading two chapters instead of one. (I know, I know, it’s not exactly a chapter-a-day, but that’s the way it is this year!) See the detailed schedule below for more information.

Of course, I hope you read the entire year with me, but you’re free to participate as much or as little as you like. I will try to write more often about the read-along this year than I did last year, and I will continue to post a line a day on social media. Again, I’ll be using the same hashtag for all three series, #fantasyreadalong.

Stay tuned for my introductory post for The Chronicles of Narnia toward the end of December, and leave a comment to let me know if you’re participating!

Ultimately, the goal of this year’s chapter-a-day read-along is to encourage people to revisit books that they might not have read in a long time, and to share those books with their family. I appreciate all those who have participated in the past and I look forward to reading these great fantasy classics with you this year. Reading a book in a chapter a day is great way to fit the habit of reading in each day, and it is so much more fun to do it with others. Seeing the quotes you post on social media is motivational and inspirational, and I look forward to them each day. I can’t wait to visit Narnia, Middle-earth, and Hogwarts with you!

2024 Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Read-along Schedule

Here is the detailed read-along schedule, and you can also download it as a pdf here: Nick’s 2024 Fantasy Classics Chapter-a-Day Reading Schedule

The background image for the 2024 read-along graphic is from Storm in the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt

We are given very powerful readings today,
powerful individually and powerful collectively.
And at the heart of them all is a line by St. Paul
in his letter to the Romans:
“…be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

So today we’re given three challenges:
transformation, renewal, and discernment.

First Paul says, be transformed.
This is what Jesus is trying to help Peter do in today’s Gospel.
When Jesus explains what it means to be the Messiah
— that it means suffering, death, and resurrection —
Peter rebukes him.
The fisherman rebukes the Messiah!
Peter is stuck thinking as human beings do,
not as God does.
And Peter is arrogant enough to think
that he needs to correct Jesus, the Christ.
In reality, Peter is an obstacle to Jesus.
In that moment, in fact, he’s just as much an obstacle as Satan.

But Jesus is patient with Peter,
he wants Peter to be transformed.
He wants what’s best for him. He cares for him. He loves him.
Peter has been raised to believe certain things about the Messiah,
things that don’t match with what he is hearing from Jesus.
So Jesus wants Peter to grow in his understanding
of what it means to follow him.
Jesus wants us, too, to grow in our understanding
of what it means to be a disciple.
He wants what’s best for us. He cares for us. He loves us.
We can misunderstand and distort the gospel
because of how we were raised,
or because of what we read or see on social media,
across the spectrum of ideologies.
Like Peter, we can be tempted to arrogance ourselves,
thinking we have the correct answer,
that we know what God wants,
and that everyone else needs to conform
to our way of thinking about God — even the Pope!
But when we do that,
we become obstacles to to Jesus,
thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.
And we’re not only obstacles to Jesus,
but we’re obstacles to other people’s relationship with Jesus.
So the challenge for us is to let ourselves be transformed by Christ,
just as Peter was transformed.
Think of all those whose lives were transformed by Christ:
Mary Magdalene, Matthew the tax collector, Nicodemus the Pharisee, etc.

It’s challenging to be transformed,
because transformation means change,
and change is always frightening,
It means leaving our comfort zone.
It means temporary confusion and instability
as we hover between our old self and our transformed self.
And transformation is a lifelong process,
so that means being uncomfortable over and over again.
We would much rather stay where we are than risk transformation.
There’s security in remaining where we are,
but there is also stagnation and death.
It’s the difference between being a living lake or a stagnant pond.

Lakes benefit from water constantly coming in and going out,
a steady exchange that brings life.
Lakes are blue and fresh and filled with life.
Stagnant ponds, on the other hand,
have no life, no color, and they’re filled with the stench of decay.
That’s because there is no exchange of water,
the water just sits there still and unmoving.
There is no renewal.

And that’s our second challenge,
to be transformed by the renewal of our mind.
Renewal is walking in the newness of life in Christ.
It’s a constant exchange
between ourselves and the living water of Christ.
As we prayed in today’s psalm,
“My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.”

Our soul thirst for Jesus, the living water.
Renewal is a steady drinking of the living water of Christ,
and then allowing it to flow out of ourselves
to others in the world around us,
through conversation, generosity, kindness, genuine relationship.
It is a constant flow, back and forth,
that sustains us in the life of the Spirit.

Today we are challenged to ask ourselves,
How regularly are we drinking from the well of the living water of Christ?
How open are we to the flow of the Holy Spirit within us and through us?
Are we making time each day to be with and aware of God,
making sure we are listening and not just speaking?
Or have we become stagnant in our faith?
Renewal is a constant process,
a steady exchange between ourselves, the Holy Spirit,
and the world around us.
It is a lifelong task, as we can see from the life of St. Peter.

Peter was constantly in need of transformation and renewal.
We’ve already seen that in today’s gospel.
Later, in the Acts of the Apostles, after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension,
Peter needs transformation and renewal again.
The question comes up
about whether the Gentiles need to be circumcised
in order to be disciples.
Peter thinks that they do,
but through a gathering of Church leaders at the Council of Jerusalem,
by listening to St. Paul, and especially by listening to the Holy Spirit,
Peter comes to a renewed understanding of God’s will,
and he was better able to discern what was “good, pleasing, and perfect.”

We see this kind of renewal and transformation in the Church
through gatherings like the Second Vatican Council
and the current Synod gathering about to take place in October.
Gatherings like these open the Church to the working of the Holy Spirit,
and make transformation and renewal possible
so that, like St. Peter, the Church can discern God’s will.

And discernment is the third challenge we hear
from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Peter was able to discern the will of God about the Gentiles
because he was transformed by the renewal of his mind.
Paul, too, underwent tremendous transformation and renewal
after encountering Christ on the road to Damascus.
Paul went from persecuting Christians
to becoming one of Christianity’s greatest evangelizers.
At first, Paul was an obstacle to faith
who thought he had it all figured out.
He needed transformation and renewal
in order to better discern God’s will for him and for God’s people.

So often we think we know what God wants
before we do the necessary work of transformation and renewal.
Peter rebuked Jesus, Paul persecuted Christians.

There is a lot of rebuking and persecuting going on today,
and precious little discernment.
We have become obstacles to Christ
by our lack of transformation and renewal.

Today we are challenged to examine our lives,
looking for those places where we are stagnant,
and where we think like human beings, rather than God.

We are blessed to have St. Peter as our parish patron.
Not only for the times he got things right,
but also for the times he got things wrong.
Like Peter, we don’t always get it right.
Like Peter, we are sometimes obstacles to Jesus.
But, like Peter, we can change.
We can be transformed and renewed.
Each time we enter this church,
we need to remember our need for renewal,
our call to be transformed.
And we can also remember
that Jesus is patient with us,
as he was with Peter.
Jesus offers us living water for our thirsty souls,
transforming us from stagnant ponds into living lakes,
and renewing us in mind,
so we can better discern God’s will,
what is good, pleasing and perfect.

The George Eliot Chapter-a-Day Read-along continues this week with a book that some call the greatest novel in the English language, Middlemarch: A Study in Provincial Life. I have wanted to read Middlemarch for many years, having started it several times, but I was never able to make it very far. A book like Middlemarch is exactly the reason I began the chapter-a-day read-alongs, and I look forward to finally engaging with Eliot’s masterpiece.

If you’ve been following this year’s reading schedule, then you know that tomorrow you will read the Epilogue to Romola and then on Thursday, July 27 you will begin reading Middlemarch. If you haven’t been participating in the chapter-a-day read-along, this is a great time to start. I invite you to jump on board this week and join us for this classic work of Victorian literature. For all the details, including the reading schedule, visit the George Eliot Chapter-a-day Read-a-long announcement post.

Penguin Classics Edition

Up to this point in the read-along I have been reading from a vintage set of the Works of George Eliot. I have used that set for Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Romola. But for Middlemarch I will be changing my approach a bit. For reading Middlemarch I have purchased the Penguin Classics paperback edition so I can mark it up with my thoughts, questions, and insights.

I’m also excited to enhance my reading of Middlemarch with a series of lectures by Benjamin McEvoy, founder of the Hardcore Literature Book Club. In December of 2021, Ben led a reading of Middlemarch that followed the original publication schedule, reading each section roughly two months apart. While I will not be following his schedule, since I will be reading a chapter a day, I’m sure his lectures will still be relevant and insightful. Maybe a few years down the road when I reread Middlemarch I will follow the original publication schedule.

Ben published one of his introductory videos for reading Middlemarch on his YouTube channel, and I share it here for those who are interested: How to Read Middlemarch by George Eliot (10 Tips).

To access the rest of the Middlemarch videos you will have to be a Patreon member of the Hardcore Literature Book Club, but it is well worth it for the sheer volume of quality lectures Ben has created. I highly recommend the Hardcore Literature Book Club to anyone who wants to live literature more deeply. There must be close to 400 lectures already available on the site, with more being released multiple times during the week. You can join the group’s current reading schedule or you can use the back catalog to create your own reading journey.

So, I’ve got my Penguin Classics edition of Middlemarch, a green Pentel metal tip .7mm EnerGel pen, and a green Leuchtturm1917 notebook with ruled pages. I’ll be continuing to post my favorite quote each day on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter using the hashtag #eliotreadalong and I hope to see you there!

It’s a sad fact of history
that the largest religious community
that ever lived together in the same place
in the history of the Catholic Church
was at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany during World War II.
Over 2,500 Catholic priests became prisoners in Dachau,
in Cellblock 26, known as the Priestblock.
They were from 144 dioceses and 25 countries,
and they made up about a third of Dachau’s total population.

While they were there at Dachau,
the priests ministered to the other prisoners the best they could,
and they tried to strengthen each other, and give each other hope.
As the days went by, they even held theological discussions
to try and make sense of what was happening,
not only to them, but to the world.
They talked about the holocaust that was happening before their eyes,
and the war raging across the world,
weapons of destruction worse than any other in history;
and all this coming after what had been called “The War to End All Wars.”

These 2500 priests considered all of this,
and as they pondered,
one question kept returning to them.
“How could this happen?”

But that was not the complete question they asked.
The complete question, the full question, included a key phrase at the end.
Their full question was,
“How could this happen in Christian nations?”
Germany was a Christian nation. Italy, France, Great Britain,
the United States; even Russia had its Christian roots.
And these priests asked themselves,
“How could this happen
among people who professed to be followers of Christ?
We must do better!” they said.

We must do better.
And that is what Jesus is telling his disciples in today’s gospel.

He says, “your righteousness must surpass that
of the scribes and Pharisees.”
In other words, “You must do better.”

The law is not simply to be observed,
it is to be lived.

It is not enough to merely avoid murdering someone, he says,
that’s not enough.
You must do better.

If you have conflict, resolve it.
Disciples are not to call people fools or other demeaning names.
These people you try to humiliate are my brothers and sisters.
Before you even approach the altar with a gift,
if you have a problem with someone,
go reconcile with them,
and then come back.
You must do better.

It is not enough to avoid committing adultery.
Don’t even look at someone with lust.
That’s exploitation,
using someone else for your own pleasure.
You must do better.

It is not enough to avoid false oaths.
Live a life of integrity,
be who you are at all times,
in public and in private,
so that your yes means yes
and your no means no.
You must do better.

This is what Jesus is telling his disciples.
It’s what Jesus is telling us.

When we look at the world today,
the escalation of conflicts between nations,
the out and out war taking place,
we must do better.

When we look at our nation,
the polarization, the name calling,
the attempts to utterly humiliate opponents,
we must do better.

Even when we look inside our Church,
we see infighting, bickering, lack of charity between fellow Christians,
even, sadly, among Church leaders.
Is this reconciling with our brother or sister before coming to the altar?
Is this living a life of integrity where our yes means yes
and our no means no?
We must do better!

The 2500 priests at Dachau who saw the need to do better
also had discussions about how to do better.
In the face of the great evil they were experiencing,
they had an insight,
perhaps even the grace of the Holy Spirit inspiring them.
They realized that in the ministries of the Church
there were images of Christ the King
and images of Christ the Priest,
but there was a need for images of Christ the Servant.
And this could help us do better.

Whenever we humble ourselves enough to serve others,
we encounter Christ in them
and they encounter Christ in us.
In the words of Pope Francis,
“The more we serve,
the more we are aware of God’s presence,
especially when we serve those who cannot give anything in return…”
And when we see Christ in those we serve,
we are more likely to treat them with dignity,
we are more likely to build friendships with them,
we are more likely to want to reconcile with them
in peaceful and loving ways.
Conflict and disagreement are always going to exist.
But the way we resolve those conflicts
and address those differences with others
ought to grow out of an understanding of their dignity as children of God.
When we serve others, we are less likely to call them fools,
humiliate them,
or exploit them for our own pleasure.

When we serve others,
we do better.

So as the priests in Dachau
continued thinking about the important of service,
they saw the need for more images of Christ the Servant.
But they weren’t thinking necessarily
of more icons or paintings of Christ the Servant
being put up in churches and homes around the world,
although that would be wonderful.

I’ve brought in this image of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet,
because that’s who Jesus was and is, a servant.
Contemplating icons like this one
can certainly help us remember Christ the Servant,
and our own call to serve others.

But the priests at Dachau intended something more.
They saw the need for living images of Christ of the Servant.

And so they began to think the time had come
to bring back permanent deacons.
In the 1940’s, and for centuries before,
there were no permanent deacons,
as there had been in the early years of the church —
deacons like St. Lawrence and St. Ephraim.
Permanent deacons existed in the Church for many centuries,
but for a lot of complicated reasons they declined in number
and eventually disappeared.

The priests in Cellblock 26 saw the need
for the return of permanent deacons,
permanent images of Christ the Servant,
who would animate the people to service.

That is what those 2500 priests concluded,
and they wrote their thoughts down in notes,
and those notes were eventually published in a book
that was one of the influences on Pope Paul VI
when he decided to re-establish the permanent diaconate in 1967,
after the Second Vatican Council.

That decision is what allows me to stand before you,
a permanent deacon,
talking to you about serving others.
God always knows how to make grace come out of any suffering.
That horrible experience of the 2500 priests in Cellblock 26
lead to the renewal of the permanent diaconate,
so that now there are almost 49,000 deacons in the world,
and the numbers are increasing each year.

But when we look at the current conflicts in our world,
the divisions in our nation,
and even in our Church,
I must do better,
you must do better,
we must do better!

So I ask you to find some individual or some group that you can serve;
someone who cannot give back,
someone you disagree with or have a conflict with;
or some individual or group that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Christ the Servant went to uncomfortable places
like Samaria and the Decapolis.
He ministered to people who made others uncomfortable,
people on the fringes of society,
like tax collectors, prostitutes, and those with leprosy.
Who would he minister to today, if he were here among us?
Those are the very people he is asking us to serve.

Today Jesus asks us to surpass the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees
and do better.

It is not easy;
but when has the Christian life ever been easy?
the Christian life is the way of the cross.
And through the grace of our baptism,
strengthened in confirmation
and nourished here at the Eucharistic table,
Christ gives us the strength to carry that cross.

Today I urge you to find a way to serve others,
for in doing so you will find Christ;
and others will find Christ in you.

With Lent approaching,
maybe this can be part of your Lenten sacrifice.

The world desperately needs to see Christ, the Prince of Peace.
Because what we Christians have done so far,
as good as it has been,
has not been enough.
We must do better.

The feast of the Epiphany commemorates the arrival of the magi,
and their journey to find Christ can inspire us
to reflect on our own journey to encounter Christ in our lives.
Each of our journeys is unique,
and no one finds Christ in the quite the same way as anyone else.

The magi in the Gospel of Matthew found Jesus in their own way.
The names and numbers of the magi are not given in Matthew’s gospel,
but we think of them as a group of three,
probably because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Our tradition gives them the names Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior.

These three magi, or wise men, read and studied the signs,
and when they noticed a particular star at its rising,
they traveled far from their own land in the east
and they found Jesus in Bethlehem.

For some of us, our journey might be similar:
following clear signs, point A to point B.
For others of us, the path is different,
a more winding road.

Such was the case with the other wise man, Artaban.
You won’t find Artaban in the Bible.
His story is told by the author Henry van Dyke.

It seems that Artaban had studied the stars with his friends
Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior,
and he knew that a king was to be born among the Jews,
a King who would change the world.
So Artaban arranged to meet up with his three friends
and travel with them to visit this King,
once they saw his star.
In preparation, Artaban sold his possessions and bought three jewels –
a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl – to carry as gifts to the king.

One night, Artaban looked up and said,
“The star! The King is coming, and I will go to meet him.”
He had ten days to get to the rendezvous
and join his friends’ caravan,
so Artaban immediately got on his horse
and rode across fields of Concabar, past Selucia,
across the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
and finally arrived at Babylon at nightfall on the tenth day,
his horse exhausted,
just three hours away from his friends.
But what was this?
There was a man lying across the road, a poor Hebrew exile, almost dead,
in the grip of a deadly fever.
Should he turn aside, if only for a moment, to help this poor man,
and risk missing the caravan?
He couldn’t leave the man to die,
so Artaban jumped from his horse, brought the man water
and cared for him until the man recovered.
But, alas, he missed the caravan and his three friends.

Sometimes we think we may have “missed the boat,”
and we look back on the choices we have made,
wondering if they were right.

But Artiban was persistent.

However, he couldn’t cross the desert with only a horse,
so he sold the sapphire
to buy the camels and supplies necessary for such a long trip.
Fortunately, the Hebrew man he had saved
told him that, according to the prophets,
the King of the Jews would not be born in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem.

So Artaban set off for Bethlehem, hoping to meet his friends there.
He crossed deserts, mountain ranges,
endured the fierce heat of day, and the bitter chill of night.
and finally arrived in Bethlehem.
As he walked through the village looking for his friends,
Artaban heard a woman’s voice through a doorway,
singing her baby boy to sleep.
When she noticed his foreign clothing,
she told Artaban of the three strangers from the far East
who had appeared in the village three days ago,
and how they said a star had guided them to the place
where a newborn child lay.
But the young mother also told Artaban
that the strangers had gone,
and the child and his family were gone too,
rumored to have fled to Egypt.

Artaban’s spirit was crushed.
He had missed his friends again, and the newborn King!

Sometimes our spirits are crushed.
And we feel unlucky or abandoned.

And then it gets worse.

For just then, soldiers arrived in the village,
and Artaban and the young mother heard shouts:
“The soldiers of Herod are killing our children!”
The young mother hugged her child tightly,
and crouched in the darkest corner of the room.
Artaban went quickly to the doorway and stood there, looking out.
A soldier came hurrying up the street
and saw Artaban in his foreign clothing, filling up the doorway.
Artaban said, “I’m all alone in this place,
and I am waiting to give this jewel to the prudent captain
who will leave me in peace.”
Artaban showed the ruby,
and the amazed captain pocketed the jewel and said to his men,
“March on, there is no child here, the house is empty.”

From Bethlehem Artaban traveled on to Egypt,
seeking everywhere and finding nothing.
When he got to Alexandria a wise Hebrew rabbi told him,
“The Messiah will be despised and rejected by many,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
Those who seek him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly,
the sorrowful and the oppressed.”

And so Artaban traveled from place to place, visiting the oppressed.
Though he didn’t find the King, he did find many who needed help.
He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and comforted the captive,
and his years passed swiftly by,
thirty-three years to be exact,
and still he sought the King of the Jews.
Artaban’s hair was now white, his face wrinkled, his body weary.

He had come for the last time to Jerusalem, still looking for the King.
It was the season of Passover and the city was filled with foreigners.
Artaban joined a group of people from his own country
and asked them where they were going.
They said, “We’re going to the place called Golgotha,
where there is to be an execution of two famous robbers,
and another, Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done wonderful works,
but who has been sent to be crucified
because he said he was the King of the Jews.”

Nazareth? The King of the Jews!
Could it be?
Could it be that he had arisen but had been rejected,
and was now about to die?
And Artaban thought,
“Maybe I will at last find the King, in the hands of his enemies,
and will come in time to offer my pearl for his ransom before he dies.”

But just then a troop of Roman soldiers came down the street,
dragging a young girl.
She was the daughter of a merchant,
but her father was dead,
and she was being sold as a slave to pay his debts.

Artaban knew what he had to do.
He took the pearl and gave it to the slave.
“This is your ransom, daughter.
It is the last of my treasures which I have kept for the King.”

Suddenly there was a great earthquake,
and the walls of the houses shook to and fro.
A heavy tile fell from a nearby roof and struck Artaban on the temple.
He lay breathless and pale, in the lap of the young girl,
knowing that his quest was over
and that he had failed.

Sometimes we feel the same way, that we have failed.
We lose hope, we despair.
But we don’t always have the full picture.
In fact, we rarely do.

You see, then came a voice through the twilight, very small and still.
The young girl turned to see if someone had spoken from the window above them,
but she saw no one.
Then the old man’s lips began to move, as if to answer,
and she heard him say,
“Not so, my Lord, when did I see you hungry and feed you?
Or thirsty, and give you drink?
When did I see you a foreigner and take you in, or naked and clothe you?
Thirty-three years I have looked for you;
but I have never seen your face, or ministered to you, my King.”

The sweet voice came again, faint and far away,
but this time the young girl understood the words:
“Truly I say to you,
whatsoever you have done to one of the least of these,
you have done it to me.”

A calm radiance of wonder and joy lighted the face of Artaban
and a long breath of relief exhaled gently from his lips.
His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted.
The other wise man had found his King.

Not one of us travels the same road.
Some of us have led fairly straightforward lives of faith,
from point A to point B,
only to begin questioning in our old age.
Some of us were raised in the Faith,
and may have drifted away and then returned with new appreciation.
Some of us came to the Faith later in life,
after exploring many different paths,
or after suffering through difficult challenges.
We may have family or friends
who seem to be moving away from Bethlehem right now.
But even they are still on the journey,
and there is hope for them.

On this feast of the Epiphany,
each one of us is asked to reflect on our own search for Jesus.

What has your journey been like?
Where have you gotten lost or sidetracked?
Who has helped guide you back?
In what unexpected places or people have you found Jesus?
What treasures have you given him?
What has been your Epiphany?

[Click here to read the full version of “The Story of the Other Wise Man” by Henry van Dyke]

With the new year beginning today it’s time for my annual list of favorite reads from the previous year. As I look back on 2022, I see that I definitely did not stick to my plan to read books from my greatest books list. Nonetheless, I still had a fruitful year of reading. My intention was to begin with a re-read of the Iliad and the Odyssey and then move on to other epics like the Aeneid and Paradise Lost, but my reading philosophy began to change in the middle of last year. More on that later. First, here are my favorite reads from 2022:

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
2. A Light in the Window by Jan Karon
3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
4. A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness by David Steindl-Rast
5. Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
6. Awareness by Anthony de Mello
7. The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian, books 5-9: Desolation Island, The Fortune of War, The Surgeon’s Mate, The Ionian Mission, and Treason’s Harbour
8. Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault
9. A Spring Within Us by Richard Rohr
10. Open Wide My Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr

I finished the year having read 29 books, short of my goal of 36. The shortest book I read was The Lion, the Mouse and the Dawn Treader by Carl McColman, and the longest book I read was Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas. I read 15 nonfiction books and 14 works of fiction. While these statistics are interesting, I hope they have less meaning for me next year.

As I mentioned earlier, my reading approach changed in the middle of last year. I began slowing down in order to savor more deeply the books I was reading. For 2023 I am choosing to take more seriously this idea from Mortimer Adler:

“It’s not how many books you get through, it’s how many books get through you.”

I began reading Moby-Dick in a contemplative way last year through the resources at Benjamin McEvoy’s Hardcore Literature Book Club and I am still reading it several months later. It has been an enriching and rewarding experience, though I have had to completely re-adjust my mental approach to reading. I will be drastically reducing my Goodreads reading challenge so I don’t feel like I have to race through books, and I will only be participating in a select few additional reading challenges.

My intention is to drink more deeply of the books I am reading, taking my time to allow them to have more of an impact on me. But this is more than just something I am doing with reading. I have chosen the word contemplation to be my word of the year and this is going to be my approach in many areas of my life as I work on my resolution to be more contemplative.

As I wrote in one of my comments on the Hardcore Literature website, what I love about the etymology of the word contemplation is that it’s a combination of com- and templum. In other words, the root meaning of contemplation is “being in a temple.” What that says to me is that contemplation is the habit of looking at the world as if it is a temple, a sacred place where God is present, patiently waiting for me to slow down and really see the divine which surrounds me.

The word contemplation originated around the year 1200, where it meant “religious musing.” This is exactly the sense of the word I mean. Contemplation encompasses mindfulness, simplicity, savoring, awareness, authenticity, longing, depth, slowing down—in other words, it is the sum total of all the many aspects of slowing down that have been calling to me recently. And yet it goes deeper than all those concepts, because its end is communion with the tender, loving God of the universe.

So this year I hope to slow down, do less, pray more deeply, be more present, focus on people, appreciate nature, and breathe.

Happy New Reading Year! Many blessings to you and your family.

It’s been over fourteen months since we first began our journey with D’Artagnan and the rest of his musketeer friends, and today we reach the end of their story. Even though I finished my first reading of the series just three years ago, I still enjoyed reading it again, especially getting to revisit such interesting and noble characters. One of the things I appreciate most about the them is how they stayed true to their friendship even when they were on opposite sides politically.

Looking back over my experience with these books, D’Artagnan remains one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Watching him grown from an immature hothead into a leader of men was enjoyable and satisfying, and the final chapter of the last book still gets to me. This second reading of the series has given me a greater appreciation of Athos, Raoul, and Porthos, but Aramis has gone down slightly in my estimation, especially after the events of the The Man in the Iron Mask. My least favorite section of the series was definitely the volume entitled Louise de la Vallière — or really any section where the musketeers were not featured. I had little patience for hearing about the romantic escapades of the French court, and the rivalry between Colbert and Foquet began to get tedious. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed re-reading Twenty Years After, and it almost matches The Three Musketeers as my favorite of the series. While Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo is probably the better overall book in terms of plot, setting, and depth of meaning, in terms of characters I think I like those in the D’Artagnan series more. At least, I would love the chance to sit down to dinner with D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and Raoul.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this longer-than-usual read-along. I hope you found the books enjoyable, and I invite you to participate in the George Eliot Chapter-a-day Read-along that starts tomorrow!

“She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot….Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women’s writing being limited to lighthearted romances or other lighter fare not to be taken very seriously. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic.” (Wikipedia)

Adam Bede was published in February of 1859, a year which also saw the publication of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. In July of 1859 George Eliot anonymously published The Lifted Veil, a novella that is supposedly quite unlike her realistic fiction. The Lifted Veil is included in the second volume of the vintage edition of Adam Bede that I will be reading, and I hope to read it after we finish Adam Bede, especially since it has been described as “a significant part of the Victorian tradition of horror fiction, which includes such other examples as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

Of the six books we are going to read this year, Adam Bede is one of three I have not read, the other two being Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. I have no knowledge of the story or setting of Adam Bede, and really only know it from seeing it on lists of classics. That means I am going into it fresh, reading it for the first time.

Good luck with your own reading of Adam Bede, and feel free to come back to this post and comment on your reactions to the book. Remember that I will be posting a quote each day on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #eliotreadalong and I’m even going to experiment with posting on Instagram as well!

The Classics Room at 2nd Look Books (image from 2ndlookbooks.com)

I discovered the collection while browsing in the Classics Room of one of my favorite used bookstores, 2nd Look Books, in Spokane, Washington. The Classics Room is in the basement of the store in one of the back corners, and as you walk through its doorway you are greeted with the lovely sight of shelves filled with individual volumes of vintage literary sets like the Great Books of the Western World, the Harvard Classics Library, and Will Durant’s Story of Civilization. To your left is the Shakespeare section and behind you are volumes of classic poetry. But on this particular day it was the wall on the right that drew my attention, the shelves of classic novels.

On the very top shelf, where the overstock is usually kept, I spied a set of antique hardcover books with dark moss-colored spines and gilt titles, nineteen volumes in all. They seemed to me like the kind of books one might find in the library of a castle in a gothic novel–ancient, dark, and exotic. At the top of each spine I read “Works of George Eliot.” After leafing through the various volumes and spending some time getting a feel for them, it didn’t take long to decide that this was a set I wanted in my own library. Thanks to some trade-in credit I had accumulated over the past years, I carried the entire set out the door with very little impact on my bank account.

The Old Library at William and Mary, 1930 (image from https://tribetrek.wm.edu/items/show/9)

Once I got the set home and begin browsing through it more thoroughly, a bookplate in each volume informed me that it did, in fact, come from a library, the library at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Not quite a gothic library, but almost. And wonder of wonders, the books still had library cards in them! Many of the books were checked out in the 1940s, which means they would have been shelved at a building that was originally called simply The Library, but which is now known as Tucker Hall. The Library was built in 1909 with money donated by Andrew Carnegie and served as the main library until 1966 when the new Swem Library was built. So this set of books most likely resided in The Library until 1966 and then moved to Swem Library where it stayed until at least 1973, according to the latest check-out date I could find in the back of the books. So far I have not discovered when the set was taken off the shelves, but each volume is stamped in the front with the words “Sent to be withdrawn.”

The bookplate also said the set was donated to William and Mary College by someone named Mrs. William H. Greene. One of my biggest questions became, Who was Mrs. William H. Greene? Some internet sleuthing produced a 1950-1951 bulletin from the College of William and Mary that announces the recipients of “The Greene Scholarships. Established in 1948 through a bequest of $60,000 by Mr. and Mrs. William H. Greene of Westchester County, New York, as memorials to John Blair and Mary Blair, James Henry Ruggles and Susan Blair Ruggles, William H. Reynolds, and Agnes E. Reynolds, and the donors, William and Aimee Ruggles Greene.”

So it appears that Mrs. William H. Greene is Aimee Ruggles Greene. More sleuthing revealed that in the 1940 census Aimee Ruggles Greene was 70 years old and lived in Westchester, New York with her husband William H. Greene, age 80. Their household included a housekeeper named Elizabeth Castiel (age 47), her son Jack Castiel (age 23), and a chauffeur named Harry Castiel (age 60). Mr. and Mrs. William H. Greene must have been pretty well off to afford a housekeeper and a chauffeur, and to be able to donate an entire set of the works of George Eliot, to say nothing of establishing a $60,000 scholarship in 1948.

So why would Aimee Ruggles Greene donate the Works of George Eliot to the college? Was it from her personal collection, or did she simply provide the money? Was George Eliot her choice or was it something the college wanted? And why is only her name on the bookplate and not the name of her husband? Maybe she donated the set after William passed away? And what was the Greene family’s connection to the College of William and Mary? Was that William’s alma mater? It’s unlikely that Aimee attended the college, since she was about 48 years old when William and Mary went coed. Perhaps one of their children went there? So many questions about the origin of this collection!

I also have questions about what happened after it was withdrawn from William and Mary. How did this set of nineteen large volumes get from Williamsburg, Virginia, all the way across the country to Spokane, Washington? If the set was withdrawn from the library in the 1970s or 80s, then perhaps someone purchased them from the library and then moved to Spokane. I didn’t ask 2nd Look Books about where they got the set, but perhaps it’s worth asking the next time I’m there.

So much for questions about the origin of the books and their original owners. My next set questions have to do with the books themselves. First, I am curious about how old the set is and whether it’s complete. The set is definitely older than 1944, which is the earliest check-out date in the back of the volumes. And it’s definitely newer than 1908, which is the copyright of the one of the pictures. It appears to be published by Brentano’s New York, but there is also a credit to The University Press, Cambridge. The closest set I could find online is a ten volume set from 1908 published by Brentan’s New York and printed by The University Press, Cambridge. Besides being only ten volumes, it doesn’t look like the books I have, which makes me wonder if I have a reprint of the 1908 set, possibly a special printing made for universities. However, the set I saw online also includes a volume with the poems of George Eliot, and none of the volumes in my set contain poetry, which makes me think that my set is incomplete.

If you’re a book collector or someone with experience with vintage books and you can tell me anything about this set, please leave a comment!

In a few days we’ll begin reading the works of George Eliot, and I can’t wait to pick up each volume in this set, wondering who read it before me and what they thought as they read. Do you have any used vintage books in your library? If so, what mysteries do they contain?

This is the official sign-up post for the 2023 George Eliot Chapter-a-Day Read-along. It’s hard to believe, but 2023 will be the sixth year of my hosting chapter-a-day read-alongs. To celebrate this sixth year, I am very excited to announce that we will be reading six major works by George Eliot.

Why George Eliot? Two main reasons: First, I have long wanted to read Eliot’s Middlemarch, the novel that Martin Amis and Julian Barnes call the greatest novel in the English language. Second, this past year I purchased a vintage set of the works of George Eliot from my local used bookstore, and it is just aching to be read. I’ll share more about the set in the future, but this post is all about how to participate in the read-a-long. For those new to the concept, the basic idea is that participants commit to reading a chapter a day of the selected books, following the schedule as much as they are able. If you can only join in for some or even only one of the books, that’s fine, too. As with all previous challenges, read what you can when you can. The beauty of a chapter-a-day read-along is that if you miss a few days it’s relatively easy to catch up. Each chapter should take only about 10-15 minutes to read each day.

We begin on January 1, 2023 with Adam Bede, and by December 31 we will have read almost every major work by George Eliot in the order in which they were originally published: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Middlemarch (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876). In order to keep the read-along contained in one year, we will not be reading Felix Holt, the Radical (1866). All of Eliot’s books are in the public domain and can be read or listened to online for free, and are also available as e-books.

How to Participate in the 2023 Chapter-a-Day Read-along

• Get a copy of each of the six books.
• If you have your own blog, write a welcome post explaining why you are joining the read-along and what you hope to gain from it. Leave a link to your post in the comments section at the end of this post. If you don’t have a blog, you can leave your information in the comments section below as well.
• Download the daily schedule: Nick’s 2023 George Eliot Chapter-a-Day Reading Schedule
• Commit to reading a chapter a day. If you get behind or race ahead, no worries. Life happens.
• It’s purely optional, but I encourage you to join me in posting a quote each day on Facebook or Twitter. I will be posting on both, using the hashtag #eliotreadalong. My Twitter and Facebook posts will stay on track with the reading schedule, and I only ask that you please respect the reading experience of those who may not know the full story. In other words, no spoilers!
• You will find official 2023 read-along graphic next to this list. Feel free to use it on your website if you wish.
• Subscribe to One Catholic Life so you don’t miss any read-along posts throughout the year. You can get updates via email by using the form in the right-hand sidebar.

Reading Schedule

As I mentioned above, we’ll be reading six of George Eliot’s major works. Here is a broad outline of the reading schedule, along with links to the Kindle editions, the online Gutenberg editions, and the Librivox audiobook editions (Kindle links are affiliate links):

• Adam Bede: January 1 to February 24 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox
• The Mill on the Floss: February 25 to April 23 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox
• Silas Marner: April 24 to May 14 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox
• Romola: May 15 to July 26 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox
• Middlemarch: July 27 to October 22 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox
• Daniel Deronda: October 23 to December 31 – Kindle – Gutenberg – Librivox

Conclusion

The goal of these chapter-a-day read-alongs is to encourage people to read books they might not otherwise read because of their length or age. I appreciate all those who have participated in the past and I look forward to reading George Eliot with you this year.  Reading a book in a chapter a day is great way to tackle an otherwise intimidating classic, but it is so much more fun to do it with others. Seeing the quotes you post on Twitter is motivational and inspirational, and I look forward to them each day. I can’t wait to read George Eliot’s books with you!

2023 George Eliot Chapter-a-Day Read-along Schedule

Here is the detailed read-along schedule, and you can also download it as a pdf here: Nick’s 2023 George Eliot Chapter a Day Reading Schedule

Once upon a time there were two towers.
Both towers began to be constructed about the same time,
in the late 1800s.
Both were constructed in Europe and designed by European architects,
and both of them were ambitious projects,
with plans for multiple levels, huge arches,
and decorative statues.
Each structure was designed to reach high into the sky,
and to be built of sturdy stone.
And both of these towers are unfinished to this day.
Both architects died during their construction,
and neither building was ever completed.

Today Jesus talks to the crowds about building a tower.
He compares building a tower
to being his disciple.
When you construct a tower, he tells the crowd,
you must count the cost beforehand.
In the same way, he says,
to be his disciple,
you must count the cost,
you must understand fully what it takes to follow him.
Otherwise you may find yourself unable to finish the work.

There is a cost to building a tower.
There is a cost to being a disciple of Jesus.
What is the cost of discipleship?
Jesus is very clear about this:
“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.”
The cost of discipleship is the cross.

The spiritual writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer explores this idea
in his book The Cost of Discipleship.
Bonhoeffer distinguishes between what he calls
cheap grace and costly grace:

“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship,
grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field;
for the sake of it, a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.”

“Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow,
and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it costs a [person] his life,
and it is grace because it gives a [person] the only true life…
Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son…
and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.”

“…what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.”

Jesus did not give up his life for us
so that we could “leave the world for an hour or so
every Sunday morning and go to church…”

He gave up his life so we could follow him 24/7:
carrying our own cross each day,
letting go of all that we possess, and all that possesses us.

Today we hear Jesus ask us if we have we factored that
into our calculations for building a spiritual life.
We often calculate costs in life.
How much do I need to save for a down payment for a mortgage?
How long will it take me to save it?
We calculate how much a vacation will cost us,
or what kind of car we can afford,
how much we’ll spend on gas or maintenance.
We calculate and estimate and predict.

Jesus is inviting us to do the same thing
with the spiritual life.
Jesus challenges us to calculate the cost of discipleship.
Because if we don’t,
we risk leaving the work of our spiritual lives unfinished,
like a building that is abandoned before it is done,
like a tower that is never completed.

Returning to the two unfinished towers we started with,
we saw that they had a lot in common.
Both were made of stone, both were started over 100 years ago,
both remain unfinished.

But there are also some significant differences between them.
The first one was designed in Scotland
by a man named John Stuart McCaig.
It was McCaig who commissioned the tower to be built,
and it was McCaig who designed it.
His purpose was to create a lasting monument to his family,
in the style of the Colosseum in Rome.
He designed it to be an elaborate structure,
with arches and arches, and a large central tower,
and a museum, and an art gallery.
Inside the central tower would be a large statue of himself,
and statues of his siblings and their parents.
But McCaig died before it was completed.
He did leave money in his will for the maintenance of the tower,
but his heirs contested the will and won their case,
and so the tower was never finished.
McCaig may have calculated
what he thought it would take to finish the tower,
but he miscalculated his family.
His tower was all about glorifying himself, glorifying his family,
and it sits in Scotland to this day, unfinished.
In fact, it’s even known today as “McCaig’s Folly.”

Jesus talks about the man who doesn’t finish his tower
who is made fun of by the onlookers.
McCaig’s Folly.

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Now the second tower in our story
is actually more than a tower, to be honest, quite a bit more.
It was designed in Barcelona, Spain.
And it, too, like McCaig’s Folly,
was intended to honor a family,
but not the family of the designer.
This building is a massive church intended to honor the Holy Family,
La Sagrada Familia, in Spanish,
the Sacred Family, the Holy Family,
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Its chief architect was Antoni Gaudi,
and construction began on it in 1882.
And like McCaig’s Folly, it remains unfinished to this day.

But what’s different about La Sagrada Familia,
when compared to McCaig’s Folly,
is that construction has never stopped on La Sagrada Familia.
From 1882 to 2022, for 140 years,
it has been worked on and worked on.
And it is magnificent.
I’ve only seen it in pictures,
but it’s on my bucket list.
Our daughter Teresa saw it when she spent a semester abroad
a few years go,
and she raved about how awe-inspiring it is.
Eighteen towering spires of differing heights,
representing the twelve apostles, the Blessed Virgin Mary,
the four evangelists,
and the tallest spire of all, representing Jesus Christ.

It will have three grand facades,
representing the Nativity, the Passion, and the Glory;
massive columns depicting the the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,
the seven deadly sins,
and the seven heavenly virtues;
five doors, with the central door having a triple entrance,
to represent the seven sacraments.
And that’s not even mentioning the interior of the church,
illuminated in all the colors of the rainbow,
designed to look organic,
like a living thing.

When Gaudi died in 1926,
less than a quarter of the project was complete.
But work continued under the direction of Gaudi’s main follower,
who handed it on to a group of architects
who have continued the work,
so the church is continually being worked on.
Pope Benedict consecrated the church in 2010
and proclaimed it a minor basilica.
It was projected to be finished in 2026,
but this has been delayed a bit due to the pandemic.

Maybe some of you here have seen it in person,
but if you haven’t, and you want to see something truly inspiring,
go online and look up La Sagrada Familia,
the church of the Holy Family in Barcelona Spain.

The construction of this church is a metaphor
for the construction of our spiritual lives,
for the building of our relationship with Christ.

Gaudi calculated correctly.
He knew the church would not be finished in his lifetime,
it was not even intended to be finished in his lifetime.
He built that into his calculations.
And now, it is very close to being finished.

And so that begs the question, where are we in our spiritual lives?
How are our calculations?
Are we, like McCaig’s Folly, focused on glorifying ourselves,
incomplete in our calculations?
Or are we, with our lives,
honoring the Holy Family,
taking Mary as our model of discipleship, of motherhood, of prayer;
taking Joseph as our model of fatherhood, of devotion?
Are we following Jesus, by taking up our cross daily,
refusing to settle for cheap grace, and seeking costly grace?

When we honor Jesus with our lives,
when we build that into our calculations,
We have a much better chance of finding fulfillment,
of being completed.
We know that we will not find complete fulfillment in this life.
That only happens in the next life.
But we also know that if we abandon the work
we will run the risk of living an unfinished, unfulfilled life

And so this week we’re invited to recalculate our spiritual life,
to factor in taking up our cross daily.
This is the cost of discipleship.

As we look at the spiritual life we are building,
is it looking more like McCaig’s Folly,
or La Sagrada Familia?

On this Solemnity of Pentecost the red vestments and red altar cloths are reminiscent of the fire that descended on the disciples. We see this color more and more in our own lives as the weather heats up and the fire season begins.

As we know so well from the fires that typically begin to plague us in the summer, fire can be destructive and deadly.

That’s one of the reasons pop singer Billy Joel used fire as a metaphor for chaos, crime, and war in his 1989 song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He got the idea for the song from a conversation he’d had with a young man. Joel had just turned 40 years old, and the young man told him that the world was in an “unfixable mess.” When Joel tried to console him by saying, “I thought the same thing when I was your age,” the young man replied, “Yeah, but you grew up in the fifties, and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.”

Joel was taken aback by this and replied, “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of Korea, the Hungarian freedom fighters, or the Suez Crisis?” Those events then became the origin of the song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Throughout the course of the song, Joel sings a litany of headlines from 1949 to 1989: North and South Korea, Joseph Stalin, the Thalidomide children, the Bay of Pigs invasion, Watergate, AIDS. And as Joel rattles off headline after headline, the chorus pounds out:

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

It’s been over thirty years since Billy Joel wrote those words, and unfortunately we can keep adding to his list of headlines: the pandemic, the epidemic of school shootings, the war in Ukraine. And on and on and on.

It sometimes seems that our world has always been engulfed in a raging wildfire, and we don’t know how to put it out.

How do we fight it?

One possible answer is to fight fire with fire.

We see the fire of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles today. “From the sky a noise like a strong driving wind,” “tongues as of fire.” It sounds like a wildfire from heaven.

The Holy Spirit descends like fire upon the disciples gathered together, but unlike a wildfire, it does not consume them. This is a different kind of fire.

Think of the burning bush on Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Law. God was present in a bush that burned but was not consumed, and from that fire God gave Moses the Law. It was that Law that connected the Israelites to their God. For generations, the way to be in relationship to God was to be faithful to the Law, to follow the instructions of the Torah.

For Jews, Pentecost celebrates the giving of the Torah, the giving of the Law to God’s people. The Law comes to Moses from a burning bush that is not consumed.

It is fitting then, that it is on Pentecost that the disciples receive the fire that burns but does not consume. The Law is now written on their hearts. That burning bush now dwells within them. They burn with God’s presence and are not consumed.

We, too, have received this fire. Through Baptism, Confirmation, and the continued reception of the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit has come to us “like a strong driving wind,” in “tongues as of fire.”

So on the one hand we have the raging fire of violence, destruction, and death outlined by Billy Joel’s song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and on the other we have the fire of the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles.

Is this how we fight the fire that Billy Joel writes about? Do we fight fire with fire?

Yes. And no.

When we hear the phrase “fight fire with fire,” we likely think of using an opponent’s strategy against him or her.

For instance, in politics, if an opponent starts slinging mud, then a candidate might fire with fire by slinging mud right back.

Or in business, if I’m competing for a promotion and someone tries to make me look bad to ruin my chances, then I might decide to fight fire with fire and try to make them look bad, too.

Or personally, if someone’s always picking on me or insulting me, then I could fight fire with fire and insult them right back.

But this isn’t the original meaning of fighting fire with fire.

The phrase “fighting fire with fire” comes from a strategy in battling wildfires. When a wildfire begins to get out of control, firefighters deliberately set what’s called a back fire in the path of the oncoming wildfire. This is not so that the two fires “battle it out.” Instead, as the back fire burns, it consumes fuel so that the primary fire has no tinder when it reaches the edge of the fire line.

The back fire burns up the grassland, the vegetation, and other flammable material so that when the main fire arrives, there is nothing left to burn. It can’t spread.

The Holy Spirit is like a back fire for our world. The Holy Spirit consumes the fuel for our fires. It’s like the refining fire in the book of the prophet Malachi that we hear during Advent. The Holy Spirit burns away our prejudice, our pride, our doubts, and our fears.

When we burn with the love of God in our hearts, there’s no room for fires of rage and hatred.

The key to stopping the wildfires in our culture is to allow the Holy Spirit to do its work of burning away the jealousy, hatred, prejudice, and fear that lie within us.

This is what the first Christians did. It’s what the saints have done throughout the ages. They set back fires of the Holy Spirit to starve the raging fires of sin.

The first disciples didn’t fight fire with fire by battling the Romans. They fought the fires of persecution with fires of baptism.

And that, too, is our call. Jesus’ words to the disciples are meant for us too: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

On this Solemnity of Pentecost, we remember our call to bring the Holy Spirit to the world, the fire within us that burns without consuming.

It’s a fire that says, “Turn the other cheek.”

It’s a fire that says, “Love your enemies.”

It’s the fire that gave St. Thomas More the determination to stand up to Henry VIII.

It’s the fire that gave St. Maximilian Kolbe the confidence to give his life in place of a stranger at Auschwitz.

It’s the fire that sustained Mother Teresa through years of discouragement and darkness.

It’s the same fire that St. Ignatius of Loyola was talking about when he told the Jesuits to “set the world aflame.”

This is the fire that makes a difference in the world.

It makes a difference in our personal lives, and it makes a difference in our culture.

It burns away our selfishness, our pettiness, our prejudices, and our fears, so that they can be replaced by self-giving love.

We see that fire most clearly in the burning heart of Jesus hanging on the cross, not a political leader come to overthrow the Romans with the fire of battle, but a servant leader come to transform hearts with the fire of sacrificial love.

It is His Holy Spirit we celebrate today, and it is his Spirit that sets our hearts on fire so that we can fight the fire of sin with the fire of the Holy Spirit.

If you have been listening to the Bible in a Year podcast and are still on schedule,
then you probably finished listening to the Gospel of John on Good Friday.
Don’t worry if you’re not on schedule,
my family and I are a little behind, too.
But if you are on schedule, then during Holy Week
you heard John describe all the many signs and wonders
that Jesus worked:
He turned water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.
He cured the official’s son from a distance.
He healed the man who had been blind, lame and paralyzed for 38 years;
he cured another blind man by making mud and smearing it in his eyes.
He raised Lazarus from the dead.

We have all heard these stories before,
and we know that the signs and wonders
that Jesus worked while he lived among us
were meant to encourage the people to believe in him.
Today we’re told that that is the very purpose of John’s Gospel:
“these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God…”

The signs and wonders Jesus performed were powerful and effective,
even if they were temporary.
Jesus turned water into wine
that was gone once the wedding guests drank it up.
He gave sight to blind eyes that would soon be closed again in death.
He raised Lazarus from the dead only for him to die again.
His bodily cures did not last forever,
and they were never meant to.
But he used those visible signs and wonders,
those temporary cures
to build up people’s faith,
to bring about eternal healing and salvation.

Some might say we need those signs and wonders today,
that since Jesus no longer works such miracles among us,
the Church was better off in its early days.
We might wish to see signs and wonders with our own eyes:
Jesus curing cancer in our friends and family,
or driving out the demons of addiction and depression.
Surely a little extra wine at our wedding this summer would be nice.

Then, like the early disciples,
we would be more easily able to believe in him,
and so would all those we know who have fallen away from the Church.

But let us not be jealous of those early Christians
who had the signs and wonders of Jesus in person
to help them in their belief.

On the contrary, as St. Augustine says,
today Jesus puts those who have never seen and yet believe
ahead of those who believe only because they see.

Even those who lived with Jesus and saw him every day
struggled with their belief.
So fragile was the disciples’ faith at that time,
that even when they saw the Lord
they found it necessary to touch him
before they could believe he had really risen from the dead.
They were unable to believe the testimony of their own eyes,
until they had touched his body
and explored his wounds with their fingers.

Only after this could Thomas,
the most hesitant of all the disciples, exclaim:
“My Lord and my God!”
It was by his wounds that Christ,
who had so often healed the many wounds of others,
came to be recognized himself.
They knew him by his wounds.

Now we might ask:
couldn’t the Lord have risen with a body
without any wounds at all,
a body with no scars?
And we know he certainly could have;
but he knew that his disciples carried within their hearts
a wound so deep that the only way to cure it
was to keep the scars of his own wounds in his body.

The disciples had left everything behind to follow him.
They had devoted their lives to him,
only to see him brutally crucified like a common criminal,
and buried in a tomb, dead and gone,
like all their hopes and dreams, seemingly.

Their pain and disappointment was a gaping wound
deep within their hearts as they gathered together in that upper room.

It was only when the disciples saw the Lord’s wounds,
and when Thomas was able to explore them with his fingers a week later,
that their own deep wounds could be healed,
and their despair transformed into joy.

And when Thomas finally exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”,
what was Jesus’ response?
“Have you come to believe because you have seen me?”
“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

And who are those,
if not ourselves and those who come after us?

When, later on, the Lord had ascended from human sight
and faith had had time to take root in people’s hearts,
those who believed in him made their act of faith
without seeing him or any of his signs and wonders,
without touching the one in whom they believed.
And so it has been from that day to this,
through countless generations of believers.

How blessed we are, indeed,
who have not seen or touched the wounds of Jesus,
and yet who believe in him.

Like the disciples, we have our own deep wounds,
and blessed are we who believe the Lord can heal them,
even though we cannot see him or touch him.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday,
we recognize that this is the mercy of God:
that Jesus is the divine physician,
capable of bringing us not merely a temporary cure,
but eternal healing and salvation.

Like the disciples, we gather here on the first day of the week.
We see the bread broken for us
and the wine poured out for us.
Though their appearance remains the same during the Eucharistic Prayer,
yet we believe that they become the Body and Blood of Christ.

When we come forward to receive Holy Communion,
blessed are we who can say,
“My Lord and my God.”

St. Augustine tells us that such a faith is beautiful to behold,
“because it springs from a devoted heart
rather than from an exploring hand.”

Let us not long for the signs and wonders
of the early days of the Church,
but instead let us celebrate these days
in which we live in the eternal presence of Christ,
who can heal us from all of our deepest wounds,
and whose divine mercy is everlasting.

Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted by the devil.”
Each year on the first Sunday of Lent
we enter into this significant moment at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
He has just emerged from his baptism in the Jordan river
only to be sent into the testing ground of the desert.
As we accompany him into the wilderness,
Jesus shows us how to live a life of Gospel conversion,
how to begin anew.
Today, as we begin the first full week of the Lenten season,
let us begin by asking ourselves
whether we are willing to embrace the grace-filled opportunity before us.
Are we prepared to be led into the desert with Jesus,
ready to wrestle with our temptations?
Or are we fearful of change,
preferring to let this season pass us by
while remaining comfortably stuck where we are?

Entering fully into Lent means leaving our comfort zone
and accepting the struggle of the wilderness.
Let us look at Jesus.
First, he was led by the Spirit;
then he enters into the desert;
and finally he faces temptation.
The Spirit, the desert, and temptation.
These three words characterize the Lenten experience.

It all begins with the Spirit.
The Gospel passage begins by saying Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit,
that he returns from the Jordan
and is led by that same Spirit that had descended upon him
in the form of a dove.
After his baptism, Jesus places himself under the direction of the Spirit.
The Father has just told him,
“You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”
Why is he pleased with him?
Because, among other things,
Jesus is a son who listens to his Father’s voice.
Jesus does not go his own way.
He is a faithful son who trusts in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Lent is the season for us to place ourselves
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit cares for us, knows what’s best for us;
the Spirit loves us.
But how often do we neglect the voice of the Spirit,
or follow the voice of our own ego instead,
or let the Spirit’s voice be drowned out
by the competing voices of all the distractions in our lives?
Jesus set his own interests aside,
put his faith in the Father,
and listened to the voice of the Spirit.
What do we need to do today to allow the Spirit of the Lord to guide us?

This Lenten season is the time to examine the voices we listen to—
the lyrics of our music, the visuals of our TV shows and movies,
the biases of the news sources and websites we frequent—
and to turn our attention to the Spirit that always seeks our own good,
that leads us to fullness of life.
What do those other voices seek?
“Buy this; buy that.”
“Condemn this group or that group, this person or that person.”
Obeying the voices of our consumer culture
leads us into envy, self-centeredness, and isolation,
resulting in a perpetual state of fear, unease, and anxiety.
The voice of the world leads to the tomb.
But the voice of the Holy Spirit
leads us into generosity, fellowship, and community,
resulting in peace, in shalom, in harmony.
The voice of the Spirit leads to the empty tomb, to resurrection.

But to get there, the Spirit first leads us into the desert.

And what is the desert?
It is a place apart,
a barren wilderness away from the false world we have created
to hide from ourselves.
The desert is the place of truth,
where all illusions are stripped away
and where we are confronted with our ego,
with our own sins and failings;
where false desires are revealed.
The desert is a place of potential chaos and danger,
but it is also the place of solitude and focus,
of meditation and contemplation.

This Lenten season is the time to let the Spirit lead us to a place apart.
The Gospel tells us
that, instead of plunging headlong into ministry after his baptism,
Jesus was led into the desert for forty days, where he ate nothing.

During Lent we are led into a desert of fasting and focus,
leaving behind those things that we think we need to be comfortable.
Let us ask ourselves honestly this Lent:
What can I leave behind for these forty days
so that I can focus more intently on what really matters?
Entering into Lent means going where Jesus went,
into the desert, into the wilderness.
It means following in his footsteps,
discovering that there are things in our current way of life
that we can leave behind and do without.
It is a challenging and maybe even fearful exercise,
this leaving of things behind.
We can become so addicted to certain patterns of living
that we can’t imagine life in any other way.
So often our habits can put us in a rut.
This Lent let us be creative and embrace new ways of living.

Lent is characterized by the Spirit, by the desert, and finally, by temptation.
Following the Spirit into the desert is not without its challenges.
On the contrary, whenever we seek to follow Jesus,
we are confronted with temptations to return to our former way of life.
And this is true no matter how long we have been a disciple.
We have doubts, we have fears,
we’re surrounded by contrasting messages,
and all of these make us vulnerable to temptation.
These temptations come in many forms:
physical and emotional comfort;
power, prestige, and success;
daring God to prove his love.
But these are false promises,
powerful illusions that seek to separate us from our true home.
And in the end they have eternal consequences.
Jesus sees right through the devil’s temptations
and dispels them with what is written in Sacred Scripture:
“One does not live on bread alone.”
“You shall worship God alone.”
“You shall not put God to the test.”

Lent is a time for us to return over and over to the Word of God
to confront the temptations that try to rule our lives.
In the first reading, Moses tells God’s chosen people,
“He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm,
with terrifying power, with signs and wonders.”
He reminds God’s people that God took care of them,
that his mighty power saved them from their oppressors.
That message is for us, too!
We need to hear, over and over again,
that God loves us, cares for us, and saves us.
This is the message of God’s sacred Word,
and the more we hear it,
and the more it becomes part of our very fabric of being,
the more we are able to dispel the temptations that haunt us.
How can we do that?
How can we make Sacred Scripture a more integral part of our lives
during the next forty days and beyond?
By whatever means necessary.
By carrying a little pocket edition of the New Testament with you
throughout the day and reading a little bit from it every so often.
Or by finding that Bible app that you installed on your phone
the last time you made a resolution to read Scripture.
Or easier yet, by going to the US Catholic Bishop’s website
and subscribing to the Daily Mass Readings.
They will be delivered to your email inbox every single day.
Temptations are powerful.
We need the strength of Scripture to help us resist them.

Today’s gospel is a powerful lesson for us.
Lent is a time to listen to the voice of the Spirit
as it leads us into the desert where we confront our temptations.
It is a process of tuning out the competing voices,
of fasting from destructive patterns of living,
and of confronting the darkness of temptation with the light God’s word.
May we journey through this Lenten season with resolve.
Let us not miss out on this grace-filled opportunity
to turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.

About five or six years ago there was a poll
to discover the world’s greatest love letter.
After all the votes were tallied,
the overwhelming favorite
among all the love letters ever written,
was a letter from country music singer Johnny Cash
to his wife June Carter Cash for her 65th birthday.
The letter was published in a book by their son about ten years ago,
and it’s just a beautiful letter, brief, simple, and heartfelt,
and it goes like this:

Happy Birthday Princess,

We get old and get used to each other.
We think alike.
We read each others [sic] minds.
We know what the other wants without asking.

Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit.
Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.

But once in awhile, like today,
I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am
to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.
You still fascinate and inspire me.
You influence me for the better.
You’re the object of my desire,
the #1 Earthly reason for my existence.
I love you very much.

Happy Birthday Princess. – John

Now there are many things to love about that letter.
First of all, I love it because it was written by Johnny Cash,
and I happen to be a fan.

But aside from that, there’s a real honesty to the letter,
a simplicity that gets right to the point,
a heartfelt sincerity.
Johnny Cash doesn’t try to gloss anything over,
he’s not trying to hide anything.
They sometimes get on each other’s nerves,
and take each other for granted.
But he ends with a beautiful tribute to how important she is to him,
“the #1 Earthly reason for his existence.”
You can tell that this is a letter
from someone who’s been in a relationship for a long time,
with its ups and downs, its tragedies and glories.

It’s just beautiful, and it’s no wonder that it was voted
the greatest love letter of all time.

Now I bring this up today
because this weekend is Word of God Sunday.
Every year on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
we celebrate the Word of God, God’s love letter to us.
The Word of God is God’s love letter to us.

Love seeks expression.
Love, true love, almost demands to be communicated,
to be expressed to the beloved.
And so God, in his infinite love for us,
gives us his Word as a love letter to us.

And what is the Word of God?
If we look at the very beginning of the Gospel of John,
we can see exactly what the Word of God is:
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
The Word of God is not a what, but a Who,
the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the Word of God.
Jesus is God’s love letter to us.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”

Out of love, the Father gives the Son as gift to the world.
Jesus, the Word of God, is God’s love letter to us.
And it is up to us to read that letter,
to receive Jesus into our lives, into our hearts.

Like all married couples,
Brenda and I have exchanged love letters over the years.
And I don’t think it would ever have occurred to us not to read
any of the love letters that we had written to each other.
To receive a Valentine from Brenda and say,
“Oh, thanks, honey, I’ll read this later,” and set it aside?
Or, “Let’s put this anniversary card on the stack
with the bills and junk mail,
and all the rest of the stuff that we need to go through this week.”

No, when we get love letters from our beloved,
we set everything aside to read them,
whether they’re from a fiancé, a spouse, a parent or grandparent.
And we often go back and reread those letters,
noticing something we missed the first time,
or just reveling in the love we feel coming through those simple lines.

And that’s why it’s so important for us to read Scripture regularly.
We have a love letter from God that we can experience every single day,
and which leads us to encounter Jesus Christ, the true Word of God.
How can we put that aside?
How can we ignore that love letter?
Well, we get distracted, we get our priorities mixed up.

And so that’s one reason the parish is promoting
the Bible in a Year Podcast.
It’s one way of staying committed to reading that love letter,
cherishing the Word of God daily.
It’s a convenient way of becoming acquainted with the whole of Scripture,
so you get the bird’s-eye view, so to speak, of Salvation History.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for the first three weeks,
I have just one word for you:
brokenness.
That seems to be Fr. Mike’s word of the year so far.
If you haven’t been listening, and you’d like to, it’s not too late to start.
Just jump in on day 22 or 23.
Or start at the beginning and listen whenever you can.
As Fr. Luke has been saying,
you can listen in your car, while you exercise,
you can even watch it on TV through the YouTube app
like Brenda and I are doing with our family each evening,
so we can read the transcript in big letters.

It can be really helpful to listen to the Word of God in its entirety,
like the Bible in a Year Podcast is doing,
but it’s also important to read God’s love letter to us
is in a slow, deliberate, savoring way.
To use a metaphor that I think some here will appreciate,
it’s like opening up a bottle of fine wine and letting it breathe,
then pouring it carefully into the glass,
swirling it around while you appreciate its color,
sniffing its complex aroma,
and finally sipping it slowly, absorbing the flavors.

Reading our love letter from God
ought to be a little like that.
Sitting down comfortably and quietly,
turning deliberately to a sentence or paragraph of Scripture,
maybe the Gospel reading for daily Mass,
and reading it ever so slowly,
looking for a word or phrase that stands out to you.

When you encounter a word or phrase like that, you stop reading
and roll that word or phrase around in your mind,
chewing on it, pondering it,
wondering what this particular word or phrase means to you,
and how God may be using it to communicate with you.

Eventually, you may feel inspired
to speak your own verbal, prayerful response to God’s word.
At that point you pray honestly, simply, and sincerely,
just like Johnny Cash’s love letter.
You pray not in order to make a good impression on God,
but simply to be intimate with the One who loves you.
Eventually, the words may just drop away
and the wordless silence will embrace you
as you simply sit in God’s presence.

For instance, if you were reading today’s gospel,
you might be taken by the phrase,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
And you might stop and ponder, and think to yourself,
“This is about Jesus, but it’s also true of me.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, too.
Through my baptism and my confirmation,
I have received the Holy Spirit.
But I forget that sometimes.
I forget what a great gift it is to have received the Holy Spirit.”
And so I might ponder that awhile and be filled with gratitude,
and then I might return to the gospel and be drawn to the line,
“He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.”
So then I might think, “Yes, I have received the Holy Spirit for a reason,
to bring glad tidings to the poor.”
And at this point I may say to God, “I’m afraid of what that means,”
or I might say, “God, show me how to do this.
I’m not sure how to bring your glad tidings to the poor.
Who are the poor you want me to reach,
and how do I speak your glad tidings?
I’m not very good at this kind of thing.
But I believe that your Spirit is with me.”
Or maybe I don’t believe that,
maybe I’m having a hard time believing that, and so I tell God that, too.
You see, our dialogue with God needs to be honest,
just like that love letter from Johnny Cash to his wife June.

When mature lovers speak to each other,
they tell the truth.
And so our reading and pondering of a word or phrase of Scripture
may lead us to talk to God honestly and openly.
And after we speak, we sit in silence,
the way long-married couples often do,
saying nothing, just reveling in each others’ presence.

Just like Johnny Cash writes,

We get old and get used to each other.
We think alike. We read each others’ minds.
We know what the other wants without asking.

This is what happens to us the more regularly we pray with Scripture,
spending time with the beloved who loves us infinitely,
just 15 or 20 minutes a day.
We get used to God, we begin to think like God,
we begin to know what God wants.
We enter into communion with God.

Reading the Bible this way is not about figuring it all out,
but rather it’s about encountering Jesus, the Word of God,
through the medium of the written word,
and entering into communion.

On this Word of God Sunday,
I encourage you to make a commitment
to listening to the Bible in a Year Podcast,
or to spending 15 to 20 minutes each day
prayerfully reading the love letter that was written directly to you,
responding to that letter in prayer,
and sitting in silence with the One who loves you infinitely,
so that you can say to God in all honesty,
You’re the object of my desire,
the #1 Earthly reason for my existence.
I love you very much.

As 2022 is about to dawn, it’s hard to know what it will hold for our world, given the unpredictable nature of the ongoing pandemic. Or is it now shifting to an endemic, as we attempt to try and live with COVID-19? That’s more than I can say, but as I look back over 2021 one thing I can say without question is that reading has helped me make it through. Not only were the books themselves an antidote to all the craziness and stress, but the reading challenges I attempted were a welcome distraction and food for my troubled soul.

Here are a few notable reading events from this year (statistics from Goodreads):

• I read 43 books this year, 12 nonfiction and 31 fiction. The shortest book I read was The Precious Present by Spencer Johnson and the longest was David Copperfield.
• I met my reading goal of 36 books and completed all the reading challenges I participated in, including finishing a lingering challenge from 2020, the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge.
• This was also the final year of the five year Classics Club Challenge, reading fifty classics in five years.
• The other challenges I completed were the Aubrey/Maturin 4 Year Chapter-a-Week Read-along Odyssey – Year One, the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, the Back to the Classics Challenge, the European Reading Challenge, the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, and the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.
• One other reading challenge that I haven’t written much about was listening to the Bible in a Year podcast from Ascension Press. It was such a great experience that I am going to do it again this year with our entire parish. Check it out and let me know in a comment if you’re going to participate in 2022!

This year’s list of my favorite reads is filled with some old friends and a few new ones:

1. Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge
2. Preparation for Total Consecration by Fr. Hugh Gillespie
3. Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton
4. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
5. The Living Wood by Louis de Wohl
6. Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
7. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
8. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
9. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
10. The Aubrey/Maturin Series, books 1-4: Master and Commander, Post Captain, HMS Surprise, and The Mauritius Command

As I look toward my reading plans for the new year, my hope is to refocus on my summary of great books lists. and reread some of the most significant works of world literature.

Happy New Reading Year! Many blessings to you and your family.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s Chapter-a-Day Read-along, whether you read all five books or limited yourself to just a few of them. In this post I’ll share a few of my reflections on the year, and I would love to know your thoughts about the experience. I invite you to leave a comment on this post to share what reading a chapter a day was like for you.

The Divine Comedy – From my wrap-up post:

There is so much depth to Dante’s poetry and there were so many footnotes that I feel I just scratched the surface of the poem. A daily read-along is probably not the best way to read the poem in the way it deserves to be read, but still I feel like this read-along has given me a good sense of the poem’s overall organization and layout. I believe that a deep reading of a work of literature should always begin with an initial reading of the book all the way through, and I think I now have enough of an understanding of The Divine Comedy that I would be in good shape to study it more thoroughly.

Quo Vadis – From my wrap-up post:

I’ve read Quo Vadis a few times already, and this reading reaffirmed all that I love about the novel. Henryk Sienkiewicz brings the apostolic era alive in a way that stirs up my admiration for the early Christians and encourages me in my own faith journey. Perhaps the best thing I can say about the book is that it makes me want to be a better disciple.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

It was good to finally get this book read after seeing it on my shelves for decades. It was more tragic and sensationalized than I expected, but it was still worth reading.

David Copperfield

It was a relief to find out that this book was as good as I remembered, and even better in some respects. It unfolded beautifully and ended just the way it should have. Not as dramatic as other Dickens novels, which is not a bad thing. I will likely read this novel again, if for no other reason than to once more encounter the compelling cast of characters: Copperfield, Pegotty, Barkis, Tommy Traddles, Agnes, Steerforth, Micawber, and Heep. Even just seeing their names makes me want to read it again!

The Three Musketeers

I don’t know how I can read this book so many times and still be surprised by it. I enjoyed this reading as much as I have ever enjoyed The Three Musketeers before. I can never get enough of D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Just thinking of them brings a smile to my face. And Milady is still one of the most cunning of all literary villains.

The good news is that the adventure is only beginning, as we continue into 2022 with the rest of D’Artagnan’s story.

As you hopefully know already, next year’s chapter-a-day read-along starts tomorrow and consists of all the sequels to The Three Musketeers. The next book finds our musketeer friends twenty years older. Are they wiser? That remains to be seen.

If you haven’t joined up yet, see the announcement post and get ready for more musketeer adventures!

Thanks again for participating, and please leave your comments below.

Today is the feast of the Holy Family,
and as we look at the gospel reading today
we might be reminded of a similar story,
a more modern story.

A story of a family taking a long trip during the holiday season
who suddenly realize that they’ve left their young son home alone.

I’m speaking of course of that 1990 movie Home Alone,
where young Kevin McAllister believes he is being bullied
by his older brothers and sisters,
and ignored by his parents,
so he wishes his family would just disappear.

His wish gets granted when,
on the morning they’re supposed to be getting on an airplane
to go to Paris for Christmas,
they oversleep and have to rush to get to the airport.

And just as Mary and Joseph don’t realize
that Jesus has remained behind in Jerusalem,
the McAllisters don’t realize
that young Kevin has been left behind at home.

It takes Mary and Joseph several days to find Jesus
after they return to Jerusalem,
and it takes Mrs. McAllister several days to get back home from Paris.

In the end, Jesus is reunited with his family,
goes back to Nazareth with them and is obedient.
And Kevin is reunited with his family,
comes to realize how much he loves them,
and goes back to his normal life.
At least until Home Alone 2.

It’s good to look at these two stories together
because today the Church sets Jesus, Mary and Joseph before us
as a model of what our families should be.
But we might identify more easily with the McAllister family,
with their arguing, noisiness, and chaos.

Here in front of us we have the beautiful manger scene
with the Holy Family portrayed in sacred art.
It’s a beautiful, peaceful image of the sacredness of family life,
so calm, so holy.
Now imagine, if you will, Kevin McAllister and his family standing
down the aisle in the back of the church just inside the doorway.
A very different image of family life.

And now picture an imaginary line running the length of the floor
from the Holy Family to the McAllister family.
And suppose I asked everyone here to get up,
move to the center aisle, and stand somewhere on that line,
somewhere on that spectrum,
closest to the family that most resembles your own.
Think back over the holidays now
and recall the scene in your house just yesterday on Christmas,
or on Christmas Eve,
or the last time you gathered together,
or your last phone call or text exchange
with your children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters.
Where would you place your family on that line?

The Church sets the Holy Family before us today as our model,
but how could we ever measure up to that kind of holiness?
And yet that is our call.
To be a holy family.

How could our families ever be that perfect?
What could we do that would ever be good enough
for us to be called a holy family?

But holiness doesn’t come from our being good enough,
holiness is not the result of our own efforts.
There is only one who is holy, and that’s God.
Holiness comes from God being good enough,
and more than good enough, overflowing with goodness!
And wherever God is, is holy.
Our holiness comes from our connection to God,
from our relationship with God.

And so what we learn about family from the Holy Family
is that a holy family is one in which God is present.

The Holy Family was holy because Jesus was there,
and Jesus is God,
and wherever God is, is holy.
Mary is holy because she carried Jesus, cared for him,
treasured him in her heart all her days.
Joseph is holy because he protected Jesus, taught Jesus,
and devoted his life to providing for him.

Our families are holy to the extent that Jesus is present in them.
And Jesus can be present in surprising and unexpected ways.

If you think back over the past few days,
where were the moments of holiness in your own family?
I would suggest three signs
that indicate the presence of holiness in a family:
sacrifice, reconciliation, and joy.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived lives of self-giving sacrifice.
Anyone who is part of a Christian family knows it takes sacrifice.
The sacrifice of time and attention,
the financial sacrifices, the emotional sacrifices, the spiritual sacrifices.
The sacrifice of dreams, perhaps, that we had envisioned for ourselves.
To be a Christian family is to sacrifice,
and all of those sacrifices can be signs of holiness.
What were the sacrifices present in your family
this Advent and Christmas season?
The sacrifice it took to bake Christmas cookies,
or to make Christmas dinner.
Time spent dressing the children for Christmas Mass.
The hours it took to wrap Christmas presents.
The money it took to buy those presents,
and braving the crowds in busy malls and stores.
Spending time in long lines at the airport
or driving over snow-covered mountain passes,
to get home in time for Christmas.
Shoveling the snow so that guests wouldn’t fall as they visited your home.
When sacrifices like these are done out of love,
then that is Jesus working in your family, making it holy.

Reconciliation is another sign of holiness in a family.
Jesus came to reconcile us to each other and to the Father.
Whenever Christian families reconcile,
the holiness of Christ is there.
Did any reconciliation happen to take place over the holidays this year,
no matter how small?
Even just the inkling that a reconciliation might be possible in the future
can be a sign of holiness.
Were there any apologies, handshakes, or hugs,
that bridged an angry or awkward divide this Christmas?
Anytime someone takes a step toward forgiveness
and embraces another in love,
reconciliation begins to take place.
And where there is true reconciliation, Christ is present.
And where Christ is, God is,
and wherever God is, is holy.

And then there’s joy.
Joy is perhaps the surest sign of holiness in a family.
At Christmas we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”
Think back on all the moments of joy you’ve witnessed
in the last few days:
The faces of the children and grandchildren opening presents;
the joyous singing of Christmas carols;
the feasting and laughter around the Christmas table;
playing board games or card games.
Enjoying each other’s company just for the sake of being together.
These are joyful signs of holiness.

Whenever there is sacrifice, reconciliation, and joy,
there is holiness.

Now it is very possible that for some,
that rather than sacrifice, reconciliation, and joy,
the last few days have been filled
with self-centeredness, division, and sadness.
The holidays can be a very difficult and stressful time,
especially for those who have experienced a recent loss,
or are alone,
or are in the middle of a difficulty family situation.
And whenever families gather,
there is always the possibility of conflict or jealousy.
But that doesn’t mean there was no holiness present.
God is present even and especially in our struggles.
And wherever God is, is holy.
If the last few days have been an incredible challenge and struggle,
and if you look back wishing that there could have been
just a little sacrifice, reconciliation, or joy,
remember that even the desire for those things is holiness.
Because that desire comes from God, and wherever God is, is holy.

And so as we recall our vocation to be holy,
and as we look at the Holy Family,
we may sometimes feel more like the McAllisters.
We may even wish at times, like Kevin,
that we could make our family disappear.

But we have a God who will never disappear,
and his presence can be recognized
in the sacrifices, reconciliation, and joy
that we experience as family,
and wherever God is, is holy.
Let us set aside some time this week
to recognize and name the holiness we experience in our family
and to look for more ways
we can sacrifice, be reconciled, and be more joyful.

In today’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples
to “stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.”

In a bit of personal irony,
I woke up this weekend unable to “stand erect”
because of an excruciating pain in my back.
I guess I must have tweaked something
putting up the Christmas tree
or carrying the box of holiday china.
But it’s starting to feel better,
and I have great hope that it will continue to heal.

We human beings cannot live without hope.
We’re unique among the animal kingdom
because we can think about the future.
We can worry about what it will become,
and we can yearn for it to be better.

Hope is so essential to being human
that we can’t live without something to live for,
without something look forward to.

As Fr. George Haspedis used to say,
hope is to the heart what breathing is to the lungs.
Stop breathing and you die.
Stop hoping and you die.
Keep breathing and you live.
Keep hoping and you live, and live with purpose.

Hope gives you strength to face the future.

But there are many things in which we can place our hope,
there are many things we can choose to live for.
Whatever we hope in shapes the way we live our lives.
We can hope in the promises of God
or we can hope in the promises of the world.

Today we begin the beautiful season of Advent,
and one of the blessings of Advent
is that it teaches us what to hope for.

That’s one of the reasons we read the Old Testament during Advent.
The people of the Old Testament knew how to hope,
and we can learn from their patient waiting.

Today the prophet Jeremiah tells us of the Lord’s promise
to raise up a just shoot.
The Old Testament peoples had hope in the promises of God
so they had the strength to wait centuries
for their fulfillment.

They weren’t always faithful to the promise,
but they never forgot it.
It fueled their imaginations
and gave them something to live for
during the long years of slavery, exile, and oppression.

As today’s psalm puts it,
“you are God my savior,
and for you I wait all the day.”

Last January 1st, Brenda and I began listening
to a brand new Bible-in-a-Year podcast
featuring Fr. Mike Schmitz of Ascension Press.
Every day since last New Year’s Day
we’ve been listening to Fr. Mike read from the Bible,
starting from the book of Genesis.
We read through the entire Old Testament,
Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus,
through Job, the Psalms, and Sirach,
through Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi.
We read every law and genealogy,
counted every cubit and ephah.

And as we listened, day after day,
we waited and waited for the New Testament to come.
Just like the people of the Old Testament,
we waited for the promised Messiah.
And we heard the promises,
the same promises we will hear during Advent:
“In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established
as the highest mountain.”
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.”
“The Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wine.”
“He will destroy death forever.”
“The deaf shall hear…the eyes of the blind shall see..”
“The tyrant will be no more.”
“Streams will burst forth in the desert…”

We finally reached the New Testament in the second week of November.
It took over ten months to read the Old Testament.
That’s how much of the Bible takes place before the time of Christ.

But as long as that seemed to take,
it’s nothing compared to how long the Chosen People actually waited
for the Messiah.

But all during those long years
their hope in that promise gave them strength to face the future.
In the face of disease they had the strength to hope for healing.
In the face of division they had the strength to hope for unity.
And in the face of war, they had the strength to hope for peace.

With the coming of Christ,
their hope was justified.
Jesus came to be our healer,
Jesus came to gather us all into one family,
and Jesus came to be peace for our souls.
The Chosen People hoped, and their hope was justified.

Hope for the Christian believer is more than wishful thinking.
Hope is an unshakeable trust and assurance
that the promises of God will be fulfilled.
It’s a trust based on what God has already done for us
in his son Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection.

Hope is the gift of the Holy Spirit within us
that yearns for the kingdom of heaven.
It keeps us from being discouraged,
it sustains us when we feel alone,
it inspires us to do good in the face of evil.

Christmas is coming.
We are getting ready to celebrate
God’s entrance into the world in history,
his coming to us in a more intimate way in the present,
and his promise to come again and redeem the world .

We are given the season of Advent
to focus our attention on this marvelous, beautiful, mystery,
not to focus on wish lists, shopping, and parties.
For the next four weeks,
we can choose to hope in the world,
or to hope in Christ.

Jesus warns his disciples,
“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life…”
Where is my heart at the beginning of Advent?
Is it weighed down with anxieties?
It is numbed by all the distractions of the culture?
Am I half-asleep moving through my day,
with no sense of hope for the future?

If so, then Advent is here just in time.
Advent is here to remind us to be vigilant,
to pray always.
to teach us what to hope for.

If you’re participating in the Aubrey-Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Schedule, then you have just reached the end of The Mauritius Command, the fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. With the end of book four we are now one fifth of the way through the series. Jack Aubrey is in the prime of his naval career, and his family is growing. Dr. Maturin’s career in espionage is bearing great fruit for the Crown, but his personal life is not what he would hope.

What did you think of The Mauritius Command? Leave your thoughts, reactions, and questions about the book and the series in the comments section below.

Next, the story continues with Desolation Island, which straddles 2021 and 2022. We begin November 22, 2021 and finish the book on January 30, 2022.

Happy reading, shipmates!

With the completion of David Copperfield yesterday, I successfully met my Classics Club Challenge of reading fifty classics in five years! I began the challenge on my 50th birthday in 2016 and finished the final chapter of the final book on the eve of my 55th birthday in 2021. Much has happened in the last five years. I became a grandfather, transitioned from elementary teacher to school principal, began hosting reading challenges, traveled to Europe for the first time, and lived through a pandemic, to name just a few of the more memorable experiences. Through it all, the Classics Club Challenge kept me motivated to read some of the world’s best literature.

Though my initial list changed over the years, and though I was not able to keep up with writing reviews for all the books, I still feel like I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to read more books from my Summary of Great Books Lists and my Catholic Classics List. I did manage to review twenty-two of the fifty books, but then I changed jobs and I had to let go of a few things to keep my sanity. I look forward to the day when I can return to book-blogging more consistently. Until then, I can be satisfied in knowing that I stuck with the five-year challenge during some pretty busy and momentous times.

This reading challenge showed me that fifty books is a lot, even spread out over ten years. Some have become personal favorites worthy of re-reading, and some were not my taste at all. Here are some of the books from the challenge that I look back on with particular fondness:

• Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson
• The Living Wood by Louis de Wohl
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
• Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
• Conan: The Definitive Collection by Robert E. Howard
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

And here are some of the duds:

• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Lilith by George MacDonald

Will I do another Classics Club Challenge? I think probably yes, but at this point I don’t think I’m ready to commit to anything new. Between the annual Chapter-a-Day Read-alongs and the Aubrey/Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Odyssey, my reading hours are pretty full these days. Still, you never know…

It had been over twenty years since I last read the novel, and I was very pleased to discover that it was still as enjoyable and moving as the first time. I had no very clear memory of the plot, so in many ways it was like reading the book again for the first time. Of all the Dickens books I have read, I believe David Copperfield has my favorite set of characters. Besides Copperfield himself, there are so many characters to love: Micawber, Mr. Dick, Traddles, Peggotty, Barkis, and of course Emily, Dora, and Agnes. There are also a fair number of villains to dread, among them Murdstone, Creakle, and Heep.

I look forward to returning to David Copperfield in another ten years or so. What about you? Will you read it again?

Leave your own thoughts below and feel free to engage with others who leave their comments. Let me know if you post your reflections on your own blog and I will link to it here.

Here we go! Tomorrow we begin the final book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along and the first book of the 2022 Chapter-a-Day Read-along: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. There’s not much to prepare for in getting ready for the The Three Musketeers except to buckle up and get ready for a wild ride! Try to put any preconceived notions aside, tuck away any memories you have of movies or TV shows you may have seen, and simply let yourself sink into the prose of Dumas’ historical fiction.

It may be helpful to know that the story begins in the small town of Meung, France “on the first Monday of April, 1625,” and King Louis XIII is on the throne, married to Queen Anne of Austria. The king’s chief minister is the powerful and canny Cardinal Richelieu, also known as “the Red Eminence,” from the color of his robes.

Though the characters of D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are based on real people, they have been elevated to mythic proportions by the pen of Dumas, and some of them have had their lives entirely invented based on their names. Still, the story has provided entertainment to people of all ages and eras, and I so look forward to reading it again.

Enjoy this first book of the D’Artagnan series and I look forward to seeing your favorite quotes posted on Twitter with the hashtag #musketeerreadalong!

King Louis XIII of France:

Anne of Austria, Queen of France:

Cardinal Richelieu, the king’s chief minister:

M. de Tréville, Captain of the Musketeers:

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham:

There is no text for my homily this past weekend, just the audio. But here is the video for “If You Eat Each Day” by Bryan Sirchio, from which I quoted:

This is the official sign-up post for the 2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along! You’re invited to join me in reading one of the great adventure series of all time, the D’Artagnan Romances. Each chapter averages about 8 pages, so you should only have to dedicate 10 to 15 minutes a day to reading. And if you get behind, you can catch up pretty easily.

Wait, what? 2022? It’s only October, so why am I already announcing next year’s chapter-a-day read-along? There’s a special reason, and it goes all the way back to last December. I’ve been hinting at a special announcement this year, and I’m finally happy to say that today is the day, and it all has to do with our next book in this year’s read-along. Last year when I announced the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, I said that there were three reasons I chose The Three Musketeers:

first, it’s a book I can’t get enough of, and I want to encourage others to read it; second, so many people enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo during our 2019 read-along that I thought another Dumas book would be appreciated; and I am going to keep the third reason to myself for the time being and reveal it sometime before we start reading it in late October.

Well, October is here, and we are less than three weeks from beginning The Three Musketeers. So it’s time to share with you not only the final reason I chose The Three Musketeers, but also why it was chosen to be the final book of the year. You see, it’s not just the final book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, but it’s also the first book of the 2021-2022 Chapter-a-Day Read-along! Starting October 25, 2021, we will be starting on the grand adventure of reading the entire Musketeer series, which will take us the rest of this year and all of next year.

While almost everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers, not nearly as many people know that Alexandre Dumas continued the story of D’Artagnan in two sequels, Twenty Years After and the multi-volume The Vicomte de Bragelonne (which includes The Man in the Iron Mask). By starting The Three Musketeers on October 25, 2021, and reading a chapter a day, we will finish the entire D’Artagnan series by December 31, 2022.

If you’re currently participating in the 2021 read-along, I hope your reading of The Three Musketeers will be so enjoyable that you will want to continue the series next year. If you’re not yet participating in this year’s read-along, I invite you to join us for The Three Musketeers starting on October 25, as a beginning to next year’s read-along.

Why Read the D’Artagnan Series?

The D’Artagnan series is a top-rate work of action-oriented historical fiction with plenty of witty dialogue and surprising plot revelations. Though written between 1844 and 1850, the books move along with the pace of a modern novel, all dialogue and action. Based on the life of a real musketeer, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan, the series showcases Dumas’ ability to immerse the reader in the life of 17th century France and England. While The Count of Monte Cristo remain’s the author’s masterpiece, the D’Artagnan series is still one great, rollicking tale, and well worthy of a long, slow read.

The D’Artagnan stories were all originally published serially. The Three Musketeers was published between March and July of 1844; Twenty Years After was published between January and August of 1845; and the huge final novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne was published across more than two years, between October 1847 and January 1850.

The Three Musketeers is one of my desert island books. I’ve read it many times over the years, and I never tire of it. The rest of the series builds on the adventures and escapades of D’Artagnan and his musketeer companions. I love hanging out not only with D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, but also with their servants Planchet, Mousqueton, Grimaud, and Bazin. Set between 1625 and 1673, the story is filled with monarchs and maidens, swordplay and society, history and humor, romance and rebellion. The books are the perfect daily dose of action and intrigue, and should make for a great chapter-a-day experience.

How to Participate

1. Leave a comment on this post telling everyone that you’ll be reading along and why.
2. Get copies of the different books in the series (see below for details).
3. Download the 2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter a Day Read-along Schedule.
4. Commit to reading a chapter a day, starting on October 25, 2021 (or January 1, 2022 if you’ve recently read The Three Musketeers). If you get behind or race ahead, no worries. Life happens.
5. It’s purely optional, but I encourage you to join me in posting a quote each day on Facebook or Twitter. I will be posting on both, using the hashtag #musketeerreadalong. My Twitter and Facebook posts will stay on track with the reading schedule, and I only ask that you please respect the reading experience of those who may not know the full story. In other words, no spoilers!
6. Please feel free to post the Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-Along graphic on your website or blog to spread the word.
7. Subscribe to One Catholic Life so you don’t miss any read-along posts throughout the year. You can get updates via email by using the form in the right-hand sidebar.

Reading Schedule

As I mentioned above, to read all the books in the series in a chapter a day, it will take more than a full year. We will read The Three Musketeers in the closing months of 2021 and the sequels in 2022. Here is a broad outline of the reading schedule:

• The Three Musketeers: October 25, 2021 to December 31, 2021
• Twenty Years After: January 1, 2022 to April 7, 2022
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne: April 8, 2022 to December 31, 2022

As you can tell by the looking at the schedule, The Vicomte de Bragelonne is a huge novel. It is so long, in fact, that it has been divided into several volumes, but not always in the same way. Sometimes it is split into three volumes, sometimes four, and sometimes even five or six volumes. Because of this, creating the reading schedule proved to be a bit of a challenge. To keep things simple, I created the schedule using the two most available sources of the novel in English: the Oxford World’s Classics paperback/Kindle editions (which are also available as audiobooks from Audible) and the free online editions from Project Gutenberg (which are also available as a free audiobooks from Librivox).

The Oxford’s World’s Classics edition of the series is an excellent translation and is readily available, so I used that as the foundation for the schedule, adapting it to the public domain version on Project Gutenberg. I tried to be as careful as possible to match the two different versions so that we are all reading the same text on the same day, but my apologies in advance if there are errors.

There are many different editions out there, so it can be quite confusing to get the right ones. To make it easier for you, I have provided direct links to the paperbacks on the Oxford World Classics website, as well as links to their Kindle editions on Amazon (as usual, Amazon links are affiliate links). I have also provided direct links to the free online editions at Project Gutenberg.

Here is the series as published by Oxford World’s Classics:

• The Three Musketeers – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• Twenty Years After – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• Louise de la Vallière – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• The Man in the Iron Mask – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)

And here is the series as available online for free at Project Gutenberg:

• The Three Musketeers
• Twenty Years After
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne
• Ten Years Later
• Louise de la Vallière
• The Man in the Iron Mask

Special Note

While this is called the Musketeer Chapter-a-day Read-along, there are many other characters who take center stage throughout the series. There are even times when the musketeers are not heard from for quite a while. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is helpful to know before starting the series so that you know what to expect.

Conclusion

Finally, I want to thank everyone who is participating in this year’s read-along and all those who have participated in the past. Reading a book in a chapter a day is great way to tackle an otherwise intimidating classic, but it is so much more fun to do it with others. Seeing the quotes you post on Twitter is motivational and inspirational, and I look forward to them each day. I can’t wait to read the D’Artagnan books with you!

2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along Schedule

Here is the read-along schedule, and you can also download it as a pdf here: Nick’s 2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter a Day Read-along Schedule