Father Thomas Esposito

JERUSALEM HOLY WEEK

Father Esposito: The science and theology of invention

We typically associate the word “invention” with modern scientific breakthroughs, brilliant and painstaking achievements by geniuses producing civilizational advancements and mastery over the forces of nature. Human ingenuity has produced astonishing developments, from the printing press to the combustion engine to the Internet, with new inventions, some of them promising to alter the very fabric of humanity, on the horizon.

PALESTINIAN CATHOLIC BETHLEHEM TOURISM

Father Esposito: Praying with the O Antiphons

Whenever people ask me how they can prepare themselves spiritually for Christmas, I invite them to read the lyrics of Christmas carols as prayers. Specifying which carols to employ is important; I am not aware of any mystical symbolism behind “Frosty the Snowman,” and I have long been convinced that “All I Want for Christmas is You” is fundamentally unredeemable on the first listen, let alone the ninetieth on the Christmas radio station’s saccharine and secular playlist. But many of the traditional Christian carols were first sung in a liturgical setting, and therefore were designed to be vocal prayers. That is certainly the case with “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

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Father Esposito: Prison meditations on providence

While awaiting a sham trial and certain execution for high treason, Thomas More prayed and wrote. Henry VIII had declared himself head of the Church of England, and the Catholic More, who had served the king loyally as chancellor, refused to break his spiritual allegiance to the pope. He was utterly alone at this hour of his life; his beloved wife and children implored him to overcome his scruple of conscience and sign the Oath of Supremacy. More clearly regarded his own suffering as an imitation of his Lord; his most beautiful prison writing is “The Sadness of Christ,” a meditation on the garden agony of Jesus, the innocent suffering servant.

U.S. TECHNOLOGY

Father Esposito: Technology’s trap and our humanity

I reached a new low recently when I felt an overwhelming and irresistible itch to catch up on emails mere minutes after my first check of the day, which happened mere minutes after I finished celebrating Mass. I had long lamented the sight of my students reaching addictively for their phones as soon as class ended, but the realization that the contagion had spread to me was a sad revelation.

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Father Esposito: The graced adventure of simplicity

The future is not simply an adventure; it’s the adventure, according to the Latin roots ad, “to, toward” and ventura, “what will come.” While many students eagerly anticipate the start of a new school year and engaged couples impatiently count down the days to their wedding, dread of the approaching unknowns is familiar to virtually everyone. Regardless of one’s age, fear of the future is a dominant emotion that inhibits our joyful living of the blessed adventure that God wishes every life to be.

FATHERS DAY GIVING SELF

Father Esposito: Mortality and weakness: A Father’s Day meditation

Being a father requires a man to acknowledge his mortality. From a purely biological perspective, the sexual drive is a program for reproduction that presumes the death of the one generating new life. Leon Kass, a brilliant physician and philosopher, asserts this truth in a stark manner: “Sexual desire, in human beings as in animals, points to an end that is partly hidden from, and ultimately at odds with, the self-serving individual: sexuality as such means perishability and serves replacement. The salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die tell the universal story: sex is bound up with death, to which it holds a partial answer in procreation. This truth the salmon and the other animals practice blindly; only the human being can understand what it means.”

BIBLE ILLINOIS CHURCH

Father Esposito: The plea of an atheist for biblical beauty

The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, declared in a book of prose that “the Scriptures constitute the common good of believers, agnostics, and atheists.” For Milosz, whose life was scarred by the Nazi and Communist takeovers of his native land, the moral authority and literary beauty of the Bible was a refuge against the lethal and banal propaganda spewed forth from those godless governments and armies, even though he could not bring himself to believe in God.