By IHE Scholar Beatriz Lopez Bonetti Most agree that beauty has something to do with symmetry, order, and pattern. When we encounter a nature scene that exhibits these qualities — such as my homeland’s Angel Falls, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world — we naturally find it beautiful and feel a sense of wonder […]

By Lucia A. Silecchia By now, the eclipse glasses have been put away. The photos of the April 8 nature show have all been posted to Facebook and Instagram to prove that it really happened. The stories from the day have, likewise, also been told — ranging from the “wow” from those in the path […]

By Lucia A. Silecchia Recently, I was in the happy company of a seven-year-old. She asked me the delightfully shocking, and shockingly delightful question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question was shocking to me because it has been decades since someone asked me this question with the earnest sincerity […]

By IHE Graduate Scholar Molly Egilsrud Is it still worthwhile to go on pilgrimage? Throughout the Church’s history, pilgrims have traveled hundreds of miles on foot to the Holy Land, to Marian apparition sites, and to the relics of the saints, even walking as far north as Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, near the Arctic […]

By Lucia A. Silecchia Happy Leap Day!   The elusive February 29 rolls around again this year, as it does in all years that are divisible by four – unless, oddly, they are years that are divisible by 100 but not by 400. This quirky adjustment to the calendar has its origins in the astronomical reality […]

Eucatastrophe, a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien as the opposite of Greek tragedy’s “catastrophe,” was a central concept in his conception of literature and reality. In the lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” he defines it as “the sudden joyous turn” in a narrative, something that brings joy out of what seemed like sorrow. We see it over […]

By Lucia A. Silecchia I love a foggy morning. Perhaps this is a luxury I can enjoy because I am not a pilot, a seafarer or a driver on winding country roads. For those such as these, the inability to see in the distance is not a welcome treat. But, when I wake up in […]

There is no Advent as short as those that come in the years like this, when Christmas falls on a Monday. When the fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve, there seems to be – and, indeed, there is — almost an entire week missing from this season of anticipation. The child I once […]

By IHE Scholar Kevin Kambo I went up, last summer, to Muskegon Correctional Facility, as a teacher for the Hope-Western Prison Education Program (HWPEP). Not unlike Socrates, I cannot offer a neat and tidy catalogue of the motivations that took me to prison. I confess no Tocquevillian ambition to survey the American penitentiary system. My […]