Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
On this All Souls’ Day, here are two Requiems, which commemorate the dead with beauty and transcendence, and may accompany our prayers this day. The first is Mozart’s famous rendition, which he left incomplete on his death on December 5th, 1791, and completed by his disciple, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, in 1792, who did such a[…]
Fr. Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ is a popular spiritual book today. This New York Times Bestseller is rated highly in Amazon’s Religious Ethics category and has 4.7/5 stars from over five thousand global reviewers on Amazon.ca. Bono and Melinda Gates have praised the book, and it can be found on the shelves of many[…]
Exogenesis, by Peco Gaskovksi Ignatius Press, 2023 ISBN/UPC: 9781621646341 One of the most difficult things in writing a ‘fantasy’ – any story which is not based on this present world – is constructing a realistic and believable ‘other world’. In his famous essay on Fairy Tales, J.R.R. Tolkien calls this a ‘sub-creation’, at which he was[…]
As we commemorated the other day the ‘Forty Martyrs of England and Wales’ – chosen amongst the countless host put to death for their Catholic Faith during the Protestant revolt – here is a symbolic motet by Thomas Tallis, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you’, which we are currently practising in our Schola. Tallis composed[…]
Michaelmas of 1724 – the 29th of September, now the feast of all the Archangels – saw the first performance of J.S. Bach’s cantata, Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, (Lord God, we all praise thee), honouring the great Saint Michael, ‘he who is like God’. The text of the cantata was Paul Eber, Lutheran[…]
To celebrate this memorial – let’s just call it the feast – of the Queenship of Mary, here is Palestrina’s rendition of the Regina Coeli, first published posthumously in 1601. May Our Lady’s reign extend through heaven and earth:
A fitting way to begin this month of August, dedicated to Our Lady, with some music in her honour. Here is a motet by the prolific Spanish priest and composer, Francisco Guerrero (+1599), a contemporary of the Italian Palestrina (+1594), their styles being not dissimilar. Both use chant-like rhythm and themes, and spiritual texts, to[…]
Since this Sunday has a Eucharistic theme – see Father Marco Testa’s reflection today – I thought we would post Mozart’s Ave Verum, one of the most beautiful hymns to the Real Presence, which he composed (in the middle of writing the Magic Flute!) in June of 1791 six months before his death, for the[…]
Up-and-coming author Ben Galeski has written three novels thus far, two of them published by Justin Press, and the third about to be. They are works of historical fiction, a demanding genre, for one must take past events, not only make them real, but maintain consistency with the historical reality. Then, the author must add[…]
I hope this review might provide a double service to readers. I am excited to promote both a new novel, which provides the core subject of this piece, as well as the existence of a new, Catholic press, which makes it possible to read such novels. My first business, however, is to write of the[…]
