On a cold morning in Rome, a man came to deliver birds to the home of Tiberius Gracchus for use in a religious rite, but the birds refused to be shaken out of the cage. No matter how hard they tried, the birds clung to the side. The oddness of the event crawled under Tiberius […]
The Christian Church and classical education are a match made in heaven. In the Gospels, Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of heaven also belongs to children and even infants (Matthew 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17). St. Paul tells Christian fathers not to provoke their children to anger but instead to raise their children […]
On July 18, 1013, a baby boy was born to the Duke of Altshausen in Germany. At some point in the boy’s childhood a crippling condition rendered him unable to fulfill his expected role as the eldest son. Historians believe that the boy suffered from a degenerative motor neuron disease, such as spinal muscular atrophy. […]
“Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.” — Was this your first sacred song? If so, you had a perfect start for the journey into sacred music. Sacred music evokes or expresses the Christian faith, either through specific words describing God’s qualities and scriptural events, or by the creation of a musical atmosphere […]
When we teach a child who has learning difficulties, medical conditions, or other daily struggles, we may find ourselves praying for that which is beyond our grasp. We need a strength deeper than our own, a joy richer than our own, a hope truer than our own, a love greater than our own. This is […]
How many people would hand over supreme power to return to life as a farmer, tilling fields? How many would trade leading armies for herding animals? Imagine returning home from war as a hero, crowds of people cheering your name, calling you a great conqueror, a savior, throwing flowers at the wheels of your chariot, […]
In Amor Towles’ new book, The Lincoln Highway, we find eight-year-old Billy Watson in a railroad freight car waiting for his brother to get back. It is the 1950s and Billy and his older brother Emmett are riding the rails east to New York from Nebraska. A man drops into the car. The boy strikes […]
As a Christian holy day, Christmas is about one great Christian doctrine: the Incarnation. The first thing to say about this is that the word means what it says. “Incarnation” is a Latinate word that means, literally, “enfleshment”—the act of being made flesh. And the doctrine of the Incarnation—the idea that Jesus was God come […]
Only one man in history both lived by the pen and literally died by it, all for the sake of defending the freedom of the city he loved. He came from nothing, but ultimately became the greatest orator of the ancient world. That man was Demosthenes: the champion of Athens’ heritage, and the defender […]
In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that in all classical and heroic societies, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories.” In a real sense the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey were the moral tutors of the Greeks. Likewise Aeneas was the model of heroic piety on which young Romans […]