Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 51

Things Keeping Us Alive, Sep. ’16

If you are like us, the season between the overstuffed summer and the barren winter is one reminding us of our own mortality. The dying landscape turns the color of flame, and the chilly foreshadowing of winter embraces us like a cold spectre. Decorations of cartoonish witches and ghosts adorn houses and businesses. People are [Read More...]

Why Do We Need The Exorcist and Pope Francis? A Review

I grew up not far from St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution in the middle of downtown St. Louis. As fans of the original Exorcist movie know, it’s the site of the real life events that inspired William Peter Blatty to write the novelThe Exorcist which was adapted into the scariest film of all [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: The Mad Balancing Act

This week’s Gospel reading is Jesus’ postmortem parable of thenameless rich man and the poor dog-licked beggar, Lazarus. It’s a popular story in Christian circles, an uncomfortable analysis of what comfort looks like to Christ. Though the story of a rich man damned because he tends only to himselfshould shake me to my selfish core, [Read More...]

Raising my son in an age of gun worship and racial violence

There are summer days in Northwest Michigan when the temperature hovers at 80 degrees, a soft breeze blows in off the lake, and the sky is an impossible Marian blue. On these days, it is easy to believe that this near-perfect weather is mother nature’s make-up gift for the nearly eight months of snow and [Read More...]

I took a crash course in Gregorian chant. Literally.

When the email circulated that there would be a traditional Latin Mass at our parish for the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, I immediately and foolishly wrote back that I wanted to be in the Schola Cantorum, the chant choir. The extent of my Gregorian chant experience at this point was one weekend [Read More...]

Art Won’t Make You a Better Person

A guest postfrom a Lutheran Sick Pilgrim, Joel Westerholm I’m in what I hope is the final stage of writing a book, and I’m getting more and more aware of the fact that the book will not change its readers’ lives. At least, not substantially. I say this from experience: my experience as a reader [Read More...]

Mud Wrestling with Angels Unawares: When Catholic Art is Dark (Or Ugly)

As a Catholic poet, I was excited to read this article about why the Catholic Church desperately needs artists, and was particularly taken with Pope Saint John Paul II’s reference to art as an evocation of our “nostalgia for God.” But as I kept reading, I feltsomething was missing, and this something was the question [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: Mother of Sorrows

After accepting that the mystical experience I had was about being drawn into full communion with the Catholic church, I found myself attracted more and more to Mary. Mary, to whom I’d inexplicably reached for prayer during the pulling aside of the veil between heaven and earth. Mary, whose “yes” to God opened the door [Read More...]

We’re All Catfishers….

My heart broke when I read Chase Padusniak’s catfishing post and his story of beingtaken in by someone passing herself off as a 23-year-old single woman under the Twitter handle “That Catholic Girl.” He gave his heart to her, and it got stomped on by a woman who is actually 30 and married. Of course, [Read More...]

Sick Pilgrim at the Ministry Fair

One of our priests gave a rousing homily on the Prodigal Sonon Sunday.Priests love to preach on this one, he said–you got your prodigal son, your pharisaical son, your all-forgiving father–there’s so much to work with! But then he remembered this weekend was the parish ministry fair. *Sad trombone* How to tie these two together? [Read More...]