Claim OwnershipThe Imaginative Conservative
Subscribed: 2Played: 9
Subscribe
Description
30 Episodes
Reverse
The end of September brings us to the feast of St. Michael and All Angels which is known as Michaelmas in England, and this first autumn term in many schools and universities is still called the Michaelmas term. The Archangel Michael is traditionally thought of as the Captain of the Heavenly Host, and, following an image from [...]
Now, in Passiontide, Christ becomes all the more visibly, our companion. We walk with him and see him face and overcome our own worst fears, we see him take on, in us and for us, the pain the frailty, the fear the failure, and the death itself that haunt and shadow our life. We stay [...]
This strange Holy Week has begun in tears: tears of frustration, tears of lament, and for so many who have been cruelly bereaves, tears of grief. It’s hard to see through tears, but sometimes its the only way to see. Tears may be the turning point, the springs of renewal, and to know you have [...]
Roger Scruton argued that the bureaucratisation of politics is replacing deliberative debate with a rigid tick-boxing exercise, substituting social justice for natural justice, imposing laws and regulations without our consent, and developing a group of activist politicians who prioritise the short-term over the long. A key component of the late Sir Roger Scruton's political thinking [...]
In my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word, we come to the last of the Seven Great O Antiphons, which was sung on either side of the Magnificat on Christmas Eve, O Emmanuel, O God with us. This is the antiphon from which our lovely Advent hymn takes its name. It was also this final [...]
The poem I have chosen for December 17th in my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word is my own sonnet “O Sapientia,” the first in a sequence of seven sonnets on the seven great ‘O’ antiphons which I shall be reading to you each day between now and the 23rd of December. You [...]
There is no feast of Thanksgiving in either the British national or church calendars, but it seems to me a good thing for any nation to set aside a day for the gratitude which is in truth the root of every other virtue. So on American Thanksgiving, I am re-posting here an Englishman’s act of [...]
We come now to a feast of Ends and Beginnings! This Sunday is the last Sunday in the cycle of the Christian year, which ends with the feast of Christ the King, and the following Sunday we begin our journey through time to eternity once more, with the first Sunday of Advent. We might expect [...]
Today the gospel crosses every border / All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace / Today the lost are found in His translation. / Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation. Drawn from Sounding the Seasons, my cycle of sonnets for the Church Year, this is a sonnet reflecting on and celebrating the themes [...]
The feast of the Annunciation, usually falls on March 25th but that was in Holy Week this year, and so the beginning of Christ's story was briefly eclipsed by its climax, but the feast is not forgotten, and has been transferred to the 8th of April. The Annunciation, the visit of Gabriel to the blessed [...]
The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia! Heres is an extra ‘fifteenth’ sonnet for Easter Morning, which I dedicate to my friend Mary who asked me to write it, and to the memory of her husband Gavin. May he rest in peace and rise in glory. Later today I will publish another Easter [...]
The Stations of the Cross, which form the core of my book Sounding the Seasons, are intended to be read on Good Friday. We will read the 13th and 14th tomorrow on Holy Saturday and then on Easter Morning we will have the 15th’ resurrection’ station and also a new villanelle that I have written for [...]
So many gospel themes find their focus on Maundy Thursday, so many threads of connection flowing to and from this deep source of love and vision, in the foot washing, and in the last supper. The meditation in this sonnet is centred on the ancient idea of the four elements of earth, air, water and [...]
The Gospel of John (John 12 1-8) tells us of how Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus. I love this intense and beautiful moment in the Gospels, The God of the Cosmos enters as a vulnerable man into all the particular fragility of our human friendships and intimacy. I love the way Jesus responds to Mary’s [...]
When Solomon dedicated the Temple he rightly declared that not even the Heaven of Heavens could contain almighty God, much less this temple made with hands, yet God himself still came into the temple. He came as a baby, the essence of all light and purity in human flesh, he came as a young boy [...]
As we come towards Hallowe’en, it's worth remembering that the word "Hallowe’en" itself simply means "the eve of all Hallows", and All Hallows is the Christian feast of All Saints, or All Saints Day’, a day when we think particularly of those souls in bliss who, even in this life, kindled a light for us, [...]
The 8th of May is the feast day of Julian of Norwich (ed. May 13th in the Catholic Church), sometimes known as Mother Julian or Lady Julian. She was an English Mystic of the late fourteenth Century, living as an anchoress in Norwich. Her life as an anchoress, finding Christ in isolation, and then finding [...]
Holy Saturday is a strange, still day, hanging in an unresolved poise between the darkness of the day before and the light that is not yet with us. No more so than now, in the preternatural stillness emptiness and grief of this pandemic, when life is paused, but also perhaps poised on the threshold of [...]
Here is my sonnet for St. Patrick’s Day. While Patrick is of course primarily associated with Ireland where he flourished as a missionary in the second half of the fifth century, he was not Irish to begin with. He seems to have been a shepherd on the mainland of Great Britain and was in fact [...]
Scribe of the Kingdom, Keeper of the Door As well as being St. Cecilia's day, 22nd November is also the day C.S. Lewis died in 1963. I remember the great celebration of his life, work and witness we had throughout 2013 and especially the honour and pleasure I had in lecturing on him at St. [...]
Comments
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States