The Catholic Mind       “What Makes the Catholic Mind Unique?” is the title of an article by Fr. David Meconi, SJ, in the December 2020 issue of New Oxford Review magazine, available online.       To summarize his presentation, we might start with creation: space, time, matter. “God’s world,” Fr. Meconi says, “by its very nature, is a sacramental that lifts human minds to their Creator through the divine embeddedness of matter. For the truly Catholic mind, this world is awash with grace.”       “Embeddedness” here is something like St. Paul’s expression that God’s “eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” ( Ro 1:20 ). And yet it goes further. It means God’s incarnation. Not absorption – we are not God, the universe is not God.       Incarnation means the Second Person of the Divine Trinity assumed human flesh in Jesus Christ, which flesh has the ...

The Gospel of the Forty Days: Breaking Bread       We are continuing to see what commands (Ac 1:2) and teachings (Ac 1:3) the resurrected Lord Jesus gave, or might have given, during the forty days between His Resurrection and Ascension – what Jaroslav Pelikan called the “Gospel of the Forty Days.”       St. Luke’s Gospel shows us some of Jesus’ teaching, and a reminder of a command, on that first evening of Jesus’ Resurrection when Jesus joined the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Lk 24:27). The disciples later said their hearts were burning within them as Jesus was speaking (Lk 24:32), but they did not recognize that it was the Lord Jesus until they were at table.  Jesus “took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them” (Lk 24:30). Recall that on the prior Thursday Passover evening, Jesus “took...