Author: Tradition Magazine
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Paul Tells of His Conversion: Acts 22:1-21
About the text: St. Paul is well-known for his “Damascus moment,” the sudden revelation that he received from Christ that changed the trajectory of his life. Fittingly, his conversion took place on a journey and was accompanied by a movement from blindness to new life in Christ through baptism. Christ’s identification with the persecuted Church…
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My Convoluted Pilgrimage to the Catholic Church
About the author: Deborah Gyapong’s journalism career included 17 years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where she spent 12 years as a television producer in news and current affairs. For 15 years, she covered national affairs and the Catholic Church for a network of Catholic newspapers across Canada. She retired in 2019. Her novel The Defilers won the…
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Inferno: Canto I
About the text: Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321) was the first writer extensively in an Italian dialect and is therefore considered the father of Italian literature and a precursor of the Italian Renaissance. Deeply indebted to his early contemporary Thomas Aquinas both philosophically and theologically, Dante’s Divine Comedy follows in the tradition of Vergil, who serves as his…
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Pilgrimage: What the Modern Pilgrim Can Learn from Kristin Lavransdatter
About the author: Christina Debusschere is a wife, mother, and cradle Catholic who grew up on a farm in northeastern Alberta. She holds a B.A. in music and a B.Ed. from Concordia University of Edmonton. Between rosaries and sinks of dishes, Christina enjoys reading, making music, educating her children, rational dialogue with her husband, and…
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Excerpts from Catechism of the Catholic Church
About the text: As is the case in any pilgrimage, prayer and penance mark the life of a Christian. Just as it was not enough for the Israelites to pass through the Red Sea, but they needed a time of purification and penance in the desert, so do we need to do penance in addition…
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Excerpts from Catechism of the Catholic Church
About the text: Drawing especially from St. Augustine’s City of God and the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the current state of the Church as one of pilgrimage to the heavenly Kingdom. Just as he provided manna for the Israelites to eat on…
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The Church in Exile: 1 Peter 1:1-9, 2:11-12, 4:12-14
About the text: The First Letter of Peter is known as one of the “catholic epistles,” not because it is read only by Catholics, but because it was written to the whole, that is “catholic,” Church. In it Peter addresses Christians as exiles, living in a land not their own; while he encourages us to…
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Departure from Egypt: Exodus 12:29-51
About the text: The Church is on a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, the New Jerusalem. This is prefigured in the people of Israel as they left Egypt during the Exodus. Leaving the bondage of slavery and crossing through the water of the Red Sea, the people of Israel were gathered at Mount Sinai where…
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St. Augustine: City of God XVIII.49-54
About the author: Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a native of North Africa—the Roman Empire’s most profitable Latin-speaking province—was faced with the turmoil that erupted following the sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth in 410. Rather than lament the desecration of the “eternal city,” he wrote a refutation of the pagans who were blaming the…
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Introduction to Tradition Magazine, Issue 3: Pilgrimage
In the spring of the year, as the birds begin to sing, the buds appear on the trees, and the fawns are seen grazing in the meadow, we are reminded of new life. For the Christian this bespeaks the Resurrection of Christ by which we have hope for eternal life in the land where there…