Author: Tradition Magazine
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The Death of Corrupt Clergymen
About the Author: Thomas of Cantimpré (1201 – 1272) was pushed into the Church because a hermit told his father that unless one of his sons became a priest, the father would spend a very long time in purgatory. But Thomas took to the priestly life, becoming a noted preacher and theologian and writing several…
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Pascal, Selections from the Pensées
About the Author: Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France, in 1623 to a devout Catholic family. Though his father and sister dabbled in Jansenism, Pascal himself had something of a mystical experience at the age of thirty-one, which prompted something of a “conversion.” T.S. Elliot describes him as “one of the greatest physicists and…
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“The Recommendation”
Richard Crashaw (1613–49) These houres, and that which hovers o’re my End,Into thy hands, and hart, lord, I commend. Take Both to Thine Account, that I and mineIn that Hour, and in these, may be all thine. That as I dedicate my devoutest BreathTo make a kind of Life for my lord’s Death, So from…
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An Instruction Unto Them That Shall Die
About the work: The Ars Moriendi, or “Art of Dying” was a genre of Christian spirituality that rose to prominence after the disaster of the Bubonic Plague wiped out up to fifty percent of Europe’s population. The present work was written in the mid-fifteenth century, probably by a Dominican friar, and reminds you, the reader, that…
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Saint Theresa of Avila
About the Author: Saint Theresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) is remembered as an ascetic, an author, a founder of convents, a reformer, a poet, and a mystic. Here she considers death in her 1583 book, The Way of Perfection. Wherever this love is, then, you will not fail to recognize it; I do not know…
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Saint Gregory the Great
About the Author: In his Dialogues, Saint Gregory in conversation is challenged on the immortality of the soul. He tells stories to make the case. Saint Gregory makes the point that saints offer a specifically Catholic case for the immortality of the soul: “For sick persons come unto their dead bodies, and be cured: perjured persons…
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Sonnet 13
About the Author: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was active in the years after Catholicism became illegal in England. Part of the case that he was a secret Catholic ties Shakespeare to Saint Thomas More. In Shakespeare’s official plays, More is almost written out, but Shakespeare and other authors collaborated on a play about Saint…
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Athenagoras on the details of the Resurrection
About the Author: Christianity teaches that the dead will rise again in a physical resurrection. This is a comforting doctrine, but right from the start Christians realized that it raises philosophical questions as well. How does a resurrection work? If we get back the same bodies that we had, how can we account for the…
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Saint Paul on Dying with Christ
About the Story: The good news of the Gospel seems to have raced to Rome, and soon Saint Paul (c. 5 – c. 64/65 AD), the Apostle to the Gentiles, wrote them one of his great letters. Here in Romans 6:1-14, Saint Paul explains what Christians should believe about death and about life. 1 What shall…
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Stewarding Death on the Homestead
About the Author: Mark Kutolowski lives with his wife and three children at Metanoia of Vermont, a lay Catholic homestead guided by the spirituality of Saint Benedict. metanoiavt.com “Thank you, Dimitri, for the gift of your life.” I speak the words softly to the 90 pound lamb I’m holding. I have him up on his…