The Catholic Monitor

> An unsettling image says Chesterton, is the whole > purpose of the imagination: “The function of > imagination is not to make strange things settled, > so much as to make settled things strange; not so > much to make wonders facts as to make facts > wonders.” > > The wonder begins with existence itself. Existence, > he says, “has a value wholly inexpressible”. But > the artist tries to express it. That is the duty of > the artist: to express the inexpressible. > > Chesterton tries to get us to feel what he calls > “the intoxication of existence” and the invaluable, > incomparable gift of life. In a prophetic poem he > wrote over a hundred years ago, a poem entitled “By > the Babe Unborn”, he portrays a baby, lying in the > dark womb, trying to imagine a world of blue skies > and green grassy hills, which to him in the darkness > is just a dream. But if he could actually attain > it, and see such a world and live in i

32. How intimate is the connection between Heaven and Earth? The joy of Heaven does, because Christ is our joy, who tells us "I am with you always, even to the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20, Phillips). We do not now fully appreciate that joy, but it is here, because the very life of Heaven, the very life that flows from the Vine into the branches, is here. If it is not here in us now, it will not be there in us then. If Heaven is not in us now, we will not be in Heaven forever. For Heaven is where God is. God determines where Heaven is; Heaven does not determine where God is. God contains Heaven; Heaven does not contain God. If God is in our souls now by faith, then the very life of Heaven is here in us now, in seed form. That is what Jesus came to preach about and to give, the focus of all his sermons: "the kingdom of Heaven." It is the "pearl of great price," the thing for which the whole world is far too small a price to pay. And it is free. 33. How do

Please pray for Michael O'Brien. He is going through some difficult times. He is not just a great writer, but a good, maybe a saintly, man. Fred Greatest Writer since Tolkien Michael O'Brien is the greatest writer since Tolkien. His stories take you on a journey like a dream where you forget that you're in a dream. Only you feel the joy or sadness that is like real life reunion or heart break. The wisdom is experienced in his tales. This is subcreation that equals Homer or Tolkien. Fred New novel by Michael D. O'Brien The Island of the World The Island of the World is the story of a child born in 1933 into the turbulent world of the Balkans and tracing his life into the third millennium. The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior. As the novel begins, World War II is underway and the entire region of Yugoslavia is torn by conflicting factions: German and Italian occupy

Is Jesus the only way? (Or can good pagans, Hindus, et cetera get to Heaven too?) The first part of the question is clear, and the answer is clear: Unless Jesus is the victim of grandiose self-delusion or deliberate, blasphemous lying, he is the only way, for he says exactly that (John 14:6). But the second part of the question is not clear. People who have never heard of Christ, and thus have neither consciously accepted him nor consciously rejected him, must also get to Heaven through Christ, for there is no other way. That much is clear from Christ's own words. But it is not clear what is going on in the unconscious depths of the souls of such people. Only God knows. Perhaps they know and love him in the obscure form of a deep, unconscious desire and love. The game of heavenly population statistics is one that Christ discouraged his disciples from playing. When they asked him, "Are many saved?" he answered neither yes nor no but said, "Strive to enter in" (Lu

Catholics and Protestants Urged to Come Together to Back Huckabee FRONT ROYAL, Va., Jan. 7 /Christian Newswire/ -- "Governor Mike Huckabee is the only candidate for President we can support with confidence," said Douglas R. Scott, Jr., president of Life Decisions International (LDI). "I urge my Protestant brothers and sisters to join me in doing all they can to advance Mike Huckabee's campaign." "We need to back a candidate who has a consistent record of supporting traditional values," said Thomas C. Strobhar, chairman of LDI. "Mike Huckabee is that kind of candidate. I urge my Catholic brothers and sisters to join me in doing all they can to advance Mike Huckabee's campaign." Scott commented on several other candidates: "John McCain supports stem cell experimentation. When I served as executive director of Arizona Right to Life, I saw nothing that would make me believe he is even remotely concerned about life issues." "Mi

Steve Mosher, head of the Population Research Institute (PRI), said that the media are "misrepresenting" and "exaggerating" the "pedophilia crisis" in the Catholic Church. According to him and other speakers at a recent PRI pro-life conference in Santa Clara, Calif., a major problem in the American Catholic Church, and specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area, is homosexuality. Mosher contended that the present Church crisis is not about pedophilia, but about homosexuality. "Only a tiny fraction of the priesthood has ever been guilty of this kind of indiscretion [pedophilia]. The vast majority is engaging in homosexual acts with young men after the age of puberty. True pedophilia is very rare," Mosher said. "This is not pedophilia if it is past puberty. These are priests who are acting out on homosexual impulses and preying on adolescent young men. So you have to understand that is why the Vatican is saying homosexuals shouldn't be ord

Why won't we be bored in Heaven? I suspect this question subconsciously bothers most of us more than we like to admit. I can remember having something of a crisis of faith as a child: I thought I didn't want to go to Heaven since the popular pictures of it seemed pretty boring to me. Freud, who occasionally comes up with nuggets of wisdom sandwiched between mountains of nonsense, says that everyone needs two things to make life worth living: love and work. The two are really one, for love is a work and work is a love. Love is a work, for it is something you do, not something you just feel or fall into. And work must be a love, for if not, it is threatening and boring. What love-work will we do in Heaven, then? We will complete the very love-works we are meant to do on Earth. There are only six things that never get boring on Earth, six things that never come to an end: knowing and loving yourself, your neighbor, and God. Since persons are subjects and not objects, they are not