The Girl Who Stood Like a Mountain
The Life of Saint Febronia of Nisibis (†304 AD) The city of Nisibis sat on the edge of the Roman Empire like a tooth on the rim of a jaw—hard, ancient, and always biting against something. To the east lay Persia. To the west lay Rome. And in between, on a narrow street that smelled of baking bread and cedar oil, stood a convent where fifty women lived together, prayed together, studied together, and—most dangerously of all—thought together. Febronia had arrived at that convent as a small child, barely two…
The Downward Path to Glory
Kenosis, Stillness, and the One Thing Needful — A Reflection for Ordinary Time on Philippians 2:5-11 and Luke 10:38-42; 11:27-28 You already know which sister you are. Not which you wish to be—which you are, right now, this morning, in the unguarded hours before you have composed yourself for public view. You are Martha. You are cumbered. The word in Luke’s Greek is periespaō—pulled apart in every direction, dragged around the circumference of your own anxieties. And the terrible thing, the thing that stings worst, is that your busyness feels…
The Girl Who Chose Her Own Name
The Life of Saint Irene of Thessaloniki (c. 282–304) Her father named her Penelope. He was a governor in the Roman province of Macedonia—a powerful man called Licinius, wealthy enough to build his daughter a tower. Not a tower for punishment, the way old stories sometimes go, but a tower for education. Licinius filled it with books, with tutors, with everything a bright girl could want except the one thing she would eventually find for herself. He placed a golden idol on a table beside her scrolls. He set twelve…
The Night-Comer and the Wind That Knows Your Name
Born Again Through Water and the Wound — A Reflection for Ordinary Time on Acts 2:38–43 and John 3:1–15 He comes by night—this Nicodemus, this ruler, this man heavy with learning and rank—and the darkness through which he moves is not merely astronomical. It is the darkness of a soul that knows something stirs beyond the ramparts of its certainty but cannot yet name it. He comes bearing a compliment, a careful theological observation polished smooth as a diplomat’s coin: Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from…
The Goth Who Would Not Bow to Fire
The Life of Saint Savva the Goth (334–372) The river was swollen with spring melt the night they dragged Savva to its banks. He was thirty-eight years old, lean and sharp-faced, and he had spent most of those years making trouble for people who preferred a quieter kind of faith. The Buzău River in what is now Romania ran fast and cold in April, and the soldiers who held him could feel the current pulling at their boots as they waded in. Savva was singing. That detail survived because the…
The Greater Horizon 