Writing a novel based on the Gospels is a tricky business, not only because the Gospels themselves are such special documents, but because the two literary forms have very different purposes. Both are narratives, of course, but the novel is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon and

Old age should burn and rave at close of day,” screamed Dylan Thomas, but he was only 37. W. B. Yeats’s “Old Pensioner” “spit into the face of Time/ That has transfigured me,” but Yeats was just 27. Shakespeare, dying at 52, knew better: his Lear and Prospero, in

"Actualizing” Scripture, or bringing it to life, is based on the conviction that “the word of God is living and active” (Heb 4:12) and speaks anew to believers in different times and places. This process is carried out by theologians, preachers, teachers, artists, those who pr

Visiting Rome in early 1959, while still an Anglican priest, I asked a learned Benedictine from Belgium who was prior of the monastery where I was staying, whether he had attended the funeral of Pope Pius XII six months earlier. His reply, an apt comment on the style of papal liturgies of that era:

How to approach—I mean adequately approach—the devastating reality of Ground Zero from Ground Zero? What happens to perception, history, language, syntax and grammar—to say nothing of lungs, flesh and brain—at that level as the second airliner rips into the swaying tower fill

In October 2003 I was part of a scholarly meeting that honored the memory and accomplishments of Raymond E. Brown, S.S. It was entitled “An International Conference on the Gospel of John: Life in Abundance,” and held at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, where Brown s