Cultivating the awareness of God and cultivating university donors
Catholic higher education in the United States faces some difficulties in common with higher education in the United States more generally, some difficulties specific to the Catholic Church, and some difficulties specific to Catholic education in the United States more generally. At the same time, institutions of Catholic higher education possess potentialities for renewal, including […]
God’s real presence in my soul imposes on me a threefold duty
One of the more intriguing features of torts is relationality, which is a term to describe the way in which duties exist in relation to particular persons. This idea of relationality has a place in the spiritual life as well. The concluding section of Chapter VII of The Presence of God by Fr. Anselm Moynihan […]
The urgent need is to reawaken to a full awareness of God
After identifying as a problem “the lack of any interest in God or sense of his reality among reputed Christians,” Fr. Moynihan describes the problem in more detail by reference to “[a]n American writer, speaking of the students at one of the smaller American universities.” This writer describes the students “as living ‘in comfortable disregard […]
The enemy is indifferent atheism
God is Someone. That is the opening of Fr. Anselm Moynihan, O.P.’s The Presence of God. Indifference rather than opposition to this recognition is most frightening about our age, he says: What is most frightening about our age is not so much the fiercely militant atheism that by its very violence gives unwilling testimony to God’s […]
“by touching the will with his love”
The final chapter of The Presence of God, by Anselm Moynihan, O.P., is called The Rock of My Heart. Fr. Moynihan describes various features of God’s presence as indwelling. Here is the third (pp. 61-62): 3. God makes known his presence by touching the will with his love. “The love of God is poured forth in our […]
Devotion
The penultimate section of Chapter IV, Rooted in God, is about devotion. Here are the concluding two paragraphs: If we want to fix on one of the numberless examples of devotion offered to us by the saints, we can picture to ourselves St. Theresa of the Child Jesus in here last illness, dragging her fevered, […]
What of myself?
The concluding paragraph of Chapter III, The Hand of God: With unwearied insistence the old Jewish prophets used to remind their people that “peace is the fruit of righteousness,” that the only true basis of personal or national security is obedience to God’s law. Peace is indeed God’s promised gift to us if we only […]
God’s Fourfold Presence
Theologians speak of four different ways in which God is present in creation. Firstly, he is in all things by what is called his presence (using the word in a restricted sense), insofar as all things are naked and open to his eyes, that is, insofar as he sees all things; then he is said to […]
Guest of Our Soul (Leonidas)
A dense and dynamic book presenting a Dominican spirituality is The Presence of God, by Fr. Anselm Moynihan O.P. Here Fr. Moynihan presents an illustration from early Christian practice in a chapter, “Guest of Our Soul”: The realization the early Christians had of God’s real indwelling in the heart of the just is vividly illustrated […]
