John C. Wright's Journal

05 March 2025 AD
Ash Wednesday

Dear Godson,

Ash Wednesday opens Lent, a season of repentance and fasting. The rite of placing ashes on the brow has it roots in the ancient Jewish practice of mourning and humility, and, earlier, the reminder from the days of Adam that man is risen from dust and returns to dust.

The beasts of the field, as best we know, have no forethought of their mortal span nor any  craving for eternal life. Devising memorials is no part of their lives, nor any admiration of beauty for its own sake.

Man gets a glimpse of eternity when his eye falls on beauty in nature, seeing star or diamond, moonrise or mountain, geyser, pine forest, rushing rill, rearing stallion, bright flower, sleek cat, beetle or butterfly or gurgling babe in joy, a damsel seen by candlelight turning her head just so, dark eyes softly gleaming.

Beauty reflects eternity, hence springs from God and leads back to Him.

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9 Feb AD 2025
Feast Day of Saint Cuaran the Wise

Dear Godson,

Today is the feast day of St Cuaran the Wise, also known as Curvinus or Cronan, and Irish Bishop of the Eight Century. When the press of bishopric work crowded out his prayer life, Cuaran fled to Iona, hid his name, and became a monk. However, he was found and recognized by St Columba and returned to his duty. He was called wise for his wide knowledge of canon law, but perhaps his flight from worldly offices to pursue intimate prayer with heaven was the better part of wisdom.

We can ask St. Cuaran to pray for the wisdom we need to face the question of man’s moral nature. If conscience is indeed the still, small voice of God within us, if it is supernatural, then God is known to us through the conscience: His voice reveals Him.

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26 Jan 2025 AD
Feast Day of Sts Timothy and Titus

Dear Godson,

Today we celebrate Saints Timothy and Titus, first bishops of Ephesus and Crete, who followed Saint Paul on his apostolic journeys. One was a Jew, the other Greek, one was circumcised according to the Law of Moses, and the other not, which was a matter of stark controversy in the Church in first years after the Ascension. Despite any differences, both followed Christ faithfully to sainthood, and are among the very earliest number of saints assuming the thrones vacated by the fallen angels in heaven.

The verse from scripture, “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom” distinguishes traditional Jewish and Greek approaches. Jews rely on the revelation of sacred books, whereas Greeks follow philosophy and science — the love of wisdom and knowledge — to discover what human reason can reveal.

And yet both paths, properly followed, lead to Christ hence to God. One might use Timothy and Titus as symbols of this twofold brotherhood of faith and reason. There is no war between them.

Today, we follow the Greek way. Reason brings forth proofs for God, especially these seven:  the argument from design; from the nature of being; from the nature of reason; from free will; from first causes; from beauty; from conscience. My two previous letters addressed these first two. Here we turn to the argument from the nature of reason.

The “Argument from Reason” is not an argument merely saying it is reasonable to believe in God. Belief in God is reasonable, to be sure, for it is backed by historical and physical evidence, intuition and common sense.

But here we are offering a more abstract argument, namely, that without God, reason is unreasonable.

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15 December AD 2024,
Gaudete Sunday

Dear Godson,

On Gaudete Sunday, we light the rose candle of rejoicing, and give thanks in the midst of our season of penitential waiting. The coming joy of the birth of Our Lord awaits us.

In lesser matters, we can also take joy, in that the Lord made knowledge of Him open not just to the spirit of faith, but also to the eyes of reason. He could have arranges the world otherwise, but, in His mercy, the Lord saw fit to give mortal man just enough power of reason for philosophy to reach the pearly gate of heaven, but not enough to enter the throneroom. Reason can tell us that the Lord is real, and worthy of glory and worship, but more than that, must be revealed by a grace, or remain hidden.

But to know God exists is no more impossible than to know reality is real. Indeed, from the fact that reality it real, that being has being, is one way to  know God exists.

The Church teaches, and reason confirms, that the Supreme Being is and must be the ground of being: and this all men know to be God.

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24 November AD 2024,
Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe

Dear Godson,

Today is the last day of the Liturgical Calendar, which differs from the Gregorian Calendar used by the world. This worldly calendar, as is fitting, begins and ends in the fortnight of the Winter Solstice, when, daylight hours cease to dwindle, light returns, and longer days begin again. But the Liturgical Calendar takes Christ as our Sun, and so we begin the year with the advent of his birth, and end with his triumphant Second Coming.

Today is a celebration of Doomsday. This Doomsday is the celebration of our salvation, and our resurrection, and of the salvation of the world, and the renewal of the world.

What is salvation?

From what are we being saved?

The word “Doomsday” has a dreadful sound to modern ears, but originally the “doom” proclaimed by a king included indeed the downfalls and punishments owed to the disloyal and wicked, but also the promotions and rewards owed to the loyal and righteous.

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21 April AD 2024, Good Shepherd Sunday

Dear Godson,

Over these several letters, I mean to discuss the source, the substance, and the spirit of our faith, which is to say, why we believe, what we believe, and how we are to live our belief in practice.

Because myriad confusions surround the matter, let us say what faith is, and what it is not.

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28 January AD 2024, Feast of St Thomas Aquinas

Dear Godson,

This day is the Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the schoolman who, for once and all, reconciled faith and philosophy, church and science.

Any man who says there is conflict speaks in ignorance, or in malice, either being too literal in his interpretation of scripture, or too hasty in calling the ever-changing guesswork of science factual. It is to be noted that true Churchmen and true scientists themselves see no such conflict, nor appearance of conflict.

The same Holy Ghost who inspired Moses and the prophets, and inspired the saints and apostles, was He who moved softly across the face of the deep when creation was formless and void, brooding as a dove over her chicks. The Creator will not take amiss any disciplined and honest investigation of the artwork and architecture involved in the making of stars and atoms, sea and sky, microbe and mastodon, the geometry of the leaf, the lifecycle of galaxies, the engineering of the inner amoeba.

Thomas Aquinas would approve of any intellectual approach to these great things that kept its aim and nature in mind: science is meant to topple the idols of false beliefs about nature, not to erect them.

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17 December AD 2023, Gaudete Sunday

Dear Godson,

This day is “Gaudete” Sunday, which is the third Sunday in Advent. Church candles and churchmen are garbed in vestments of rose-red, but everyone calls it pink. It is the Sunday of Joy, for Gaudete is the Latin word for rejoicing.

Advent includes four weeks leading up to Christmas, which is the nativity of Our Lord. On this day the Lord God Almighty came to earth as a helpless baby, small enough to hold in your arms, cradling his little head in your hand. He was prophet, priest and prince from the moment of his birth, and the worldly kings sought his life both then and thereafter. There is nothing worldly powers hate more than heavenly powers.

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7 December AD 2023, Feast Day of St. Ambrose

Dear Godson,

To instruct you in the mysteries of the faith is the duty and joy of a godfather. It falls on a godfather to introduce, as best he may, to his godson the God who is to Our Father in Heaven, and tell of His wonders.

This is an auspicious day to begin the task for Saint Ambrose, whose feast today it is, is famed for reconciling the opposite parties when controversy divided the Church.

So might these letters aid you in finding fit words to say to tell of the faith within you, and to explain with those who have ears to hear how the gift from God called reason and the gift from God called faith are not now, and can never be, at odds.

But where to begin?

Were I to teach you geometry, beloved godson, it would be proper to begin at the premises and common notions and definitions, for these are the beginning of that study. But the faith is in all things and informs all things, and so anywhere is a proper beginning: all roads lead to Rome.

So I will start with this letter, this sentence. I am late in writing it. Alas, I take up my pen tardily, but readily. I meant to do this yesterday, but it slipped my mind.

Therefore let me be an example for you: In later years, when you find yourself to have fallen short, perhaps less perfect in charity than you should have been, do not allow this imperfection to hinder the speed at which you will begin to repent and to make amends.

Even in so small as thing as failing to remember to write a letter, we Sons of Adam know what is right, and we do not do it. We are imperfect beings who cannot escape the longing for perfection.

Why is that? What is man?

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