It's the Year of Our Lord 34, and Saul is on his way to Damascus to persecute "the Way," as Luke puts it in Acts 9. Then—all of a sudden—BOOM!

When twenty-three year old Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in Rome to complete his very first public commission, he was provided with a single block of marble, a one-year timeframe, and a sacred theme: the Pietà.

From Spiritual Struggle to Marian Surrender

This essay is excerpted and adapted from comments delivered on April 29 at the Scala Foundation's conference "Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good."

If you've not been in the Vatican basilica on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, by all means put that on your bucket list. 

For the child — and the adult who knows there is still a child in all of us — fairy tales reveal truths about ourselves and the world.

This is the final article in a series of three.

This is the second article in a series of three.

In this witty, elegant, revelatory biography, Richard Greene states that his "book takes a very high view of Graham Greene's accomplishments and so endorses the common opinion of three generations of writers and critics that he is one of the most important figures in modern literature." 

This is the first of three postings on beauty as a principle of choice.