McGrath Institute Blog

Today, September 30, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Jerome (ca. 345/7–420), one of the four great Latin doctors of the Church, along with Sts. Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. He is primarily known for translating the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (both Old and New Testaments) into Latin. His translation, known as the Vulgate, was adopted as the official Latin translation of the Bible.

For the past four weeks, we've published a series of articles from Echo Associate Director Katie Diltz on the importance of not just participating in parish life at a surface level, but diving deep to embrace life in one's parish community more fully and fruitfully.

Today marks the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest executed at Auschwitz on August 14, 1941, offering his life in the place of a fellow prisoner who had been condemned to death. 

2019 marks the fifteenth anniversary of Sufjan Stevens’ remarkable album Seven Swans. Apart from his Christmas albums, the twelve songs on Seven Swans are by far the most overtly Christian in Stevens’ catalog: track one, “All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands,” takes its title from Isaiah 55:12; track two, “Abraham,” meditates on the patriarch’s near-sacrifice of his only beloved son, Isaac. These sometimes scriptural, sometimes literary (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”), always spiritual musical meditations culminate in the final track of the album, “The Transfiguration.”

On February 2—forty days after Christmas—the Church celebrates the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, calling to mind the Holy Family’s observance of the Mosaic Law (see Leviticus 12:1–8). Mary comes to the Temple forty days after giving birth to Jesus, and she and Joseph offer for her purification a sacrifice of two turtledoves, the offering prescribed for the poor. In addition, Mary and Joseph present and dedicate Jesus to God, as he is Mary’s firstborn Son (see Exodus 13:2–16).