Hello everyone!
I wanted to welcome the slew of new subscribers that just came over from Saints Simon and Jude Cathedral. Welcome to the “writing ministry”!
The Substack is called “Via Experientiae” which is an attempt to express what I hope to accomplish in these pages. Via means “the way” and experientiae means “of experience”. It is a bit of a play on the two ways / vias that people have done theology, the via positiva and the via negativa. The first makes positive claims about who God is and is the cornerstone of revealed religion. We know that God is Trinity because God revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He “posited” this, and therefore we have positive theology. The second type of theology is negative theology. Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that we know more what God is not than what God is. God is immortal, for example, which means that God is not mortal. But we only know what it means to be mortal, so by saying that God is immortal is to say that God is not like us in this way.
And so we come to the way of experience. The way of experience is a mix of the positive and the negative. We experience the love of God in the Sacrament of Confession, for example, but it is an experience that we could never fully understand. This is the experience of mystery, which is, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “an unfathomable certainty”. Mysteries are not meant to be grasped, at least not fully, but experienced. We are invited to enter into the mystery and that’s what I hope to do in these pages.
I already mentioned Gerard Manley Hopkins, but another familiar face in these pages is Luigi Giussani. Hopkins was an English Jesuit who died in 1889 and wrote incredible poetry. Giussani was an Italian priest who died in 2005 and founded the lay ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation. I am writing my dissertation on the first and doing my darnedest to follow the method of the other. Giussani’s method was an invitation to experience the mysteries of faith because he knew that otherwise we tend to reduce Christianity to a collection of doctrines or a moral code. I am reminded of the Psalm we sang at Mass the last several weeks: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” In these pages, I offer some experiences of what I have tasted and seen of our Lord.
I started this blog when I was in Rome in 2013-2014 and then came back to it in 2023. Here are some highlights from the last several years.
We Want to be Outrageously Happy Too (First Published February 1, 2014)
Technique and Mystery (First Published March 6, 2024)
Slow Wisdom (First Published November 14, 2023)
Deep in the Heart of Texas (First Published October 15, 2023)
The Meeting of Rimini (First Published August 25, 2013)
There is so much more. Browse around and enjoy.
One last thing. Each month, I take any proceeds from Substack subscriptions and donate to a charity that has been speaking to me of late. Everything on my Substack is free, so you won’t miss out if you are not a paying member. But each month I will share where I used the money collected. Thanks for donating!