“Man, are you guys Jedis or what?” That’s what a surprised inner-city schoolboy said when he first encountered some of my fellow Dominican friars. And the question is not completely without basis. Our white habits and dark leather belts do give us an appearance similar to the legendary guardians of peace and justice in the Star Wars galaxy. We carry rosaries instead of lightsabers, but we are entrusted, like the Jedi Knights, with the task of safeguarding the truth. Yet we differ from the Jedi—as does any Christian—on several points.

The idyllic setting of rural New England, far from the bustle of the cities and college towns, is a fitting location for contemplative religious. Near the small town of North Guilford, Connecticut, about a half-hour drive from the Dominican priory of St. Mary in New Haven, stands the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace. This place, rich with colonial tradition, is enriched by an even older tradition—that of the cloistered nuns of the Dominican Order. Here, thirty nuns, comprising one of the Order’s largest contemplative communities in the nation, live a life of intimate prayer and varied labor in the heart of the Order of Preachers, on their 125-acre property nestled among several small farms along Race Hill Road (according to local legend, the sisters tried to change the name to “Grace Hill Road”).

Yesterday marked the fortieth anniversary of the nationwide legalization of abortion. This Friday, hundreds of thousands of Americans will gather on the Washington Mall to advocate for the rights of children in the womb at the fortieth annual March for Life. In the intervening four decades, there has been much heated debate on the issue.  Proponents of access to abortion often frame the matter in terms of women’s rights or women’s health, but one crucial consideration is often lost in the discussion—what happens to a woman after she has had an abortion?

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter, suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

Tonight, with Christmas Eve only a week away, the Church’s liturgy intensifies in anticipation for the coming of the Savior. Each evening until then, at the Magnificat, the Church prays one of the O Antiphons, a series of invocations to the Lord, each beginning with one of the titles applied to Him in the Old Testament. The first one, quoted above, is sung at Vespers this evening:

O Wisdom, who hast proceeded from the mouth of the Most High, who reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence” (cf. Ws 8:1).

The idea of wisdom is not unique to the Scriptures.

At last, Election Day is here! At last, after months of campaigns, hours of debates, and countless speeches, the time has come for us to cast our votes! This presidential election seems to carry a greater significance than most, for the choice before American voters today is not merely a choice between incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, but a choice between the two visions of America they represent.

The polarization of our nation is readily apparent throughout this campaign season. Each side attacks the other as the greatest threat to the American way of life in order to win votes. Critical issues, such as the freedom of the Church to exercise her charitable mission, have slipped through the crossfire unnoticed. Millions of voters remain resolutely committed to the ideology of their party, dividing the country into red states, blue states, and swing states. Several other rifts have emerged during this campaign cycle: “makers” versus “takers”, the 99% versus the 1%, the Tea Party versus the Occupiers. With such stark divisions, one may wonder: what is it that unites us as a nation?

If you ever plan to motor West, travel my way; take the highway that’s the best.

During a long break that I had in graduate school, right after I passed my candidacy exam, I decided to take songwriter Bobby Troup’s advice and drive all the way from my home in Columbus, Ohio to Los Angeles, following the path of historic Route 66. Built in 1926 as a link between the Midwest and the West Coast, this road soon became the subject of songs, novels, and television shows, and has come to symbolize America’s fascination with auto travel. Even decades after being superseded by interstate highways and then officially decertified, the route continues to inspire the adventurous—as shown, for example, in the 2006 Pixar film, Cars.

Most of the old road is still drivable, and so I traversed the route from Chicago to Santa Monica over the span of twelve days, visiting tourist traps, staying in motels, and eating at diners, drive-ins, and dives along the way.

By the time that this post appears, the entire community at the Dominican House of Studies will have begun our annual house retreat. This time, in which we meditate on the word of God and pray more intensely, is a period of refreshment and revitalization of our religious vocations. While all members of religious orders and institutes make a retreat every year by canon law (CIC, c. 663, §5), retreats are highly recommended for the laity as well. Having attended several retreats, from the lively kind in high school youth group to a silent weekend in my mid-twenties, I (along with my fourteen classmates) will be making my first canonical retreat since simple profession a year ago. Yet as the retreat approaches, and after having spent the summer in hospice ministry, I have often wondered: how would you make a retreat if you knew that it would be your last?

Every time that Friday the 13th rolls around, superstitions abound in the news. Black cats, ladders, and broken mirrors receive special attention, and many people avoid travel on this day for fear of accidents (though it was on Friday the 13th that I first drove here to Washington to visit the House of Studies).

Popular use of the term “superstition” suggests a belief in any sort of supernatural power that cannot be explained by natural reason. For this reason, a common trend among modern atheists is to classify all religion as superstition, asserting that no religious claim can be in tune with rational thought. Of course, it’s true that the articles of faith cannot be demonstrated directly from reason alone—for if they could, then belief in them would not be faith at all—but many Internet atheists vehemently object to the idea of faith being reasonable at all, as seen in their reactions to the recent conversion of one of their own bloggers. Contrariwise, others, such as Dr. Edward Feser, author of The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, make the opposite claim: that it is the other side whose belief is superstitious. Which assertion, if either, is accurate?

“In the beginning there was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 1:14). One of the most curious aspects of Christian doctrine is the description of God the Son as Word. We usually think of a word as something we sense, by reading or hearing, or communicate by speaking or writing, and we associate the “Word of God” with the Bible more often than with the Second Person of the Trinity. But before we analyze these theological matters, we must first consider: what is a word, exactly?

Before I entered the Dominican Order, I completed a doctorate in mathematics, in which I focused on the narrow subfield of applied probability; this, as esoteric as it seems, has come in handy at least once in discussions among the brethren. Without going into the great, gory details, let me simply say that I wrote about a model for large polymer molecules, such as proteins or DNA, and how their shape changes when pulled in one direction. This model is called stochastic, that is, it takes into account the random movement of the fluid that surrounds the polymer and examines the net effect on its motion.

While I researched this model, I often wondered: is this motion, or any event, truly random?  That is, can there be any effect whose cause is completely uncertain, or which has no cause at all?