I would guess that if you are the type of person who reads a blog, you are also the type of person who uses email. And if you use email, then it is a healthy bet that you have sometimes found yourself checking your email quite frequently, perhaps every hour or every ten minutes. For me, it got to a point in college where it seemed like I was checking my email every three minutes. If you think about it, most of our email is quite banal: another mass mailing list has decided to express its commercial affection towards you, another friend has decided to send you a video of a talking dog, or you have received notice that your library books are overdue. What is it about using email that breeds this sort of habit? If we were to engage in any other activity so frequently, we would probably be labeled obsessive compulsive. Imagine going to your mailbox down by the street every hour! Perhaps you have always been a temperate email-checker or have an in-built disdain for email that has prevented you from checking it more than twice a day. If so, more power to you, but please indulge my use of this image.

I think it was Aristotle who famously said, “All men by nature desire to know [who the next Pope will be.]” Perhaps that is a bit anachronistic or syncretistic, but the point is clear: we are in papal buzz mode. Today, as the cardinals cast their first vote, we are all fixed intently on the Sistine chapel chimney more assiduously than curious kids on Christmas. I admit that the chatter and the twitter have been hard to avoid whether one has accidentally stumbled upon the cardinals’ social media scoreboard, or voluntarily downloaded iConclave. It seems many would trade in their humanity, just to be one of the frescos in the Sistine chapel’s ceiling, the conclave’s concave cover: “Please let me be a patriarch, a prophet, a sibyl, or at least a cherub on the wall—anything that will allow me to spy on the flurry of red beneath me and see the ballots strung on a string like popcorn or cranberries on an evergreen.”

People often criticize St. Thomas Aquinas for being “boring.” Today, on the feast of the Angelic Doctor, I offer this light-hearted reflection in his own idiom:

Whether Thomas Aquinas is fittingly called boring?

I would like to do something that Dominicans typically don’t do: exhort. I’d like to exhort you to read Pope Benedict’s new book, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. This is the third of the Pope’s books on the life of Christ to be released since 2007. In the first volume, he described the preaching and public ministry of Christ. In the second, he meditated on the events of Holy Week and the Paschal Mystery. In the most recent volume, he takes us back to the beginning of the Gospels, treating the birth and early life of Christ.

If you’ve purchased anything online in the last few years, you may have noticed a new type of advertising. Sites like Amazon.com and iTunes use your searching and buying history to generate a constant stream of recommendations, all tailored to your preferences. These are generally titled: “Recommended for You,” “Related to Your Search,” or “Inspired by Your Browsing History.” My personal favorite is “Customers who bought this also purchased x.” It’s as if behind the screen there’s a little Amazon robot mocking you and saying, “You people are all the same!”

In the month of November, the Church calls to mind and prays for the faithful departed. When I was growing up I thought this was silly. Why should I waste my time praying for the dead while the living are in such need of prayer?

Joel Osteen, the popular author and pastor of Lakewood Church, released his latest book this month last year: Make Every Day a Friday: How to be Happier 7 Days a Week. The premise is clear enough: Fridays are great because the workweek is over and the weekend is starting. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be as happy every day as we are on Friday?

Today the Church celebrates the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Since we Americans do not live under a monarchy, it might be tempting for us to think of a queen as a merely historical personage, as someone whose influence is frozen in the past. But this is not the case with the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was a real, historical person, who walked the earth about two thousand years ago, but she is not limited to history. She still lives, body and soul, in heaven, and even now her powerful intercession brings about real effects in our lives and in our world. By celebrating her Queenship, the Church draws our attention to this fact. Mary is a queen whose reign has not ceased and never will cease.

During college, I was in a small Catholic reading group, and in various books we kept coming across stories of conversions brought about by Our Lady’s intercession. Up to that point in my life, I thought that most conversions were brought about by intellectual means or, perhaps, through a serious illness. I figured that Our Lady’s role in conversion was almost always remote or imperceptible. Accordingly, I posed a question to the reading group: “Does anyone know someone who was converted to the Catholic faith due to Mary’s intercession?”

Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a day that highlights the maternal protection of Our Lady over the Carmelite Order. There are numerous ties that bind the Dominicans and the Carmelites together: our strong emphasis on contemplation, St. Teresa of Avila’s fondness for Dominican confessors, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s experience of spiritual transformation after hearing a Dominican friar preach on the indwelling of the Trinity within the soul, and the list goes on. Indeed, the connection is so strong that the twentieth century saw Dominican theologians strive to synthesize the teachings of St. John of the Cross and St. Thomas Aquinas on the spiritual life.

“O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine.” Today, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Catholics throughout the world are making this petition. Our Lord Jesus was, of course, preeminently meek and humble, but, we may wonder, what other virtues are we asking for in this short prayer? In what other ways do we desire our hearts to be “like unto his”? I would suggest that the life of our Holy Father Saint Dominic can help us find an answer to this question.