On the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010, I was standing with my novice brothers outside St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, waiting to leave for a pro-life dinner downtown. I happened to be holding one of our cell phones, and, shortly before we got into the vans, I received a call I will never forget.
One commonly noticed cultural difference between the United States and Latin America is the question one asks after meeting someone for the first time. In the United States, it is almost always, “What do you do for a living?” But in Latin America, the question is usually about the person’s family or place of origin.
Being a student can be frustrating.
I recently read an article by Emily Stimpson over at Our Sunday Visitor about millennial Catholics. Citing a study suggesting that large numbers of Catholics in my generation are losing their faith, Stimpson highlights the encouraging fact that, of those who are not losing their faith, many are dedicating their lives to spreading it.
First off, I forthrightly admit that St. Thomas did not directly address Memorial Day in any of his works. Still, I propose that this U.S. holiday can be better observed in light of what he says about the virtues. A virtue, of course, is a conscious habit that helps us to perform good acts consistently, and the general virtue that I propose to relate to Memorial Day is the virtue of justice. The virtue of justice governs our relationships with others and causes us to give the other person what is due to him. Because it encompasses the whole of our relations with one another, its scope is wide and its importance great.
As children, we all heard stories of pirates in search of buried treasure. They always had a map, and “X” always marked the spot. The excitement of the adventure captured our imagination: along with the pirates, the Goonies, or whoever happened to be searching for the treasure, we felt the thrill of chasing after riches we did not yet have but sorely desired.
Notice, however, that we were never told much about what happened after the pirates found their treasure.