Tommy Humphries 
In the throws of genuine Eros, we find ourselves making ridiculous claims. Everyone except you knows it won’t last. That’s comical to the rest of us. Eros teaches us that we must laugh at ourselves.
Humans obviously have need-love. Thus, at first blush, divine love would be gift-love and human love would be need-love. Christianity would then be something like maturing from need-loves to gift-loves. Lewis argues this is not quite right, and Lewis is right about that.
While Catholics have firm reason to hope in our salvation, we always walk the line between presumption and despair. (1 Pt 3:15-16) Frankly, as with COVID, we do not know how our lives will turn out.
We still live near the chapel in which my wife accepted my proposal for marriage. There are layers of meaning in that place. This is often what we mean when we speak of “sacramentality,” there are layers of meaning kept between the body and soul.
The Basilica structure is simply more suited to our kind of worship than were the ancient temple structures.
Every Catholic altar is a kind of graveyard. Catholics pray surrounded by the remains of saints who have died before us. You could say it’s a bit creepy.
Fr. Tribou told us that he was somehow able to rest in that love, knowing he was convicted of sin, but loved in order to be better. Tribou, in turn, dedicated his life to loving us not because we were already worthy, but in order that we might become deserving.
Take the insight of a troubled and flawed poet, and trust “there ain’t no dark ‘til something shines,” and then go and leave the dark behind secure in the light.
Augustine’s God is voluptuous, and to be Catholic is to be willingly drawn into that God of Beauty!
Reclaiming my place as the “young monk” I really was, instead of the haughty graduate student I was pretending to be, I returned to St. Bernard.