From Season to Season

An Italian by birth, Martin became Pope in 649. Immediately after his election he convoked a council in Rome to condemn both the Monothelite Heresy (which denied that Jesus had a human will and freedom), and the involvement of Emperor Constans II in Church affairs. In response, the outraged emperor had Pope Martin kidnapped and imprisoned in Constantinople. Saved from execution only through the intervention of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Martin was exiled to Kherson, in the Crimea, where he eventually died as a result of starvation and abuse in 655. He is the last of the Bishops of Rome to be honored as a martyr. The feast of Pope Martin I is celebrated in both the Eastern and Western Churches. Today’s First Reading tells us of a dark time in the life of the Early Church, as the first Christians faced severe persecution and exile following the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the Church’s first martyr. The experience of this early Christians—and other saints, including Pope ...

I generally have two books going at any given time—one for spiritual enrichment and the other for entertainment. I’m currently reading Jesus: The Son of Man by Kahlil Gibran and Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’ve also been making my way through an audio version of Michael Cunningham’s The Snow Queen: A Novel. A few days ago, I was listening to The Snow Queen as I went for a walk and I was struck by this passage: There’s something about the courting of disaster, in shopping terms, that fascinates Barrett [one of the book’s main characters], that holds his attention, helps render him satisfied with his current stature. It’s the technically extinct but somehow still plausible hint of calamity implied by the impulse purchase—the impoverished dowager or disinherited young earl who says, “I’m going to walk the earth in this perfectly faded Freddy Mercury t-shirt (two-fifty), I’m going to party tonight in this vintage McQueen minidress (eight hundred), because...