Of Many Things

Henry James named one of his novels Washington Square, after a formerly fashionable area in Lower Manhattan known for its handsome row of mid-19th century houses on the square’s north side. Most of the houses are now owned by New York University, but one belongs to the Sisters of Charity. It i

Before my sister’s son, Charles, was born four years ago, I found it difficult to understand why people found their children’s comments so amusing. Certainly I had friends and relatives with young and often precocious children, but when they repeated their supposedly hilarious comments t

On Aug. 2, the Jesuits at America House celebrated the feast of Blessed Peter Faber, the first recruit and only priest among the early companions of St. Ignatius Loyola. A humble shepherd from Savoy, France, he was a skilled master of the Spiritual Exercises and was chosen to attend the ecumenical c

As of last Sept. 11 the word hero has assumed a life of its own. Although our political and social history is replete with heroes and heroic deeds, whether in wartime or peacetime, a new way of looking at heroism, of defining courage and sacrifice, was born on that fateful day in 2001. In his addres

A popular and pious saying is that God gives you the graces you need. This is thought to be especially true in your ministry or vocation. If you are a parent, for example, God will give you the graces you need to raise your children—like patience, compassion and wisdom. Likewise, to accomplish

On Sundays I sometimes pass the Church of the Ascension on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and I generally pause to admire its Gothic Revival brownstone exterior fronted by a small courtyard with boxwood bushes. But it was not until late one Sunday afternoon in May that I went inside—drawn by

Perhaps the saddest person I ever met was a fellow named Benjamin. Between 1992 and 1994 I worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Nairobi, Kenya. My job was to help urban refugeesthat is, people who had migrated to Nairobi from countries like Sudan, Rwanda and Ugandato start small businesses and

Jimmy Carter, who learned Spanish in the Navy, found a special use for that skill in 1969, when he was a state senator in Georgia. In that year he worked for some days as a Southern Baptist lay evangelist in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Springfield, Mass.In a speech at the University of Havana

The saints in glory, whether they have been formally canonized or not, are immune to irritation. Were that not the case, those canonized saints who were married men might have been chagrined to find their existence denied in a letter to the editor in the May 6 issue of The New Yorker.Thomas A. DiMag

With luck, you may live close enough to your job to be able to walk home from work. This is my own fortunate situation. On weekdays, I usually leave America House between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m and head southeast down through Manhattan to the Lower East Side. Having been seated at a desk since 8 a.m., the