In this week’s course reflection question, Dr. O’Malley asked, “What do you find yourself gazing upon? How do these images form you?” In today’s modern world, through the use of the internet on practically any device, one has access to pretty much anything they wish to see. You can be…

In Jeremy Begbie’s book, Theology, Music and Time, one realizes how truly complex music is. When reading this book, I couldn’t help but reflect on my favorite church hymn, Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today and Forever by Sister Suzanne Toolan, RSM. Growing up in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, having attended…

In Richard Kieckhefer’s book, Theology in Stone Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley, one gains an understanding of church architecture and how to examine those church structures with a particular lens that expresses its type. Kieckhefer elaborates these types as the following: classical sacramental, classical evangelical and modern communal churches…

In Sister Ann Astell’s book, Eating Beauty, one gains an understanding of this title in both the physical and spiritual sense of the Eucharist. She states that, “To see the consecrated Host, for it was -Christ- , was to see it with the eyes of faith; to hear, to smell…

At Mission Dolores Basilica I am part of the RCIA team. My favorite part about being on the team is partaking in the journey of our catechumens from the first meeting to the culmination of their initiation into the Church at the Easter Vigil. In recent years, before COVID-19, we…

Aesthetics is the appreciation of beauty. In spirituality, beauty is beyond what is pleasurable to the eye drawing us to a deeper sense of the divine. In reading Romano Guardini’s “The Spirit of the Liturgy”, one is able to grasp truly why the liturgy is the source and summit of…

Divine Revelation is beautiful because it is emotive in displaying the immense love that God has for us. In Han Urs Von Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible and Roberto Goizueta’s Christ our Companion, this immense love is expressed in Jesus Christ hanging from the Cross providing an understanding of his…

Diego Rivera’s Flower Carrier has always evoked great joy within me. My grandmother had a replica of this painting in her kitchen on the pantry door. Though simple in its nature, I was always drawn to its vivid colors, shapes and comforted by the action in the painting. In reflecting…