I recently read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, a Hugo-and-Nebula-award-winning science fiction novel. I admit, while the other Dappled Things editors are busy writing compelling articles about aesthetics and successfully publish super-amazing novels, I’m over here chilling, deeply immersed in some pretty weird sci-fi and making no apologies for it. It’s just a phase. I can stop any time I want.

I don’t want to do a deep dive into Ancillary Justice itself but what interested me as I was reading it was how flexible and adaptable sci-fi can be when it comes to creatively discussing metaphysical concepts via scientific descriptions of the universe. Of course, this is what many philosophers would argue someone like Plato is doing with The Republic, which is a utopian fiction, not quite sci-fi…but maybe it is? I don’t know if I believe this but the more I thought about it, the more I really wanted to be able to irresponsibly claim that Plato is a science fiction writer. This guy, at least, agrees with me. In any case, it seems to me that Aristotle’s description of metaphysics is actually, technically, a common-sensical outgrowth of natural sciences, so the link is there between the sciences and descriptions of the human soul, but I’d need to leave that claim up to the philosophers to defend or attack, as the case may be.

Quickly moving on, here’s a brief synopsis of how it works in Ancillary Justice. The novel is about an artificial intelligence that is bonded with and runs a military spaceship called Justice of Toren. The ship is a person of sorts. She is several thousand years old and stocked full with thousands of “ancillaries.” Ancillaries are human bodies that have been taken over by the AI. They’re unified with her and think with her common mind. They are the ship.

In the novel, during a moment of stress and suffering from a glitch that causes a lack of connectivity between her parts, it turns out that the AI Justice of Toren isn’t as unified as she seems. Her ancillaries have subtle but unique personality differences, and these end up splitting under stress. Different pieces of her make different choices, even as they maintain identity with the whole.

The same phenomenon holds true for a character named Anaander Mianaai, the tyrant of the Radchai empire who has multiplied herself into thousands of bodies. Theoretically, she is a single intelligence, a unified self who happens to be present in multiple locations. It turns out, though, that she too will split under stress. After a horrible massacre based on an order from the tyrant, she begins to maneuver against herself. Part of herself is horrified by her actions and decides to reform the empire, another part of her desires to relentlessly double-down on the ruthlessness that has built the empire. Throughout the struggle, she is still herself, not two people, and yet she is divided.

It’s a physical description of a metaphysical concept – Sin. It affects all of us. Those things we do which we don’t want to do and those things we don’t do and wish we had. It’s a description of our unexamined motivations, regrets, intentions to change a behavior and then failing day after day. We are at war with ourselves. All our actions are fully ours and yet we are divided.

The ability to describe these metaphysical struggles with simple physical descriptions is a distinct advantage of the genre. Sci-fi is an odd corner of the literary world, but it really does have its merits.

The recent publication of a profile piece on Daniel Mitsui at the National Catholic Register reminded me of an essay he posted last year concerning the rebuilding of the fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral. Entitled “Beautiful, Traditional, Interesting, Real,” Mitsui opines on the broad gulf between restoration and the making of art within a tradition:

The commentary in the aftermath of the tragic fire at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Paris is telling of this. Certainly I understand the dread that its reconstruction will be entrusted to some architect with no religious sensibility. But the reactionary demand to rebuild Notre Dame exactly as it was before is equally troubling. If the faithful never saw in a church fire the opportunity to build something even better, the Gothic cathedrals would never have existed at all. (There are rumors even that the Archbishop of Reims started the blaze himself in 1210!)….

Many who consider themselves religious and æsthetic traditionalists will celebrate this approach. Even now, I know that the easy availability of printed reproductions of 15th century paintings affects the demand for my own artwork. I don’t oppose such reproductions themselves; I have them on display in my own home. What I oppose is the notion that traditional art can be fostered through attitudes that would have made its existence impossible in the first place.

It indeed seems likely that, if Notre Dame is ultimately salvageable, it will be reconstructed almost exactly as it had been before. The French preservationist societies have significant sway, and the wilder concepts for rebuilding will probably be left in the dustbin of history. As preferable as this result would be, Mitsui is correct in worrying that our modern inability to rebuild the cathedral according to a traditional mode without resorting to mere mimicry is a sign of failure.

Sometimes I peruse iconography of the Eastern traditional style. Most of what I find online is either a carbon copy of ancient icons or a bizarre pseudo-realistic depiction of contemporary figures for whom we have (too many?) photographic records. Only rarely do I find an icon of a more recent subject which works within the artistic tradition in such a way that feels like it is actually part of that organic whole.

T.S. Eliot expressed similar sentiments in his “Tradition and the Individual Talent”:

[T]he historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.

Ever since the West tired of the Renaissance’s glut of classical-revivalism it has attempted to remain in a cycle of constant reinvention. Deconstruction, reconstruction, and whatever supposedly Hegelian synthesis is meant to emerge—all these fail to produce anything substantial that the larger culture can assimilate and make its own across generations. Even the rebranding of prose fiction as the “novel” assures us that newness is the only lasting aesthetic. Few today could imagine the retelling of a recent event like the Vietnam War in Homeric epic verse, and even fewer could appreciate such an artifact, but this was once the trajectory of our cultural heritage. If Chesterton was right in saying that the purpose of an open mind was like that of an open mouth (to close it upon something solid), then a similar observation can be made regarding the purpose of a supposedly progressive school of art: that its ultimate purpose must not be to destroy but to incorporate new experiences into an existing organic whole. Progress must have a real destination, even if it is only dimly viewed at the outset. Change is not an end unto itself, and annihilating the past only ensures that contemporary trends will last less than a generation.

Imagine a Medieval Revivalist movement in literature, if you can. Imagine the use of chansons and moralist retellings of myths by modern poets who have lived through the War on Terror and multiple sex abuse scandals in the Church. Imagine supplementing the traditional three “Matters” (of France, England, and Rome) with the Matter of Japan or the Matter of America. Imagine the revival of allegory with the experience of Communist propaganda and the rise of nuclear power. Imagine reconsidering the mores of courtly courtesy in light of the recent history of online trolling and televised political debates. Imagine the cosmological-spiritual symbolism pregnant in discoveries like solar winds, black holes, and galactic superstructures.

The reclamation of our ancient cultural heritage requires neither a rejection of modern discoveries nor a hatred of technological inventions, and it can offer a framework for contextualizing alien elements. The world has been overwhelmed by an excess of data which our scientists try to convert into comprehensible information, and which our poets and philosophers usually fail to convert into wisdom. The restoration of metanarrative might be the only way to make the world comprehensible again without regressing into a dark age.

We could not only rebuild Notre Dame, but we could build another grand church based on similar modes of thought—and with the benefit of modern structural know-how—if only we bother to learn the principles. We lack some of the knowledge, but that can be attained. More importantly, we lack the will. We have been content to allow the world to dictate all artistic trends and storytelling. Are we surprised to find aesthetics in a state of disarray, becoming either the slave of avarice and sentimentality or a blasphemous cry of despair? What other spirit could even consider designing a parking lot to crown the Notre Dame?

On Sunday the death of Sir Roger Scruton weighed much on my mind. The English philosopher-knight was an Anglican but in some ways more Catholic than many Roman compatriots. His defense of beauty against the “cult of ugliness” he saw encroaching on all sides was more robust than the self-doubting, half-hearted aesthetes who flit about the usual religious milieu. One wishes he had had some influence on the last generation of Catholic architects when reading his complaints against the modernists:

Modern architecture is unavoidable. Nowhere do we feel the need for beauty more vividly than in these vast, supposedly functional, buildings. Without ornament, grandeur, style or dignity, a building is opaque to us. We cannot find our way around it. Nothing seems to face us, to beckon to us, to welcome us. When we enter such a building, we are immediately lost. (“The Modern Cult of Ugliness”)

Scruton’s death came a few weeks after a friend’s father had passed away, and a couple months after finding out that an old mentor of mine had passed late in 2018. Sometimes you seek out a memento mori, and sometimes one is imposed upon you. This mentor, a retired professor who found a spiritual home in Opus Dei many decades before, had shepherded me towards a love of great books, great philosophers, and great beauty in a time when my recent conversion seemed unlikely to grow roots. I probably owe my continued Catholicism to Dr. John Gueguen.

And yet, thriving in a hostile environment would require the appropriation of many good ideas from outside the Church, and Roger Scruton, lifelong Anglican though he remained, was a stay against confusion. He was not a perfect man nor a perfect philosopher, but he fought for the protection of a transcendental that he did not even believe was a transcendental. God forgive him his faults, and may those of us spiritually privileged with the Catholic Faith be half as courageous as he.

Within the grounds of the University of Geneva stands the “Reformation Wall,” a century-old monument commemorating the influence of John Calvin’s development of Fr. Luther’s movement. Calvin is not the central figure but stands as an equal, flanked by other early Protestant figures like the Scottish iconoclast John Knox. There is some irony in seeing these old icon-smashers depicted in statuary and bas-relief, but the intent is so clearly secular that few modern Calvinists are likely to complain.

For all the problems 2020 is likely to bring, I can at least breathe freer now that a major reading project from 2019 is over and done. Both of my sisters’ husbands are Protestant seminary graduates who have worked in ministry positions. During Christmas Vacation 2018, we agreed on a theological-exchange program: they would read St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica if I would first read the lengthy Reformed Dogmatics of Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck. Thousands of hardbound pages and ten long emails of my own glosses later, the ball was back in their court, and I was left to reflect on the theological tradition in which I was raised.

Like most heretical sects, Calvinism not only bears a smudged image of what Catholics would recognize as Christian, but veers so far into its own peculiar style that it enters a sort of Uncanny Valley of Christianity. While Dr. Bavinck is not the best known Calvinist theologian, he is making a minor resurgence in Reformed circles thanks to the recent translation of his major works into English. He is clearly well-read in Protestant theology, Patristic sources, and in the contemporary philosophy and theology of his day, all of which serve to impress his readers with his erudition. Intellect is no sure stay against contradiction, however. Scattered throughout his systematic volumes were the stirrings of an aesthetic which never managed to come to life:

For the beauty of God Scripture has a special word: glory…. All creatures, accordingly, contribute to the beauty of the whole. But all creaturely beauty is transitory and changeable; it is not beautiful by itself but by participation in a higher, absolute beauty…. The pinnacle of beauty toward which all creatures point, is God. (Vol. II, p. 254)

Bavinck gives us much to appreciate, and from a certain point of view he appears to care more about beauty than St. Thomas, who does even not include Beauty among the Transcendentals. Yet, for all of the Calvinist’s bluster about God’s glory and the Christian’s duty to glorify the Creator, the Calvinist tradition is one of destroying all objects intended to glorify God. The Reformed are so scrupulous about graven images that they ignore the divine command to make beautiful religious instruments patterned in part after heavenly beings and angels (Exodus 25; 1 Kings 6). Strong scruples have a tendency to spread, and thus one also finds no beautiful Calvinist churches, no memorable Calvinist hymns, no great paintings, poems, or novels. Their sole boast is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, which succeeded only by stripping out all specifically Calvinist theology, and still it is a faint echo of the great spiritual allegories of the Catholic Middle Ages.

I am grateful now for many things I did not have as a Calvinist—the richer theology, the sacraments, and the missing books of the Bible all come to mind—but beauty is something I did not realize was missing until I had been in the Church for a while and completed a pilgrimage to Rome. (Brutalism has not yet eradicated the Catholic sensibility for beauty, and perhaps we still have time to reverse the backdoor invasion of Calvinist anti-aesthetics that came to us through modernist architectural experts.) I became obsessed with aesthetics and began my lifelong amateur study of poetry, iconography, storytelling, symbolism, architecture, liturgy, and allegory. I cannot deny that it saddens me to see Catholic artists ignoring their rich aesthetic heritage to chase after the ephemera of the world, although I can hope that we might successfully plunder the Egyptians of whatever riches we may put to our use. All truth is God’s truth, and all real beauty is God’s beauty, but we still need to get out of this toxic, co-dependent relationship we have with Ugliness. Dredging treasures out of sewage might not be a task worth doing unless we are the ones who threw them in there.

Indeed, it seems silly to criticize the aesthetic failures of a small sect when our own house is in such disarray. It is less interesting to trace the loss of beauty through history than to try to build it back up into something substantial. Early Christian poets built a new aesthetic on the last gasp of Roman Stoicism, and perhaps we will miraculously build something on the dying embers of postmodern cynicism. We need the will to make it happen, and we need to do so much more than lazily mimic the world around us. We need to think of our art in terms of centuries. Will we make art that future generations will want to imitate and develop into depths we had scarcely even considered? Are we making feuilletons or heirlooms? If there is such a thing as an examination of conscience for artists, we might kneel quietly and soon feel the need for a bit of shriving.

We’re rounding out our year-end collection of favorite books with the recommendations of four Dappled Things editors who all spent the year reading awesome sci-fi/ fantasy books with Catholic themes. We’ve thrown in some poetry, Walker Percy, and fictional homeschooling for good measure, but now’s the time to power up your warp engines and get reading with these suggestions from associate editor Fr. Michael Rennier, managing editor Karen Ullo, editor-in-chief Katy Carl, and associate editor Rosemary Callenberg.

(You can read Part One of our list, and Part Two.)

Fr. Michael Rennier

This was the Summer of Gene Wolfe. It has also been the Fall and Winter of Gene Wolfe. After his death, I re-read New Sun and got deeply into his stuff again. I forced all my friends to read the New Sun books too and participate in a discussion group with me. It got intense. After that, I started reading (and am still reading) the Long Sun books. If you like sci-fi, they are unbeatable.

I’ve also been working in lots of other reading. I finally read Walker Percy’s Thanatos Syndrome. It’s super weird in all the right ways. I’m hooked on the etymological deep dives that Mark Forsyth does, and his Etymologicon was a delight. If you enjoy trivia, pointless knowledge about word origins, and being able to intimidate your literary friends, give this one a read. I’ve been working back through Robert Alter’s Art of Biblical Narrative and he’s simply the best reader of the Scriptures around. I find his work far more insightful that run-of-the-mill commentaries.

Karen Ullo

It’s no secret that I love weird fiction. Sci-fi, fantasy, and horror are my go-to genres, and it’s been a banner year for me for discovering gems of Catholic speculative fiction.

J.B. Toner’s Whisper Music gets off to a rollicking start with a battle between vampire Daniella Morrigan and the Blessed Virgin Mary. If that’s not enough to tempt you, just ask the question the protagonists ask: How do we weaponize the pope? My full review is winging its way toward Dappled Things subscribers in our Mary, Queen of Angels issue, but there’s no reason to wait for it before treating yourself to some to some fun.

The Innocents by Gertrude von le Fort has been newly translated into English for the first time this year. This collection of four novellas by the famous twentieth century German Catholic writer is both haunting and haunted. The four stories span the history of Europe from the Scanian War to the mistresses of King Louis XV of France to the aftermath of World War II. On the whole, the collection is an excellent Gothic romp with deeply Catholic themes.

I hesitate to recommend Somewither by John C. Wright only because I haven’t finished it yet—but I am thoroughly enjoying it. The 2016 Dragon Award winner for Best Science Fiction Novel opens with a host of quotes from G.K. Chesterton and is shortly thereafter followed by a (punchy, short, and interesting) discussion of the moral and theological implications of the Many Worlds Theory. The Knights Templar still exist, the Church has been hiding the reality of other world for centuries… and they’re the good guys.

There I was, wearing my bathrobe and moccasins, big black bulletproof vest, cool nightvision goggles, honking huge flashlight tucked through the jacket belt at one hip, ridiculously cool, expensive, antique Japanese sword no one in his right mind would ever take into a for-real battle at the other hip, and my Dad’s blessing and prayer on my head.

And I could not decide if this was the best night of my life or the last.

What’s not to love?

I also read quite a bit of poetry this year, and would especially like to recommend James Matthew Wilson’s The Hanging God. You can read the review from our print edition here. It’s far more eloquent than I could be. Also, I’m not quite sure why I decided to spend my summer with Longfellow, but I’m very glad I did. I (re)read both The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline. Beautiful, faith-filled stories told in gorgeous lyric poetry—the world needs more Longfellows.

Katy Carl

This winter I have a mighty destroyer of a toddler: 15 months, no brakes. Lots of mothers (and fathers) at this stage say they can’t find time to read. I can’t manage not to read. This is as much a liability as it is a virtue. Without the printed word I would be nowhere. Even if it’s on a glowing screen in the dark while the toddler falls asleep, reading is breathing.

Out of a truly excellent field, one of the best novels I read this year (possibly in years) is Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai. Friends, I did not expect a book with this title to be about homeschooling. It is about homeschooling. It is also about human identity and community and culture and language and so many good things. Despite her characters’ grim situation, DeWitt finds a splendid balance between loss and a rich vein of comedy. You will be laugh-crying over how well the experience of having (and of being) a bright, difficult child—or a parent trying to square the circle when being human and being family feel incompatible with each other–is seen and transliterated. Do beware of the twist at the very end, which drops a sudden intense emotional and moral weight into what had been a relatively lighthearted caper through the end of civilization, but don’t assume that the narrative is implicitly placing praise or blame on its characters. If there is a didactic message here, it’s Sondheim’s from Into the Woods: “careful the things you say; children will listen.”

I’m grateful to the pages of First Things for pointing me toward Laurus  and The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin. Both novels are stunning — at the line level, in their dramatic arcs, and in their unified artistic and moral vision of the human condition.

Following up on Dana Gioia’s recommendation in a casual conversation at the CIC, I read Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. As promised, I found it finer in form and composition than most things filed under the “genre” label — even finer, imo, than Le Guin’s own Hugo- and Nebula-winning The Left Hand of Darkness — while it also checks all the boxes for exciting sci-fi. Recommended if you’re at all into that genre (hey Karen; hey Fr. Michael). An unexpected gift: the novel digs deep into the triumph and pain of struggling to create something that will outlive you while also working to live a compassionate, engaged human life here, now.

I finally also put Gioia’s 99 Poems, a strong fortress in the renewal of the Catholic literary neighborhood–and beyond that, of American formal poetry — on my shelf. I want to say more, but you should go get your copy first, and then let’s talk about it.

Still another marvelous discovery through the CIC, in particular through the influence of scholar Cynthia Haven, was Rene Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel — a book I wish I had found a decade ago. Any synopsis I could give here would risk seeming reductive, so instead please check out T.C. Merrill’s essay in the most recent Dappled Things for a taste of what’s going on. Girard takes a seemingly simple insight about human nature and develops it into a cathedral of perspective on why we want what we want (or what we think we want) as social creatures. You’ll never look at human community and human endeavor quite the same way again.

I also loved our own Natalie Morrill’s The Ghost Keeper  (check out Simcha Fisher’s review of the novel here), Abigail Rine Favale’s Into the Deep, Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy and The Ninth Hour, Randy Boyagoda’s Original Prin and Beggar’s Feast — all splendid. If 2020 brings in a reading year half so substantive, elegant, complex, and engaging, that will be marvelous good fortune.

Rosemary Callenberg

This year’s reading has been rich and varied. Goodreads tells me I’ve completed 57 books, and I’m sure a few fell through the cracks somewhere.

Most recently I finished Night’s Bright Darkness by Sally Read, and it was one of my favorites. The memoir of her conversion from staunch atheist to Catholic is not just an intellectual journey, but a story of encounter with God, of a burning love for Christ being awoken in her soul when she least expected it. It was a beautiful example of how knowing Christ changes everything—including, for Read, her relationship to family, to writing, to the world around her—and brings us more fully into being.

I also reread the entire Chronicles of Narnia this year with my boys. (I might add, at the risk of stirring up controversy, that we read them in the proper order, i.e., that in which they were published.) Sharing these stories with them for the first time was a joy, and I was surprised by how often I found myself thinking about these books rather than my “own” reading. For me they offered both the comfort of the familiar and the delight of newly discovered layers of meaning.

My Schole Sisters group read The Dream of Gerontius by Cardinal Newman in October, to celebrate his canonization. I thought I would read a bit of this book-length poem every evening; instead I found that once I started, I couldn’t put it down, so compelling was this saint’s vision of a soul’s journey after death to meet God.

Finally, no reading list of mine would be complete without a post-apocalyptic novel, so I will mention my favorite of the year: When the English Fall by David Williams. This novel can be described as “post-apocalyptic Amish fiction.” Who can resist such a description? Not me! As the author points out in an essay at the end of the novel, apocalypse means not destruction, but an unveiling or making clear: “Apocalypses, as a genre, are about stripping away all of the fluff and pretense and getting down to what matters.” This book certainly does that.

Some of the editors of Dappled Things have put together a list of our favorite books we read this year. New books, old books, middle-aged books, philosophy or fiction, children’s books or ancient history… Anything we read and loved this year. Since we’re all a bunch of literary nerds, it turned out to be far too many books for one list. You can read Part One from blogger and contributor Roseanne Sullivan. For Part Two, we’ll hear from Bernardo Aparicio, president and founder of DT, as well as fiction editor Natalie Morrill, associate editor Josh Nadeau, and web editor Jonathan McDonald.

Bernardo Aparicio

As a bibliophile, one benefit of raising kids is getting to read all the great children’s literature you missed as a kid. This year I had the pleasure of reading Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink, and The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, the first in his Chronicles of Prydain series. The first two are moving and exciting coming of age tales about families in pioneer times, where the young main characters come face to face with the sweet and bitter realities of life. In today’s world, when reality gets smothered by the virtual and artificial, when our culture drives us to live in an eternal adolescence, these books should be required reading for children. (I’ll add that Caddie Woodlawn, in particular, surprised me with how masterfully the author brought its disparate themes together for an extremely satisfying conclusion.) Lloyd Alexander’s book could also be classified as a coming of age novel, but this one is set in a world of high fantasy, one inspired by Welsh mythology. The novel is definitely for younger readers than the Lord of the Rings and therefore cannot rise to its epic scope and authoritativeness, but nonetheless it shares many of its virtues and is an exciting adventure about a young “assistant pig keeper” who is learning what it really means to be a hero.

Children’s literature aside, the two most memorable books I’ve tackled this year are the Histories of Heredotus and Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Herodotus, often considered the first proper historian, is sometimes mocked for lapses in factual accuracy (though many of his more unbelievable tales have turned out to be true), but his real value lies in the way he lets us look at the ancient world directly through ancient eyes. Reading him has brought home to me, like nothing else, just how fundamental a transformation Christianity constitutes, and that the idea of a truly post-Christian world, even in the midst of today’s widespread unbelief, may forever remain a fantasy. As for Abandonment to Divine Providence, I can only say that I wish somebody had forced me to read this book before, especially for its disarmingly simple idea of what holiness constitutes.

Natalie Morrill

It wasn’t my best reading year in terms of numbers, but there were some real winners. Among the top contenders was Excellent Women by Barbara Pym – easily my favourite Pym novel. Mildred feels more like one of my own real friends than most fictional folk I run into – in no small part because of her humble religious seriousness, but also because of her humour and honest disorientation in the world. There were passages in it that made me guffaw, regardless of whether I was alone or among (possibly embarrassed) fellow bus passengers.

Another winner was Alan Jacobs’s biography of C.S. Lewis, The Narnian. I’ve been a fan of Jacobs’s writing since devouring A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, and while I’ve read most of his books by this point, The Narnian might be my new second-favourite. It came to me at a low moment, meaning that I wondered more than once, “Would it be silly to tell someone that the highlight of my week has been this book?” I so appreciate Jacobs’s willingness to approach Lewis’s life with honesty and charity. I don’t know if I’d ever dare write about a figure people either revere or roll their eyes at so fiercely.

Important re-reads: I paid much more attention to Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory book this year than I did in undergrad. While he and I probably disagree on many of the fundamentals, it’s such good fun to work through a thesis (even one I have to protest against) by someone so intelligent and funny. I also got to re-read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré – uncontroversially a masterpiece, and a spy story everybody should stack on their shelves among all the best 20th century novels. Beloved by Toni Morrison was another important re-read, and a powerful reminder of Morrison’s genius in what turned out to be the last year of her life.

Besides those, Swann by Carol Shields was marvellous (I love most of her novels, but this one is up there with the best). I was also thrilled to finally hold and read a full collection of poems by one of my favourite poets (and friends! and Dappled Things contributors!), Ruth Daniell – The Brightest Thing is beautiful, and sad, and hopeful.

Josh Nadeau

For me, 2019 was unquestionably the year of Alice Munro. I had read one of her books at university in Canadian literature class but I was far from ready to take it in. It took more than a decade to get back to her, encouraged by her Nobel Prize for Literature win last year. She works almost exclusively with short stories, and I read the collection The Moons of Jupiter back in January. The sensation was not unlike stepping in a puddle without knowing it’s actually a hole that might run all the way down through to the Earth’s core. The only other short story writer I can think of who works consistently at this level is Chekhov. I read four of her collections this year (of fourteen!) and may make it five before 2019 calls it quits.

A number of my favourites from this year turned out, unusually for me, to be nonfiction. I’m involved in a number of dialogue and conflict resolution initiatives, and two books turned out to be game changers: Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (or “why good people fight over politics and religion”) and Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. While I’m still processing to what extent I agree with the books, their authors’ insights had a huge impact on how I approach the projects I work with. I’m a huge fan of Svetlana Aleksievich, another Nobel winner who assembles interviews into towering “novels of voices” that document the collapse of the Soviet Union, and her Chernobyl Prayer (where the famous miniseries got much of its material) is as harrowing and revelatory as ever. Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, a history of the world (500 BC-2001 AD) that takes the eponymous trade routes as its focus, is a total ride that makes me wonder why any of us feel the need to watch Game of Thrones.

One of the biggest surprises, though, came from a novella called All My Friends Are Superheroes. I saw it in a university bookstore back when I was in undergrad and remembered it, hoping we’d cross again when it didn’t cost more than twenty-five bucks. That day came this past October, and I devoured it in a single sitting. It will be forced into the hands of all my nearest and dearest well into 2020.

Jonathan McDonald

I had thought the previous year to be mostly lost to a polemical reading of the 19th-century Dutch churchman Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, but upon a review of my book piles I realize I have actually made my way mostly or entirely through quite a few decent volumes. The revised publication of James Matthew Wilson’s Some Permanent Things was a good read, though I must admit the poems were not all to my taste. Other poetic readings of 2019 include Tolkien’s criminally unfinished The Fall of Arthur, C.S. Lewis’s Narrative Poems, and a revisiting of Beowulf.

Spiritual reading was sporadic, but some works thrive with a slow pace. The Divine Names by Dionysius, for example, unfolds best when read without haste. I reread the second part of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress for the first time in decades and found that the journey of Christian’s wife and sons expands rather nicely upon the original tale. William Langland’s Piers Plowman, another old allegorical text, is a precursor to Bunyan’s better-known work but acts as a Catholic counterpart to the later Puritan narrative.

This was not a great year for me to read fiction. My guilty-pleasure book series The Dresden Files magically appeared in my hands more than once. There is little to say about them except that I hope author Jim Butcher is serious about finding a feeling of home in Catholicism and that I am very ready for the next book to be published. One novel that had been sitting idle on my shelf for far too long was John Myers Myers’s Silverlock, a postmodern pastiche fantasy narrative from the mid-20th century which follows a modern man thrown headlong into The Commonwealth, an island-nation populated by fictional characters from all places and times. I continue to make my way through The Romance of Reynard the Fox, a medieval humor novel of sorts which manages to be funnier, filthier, and yet somehow more wholesome than most humor writing today. Lastly, A.N. Wilson’s short novel Unguarded Hours allowed for a brief tour of the ecclesiastical chaos of seminaries in the 1970s Church of England. The problems of Roman corruption and liturgical “creativity” are hardly unique to ourselves, and it was relieving to have a laugh at someone else’s expense for once.

[Update: I’m posting this again, as I do yearly, so it can be handy for anyone who wants to do the novena this year.]

Catholics who wish to celebrate Advent as a time to prepare spiritually for Christmas often find themselves at a loss about how to do it. After setting up an Advent wreath and singing a couple of stanzas from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” what is one supposed to do? In order to help fill that void, during the past couple of years I’ve been making available to our readers the Advent novena that I grew up with as a child in Colombia, and which is practically ubiquitous there. If you’d like to know more about what the novena is all about, I invite you to read the post in which I originally introduced it and then come back. On the other hand, if you’re already convinced that you want to adopt this tradition, you’ll find everything you need on this page.

To begin, let me give you a brief outline of the order of the prayers:

Timeline: the novena runs from December 16th to December 24th. It is usually said in the evening by family, friends, and neighbors who gather nightly during this period.

Prayers: The host usually does the first reading/prayer, but the text gets passed along among the people gathered so that as many people as possible get to lead one of the prayers.

1. Begin with the Sign of the Cross.
2. Read the daily Opening Prayer
3. Read the Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary
4. Read the Prayer to Saint Joseph
5. Read the Day’s Meditation
6. Jubilations: the text gets passed along so that a different person reads each stanza. Snippets of “O come, O come, Emmanuel” are sung between each stanza.
7. Read the Prayer to the Christ Child

Caroling

Now that the prayers are over, enjoy some time singing your favorite Advent and Christmas carols. Don’t be a wimp. Sing at least three before moving on the next stage.

Food & Fellowship

As explained in the introductory post, the novena is all about family and friendship. You should really spread the word to your family and friends, and get together with them to celebrate and pray it together. The hosts for each night can provide some of their favorite treats for this time of year (or it can be a potluck), but make sure there is food! Chat, sing some more, dance if the mood strikes, and just enjoy the evening with your loved ones until it’s time to go to bed.

And now, without further ado, here is the main text of the Advent Novena.

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Advent Novena to the Child Jesus

Opening Prayer

Most gracious God of infinite charity, You gave your only begotten Son as an unparalleled sign of your love for man. By this love He was made flesh within a Virgin Mother’s womb, and was born in a manger for our salvation. Let our prayer come before you as a song of thanksgiving, uttered on behalf of every mortal man, for this wonder of your grace.

Loving Father, there is nothing with which we can repay you, other than the poverty, humility, and other virtues of your Incarnate Son; I pray that for the sake of his divine merits, of every hardship that surrounded his birth, and of every tear that He shed at the manger, You may bring our hearts to such deep humility, such zealous love, and such perfect disregard for every worldly thing, that the newborn Christ may find in them his cradle and abide there forever. Amen.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, ever shall be, world without end. Amen. (Said three times.)

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin

O Blessed Virgin Mary, spotless mirror of virtue and humility whom the God of Heaven and Earth elected for a mother, I pray that you may prepare my soul, and that of everyone who at this time might pray this novena, for the spiritual birth of your beloved Son. O Dearest of Mothers! Let me know something of that profound contemplation and devout tenderness with which you awaited Him, that I may be made less unworthy to see, love, and adore Him for all eternity. Amen.

(Pray the Hail Mary nine times—three is acceptable when appropriate–meditating on the birth of Jesus.)

Prayer to Saint Joseph

Dearest Saint Joseph, husband of Mary and adoptive father of Jesus Christ, I praise God for electing you to such an exalted task and adorning you with every grace befitting so high a ministry. I pray that through the love with which you cared for the Infant Christ, you may embrace my heart with a fervent desire to behold and receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament, until in His Divine Essence I may one day gaze upon Him and rejoice with Him in Heaven. Amen.

(Pray once the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.)

Meditation for the Day

(Meditations for each day will be posted individually on Deep Down Things. We will post the first day’s meditation below, and then provide links from this post to other days as each meditation is posted.)

Day 1 (December 16th):
In the beginning, the Word rested within the bosom of the Father in the highest Heaven, being at once the cause and the model of all Creation. Within the depths of that unfathomable eternity, the Child of Bethlehem existed before time itself, awaiting the moment in which he was to descend and take visible possession of his earthy palace—a cattle shed on the outskirts of David’s City. It is within that infinity that we must look for his origins that had no beginning, that we must commence the genealogy of the Eternal, which has no ancestors, and contemplate the life of infinite bliss that he possessed within the Godhead.

The life of the Word in the bosom of his Father was perfection itself, and yet—O sublime mystery!—He sought a new abode, a created dwelling place. Nothing that could have added to his infinite bliss was lacking within his eternal mansion, but in his boundless mercy He nevertheless desired the redemption of the human race, which without Him could never come to fruition. In the sin of Adam mankind had rejected God’s friendship, and the guilt of that infinite offense could not be remitted save by the infinite merits of God Himself. In disobeying, Adam’s race had turned away from Goodness itself, meriting an eternal punishment. For man to be saved, it was therefore necessary that God, without leaving Heaven, should take on human flesh on Earth, so that through the Word’s obedience to the will of the Father, He should atone for our former disobedience, ingratitude, and rebellion. It was necessary, in consequence of his love, that He should take on the form, the weaknesses, and the limitations of man; that He should subject himself to physical growth in order to give man growth in the Spirit; that He should suffer in order to teach man how to die to his passions and pride. Hence, the Eternal Word, alight with a desire for man’s salvation, willed to make Himself also a man, and thus redeem the guilty.

Click for Day 2 (December 17th)
Click for Day 3 (December 18th)
Click for Day 4 (December 19th)
Click for Day 5 (December 20th)
Click for Day 6 (December 21st)
Click for Day 7 (December 22nd)
Click for Day 8 (December 23rd)
Click for Day 9 (Christmas Eve)

 

Jubilations

(Everyone sings the refrains to the tune of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Take turns reading the intermediate stanzas.)

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O infinite wisdom
of the Sacred Godhead,
to an infant’s limits
You humble your powers!
O Child Uncreated,
come to teach the blinded
the prudence that fashions
wise men from the humble!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O Adonai, strong one,
Once on Sinai’s mountain
You spoke unto Moses
giving your Commandments!
Come in haste to save us
from our sinful darkness
as a child whose meekness
topples every power.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O blest root of Jesse,
from the fields eternal
you shower Creation
with the nard’s aroma.
O Sweetest of Children,
Long-awaited blossom,
Lily of the valley,
Flower of the meadow!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O great Key of David,
to mankind in exile
you open the gateway
of your royal palace!
With a hand most gentle
do, good Child, release us,
from the dismal dungeon
that our crimes erected.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O lamp of the Orient!
O Sun everlasting!
Let us see your splendor
in the midst of darkness!
Most precious of children,
joy of all the faithful,
the light of your laughter
banishes all shadows.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Mirror without blemish,
You alone are holy—
O perfect reflection
of the Father’s mercy!
Wash away our evil,
save the exiled sinner,
and shelter the homeless
in your lowly manger.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O King of the nations,
O radiant Emmanuel,
Israel’s deep yearning,
seeker of the lost ones!
Child who soothes the restless
with kind staff—Good Shepherd!
Wild rams, at your calling,
Come as lambs to praise you.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Let the heavens open!
Rain down from on highest!
Beneficent shower,
like a holy downpour!
Come, beautiful Child!
Come, O God Incarnate!
Shine, O brilliant lodestar!
Bloom, O sacred flower!

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

Come! that Mother Mary,
joyfully awaiting,
longingly devices
in her arms a cradle.
Come! that good Saint Joseph,
for your love to safeguard,
has his heart refashioned
as a Tabernacle.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Comfort of the mournful!
Champion of the humble!
Refuge of the outcast!
Light of the benighted!
You, the life within me,
my beloved master;
Friend forever faithful—
Brother in the highest!

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

Let my eyes enraptured
by your love behold You!
Let me press my lips, Lord,
to the wounds that saved me.
Prostrate now before you,
I reach out in worship—
and my tears you treasure
like a loving prayer.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Come, beloved Savior,
every heart’s deep longing!
Recreate our spirit
and do not delay, Lord!

Prayer to the Christ Child

Remember, O beloved Infant Jesus, the words you spoke unto Venerable Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament as a promise of comfort to all the suffering and afflicted: “Everything that you would ask, ask it through the merits of my infancy, and nothing shall be denied you.” We thus come full of trust in you, O Christ—you who are Truth Incarnate—to offer up our every sadness.

Help us to lead a holy life, that we may receive the gift of a blessed eternity. Grant us, through the merits of your incarnation and infancy, the grace that we now request of You. (Pause for a brief moment to silently make your prayer to God.)

We give ourselves to You, O Omnipotent Child, certain that our hope shall not be frustrated, and that by virtue of your divine promise, You will hear and answer our supplication. Amen.

As Dappled Things begins its fifteenth year, I am delighted to share with you the momentous news that the journal is entering into a partnership with the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the past decade and a half, we have relied entirely on God’s providence from one year to the next, never knowing for sure where the funding for our 100% volunteer-run ministry would come from. We are full of gratitude to Him for this new opportunity that will allow us to further the journal’s mission substantially.

As some of you may know, most of the founders of Dappled Things met as students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Newman Center, so we are pleased to return to our roots with this partnership. The Collegium Institute was founded by students, faculty, and alumni of the university with the purpose of enriching academic culture by sharing the intellectual fruits of the Catholic tradition with a mainstream audience. After a period of discussion and discernment, our editors and board of directors agreed unanimously that the Collegium Institute would be a fantastic partner. With their support, we will be able to attract and develop new talent, organize cultural events, and know that our work has the backing of a broader institution with whom we share a common vision.

I am thrilled to share that as a first step in our partnership, Collegium has pledged to match up to $10,000 in donations to our Advent fundraising campaign. In order to receive this gift in full, however, we need to raise an equal amount on our own. Can you support us with a gift of $100, $50, $25, or even just $5? Or are you in a position to contribute $1,000, $500, or $250? Donors at this level, without whom we cannot reach our goal, will be recognized in the journal and receive an exclusive, signed art print by an artist featured in Dappled Things. Please consider at what level you can give and make your donation today. If we can achieve our overall goal of raising $20,000, it will constitute the most successful campaign in the journal’s history, putting us in a position to do more than ever towards fostering a revival of Catholic culture and art.

Wishing you a blessed Advent and Christmas,

Bernardo Aparicio García
Founder & Publisher, Dappled Things

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