Your All-Holiness, holy brothers,
I do not think it to be a disadvantage that I, in speaking after many brothers, am constrained to repeat many things that have already been said. The event we are experiencing is an extraordinary and very great one, and for this reason, while stressing its significance and expressing our joy, we must persuade ourselves and the whole world of [the Council’s] dimensions and the expected outcomes.

Interview with John Chryssavgis

Interview with Anastasia Colosimo
Translated by Michael Berrigan Clark

Born in northern Indiana in 1980, I was raised in a conservative evangelical Protestant enclave community, and thereby hangs a tale. While I will try not to tell it like an idiot, this tale is certainly full of sound and fury.

Translated by Fr. Alvian Smirensky

This essay, written in 1954, was inspired by the controversy surrounding the death in 1953 in New York of Russian socialist and revolutionary Vladimir Mikhailovich Zenzinov. Zenzinov had been involved in the Revolution of 1905 and was later an official in Alexander Kerensky’s provisional government, but opposed the October 1917 Revolution.

In 1944, a bomb destroyed a small Christian chapel on a hill outside the eastern French town of Ronchamp. The structure had been built in the fourth century, probably on the site of a pagan altar, and had become an important pilgrimage site. After the end of the war, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a new church. Though not Roman Catholic himself, Le Corbusier was moved to embark on a profound struggle with the principles of machine-age rationalism that had guided his earlier work.

Some time ago, a magazine asked for my comments on a certain project launched by an international network of tattoo salons, the goal of which was to restore the swastika’s primordial solar meaning. Before submitting my analysis, I spent some time exploring the history of the symbol. I was struck by the deep iconic resonance of the swastika in a variety of different cultures, where it stood for well-being, light, and movement.

Pasternak died—and in spite of all the clamor of modernity, in spite of all the news about global events, the world became quiet and empty for a moment. This din drowned his voice, he took no part in these events. But, as he said in one of his poems, “a miracle is a miracle.” And the miracle was that his lone voice was heard even in his silence, that we felt his presence — in life, in the world, in history being made before our eyes — as a source of joy and hope . . . .