Candidacy FAQ!
I recently shared the happy news that I have been accepted to candidacy with the Daughters of St. Paul, a congregation of women religious who proclaim the Gospel using modern media. I’m thrilled and honored to be moving into their convent in St. Louis on October 1 to begin my formation journey alongside Paz, who…
Keep readingFolk Phenomenology, ep. 7: “Translation with Catherine Addington”
I was honored to be interviewed by Sam Rocha for his podcast Folk Phenomenology, where we discussed translation, sanctity, Spanglishes, and (controversy alert) why Don Quixote is funnier in English. Take a listen here, and check out my supplementary thread of reading recommendations here.
Keep readingThe Antics of the Turnips | Commonweal Magazine
Let us make the most of the little things in our everyday life, our ordinary life…. There is no need to do great things to become great saints. Making the little things great is enough. In the world, people waste many opportunities, but the world is distracting…. It is worth just as much to love…
Keep readingBest of 2020
To close out the year, here are some of the things I most enjoyed in 2020! (Find previous years here.) Books Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (1373)trans. Fr. John-Julian Swanson OJN (2011) María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Desengaños amorosos (1647) Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881)trans. Flora Thompson-DeVeaux (2020) Chanel Miller, Know…
Keep readingInter Sessions Podcast | Ep. 3: Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart, Rafael Arnáiz Barón, Augustine
It was my honor to be featured on this episode of Inter Sessions, a new podcast from the Grexly network about how the saints work in our lives. I shared my experience of spending quarantine with St. Rafael Arnáiz Barón, who didn’t just provide me with my dissertation topic, but the spiritual companionship I needed…
Keep readingSt. Dymphna’s Playbook, Ep. 59
I was so grateful to be invited onto St. Dymphna’s Playbook, a Catholic podcast about mental health and holiness, this week to introduce listeners to St. Rafael Arnáiz. His struggles with chronic illness and vocational discernment have so much to teach us today. (The clip starts at 5:24!) St. Dymphna’s Playbook, Ep. 59
Keep readingnotes on translation & faith
As you may know, I’m currently working on my dissertation project, the first English translation of the collected writings of St. Rafael Arnáiz Barón. I’ve decided to trick myself into drafting it by conceiving of it as an especially long series of newsletters. To that end, if you’d like to follow my progress, you can…
Keep reading“Not theory, but testimony.”
Today we need prophecy, but real prophecy: not fast talkers who promise the impossible, but testimonies that the Gospel is possible. […] It makes me sad when I hear someone say, ‘We want a prophetic Church.’ All right. But what are you doing, so that the Church can be prophetic? We need lives that show…
Keep readingTwo quotes on hope
[Hope is] an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. … Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. Vaclav…
Keep readingReflections on Contract Grading
Yesterday marked the end of my last semester of teaching, but this was also the first semester when I taught the way I wanted to. It sounds strange to say, given that the semester was unexpectedly cut in half by a global pandemic, but the resilience of my course design felt like a total victory…
Keep reading“Do not despise this world, for it is Mine”
Today is the feast of St. Rafael Arnáiz Barón, the young Spanish Trappist about whom I am writing my dissertation. (At least, it’s the anniversary of his death on April 26, 1938. In Spain, a few dioceses have delayed his feast day to April 27 because April 26 is already reserved for St. Isidore of…
Keep reading“May we be profoundly shaken by what is happening all around us”
Now, while we are looking forward to a slow and arduous recovery from the pandemic, there is a danger that we will forget those who are left behind. The risk is that we may then be struck by an even worse virus, that of selfish indifference. A virus spread by the thought that life is…
Keep readingfrom the diary of St. Rafael Arnáiz Barón on Holy Thursday
April 14, 1938Holy Thursday On this day, Holy Thursday, on which the Lord gathered his disciples and promised to remain with them forever, I too approached Jesus in my littleness, asking Him to remain with me, and welcome me at His table, and allow me to live with Him, and to follow Him everywhere like…
Keep readingUVA Cemetery Tour
I’ve been taking daily walks through the University of Virginia Cemetery to get some fresh air during quarantine, and the official walking tour leaves a lot to be desired. You can imagine: the cemetery itself is a lot of illustrious male professors and male librarians and male soldiers next to graves marked “wife of.” I thought…
Keep readingCoronavirus has cancelled public Masses. How can we participate in our own homes?
I really enjoyed speaking to Colleen Dulle for this article, and I especially appreciated the insights of the other interviewees. Sr. Bernadette Reis FSP, who is the English interpreter for Vatican Media, pointed out something that really stuck with me: “The fathers of the church actually taught that Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament is…
Keep readingClase magistral: «Sin compasión del delicado sexo»
Today I became a PhD candidate after passing my comprehensive exams! As part of the process, we generally give talks on our research to the department—but since we have to give virtual presentations this time around, now you can watch it too. In this talk, I discuss representations of Chinese laywomen in a Spanish missionary…
Keep reading“we need the Lord, like ancient navigators needed the stars”
Faith begins when we realize we are in need of salvation. We are not self-sufficient; by ourselves we founder: we need the Lord, like ancient navigators needed the stars. Let us invite Jesus into the boats of our lives. Let us hand over our fears to him so that he can conquer them. Like the…
Keep reading“O daughter of little faith, what do you fear?”
Fear is a greater evil than the evil itself. O daughter of little faith, what do you fear? No, fear not; you walk on the sea, amid the winds and waves, but it is with Jesus. What is there to fear? But if fear seizes you, cry loudly, ‘O Lord, save me.’ He will give…
Keep readingRetablo for the Pandemic
ithankthevirgin: Holy Trinity! Divine Providence! I humbly ask you, with this retablo, to find the cure for the COVID-19 and therefore stop this terrible pandemic that affected the entire world. I ask you for health to all the people sick with this virus and for eternal peace to those who died. 2020 retablo by Gonzalo…
Keep reading“Is it not enough, Lord, that the world has us locked up?”
As Teresa de Ávila edited her Camino de perfección (The Way of Perfection), she crossed out a passage in chapter three, that nevertheless remains legible in the manuscript. She had been exhorting her sisters to be constant and persistent in prayer, both for the world’s sake and for their own, remembering that the Lord was…
Keep reading#BreviaryViews: Divine Office 101
Over the past year, some Catholics on Twitter have been using the hashtag #BreviaryViews to encourage one another in praying the Divine Office, or the Liturgy of the Hours, which is the prayer of the Church marking the hours of each day. While it is generally an obligation for priests and religious, the invitation to…
Keep readingsome Lenten considerations
As someone who has tended toward scrupulosity in the past, I’ve found it helpful to distinguish what the Church actually asks of us during Lent (fasting-if-you-can, prayer, and almsgiving) from popular tradition (“giving up X for Lent”). For the sake of not getting lost in my own thoughts, I wanted to put together a little…
Keep readingQuerida Amazonia
It is well known that, ever since the final decades of the last century, the Amazon region has been presented as an enormous empty space to be filled, a source of raw resources to be developed, a wild expanse to be domesticated. None of this recognizes the rights of the original peoples; it simply ignores…
Keep readingworking trees together
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is dismissed in his hometown. “Is he not the carpenter?” That he is. I’ve been complaining to him a lot lately about having to spend all day every day staring at page after screen, consuming massive amounts of data on the Spanish literary canon so I can pass my comps at the end…
Keep readingBest of 2019
To close out the year, here are some of the things I most enjoyed in 2019! (Find previous years here.) Books the Confessions of St. Augustine The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang El divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst All the Rage: Mothers,…
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Catherine L. Addington 