El Filósofo

Think Deeply, Feel Fully

Filosofical Fragments

  • The Four Last Things: Death

    Advent, as I alluded to earlier this week, is not simply a time for celebrating the mystery of Christ’s first coming in the Incarnation. It is also a time to reflect on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. As luck would have it, one of my favourite saints, St Francis de Sales,…

  • It’s beginning to look a lot like… Advent!

    Today marks the first Sunday of the liturgical year: that is, the first Sunday of the season of Advent. Over the last month, we have heard countless readings from the book as Revelation. This is more than mere coincidence. The Latin word for “Advent” (adventus) means “coming”, so as we prepare the celebrate the first…

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    Faith of Our Fathers (A Review)

    I’ve always been proud of my English heritage. So much so that when I began to consider converting to Catholicism, I felt uneasy. After all, English history this past half of a millennium has been littered with anti-Catholicism. To be Catholic, I felt, is to be very un-English. Moreover, many well-revered “heroes” of English history…

  • “To every thing there is a season”

    Yesterday I attended the Archdiocese of Toronto’s 2022 Renew conference for young adults. This was my first experience with one of these catholic young adult conferences, and I was not disappointed. My day was filled by great encounters and listening to insightful speakers. I had a wonderful time!(On top of everything else, I also got…

  • Dulce et Decorum Est Mori

    As we come to the end of Allhallowtide, I’ve found the opportunity to reflect on why the Saints are important. The Saints are more than just good people: their sense of mission coupled with their holy mode of living ought to serve us as a source of inspiration. Of course, Jesus Christ is the moral…

  • The Church’s Greatest Secret?

    For the first time, today I attended the Catholic Mass of St Thomas More Parish in Toronto, which is part of the “Anglican Patrimony within the Communion of the Catholic Church” (as it says on their website). The Anglican Ordinariate, as it’s commonly called, was established by Pope Benedict XVI in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum…

  • Reason Enough (II)

    Continued from The Ouroboros & Philosophy (I) There is something awfully wrong in this train of thought, isn’t there? How could reason undermine itself with any integrity? It seems that it can’t: to reason that reason itself is unreasonable is absurd, thus we have no reason to believe it although reason itself may tell us…

  • A Rich and Frantic Whirl

    People often speak of romantic relationships as having a “honeymoon phase”. In this phase, people are so enamoured with each other’s presence and don’t possess enough shared experience for that wonderful love to be tested. There is nothing quite like falling in love, but as anyone who has been married long enough will tell you,…

  • The Ouroboros & Philosophy (I)

    There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy Why did I study philosophy? Many people have asked me this, usually accompanied with a follow-up question like, “What are you planning to do with that?” Usually when people ask me the latter, they do…

  • Let your light shine forth

    There was a general theme running through today’s Mass readings about a Christian’s duty towards the less fortunate. Today we heard the prophet Amos warns those who “trample upon the needy” that “[the Lord] will never forget any of their deeds,” and heard the Psalmist tell of how the Lord “raises the poor from the…