As a student in the fourth grade of Saint Thomas Aquinas School in East Lansing, Michigan, I looked about me and saw a great landscape whose meaning lay in the saints who had moved across it and prayed within it. Michigan, you see, is a Catholic country, and America a Catholic land.
So much at least did we learn under the instruction of Mrs. Rambo, the Americanized spelling of whose name thinly veiled her French ancestry. As she taught us our Michigan history, we learned with some pride that ours was the only state that could put “three square meals on the table” from what was raised and grown within its borders. But that achievement in autarky, in sufficing for ourselves, great though it was, paled in comparison with the many other astonishing tales we were told—tales that taught us that what man may do for himself, by his own hard work, is nowhere near as thrilling as what God may do by grace for and through those who serve him.
Read Full Article »