"To show you that I've thought about you and missed you"

A couple of posts back, 2025 became the most prolific year on Καθολικός διάκονος since 2016. I don't mind sharing that I am proud of that fact. This is a labor of love and vehicle for growth.

More than being something I love and that helps me grow, this blog is a way to share to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I try to do that in a credible way. At root, my blog was born as and hopefully remains an evangelical effort.

As my blog epigram puts it: "This is a public cyberspace in which I seek to foster Christian discipleship in the late modern milieu in the diakonia of koinonia and in the recognition that "the Eucharist is the only place of resistance to annihilation of the human subject."

I am glad that the Church prohibits the use of electronic devices for her liturgies. The use of the ritual books matters. Liturgy is analog and corporeal. In a word, incarnational.

One of the ways I try to share the Gospel is by a deep engagement with "secular" culture: books, movies, music, etc. There were ways that I came to faith and these also sustain my faith. One of the beautiful things about being Catholic and catholic is not to have to make some nutty hard-and-fast distinction between the sacred and the profane. Christ collapsed that.

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Wednesday I read on article over on First Things by Stephen Adubato: "Rosalía’s Restless Heart." Let e clear, I claim no familiarity whatsoever with Rosalía's music. This article was my first exposure to her music.

Like me, Adubato is apparently a beneficiary of the work and charism of Monsignor Luigi Giussani. Giussani's "method," such as it is, lends itself nicely to attending to life, to looking at reality according to all the factors that make it up. This is indicated by Adubato's citation of Don Gius at the beginning and end of his article, citations that discuss music and celebate vocations.

I was very struck by a quote from the article- a citation from an interview with Rosalía:

The more we are in the era of dopamine,” she says, “the more I want the opposite. . . . There has to be something that pulls us . . . to be focused for an hour where you’re just there. I know it’s a lot to ask . . . but that’s what I’m craving

I think more and more people are craving something very like this as well. Just as Elijah did not find God in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, God is not likely to be found in the dopamine hit to which so many of us have become addicted (see 1 Kings 19:11-13). Really, anything that adheres to the law of diminishing returns can't be God.

Como escribió el obispo dominico de la diócesis española de Sant Feliu de Llobregat sobre Rosalía después de escuchar Lux: «No consigo entenderte, pero me gustaría hacerlo.» As the Dominican bishop of the Spanish Diocese of Sant Feliu de Llobregar wrote about Rosalía after listening to her album Lux: "I don't understand you, but I'd like to."

Now I am listening to Lux. Hence, our traditio is a track from her album- "Dio es un stalker." Even for an English speaker that should be easy to translate. A bit different than "the hound of heaven," ¿verdad? The title of this post is my translation of lyrics from this song.

Hoy se conmemora la presentación de Nuestra Señora. Es una conmemoración muy especial para todos en la iglesia.