My wife, Patti, has been a music director in parish contexts for over thirty years. She is an accomplished vocal performer, an exacting choral conductor, and a gifted composer. She treats her work as a sacred task in service to the majesty and dignity of the divine liturgy, and experiences her work as an act of prayer and as a call to prayer. Anyone who has ever watched her conduct knows it is pure choreography. David twirling about the Ark of the Covenant with unhampered joy—with abandon!—is the best analogy I can think of. Her ebullience and intensity electrify every space she enters. And as any artist knows, the grace of bringing beauty into the world plants the cross of Christ, the origin and standard of all beauty, deep into the core of her being. How grateful we should always be to artists. Patti has brought into our family over…

Today, Matt Nelson sits down with Dr. Brett Salkeld, in-house theologian for the Archdiocese of Regina in Canada. Dr. Salkeld is an expert in the doctrine of transubstantiation and, in today’s interview, he discusses the history and significance of the central Christian teaching in light of the recent Pew Research study that suggested the majority of Catholics today do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It is rare to find someone with a PhD who is not working in academia. Tell us what you do for a living. I am the Archdiocesan Theologian for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina (in Saskatchewan, Canada). I got the job—back in my home diocese—because the previous Archbishop wanted to start a diaconate formation program, but we’re a long way from the nearest seminary or theology faculty. So diaconate formation is the biggest part of my work, but once you…

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. . . . To work out our identity in God. —Thomas Merton The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. —G.K. Chesterton Mr. Crouchback grimaced. It was wartime in England. His grandson Tony was shipping off to continental Europe to liberate the enslaved states from the iron grip of the Nazis. And Mr. Crouchback had forgotten to give him something. Mr. Crouchback was a curious soul in mid-twentieth-century England. Descended from an aristocratic lineage, he was not pretentious. A widower at a young age, he was not lonely. Financially less secure in his older age, he was…