"As every mystery worth the name will do"

This month's edition of the latest writings from the desk of James Matthew Wilson includes a short poem about the threshold of lilac boughs that led into the backyard of our old house in Pennsylvania, a threshold that was indeed a portal into mystery. Appropriately, all my new prose essays this month are about other portals to mystery, particularly those through which we may enter if we journey with Dante and Paul Claudel toward the kingdom of God. I round things off with an entrance into the mystery of mysteries, the revelation of divine truth given to us in the Nicene Creed, on which I have published a new book.

Click on the images to the write to read "Lilacs," "Paul Claudel and the Poetry of Praise," "A Map of Dante's Inferno in Three Touchstones," and "A Map of Dante's Purgatorio in Three Touchstones."

In two weeks, my series on Dante will be completed. If you have not seen it, take a look at last month's announcement about my new book, Praying the Nicene Creed: I Believe in One God​. You can read the first chapter by clicking the Catholic Truth Society logo below.

Read "Lilacs" in National Review

Read "Paul Claudel and the Poetry of Praise" in The Catholic Thing

Read "A Map of Dante's Inferno in Three Touchstones," in Church Life Journal

Read "A Map of Dante's Purgatorio in Three Touchstones" in Church Life Journal

Read an excerpt from "Praying the Nicene Creed: I Believe in One God," newly published by the Catholic Truth Society