Nineteen Years and Heartsick

Today, June 29 2026, is the nineteenth anniversary of this blog, which I launched on June 29, 2007 when I was only 27 years old and working as a lowly DRE in a rural parish in southeastern Michigan. As always, I am grateful for all the support and patronage over the years. I had no idea when I created a blogger account and started banging away at my desk back in 07 that I'd still be here today—and not only still here, but going strong as ever! Indeed, I still have so many ideas for future blog posts and essays on the sister site that I often despair of ever finding time to get it all out.

Contemplating the Nakedness of Christ

Earlier this month on Pelican Brief, I authored a piece entitled "Why St. Francis Stripped Himself in the Public Square," in which I discuss nakedness in the Franciscan tradition, especially as it relates to humiliation and the contemplation of Christ's nakedness on the cross. Multiple sources on St. Francis's life tell us that the saint was fond of meditating on Christ's nakedness. Francis considered the state of nakedness to be a particularly intimate manner of conforming oneself to Christ, specifically in His humiliation. Bonaventure relates, for example, that Francis's desire to be stripped naked while dying a deliberate means of identifying with our Lord's nakedness on the cross.