On this Feast of the Assumption, we bring you not one, not two, but three On the Square columns!
In his piece for today’s On the Square , Russell E. Saltzman takes on that most famous (and most famously incorrect) of opening sentences: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” by considering his own happy family and the happy families it has made. (I imagine Saltzman takes little issue with the second sentence of Anna Karenina, however: “All was confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.”)
In “Trayvon Martin and Divine Justice,” Richard Samuelson ponders why the Torah demands that even accidental killings be punished . . . and why American justice does not. What is the principle of justice at work in the idea of “cities of refuge,” which existed so that a “slayer might flee thither, which should kill his neighbour unawares, and hated him not in times past; and that fleeing unto one of these cities he might live”?
And finally, in “Learning from the Virgin Mary,” R.R. Reno talks about why he loves the Feast of the Assumption and what it has to say about “the real possibility of sanctification for all of us.”
We suggest following up on these posts with some appropriate music .
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
