The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), “God’s Grandeur”
Our secular culture is increasingly dominated by a critical cynicism which elevates cultural self-hatred to an aesthetic value, and, it is argued (e.g. by Theodore Adorno), that this is the correct response to the depravities and desecrations of our time, when the ugliness of human nature has finally been unmasked beyond refutation as the rock-bottom truth about man.
Against this, the Catholic tradition argues: ubi amor, ibi oculus: “where love is, there is vision” (see Joseph Pieper’s Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation). The vision that love makes possible, says Pieper, is not merely a copy of reality but rather a participation in being that makes visible “the archetypes of all that is.” To behold the true essences (archai), the “deep down things,” and to learn to speak them (logoi), requires contemplation. To move from surface perception to deep reception of the Being of beings requires that we allow to be formed in us the virtues of character that alone make this active openness possible. One who lives in this way is sharing in the essence of the philosophical path.
True, active contemplation must begin with an informed intuition that behind the ugliness and mendacity of human society it is beauty and goodness and truth that are the models of the world as it really is. But is there a privileged standpoint from which someone can hold firm the philosophical intuitions necessary to see the world in this way?
No philosophical intuition, argues the Christian, is more truthful about the world than the one informed by the sign of the cross, when God showed the world, under the symbol of the most profound desecration and ugliness and betrayal, the seed of rebirth, recreation, and redemption.
This is what the Deep Down Things podcast is about—the vision of the Christian lover who contemplates the human world in its manifold diversity and keeps watch for the transcendental unity that is the Divine Archetype of creation. DDT podcast is a collaborative project of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and Oratory Media Projects (an apostolate of the aspirants for the foundation of an Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis). The podcast serves as an extension of the Center’s quarterly publication, Logos: a Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture. It is hosted by David Paul Deavel (Logos Journal editor) and Liz Kelly (managing editor), who, in each thirty-minute episode, guide a conversation with a Logos Journal author in exploration of the meaning of the Incarnation of the Word and Catholic faith with respect to some given aspect of human culture.
The interview episodes are free and increasingly available across the spectrum of digital formats. For a nominal monthly subscription ($5 and $10 levels), show notes, individual access to DDT guests and hosts, and brief theological-spiritual reflections (from the aforementioned Oratory aspirants, Fr. Bryce Evans and Yours Truly) are available to enrich the interview experience with relevant background. DDT has completed its first 8-episode season and the second season’s production is underway, to begin release toward the end of the summer.
We hope you’ll give Deep Down Things podcast a look and a test-drive. It’s an exciting thing to be a part of—to see the life and project of the Catholic University expand the fruit of its contemplation more deeply into the public and popular realm.
Fr. Byron Hagan is co-pastor of St. Mary's Lowertown (St. Paul) since 1 July 2021. Together with Fr. Bryce Evans, he is an aspirant to the founding of an Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Fr. Hagan is a frequent contributor to MSP Catholic as well as to Deep Down Things podcast.