Our Events

Stephen L. Brock (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross) REGISTER HERE If, as Christians believe, God is all-wise and all-good, what sense does it make to ask Him for things?  He is already perfectly aware of our true needs, and He already wants to provide for them.  Many of our petitions, it seems, will be ignorant and misguided; and the others, unnecessary and superfluous.  And if He already knows everything that will happen, can our requests really make a difference anyway?  Yet petitionary prayer is part of the whole Christian tradition.  Jesus himself practiced it, exhorted His followers to do...

Friday, February 20, 2015, 7:30pm Bond Chapel, University of Chicago Saturday, February 21, 8:00pm St. Clement Church, Chicago A concert by Schola Antiqua of Chicago Tickets available online or at the door (cash, check or credit) $25 adults / $10 student and senior Schola Antiqua teams up the talented young lutenist Ryaan Ahmed to present music in the milieu of Pope Leo X (r. 1513-21), one of the sixteenth century’s most important patrons of the arts. Part of the program will be devoted to sacred works that Leo “the Lion” would have encountered in the Sistine ]Chapel, an institution known for producing the...

Intended for current university students. Others interested in attending please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Join us for an evening of prayer with Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Students will participate in the prayer of the Divine Office (Vespers and Compline), dine with the monks, and learn about the Benedectine tradition of Sacred Reading or Lectio Divina with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., prior of the monastery and alum of the University of Chicago. Divine Reading is an ancient Christian practice of reading scripture that includes reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation (Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio). This is an excellent opportunity to get into...

Russell Hittinger (University of Tulsa) This lecture will compare the great pontificates that represented two “modern times”: Leo XIII at the end of the 19th century and John Paul II at the end of the 20th. Between Leo’s birth in 1810 to JPII’s death in 2005, the lived experience of these two men encompass all modern times, both secular and ecclesiastical – from Napoleon to the iPhone. What was at stake for the Church over the course of this rapidly changing century? How did the social teaching of these two popes differ in addressing the modern crises of their day?

Tuesdays, April 7-May 19 Gavin House, 1220 East 58th Street 6:00pm: Dinner 6:30pm: Presentation Paul Mankowski, S.J. (Lumen Christi Institute Scholar-in-Residence) REGISTER HERE Open to current university students and recent graduates. Others interested in attending please contactinfo@lumenchristi.org. “This book is solely an expression of my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord’.”  Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth is the product of a lifetime’s prayerful contemplation of scripture by an eminent theologian, for whom the person of Jesus is the key to understanding both the sacred text and the human person:  “Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our...

Lewis Ayres (University of Durham) To understand the exegetical culture that nurtured and formed classical Patristic exegesis, we must attend to some understudied features of the generation of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. This generation, in response to the exegetical cultures of ‘Gnostic’ thinkers, developed the exegetical practice that became fundamental for all later Christian doctrinal disputes and for Christian speculative thought. Bringing this historical moment into clearer focus helps us think about the character of Christian thought today.

Brian Daley, S.J. (University of Notre Dame) REGISTER HERE This master class seminar will cover the theological and doctrinal issues surrounding the First Council of Nicaea, focusing on the Arian controversy over the nature of Christ in relation to the Father. Participants will read and discuss primary texts from the early Nicene controversy with one of the world’s leading scholars of the Patristic period. Readings: The Controversy over Arius of Alexandria: Letters by Arius, Alexander of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Ceasaraea: Rusch, William G. (ed.), The Trinitarian Controversy (Fortress, 1980) pp. 29-44. Hardy, Edward R. (ed.), Christology of the Later Fathers (Westminster, 1954) pp. 329-340. From...