Let Love Be Your Foundation, Not Just Your Feeling As a young Catholic woman, newly married, you are beginning a sacred journey. You’ve stepped into a vocation—not just a relationship. Marriage is not merely a contract between two people. It is a covenant sealed by God. As St. Paul teaches in his letter to the Ephesians, a Christian marriage reflects the love between Christ and the Church. That love is faithful, fruitful, and forever. The world often speaks of love as an emotion that comes and goes. But Scripture and the Church tell us otherwise. Love is a choice. It … Continue

A Catholic Reflection on Nicomachus’ Arithmetic, Book I, Chapter 8 In the eighth chapter of Arithmetic, Nicomachus brings our attention to one of the most orderly and structured types of numbers: what he calls the even-times-even. He doesn’t simply list them or explain how to calculate them. Instead, he reflects on how their structure reveals a kind of mathematical harmony—one that mirrors the wisdom and order God placed into creation itself. For us, as Catholic readers, this is not just a study of arithmetic—it is a chance to contemplate the mind of God, who, as Sacred Scripture tells us, “has … Continue

A Catholic Reflection on Nicomachus’ Arithmetic, Book I, Chapter 7 What can the even and the odd teach us about truth? To modern minds, such a question may seem trivial—fit for grade school, not for theology. But to Nicomachus of Gerasa, and to the philosophical tradition he represents, even and odd are not mere labels. They are principles of being, woven into the very structure of creation. And as he unfolds their definitions in Chapter 7 of Arithmetic, he reveals a spiritual harmony that lies beneath the most basic of mathematical concepts. As Catholics, we are called to contemplate creation—not … Continue

A Catholic Reflection on Nicomachus’ Arithmetic, Book I, Chapter 4 Why should arithmetic come first? Among the sciences of number, shape, music, and motion, what gives arithmetic its primacy? In Book I, Chapter 4 of his Arithmetic, Nicomachus of Gerasa offers an answer that is not merely logical—it is theological. He explains that arithmetic is not only first in time and understanding but is also first in the order of being. It stands as a root and mother of the other sciences. More than that, it reflects the mind of God, who used number as a divine exemplar in the … Continue

A Catholic Reflection on Nicomachus’ Arithmetic, Book I, Chapter 5 At the heart of creation is not chaos, but order—not randomness, but reason. In the fifth chapter of his Arithmetic, Nicomachus of Gerasa continues his exaltation of number, showing how it lies at the foundation of the sciences and the structure of the universe. For him, number is not merely a tool of measurement—it is the very principle by which the soul rises to contemplate truth. It is, he says, the “mother and nurse” of the other sciences. For Catholic readers, this view resonates deeply. In the Christian tradition, order … Continue

In every age, those who seek truth must ask how the mind rises from confused perception to clear understanding. Nicomachus of Gerasa, in Book I, Chapter 3 of his Introduction to Arithmetic, offers a precise and orderly answer. He does not present mathematics as a collection of “useful” skills, but as the necessary path to Wisdom. The study of quantity, rightly understood, leads the mind from sensible things to intelligible principles, and from these to the contemplation of divine wisdom. At the foundation of his teaching is a careful division of the genus Quantity. Nicomachus teaches that Quantity is not … Continue