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Zeus’ Plan for February

“Aegis-bearing Zeus has a design for each occasion, and mortals find this hard to comprehend.” Hesiod, Works and Days Hesiod was convinced that Zeus has a plan for every occasion. Even February.…
John CuddebackFebruary 26, 2014

carl-larsson-winter

“Aegis-bearing Zeus has a design for each occasion, and mortals find this hard to comprehend.”
Hesiod, Works and Days

Hesiod was convinced that Zeus has a plan for every occasion. Even February. Yet we mortals find this hard to comprehend—especially after a long, cold winter.

But Hesiod has discovered the beginning of wisdom: a confidence that a loving Providence has arranged all things, including the cycle of the year, for the good of mortals. It is our place to discover the design, and to live according to it. Winter is not simply to be tolerated; it is to be lived well.

Here is my longer reflection on the spiritual challenge of winter: God’s Plan for February.

Hesiod (8th century B.C.) was a Greek contemporary of Homer, and likewise an epic poet.

Originally posted at Bacon from Acorns.

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A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

John Cuddeback

John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.

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