From “Kingdom Hearts” to “Fortnite,” key human desires manifest themselves in video game culture.

The film “Birdbox,” based on a British novel of the same name, started streaming on Netflix around Christmas time. Starring Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich, it is a taut thriller that manages, perhaps despite itself, to shed considerable light on the parlous spiritual condition of contemporary culture.

The senior demon has a new letter for Wormwood about his disoriented American subjects.

We are constantly being called to enter deeper into God’s heart.

Love alone makes the wild tensions of difference wildly creative.

A vacuum in the soul is evident in the lives of many today, even among those who are baptized.

The desire to be seen, to be acknowledged, is deep, and its lack diminishes the person.

What is it about human neediness that both fascinates and repels?

“Credibility will only come from saints—and this is the hard way the Church seems called by the Lord to go.”

While I was in Chicago for the Christmas break, I had a wonderful meeting with around thirty young Jesuits. They were massively impressive people: smart, articulate, passionate about their work, and dedicated to the Gospel. Toward the end of our time together, one of the men posed a question that, he warned, would “put me on the spot”—and the discussion then became especially lively and illuminating.