I am currently in Princeton to give a talk at the university this evening on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Rather unusually, I have time on my hands, enabling me to explore campus and the surrounding area. I was here once before, about ten years ago, to give a talk on The Lord of the Rings at the time that the Peter Jackson movie adaptation was first released. There is, therefore, an inevitable sense of deja vu. As with my previous visit, I am staying at the Nassau Inn, which dates back to the 1750s and must be one of the oldest hotels in the United States. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly renovated and modernized that a casual visitor would have no idea of its vintage.
 
Yesterday, shortly after my arrival, I had dinner with the dynamic young chaplain to the university, his assistant, and four fine and very bright undergraduate student leaders, two of whom were sophomores and two seniors. It always encourages me greatly when I see such strong Catholics in the heart of the secular academy. We had much lively and intelligent conversation. Two of the students were classics majors, which led to a discussion of the relationship between truth and beauty, ranging from Aristotle and Aquinas to Tolkien and James Joyce. 
 
This morning, I visited the university’s chapel, a superb neo-gothic ediface which I recall had greatly impressed me during my previous visit. One addition since my previous visit is a Blessed Sacrament chapel, to which I retreated to say my morning prayers. I then wandered through campus and, as luck or providence would have it, found myself at the local Catholic parish church, dedicated to St. Paul. Entering under the sword-wielding statue of the saint, I beheld the high altar resplendent with a veritable cascade of Easter lilies, the fragrance of which filled the church with floral incense! In thanksgiving for such a presentation of God’s grandeur in the presence of His Presence I fell to my knees and said the Divine Mercy chaplet, followed by moments of decorous silence.
 
After more wending and wandering, I returned to the university chapel for confession and then holy Mass. Afterwards I visited the art museum at which the full panorama of art history was on display, a full spectrum of sub-creative offerings, ranging from the magnificence and reverence of Catholic Europe to the postmodern and meaningless nonsense of today’s culture of death. Regarding the latter, I was darkly and grimly amused by a number of canvases painted in primal black from top to bottom. It reminded me of the work that my five year old daughter had done a few days earlier in painting our chicken coop. On the whole I think her sunshine yellow on plywood was better than the artist’s (sic) pitch black on canvas!
 
All in all, my visit to Princeton seems to have become something of a pilgrimage. Hopefully my dinner with Catholic graduate students this evening and the subsequent talk on Tolkien’s Catholicism will prove a success.
 
Tomorrow, a couple of hours before the crack of dawn, I leave for Madison to give two talks at the University of Wisconsin and another talk at a diocesan conference. It’s such a joy to be spreading the gospel on secular campuses through the power of beauty!