Aims & Scope

Obsculta Mission

obscvlta, o fili, praecepta magistri, et inclina aurem cordis tui

Listen carefully, o youth, to the words of the Teacher, and incline the ear of your heart.

This opening line of the Rule of Benedict is the root of the formation of students at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. By attuning ourselves to the Word, listening with interior hearing, we seek to discern the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.

Obsculta is a student-edited journal, published annually by the School of Theology, which features the academic, artistic, and ministerial works of students, faculty, and alumni.

Our mission is to invite others into holistic, theologically informed, and intentional conversation and to engage and empower others through scholarship. Through careful and contemplative listening, we hope to inspire meaningful dialogue and to create a community of empathetic pastoral leadership—willing to welcome all guests as Christ.

These contributions come from a diversity of perspectives and are efforts at the fides quaerens intellectum that constitutes theology and the love of wisdom—φιλοσοφια—that is philosophy. We celebrate and honor these pursuits. As such, the journal is a collection of thinking on pilgrimage—faithful to revelation and the dynamic handing-on of the Christian community while, at the same time, open to development and on-going conversatio morum. We present the following articles as evidence of this lively and committed, yet ever incomplete, pursuit of wisdom.