Fr. Jon Jordan

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:02:34 +0200

Worshiped in Italian at Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Being in a Roman Catholic parish speaking a different tongue did not stop us from recognizing the liturgy and (almost) following along.

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:59:34 +0200

Proud of our family for completing the Sentiero Azzuro between Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza. Our kids were by far the youngest hikers out this morning, and powered through some pretty steep inclines.

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 08:16:33 +0200

We started our trip praying in the ruins of a 14th century church, and we ended with Evening Prayer and holy unction in the Little Chapel at the hermitage of St. Francis of Assisi. Beautiful bookends for a wonderful school trip.

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:59:19 +0200

An ordered list of World Cup teams I am pulling for this summer, to be updated as teams are eliminated.

The US of A plus two motherlands, along with nations in which people we love live or for whom players we admire play.

🇺🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇩🇪 🇸🇳 🇭🇷 🇰🇷

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:33:45 +0200

They don’t make instruction manuals like they used to.

Sat, 30 May 2026 19:23:45 +0200

Evening Prayer to kick off our Rhetoric School visit to Rome in the ruins of the youngest church we will visit throughout the trip.

San Nicola a Capo di Bove, dedicated in AD 1303.

Fri, 22 May 2026 22:21:40 +0200

✅ Submit final manuscript for Rhythms of Habit.

Tue, 19 May 2026 16:48:17 +0200

This looks to be the final version of the beautiful cover my wife designed for Rhythms of Habit!

Mon, 18 May 2026 20:28:21 +0200

Very glad for Petar Musa as he earned a spot on Croatia’s World Cup roster. He has been on fire for FC Dallas this season, and I’m excited to see him play this summer. As you can tell, we are basically best friends because Zoë and I saw him walking through the stadium last season.

Headmaster's Address for the Class of 2026

Mon, 18 May 2026 19:54:33 +0200

Seniors, I have to be honest with you. I wrote you each a letter that you received on Thursday morning. I then shared another letter with you all at dinner on Thursday night. And now I am standing here to share one final word with you before you walk across this stage.

I’m running out of things to say!

But I have the microphone, and I love you, so I’d like to offer two final thoughts.

You are less than one hour away from becoming entirely ordinary again.

You have been a Senior all school year. Our youngest students see you in your blazers and they think you hung the moon. You spoke in Noonday Prayer, you painted your parking spots, you chose the Homecoming Week dress up themes, you let us all wear jeans and college shirts for a week, you were honored at AT&T stadium, you have had parties and dinners and dinners and parties.

You might even be a little tired of it by now.

All of these things were good.

But at around 3:30pm today, you become ordinary again.

And that is a good thing.

Because God uses ordinary people.

That was Final Thought Number One. Here is Final Thought Number Two.

Leslie Newbigin, a Scottish missionary and theologian who wound up serving as a Bishop in the Church of South India, was once told the following by a Hindu scholar he encountered:

I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it.

The Christian Scriptures are not a collection of compelling one-liners to live by, though you will find plenty of words of wisdom in them. The Christian Scriptures are not a collection of books aimed at telling you exactly how to live your life. The Christian Scriptures are not even primarily a collection of texts that tell the history of our faith.

So what are they?

The Christian Scriptures are what God has chosen to reveal to humanity about Reality Itself. They tell us what is. They are not the Christian story, or a presentation of Christian theology, or a handbook for Christian folks.

They are the story of Ultimate Reality. And through them, God himself beckons us to get on board with Reality. At the center of Reality itself is the Triune God.

Holding all things together.

Holding You together.

Up to this point, you have been in the good hands of your parents, and your church, and your school.

I want you to remember always that you leave this place in the hands of the One who held you before your parents even knew that you existed.

Now, let’s graduate.

Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany 2026 (Beatitudes)

Tue, 12 May 2026 11:48:19 -0500

Are the Beatitudes merely beautiful words — or do they actually mean something in a broken world?

The Beatitudes are not simply moral advice or self-help teaching, but Jesus’ announcement that a new world is breaking in. Spoken into a first-century world shaped by violence, power, and fear, the Beatitudes declare that those who live by God’s kingdom values now are already blessed.

Palm Sunday Sermon 2026

Tue, 12 May 2026 11:47:45 -0500

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week—but this week is more than what it appears to be.

It is easy to move through these days as just another stretch of time filled with responsibilities, schedules, and routines. But Holy Week invites us to see more deeply—to recognize that beneath the surface, something eternal is unfolding. The story of Jesus breaks through the “enchantments” we live under: the belief that we are in control, that we are self-sufficient, or that our deepest needs can be solved by the world around us. Instead, Holy Week reveals the truth—our greatest need is deeper than we think, and only Christ can meet it.

Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter 2026

Tue, 12 May 2026 11:47:18 -0500

Many of us feel the tension—wanting to follow God fully, while still holding on to the life we want for ourselves. Can we live our way now and God’s way later?

The invitation of the Gospel is not a loss of joy, but the discovery of it—both now and forever. To entrust our lives to God is to find the meaning, freedom, and joy we were made for.

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:45:54 -0500

I have found adding more apps to help limit my smartphone to be a mixed bag, but so far I find the Anti Browser to be a truly helpful one. Disable Safari, set Anti Browser as your default browser, and retain the ability to tap direct links and open QR codes when absolutely necessary. (I still remain committed to asking for a paper menu when QR is the only option, if only to see the confused faces that ensue.)

I appreciate the option to disable Search/AI, leaving QR Codes and Wikipedia as the only two browsing options.

I think this will allow me to keep my “no browser” practice even when traveling on a school and family trip this summer.

Fri, 08 May 2026 17:11:04 -0500

This is the face of a man who can’t believe how relieved he feels as the one at the helm when a miracle occurred. The best Champion’s League semi-final match ever never gets old.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:27:24 -0500

This is part of why I keep a soccer diary. The three matches I was interested in yesterday all ended 2-2 (ish), but with wildly different results. One was a high for American soccer, one was a further low for Spurs. And the final match was a lot more fun because of who joined me!

Why Anglican: What is a human person?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:48:16 -0500

The answer I give when asked what drew me in to the Anglican tradition has grown over the years, as I find more words to describe what I sensed but could not explain at the time. (I spend most of my week wearing a collar in contexts where collars are not often seen, so these questions are frequent.)

Last November I wrote more about some of those developments in an essay for Covenant.

But here is a more recent realization I have had about the link between my own work in the classical school tradition that began sixteen years ago, and my Confirmation into the Anglican Communion that happened thirteen years ago:

My work in a classical school gave me—for the first time that I can recall—a more wholistic understanding of what a human person is. My first encounters were certainly with people like Lewis, Sayers, and Chesterton, who turned out to be medieval thinkers who happened to find themselves living in the thick of modernity. But then the many ways that the Christian Scriptures teach what it means to be a human person came to light through readings of pagan classics, patristic texts, and medieval works.

The human person is an embodied soul. We are made up of concentric circles of imagination, and intellect, and a will. We are a mind, a heart, and a gut. We are created, moral beings living in a created, moral universe. So we are to grow as moral beings always, so that increasingly strengthened grace-infused virtues can strengthen our will to master and direct our desires. And we are all of these things, together. The ancient and medieval church developed at a time and in a place in which this fuller understanding of the human person was held, which directly impacted the worship and theology of that Church.

Modernity changed how we think about the human person, and the churches in which I was a member before moving into the Anglican Communion all had their beginnings in modernity, or at least considered their beginnings as being in modernity. So they were in this sense born with a modern understanding of the human person. This shaped their worship and theology.

When modernity suggested that we are just our minds, or we are just our wills, or we are just our desires, or we are just our bodies, the churches born in modernity could not help but be shaped by these fractured understandings of what makes a whole human person.

At its worst—not everywhere always, but at its worst—the telos of the Christian life changed. What started as journey of becoming increasingly united as a whole person to Christ that “He may dwell in us and we in him” became “affirm the right idea about God” or “feel the right things about God.” What started as “gather together with fellow Christians who live nearby” became “gather together with those who look and think and act like you.”

There is an important caveat. It would be important even if the Anglican Communion was currently a beacon of ecumenical light in a fractured world. But it is all the more important given the reality that this is sadly not the case.

Here is the caveat: all Churches lived through modernity and are now living in whatever you want to call this time we are living in. So all Churches have succumbed to these things in some ways, whether they were born in modernity or not. I remain drawn to a tradition that is at least aware of and trying to connect itself to a more whole—a more catholic—picture of the human person, but I am ever aware of the ways in which modernity has infected all of us.

In short: As I began to understand the human person more, I was drawn to those traditions whose worship and theology fed and equipped whole human persons by connecting them—body and soul—to their Maker. So that in Christ, we may one day stand before the Triune God, survive that encounter, and enjoy Him forever.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:52:37 -0500

How to unlock the potential of AI for those in the field of education and the formation of human beings: throw the key into the middle of the ocean.

A helpful reply to this post, from Alan Jacobs:

“There are many things in the deep waters; and seas and lands may change. And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.” The key must cast into the fires of Mount Doom, whence it came.

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:41:30 -0500

I finished reading Against the Machine the same week I finished watching Greyhound and started watching Band of Brothers and Fellowship of the Ring with my son. All as Holy Week approaches. Ready to double down on living in a different world while living in this world.

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:54:08 -0500

Brad East on the need for a big tent among those who (nobly) insist on low-tech parenting. I appreciate his inclusion of “willing to sacrifice to do it.”

It has to include as many as will fit—which is to say as many as are seeking to live wisely in a digital age and are willing to sacrifice to do it.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:10:03 -0500

Watching Band of Brothers with my son. Shaping of the moral imagination is happening. “Why is the drill sergeant so mean to them in training?” turned into “I get it now” as soon as the planes took off.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:57:48 -0500

Received an endorsement this week from Malcolm Guite for my forthcoming book on virtues and the Church Calendar. It feels nice to be towards the end of this long, slow project that ultimately led to a rather short book!

Jon Jordan’s Rhythms of Habit makes a helpful and original contribution to the growing body of literature on how the rhythms of the Church Year can deepen and sustain our faith. He gives a clear introduction to the seven virtues, helps us to understand how habit strengthens virtue and helps us see how the Church Year can itself strengthen habits of virtue. I commend this book not only of its clarity but also for the way Jordan constantly illustrates the practical applications of all he says. The whole book has the tone and style of helpful advice from a good friend who understands our struggles and is there to help us.

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:03:24 -0500

This pairs well with Cal Newport’s latest on digital productivity traps.

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 17:34:07 -0500

No, you just took the last of your Christmas lights down the same week you started prepping your Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil sermons.

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:46:14 -0500

From Cal Newport:

In other words: The more you organize your analog life, the less appealing you’ll find the digital alternative. If this is true, then maybe the thing social media companies fear most is not some newly-powerful application-blocking software or impossibly strict regulation, but rather a good old-fashioned daily planner.

Up with analog! This Christmas gift from a friend has been a daily companion.