Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of a liturgical season known as Septuagesima or Fore-Lent or Shrovetide. It consists of the three weeks immediately before the start of Lent, and indeed the name Septuagesima means seventy, in reference to Quadragesima – forty – which is the proper Latin name for Lent. This liturgical season, meant to prepare us for the […]
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Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than you can with just one.(J. Michael Straczynski, “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars“) Today is the Feast of the Universal Doctor of the Church and one of my name Saints, Thomas Aquinas. When (certain) people, told of my conversion, said to me “oh, you’re Catholic […]
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Today is both the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, and the thirteenth anniversary of the day I wed my beautiful bride. It is, as I have said before, a “moment when everything changed, celebrated on a day when everything changed”. For reasons too long to go into here, thirteen has always been our “lucky number”, so it’s quite […]
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Happy Saint Agnes Day! Saint Agnes was a young Roman lady of 12 or 13 who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian in about the year 304. She was one of the youngest of the early martyrs and one of the most moving and articulate. Agnes hastened to the place of torture as a bride to her wedding feast. […]
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The Church used to celebrate many Octaves. Many great solemnities, and even some older feasts of lesser liturgical stature, had an Octave. Some holy days are so holy that a single day can’t contain them. Take Easter, for instance. The ancient tradition of the Church is to add an entire week to the Sunday that is Easter, making it actually […]
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by G.K. Chesterton Step softly, under snow or rain,To find the place where men can pray;The way is all so very plainThat we may lose the way. Oh we have learnt to peer and poreOn tortured puzzles from our youth,We know all the labyrinthine lore,We are the three wise men of yore,And we know all things but truth. We have […]
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Happy Epiphany, probably! In much of the world, and for much of time, today is celebrated as the great Solemnity of the Epiphany, even if many in the United States and Canada celebrated it this past Sunday. In a sense, the Feast of the Epiphany is the culmination (if not quite the end) of the Christmas Season. It was once […]
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Happy Eleventh Day of Christmas! Today we honour a more modern saint than those of recent days. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first native-born American citizen to be canonized. She was born in 1774 and grew up in a home in upperclass New York society. Her father was frequently absent in London for his business, and her stepmother spurned her […]
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On this day in 1892, J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The Professor is 129 today! All around the world, at 9pm local time, the Tolkien Society and the Professor’s many other devotees will celebrate his birthday with a toast to “the Professor”. I will join in, though it will undoubtably be earlier in the evening, and I […]
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Happy Tenth Day of Christmas! Today is… complicated. Depending on what calendar you happen to be using, today might very well be the great Solemnity of the Epiphany. Or not. Traditionally, though, the Epiphany is celebrated on January 6 – the the day after the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Since the calendar reforms of 1970, any diocese may choose to […]
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Happy Ninth Day of Christmas! Today is the Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church. Well, it is in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. On the older calendar, it is a simple Christmas feria. Saints Basil and Gregory Nazianzen were contemporaries from Cappadocia and great theologians of the early Church. […]
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All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady. (J.R.R. Tolkien) Wishing all of you a very happy new year of 2021! This day, being the Eighth Day of Christmas, the Octave Day of the Nativity, has always been a holy day in the Christian Calendar. However, the name and focus of this […]
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Happy seventh day of Christmas! Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Saint Sylvester I, pope and confessor. He was born in the southern Italian town of Sant’Angelo a Scala to two Roman citizens, Rufinus and Justa. He was ordained by Pope Saint Marcellinus just before the persecutions of Diocletian got underway. He survived those years of terror and saw […]
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Saint Sabinus preaching the Gospel before the governor Venustian Happy sixth day of Christmas! Today is the first day of the Christmas Octave that is not otherwise also a solemnity, feast, or memorial. That does not mean, however, that there aren’t other saints we could celebrate today in some form. Today might be a good time to talk about the […]
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Happy fourth day of Christmas! Today we pause our revels for a moment to remember and celebrate the Holy Innocents. When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained […]
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Happy third day of Christmas! Today we celebrate the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In the Holy Family, God gives us a living icon of family life: child, mother, father. Russian Icon of the Holy Family And more than that, this being an icon and not just a […]
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The rest of the world thinks Christmas is over, with the possible exception of those who celebrate Boxing Day today or those fond of partridges in pear trees. Oh, how wrong they are! For like Easter, Christmas isn’t just one day, but a whole season! The Twelve Days of Christmas continue right up through the Epiphany (January 6). In some […]
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