Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Happy Saint Nicholas Day! How Saint Nicholas was transmogrified into Santa Claus, I’ll never know. “Jolly Old Saint Nick” was by all accounts a thin man, most famous for giving gifts to prostitutes and punching heretics. That whole “eight tiny reindeer” thing seems like a bit of a come down. Wait, prostitutes? Well, almost. That was the plan of the […]
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Advent begins with tonight’s vespers, and tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent. Behold, the Name of the Lord comes from afar, and His glory fills all the earth. (Magnificat Antiphon for I Vespers on the First Sunday of Advent, Monastic Diurnal) Not sure exactly what Advent is? Here’s a two-minute snapshot. Meanwhile, I’m doing my annual fumbling to remember […]
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Today is the memorial of Saint Edmund Campion. If the paintings of him are to be believed, he is a man to whom I bear more than a passing resemblance. We commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation last year. Many continue to see this as a good thing. I don’t. Here is one of many, many reasons […]
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Andrew, son of Jonah, fisherman of Bethsaida in Galilee. Follower of John the Baptist. The first apostle called by Christ, who told him and his brother, Simon, to “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men”. After the Resurrection, Andrew preached along the coasts of the Black Sea, both north and south, founding churches that included one […]
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This Advent, as in past years, our parish of Holy Rosary in Tacoma will be chanting Vespers on Sunday evenings. Because of the damage to our beautiful church, this year we’re celebrating Vespers the school auditorium. I know, I know, the poster says the chapel, but we decided at the last moment that the chapel perhaps wouldn’t hold everybody. The […]
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Today is the great feast of Christ the King. Later this afternoon, we will have our “Franksgiving” feast on this day. As it is every year at this time, Pistachio House shall be transformed into a great feasting hall of the ancient of days. And it is right that we celebrate God’s bounty and God’s blessings in our lives. But […]
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Fifty-six years before the English Puritan refugees at Plymouth celebrated their “first Thanksgiving”, Spanish explorers and their Timucua allies celebrated one in Saint Augustine, in what is now Florida. They had bean soup.
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You would be forgiven for thinking that the Pope’s main church is St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It’s certainly the largest. But no. The Pope’s own church – his episcopal seat as Bishop of Rome – is the church of Saint John Lateran. Which Saint John? Good question. Two of them, actually, for the full name of this church […]
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Today in 1605, a cabal of Catholic plotters, hoping to turn back the tides of reformation and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne of Great Britain, attempted to assassinate the very Protestant King James. Their plan – if you can dignify it by calling it a plan – was to blow up the House of Lords during the State […]
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Let’s talk Purgatory. We have to, to make any sense at all out of today’s feast. Today is officially “The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed”, but like most folks, I’ll stick with the simple version – All Souls’ Day. Over the years, I’ve heard numerous homilies and essays that mix this day up with yesterday, All Saints’ Day. Somebody […]
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Happy Feast of All Saints! This is the day where we celebrate all the saints, known and unknown: the Church Triumphant. We ask them to pray for us. I for one could use all the help I can get! This day has been a feast since the sixth or seventh century, thanks to the abbots of Cluny, and it was […]
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Protestants all over the world celebrate “Reformation Day” of October 31. I don’t. Last year, on the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s revolt, I wrote a lengthy essay on exactly why not, and I think it’s worth reprinting in its entirety. Five Hundred Years Today is the five hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. It is […]
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Can we talk about Gregorian chant? Because All Souls Day – coming up on November 2nd – has some doozies. I confess that I was a fan of chant long before I was a Catholic. In part, God used the beauty of this kind of music to draw me to Him. Specific chants are prescribed for each Mass in both […]
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Today is the 603rd anniversary of King Henry V’s famous victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. As Shakespeare reminds us in his Henry V, this battle took place on the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian. May you have the joy of the feast! Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten […]
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Joseph Stalin famously demanded to know “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?” Stalin was, of course, asking the wrong question, as the saint whose feast is today finally proved. When Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II in October of 1978, I was not only just 11 years old – I wasn’t even Catholic. It’s safe […]
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Saint Luke is my kind of writer. Luke the historian and Luke the lyrical poet are both in evidence in his New Testament writings, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He freely admits that he never met Christ in the flesh, that he was not a witness to the events he describes in his Gospel. Like any good […]
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More than a century ago on this very day in the town of Fátima, Portugal, a miracle occurred. This remarkable event occurred at the height of the Great War, and an estimated 70,000 people witnessed it. It is known as the “Miracle of the Sun”. Avelino de Almeida, writing for Portugal’s popular pro-government and anti-clerical newspaper O Século, said: Before […]
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