Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Today is the feast of the great Doctor of the Church, Saint Ambrose of Milan (340-397). Rather than prattle on about this great saint, I thought I’d post the second reading from today’s Office. Although Ambrose is specifically addressing bishops in this letter, his call to evangelization is for all of us, for all time. You have entered upon the […]
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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 began with last night’s vespers, and today 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 […]
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Today is historically 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 this year. Many continue to see this as a good thing. I don’t. Here is one of many, many […]
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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 celebrating Vespers in the church on Sundays at 6:00 PM. Please join us! There’s nothing like chanted Vespers in a beautiful, echoing church to pull the heart and mind towards the Lord.
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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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Saint Cecilia is one of the most famous and most venerated of Roman martyrs. Legend has it that she, her husband Valerian, and her brother-in-law Tiburtius were martyred during the reign of Emperor Alexander Severus, about the year 230. Her name appears in the First Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon) among Rome’s other beloved martyrs, and when Christianity became legal […]
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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 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 Opening of England’s […]
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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, and it was fixed on November 1 in the […]
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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 602nd 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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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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by G.K. Chesterton White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; For the inmost sea of […]
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Today is the feast of the Most Holy Rosary. For most of the Catholic world, this is a memorial of various sorts. Since, however, my parish is dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, for us it is a Solemnity. Huzzah! If you are in the Tacoma area, please join us for the Mass of the feast, either tonight […]
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