Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
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, more or […]
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Today is Lucy’s Day! No, not that one. Saint Lucy was a Sicilian martyr. She was a wealthy young lady of Greek extraction brought up by Christian parents. She was killed during the horrific persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian in about 304. The facts surrounding her martyrdom have accreted so many legends that it’s difficult to be sure exactly what […]
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If you think that the Spanish conquistadors are the ones who imposed Catholicism on the hapless Aztecs, well you’re wrong. Lord knows they tried. And tried. And failed. In the first decade of Spanish rule (1521 – 1531), only a handful of natives embraced Christianity. And then… well, here’s the story as found in the venerable Catholic Encyclopedia: To a […]
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Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (d. 06 December 343) 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, […]
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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 commemorated the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation a few years ago. Many continue to see this as a good thing. I don’t. Saint Edmund Campion, SJ Here […]
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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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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 AD 230. The Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia (Stefano Maderno) Her name appears in the First Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon) among Rome’s other beloved […]
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Several years ago, The Catholic Herald published an article on one of today’s lesser known saints that absolutely delights me: Blessed Lucy of Narnia. Of all the great characters from children’s literature, who better to have a namesake to intercede for us in heaven? (At least, in the absence of a St Bofa of Sofa.) After all, it was she, […]
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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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Today is the 607th 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! The two saints were beheaded during the Diocletian persecution in AD 285, give […]
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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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With the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II still fresh in our minds, it is worth turning our attention to her saintly predecessor, Edward the Confessor, whose feast day is today. He was the son of the unfortunate King Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. Being the King’s seventh son, he never expected that he himself would reign, and he took […]
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On October 12, AD 40, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the Apostle Saint James near the town of Caesaraugusta in the Roman Province of Hispania, in what is now Zaragoza, Spain. He was discouraged. His mission in Hispania was largely a failure, with few converts and only a handful of ordained men to preach the Gospel here, at the […]
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Stat crux dum volvitur orbis – “The Cross is steady while the world turns” (motto of the Carthusian Order) Saint Bruno (d. 1101), whose feast day is today, famously founded the contemplative Carthusian Order. The Carthusians are hermits living in a cloistered quasi-community, famously adhering to a vow of silence, and who to this day celebrate their own distinctive liturgical rite. Source, […]
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By coincidence, today is the feast day of both the saint who gave the Divine Mercy devotion to the world, and of one of the disciples of Saint Benedict. Interestingly, neither of these feasts are on the universal calendar. Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska (1905 – 1938) was a Polish nun who received a vision of Christ […]
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Just about everybody knows Saint Francis. He’s the plaster birdbath guy, right? The saint who hung around with fuzzy pastel animals. Well, sort of. “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.” (Saint Francis of Assisi) Not Saint Francis I very nearly took “Francis” as my confirmation name. It might have been awkward, though, what with being engaged to Francine at […]
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Saint Jerome should be the patron saint of grumpy old men. Born in the Roman province of Dalmatia in modern Slovenia, he studied in Rome starting in about the year 360. During a journey to Syria in 373, he fell ill and had a vision that caused him to devote the rest of his long life to the service of […]
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