Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
The Saint Boniface Window at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church, Tacoma Saint Boniface, whose feast is today, is widely known as the “apostle to the Germans”. An Englishman of Devonshire, he was part of a great Anglo-Saxon missionary effort in the Saxon marches of the Frankish Empire in the early eighth century. Since my parish church of Holy […]
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On this day in 1431, one of the most truly remarkable women who ever lived was burned at the stake. She was 19 years old. She was known as Jehanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maiden), but today we name her Saint Joan of Arc. Saint Joan at Holy Rosary, Tacoma She was canonized in 1920, and her memorial was first […]
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Saint Bede the Venerable translating the Gospel of John Today in the calendar of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is the feast of this blog’s patron, Saint Bede the Venerable. The amazing Saint Bede was a monk, priest, historian, and a Doctor of the Church, all while dealing with Viking attacks. I took the name Bede when I […]
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Today is the feast of a most remarkable saint, Peter Celestine. Pietro Angelerio was born in the village of Sant’Angelo Limosano, in south-central Italy, in the year 1215. At age 17, he became a Benedictine monk. By the time he was in his thirties, his abbot had given him permission to enter a hermitage in a cave. He became famed […]
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After the suicide of Judas Iscariot, the remaining Apostles gathered to choose another to replace him. They had some criteria: Therefore, it is necessary that one of the menwho accompanied us the whole timethe Lord Jesus came and went among us,beginning from the baptism of Johnuntil the day on which he was taken up from us,become with us a witness […]
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Mary’s month of May begins with a day for her husband. Today, celebrated around the world as “International Workers’ Day” is the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. There’s poetry to the fact that the month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin begins by putting the focus on her husband, and therefore on their family life. Imagine the Holy Family of […]
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Today is the feast of four great Abbots of the Benedictine Order: Saints Odo, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh. They were all good and holy men, and during the course of their reigns over the Abbey of Cluny and its associated priories, they reformed western monasticism – indeed, it could be fairly said that together they saved western monasticism. My Monastic […]
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John Mark was one of the original seventy disciples (Luke 10:1 ff). Tradition holds that he was one of those who left Christ when he preached on the Bread of Life (John 6:44-6:66). Saint Peter brought him back to the faith. He traveled with Paul and Barnabas, who thought him unreliable (Acts 15:37-41). Again he left, again he came back […]
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“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (G.K. Chesterton) Saint George of Lydda (Eastern Version) Today’s feast is of the martyr Saint George. Pious legends of dragon slaying notwithstanding, George was a soldier of the Roman army who was killed during the persecutions […]
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In 2016, Francine and I visited the tomb of Saint Isidore of Seville. Although he is entombed in Spain, it is strangely not in the city of Seville, where he was bishop from AD 601 to 636. No, due to the vagaries of history, the majority of his bones are now in in a silver casket at the high altar […]
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For the Order of Saint Benedict, today is the Feast of the Transitus of Saint Benedict, the anniversary of his death, in the year of our Lord 547. Of this event, his biographer Pope Saint Gregory the Great writes: The same year in which he departed this life, he told the day of his holy death to his monks, some […]
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Today on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, we would do well to meditate on the life of the man who helped raise the Son of God. It can’t have been easy. Tradition holds that Joseph was already an old man and a widower when he married the Blessed Virgin, who was very young, perhaps 16 or so. He had several […]
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Pope Francis calls on everyone to pray the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary tomorrow, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, at 9:00pm Rome time invoking “Our Lady, Health of the Sick and Saint Joseph, to protect our families from coronavirus COVID-19, especially the ill and those who are caring for the sick, the doctors, nurses, who are risking their lives”. This […]
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Well that got your attention, didn’t it? It’s not quite true of course; Patrick may have been born on the isle of Britain, but in a time before the Angles had arrived and started making it Angland. No, his family were Roman Catholic churchmen from the Roman Imperial province of Britannia. Today, nobody is going to go around speaking in […]
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During Lent, I am often reminded of this, one of my favourite stories from the Desert Fathers: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my […]
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Most folks have seen some variation of this photo of Bernini‘s “Chair of Peter” in the Vatican. It’s a masterpiece of baroque art, found in every art textbook covering the period. The chair in question is carried aloft by four saints. The image of the dove in the Holy Spirit window has been duplicated and copied all over the world […]
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Saint Valentinus of Terni The feast of Saint Valentine was removed from the Roman calendar during the reforms of 1969. It seems a shame, since this is one of a vanishingly small number of saint’s feasts that have remained in the secular culture. It seems to me that it could be used as a touchstone for the new evangelization. Mind […]
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