Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
I had meant to post something about this when I head it during the Bishops’ conference, but Father’s illness and a pile of work intervened. Huge news on the implementation of the new Missal translation: Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Divine Worship, announced that diocesan bishops may […]
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The church in which I was Baptized, Confirmed, and Married has all sorts of Christian symbols painted on the walls. One of them that always set my brain to thinking looked something like this: It is, of course, an ancient Trinitarian symbol, reminding us in a visual way that while the Father is God, and the Son is God, and […]
» Read moreJust for fun, I’ve rearranged the look of the blog a little bit and added a feed and a Networked Blogs thing so folks can “follow” the blog from Facebook. This is a great way for me to figure out who the three people who read the blog are! I’ve also added an Amazon “recommended reads” widget and a link […]
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Please won’t you take a moment to pray for our pastor, Rev. Carmine Sacco? I just got an e-mail from the president of our pastoral council, which read in part: We received a call from Father Fuchs yesterday late PM that Father Sacco is back in Saint Joe’s. The emergency room folks told him that Father needs his gall bladder […]
» Read moreHere, in the middle of what used to be the Octave of Pentecost, I’m finally turning my attention on these pages to one of my greatest loves in the Church: the Sacred Liturgy. The liturgy – and here I’m thinking most especially of Holy Mass – is where we meet the Lord, where He deigns to come to us in […]
» Read moreAs Rocco reports, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops will be holding their spring meeting in Bellevue, just across Lake Washington from Seattle. It’s quite a feather in the cap of our new Archbishop, though I’m sure it has been in the planning since long before his arrival. I love following these confabs, though there’s a certain “inside baseball” aspect […]
» Read moreThere are those who think that the Church is being a little hasty in the process of conferring sainthood on Blessed Pope John Paul II. He has reached the penultimate stage of the process – beatification – only six years after his death. I wonder what these folks would have thought about the process taken in the case of Saint […]
» Read moreWe read today in the Acts of the Apostles of this great day, which in a certain way we can celebrate as the birthday of the Church: When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire […]
» Read moreIn the old calendar, the one still used in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces. Here’s where many folks go off the rails in castigating the Church as non-Christian. Mediatrix of All Graces? Isn’t Christ our mediator? Does not the scripture say For there is one God. There is […]
» Read moreHow does the human brain wrap itself around the eternal and infinite love of God for His creation? How can can we even begin to comprehend the depth of love in Christ’s wounded heart as he pours Himself out for us sinners at Calvary? The truth is, we can’t. The saints and the mystics may catch glimpses, but we humans […]
» Read moreOne of the more succinct descriptions of this day I’ve found has been copied all over the Internet, to the point where I’m unable to properly source it. The Ascension of Our Lord, which occurred 40 days after Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter, is the final act of our redemption that Christ began on Good Friday. On […]
» Read moreTomorrow is forty days since Easter, the Solemnity of the Ascension, when Christ ascended into heaven in what has to be one of the great comic scenes in the Bible: [A]s they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly […]
» Read moreMary’s month of May draws to a close with the Feast of the Visitation. This feast celebrates the visit of Mary, pregnant with Jesus, to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist (Gospel of Saint Luke, Chapter 1 verses 39 – 56). Luke’s account culminates in one of the great New Testament songs, Mary’s Magnificat, which we recite at […]
» Read moreToday is a day of many memorials. In the United States, it is a Federal holiday honouring those men and women who died in the military service. While in the popular media this has become merely an excuse for a three-day weekend and countless barbeques, many folks, myself included, hang out the flag and do our best to honour the […]
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Last night, I was Master of Ceremonies at our parish Confirmation Mass. It was my first, but hopefully not my last, MC gig. My reflections on last night are bound to be a little rambly, but I wanted to be sure to record as many of my impressions as I could. The MC role at Mass is somewhat different from […]
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In many cultures throughout the world, a person will take a new name at a new phase of their life: birth, coming of age – really any of the great passages of life. Even in cultures where this is not a formal (re)naming, we often take or are given nicknames that stick with us. We are reinvented in college, or […]
» Read morePope Benedict XVI is not typically regarded as a stern disciplinarian, despite a fearsome reputation as head of CDF when he was a Cardinal. However, the past few weeks or so has seen an Australian bishop sacked, and now this: Vatican suppresses Cistercian abbey in Rome The abbey of Santa Croce in Jerusalem, associated with the Roman basilica of the […]
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