Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
I have not been keeping up with my annual posts on the saints, and for this I apologize. Today is the 606th 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 […]
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Today has been a busy, exciting, and exhausting day. This morning, after a series of interviews this week, I accepted an offer from GitHub, where I have been contracting much of the year. I also contracted with them for a year or so before the Plague. There are still some formalities – a contract to sign on Monday, a background […]
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Often on this day, I will re-run some version of my article on the “miracle of the sun“. Feel free to follow the link and read up on that again! For today, however, I’d like to highlight Saint Edward the Confessor. He was the son of the unfortunate King Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. Being the King’s seventh son, he never […]
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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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Today is the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. In later years, the anniversary of this day was celebrated as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory and later, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. Back in high school, a group of us did an extensive report on the events of this day for my freshman history class. We […]
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Thursday, October 7 is the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. For those of us who were once parishioners of Holy Rosary parish in Tacoma, it was our patronal feast. In years past, we could celebrate this on a Sunday. Altar servers for our patronal feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary parish (Tacoma, WA) in 2019. We […]
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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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Do you pray to your Guardian Angel? Do you ask them for advice or help? Why not? The Church teaches that we all receive a guardian angel at birth, an angel assigned to guide and protect us, to watch over us. As it says in scripture: There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy […]
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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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Today is the “Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels” or, in the old calendar, the “Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Michael the Archangel”. Whatever you call it, the most common name is Michaelmas. It is one of several harvest festivals celebrated throughout Christian Europe. So happy Michaelmas! In England this is one of the “quarter days”, which […]
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What kind of life could the child possibly look forward to? He was born with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida. In these progressive days, the child very well might have been aborted after the doctor showed the mother her first detailed fetal ultrasound. Blessed Hermann of Reichenau But the child had the great fortune to be born […]
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Whither is thy Beloved gone, O thou most beautiful among women? Whither is thy Beloved turned aside, and we will seek Him with thee? We begin with the first antiphon of Lauds for today’s feast of The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Monastic Diurnal. The Blessed Virgin Mary is sometimes called Our Lady of Sorrows – […]
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O great work of love: death then was dead when on the Cross Life iteself had died.(Antiphon 1 of Monastic Lauds for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross) Today is celebrated in the western Church as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Exaltatio Sanctæ Crucis). In the eastern Church, it is known as “the Universal Exaltation of […]
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Depart from me, I will weep bitterly; labour not to comfort me. (Antiphon 1 of Monastic Lauds for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows) One year ago today, Archbishop Paul Etienne celebrated the final Mass of Holy Rosary parish in Tacoma. Tomorrow is the Feast of The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and the following day is the Feast […]
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Nine months after the solemnity of her Immaculate Conception, celebrated on 8 December, today we celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a feast so ancient that it is celebrated on the same day in both East and West. WEST: Giotto’s Birth of the Virgin Scripture tells us very little about the early life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. […]
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“We make Idols of our concepts, but Wisdom is born of wonder.” (Pope St. Gregory the Great) Only a handful of Popes ever get named “Great”. Today in the Ordinary Roman calendar is the feast of one of them, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, confessor and doctor of the Church (540 – 604). Gregory had been born into an ancient […]
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No, not that one. Today is the feast of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Born in 1090 to a noble Burgundian family near Dijon, he entered the monastery at age 23. In less than three years, he was sent by his abbot to found a new monastery in Vallée d’Absinthe on 25 June 1115. Bernard named this new monastery Clairvaux, meaning […]
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