Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Near the beginning of our virtual Camino, February 2020 Yesterday my beautiful bride Francine and I finished walking our virtual Camino from Lourdes to Santiago, a distance of roughly 957km. You’ve heard of staycations? This was a staymino. It took us just over a year. At least I got one thing accomplished during lockdown! We mostly walked around our neighbourhood […]
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Today is the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter. Now, you might be thinking, “a feast for a piece of furniture?” Read on! 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 […]
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Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And with those words, our Lent has begun. Holy Mother Church calls us to make these next forty days until Easter a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Lent is a pilgrimage, in a sense, through time if not space, through death to resurrection. A pilgrimage of penitence. Let […]
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In the past, my home Archdiocese of Seattle has published “Lenten Regulations” to remind us what is expected of every Christian during Lent, which begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. This year, however, they are nowhere to be found. Instead, we have a web page called “Lent 2021 Inspiration and Resources“, which I heartily recommend to you. The Fasting and Abstinence […]
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Saint Benedict was the founder of western monasticism; to this day, most monks and nuns worldwide follow some variation of his “Little Rule for Beginners“. Benedict had a twin sister, Scholastica, whose feast day is today. Under her brother’s guidance, she founded the first female monastery in the west. I often think that their parents had a sense of humour, […]
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When Pope Saint Pius V promulgated the revised Missale Romanum in the Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum in 1570, he famously wrote that it applied “henceforth, now, and forever, throughout all the provinces of the Christian world”. Yet, just a year later the Pope himself issued the first changes to the Missal, inserting the feast of Our Lady of Victory, to celebrate […]
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Sometime in early June 1977, in a small theater in Hegewisch Illinois, I saw Star Wars for the first time. My grandfather took my sister and I after we were too bored just walking in the woods. I was ten, and she was seven. I maintain that this is the best age range to be introduced to the Star Wars […]
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Today was once one of the most solemn feasts of the year. It’s gone by several names over the millennia: the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Candlemas. Coming forty days after Christmas, it was even once the end of the Christmas season. Even today there are relics of […]
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Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of a liturgical season known as Septuagesima or Fore-Lent or Shrovetide. It consists of the three weeks immediately before the start of Lent, and indeed the name Septuagesima means seventy, in reference to Quadragesima – forty – which is the proper Latin name for Lent. This liturgical season, meant to prepare us for the […]
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Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than you can with just one.(J. Michael Straczynski, “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars“) Today is the Feast of the Universal Doctor of the Church and one of my name Saints, Thomas Aquinas. When (certain) people, told of my conversion, said to me “oh, you’re Catholic […]
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Today is both the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, and the thirteenth anniversary of the day I wed my beautiful bride. It is, as I have said before, a “moment when everything changed, celebrated on a day when everything changed”. For reasons too long to go into here, thirteen has always been our “lucky number”, so it’s quite […]
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Happy Saint Agnes Day! Saint Agnes was a young Roman lady of 12 or 13 who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian in about the year 304. She was one of the youngest of the early martyrs and one of the most moving and articulate. Agnes hastened to the place of torture as a bride to her wedding feast. […]
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The Church used to celebrate many Octaves. Many great solemnities, and even some older feasts of lesser liturgical stature, had an Octave. Some holy days are so holy that a single day can’t contain them. Take Easter, for instance. The ancient tradition of the Church is to add an entire week to the Sunday that is Easter, making it actually […]
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by G.K. Chesterton Step softly, under snow or rain,To find the place where men can pray;The way is all so very plainThat we may lose the way. Oh we have learnt to peer and poreOn tortured puzzles from our youth,We know all the labyrinthine lore,We are the three wise men of yore,And we know all things but truth. We have […]
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Happy Epiphany, probably! In much of the world, and for much of time, today is celebrated as the great Solemnity of the Epiphany, even if many in the United States and Canada celebrated it this past Sunday. In a sense, the Feast of the Epiphany is the culmination (if not quite the end) of the Christmas Season. It was once […]
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Happy twelfth day of Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying your twelve drummers drumming. This evening is called Twelfth Night, traditionally the vigil of the Epiphany. In my Monastic Diurnal, Epiphany begins with tonight’s Vespers. This was traditionally a time of feasting and festivity (all of which seem to include various varieties of enormous pastries) marking the end of Christmastide and […]
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Happy Eleventh Day of Christmas! Today we honour a more modern saint than those of recent days. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first native-born American citizen to be canonized. She was born in 1774 and grew up in a home in upperclass New York society. Her father was frequently absent in London for his business, and her stepmother spurned her […]
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