Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
< Advent begins with tonight's vespers, for tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent. Behold, the Name of the Lord comes from afar, and His glory fills all the earth. (Magnificat Antiphon for I Vespers on the First Sunday of Advent, Monastic Diurnal) Not sure exactly what Advent is? Here’s a two-minute snapshot.
» Read moreFifty-six years before the English Puritan refugees at Plymouth celebrated their “first Thanksgiving”, Spanish explorers and their Timucua allies celebrated one in Saint Augustine, in what is now Florida. They had bean soup. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral under orders to root out some French colonists in the area. Sighting land in La Florida on 28 August […]
» Read moreSince the rain and the early sunsets have curtailed much of our hiking schedule, little progress has been made in the training arena. We hope to address that this coming weekend. Since we’ve already celebrated our Thanksgiving, we plan on getting out and about on this coming four days off. In other news, my new passport has arrived! Huzzah! Logistical […]
» Read moreYesterday, on the great feast of Christ the King, we held our annual feast of thanksgiving at Pistachio House. We had a houseful of guests for dinner, including family and friends. We ate good food, drank good vino tinto (or beer, tonic, cider, water, coffee, or tea as the occasion demanded), played board games, wore silly hats, talked, and laughed. […]
» Read moreThis evening I have electronically submitted my application to the diaconate. There are one or two additional pieces I need to send in electronically, and then the physical copies next week. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
» Read moreHoly Mary, Mother of God, pray for the people of Paris. Saint Geneviève, pray for the people of Paris. Saint Denis, pray for the people of Paris. Saint Joan of Arc, pray for the people of Paris.
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Once again we come to a feast of All Saints. “But wait!” I hear you cry, “wasn’t that back on the first of November?” Right you are! But today on the Benedictine calendar is the feast of All Saints of the Benedictine Order. And on a Friday the thirteenth, no less. Many Orders (and some countries) have their own All […]
» Read moreYou would be forgiven for thinking that the Pope’s main church is St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It’s certainly the largest. But no. The Pope’s own church – his episcopal seat as Bishop of Rome – is in the church of Saint John Lateran. Which Saint John? Good question. Two of them, actually, for the full name of this […]
» Read moreThe other day, I attended two Masses for All Souls. I served at the first, an Ordinary Form (English language) school Mass at Holy Rosary at nine o’clock in the morning. The second was an Extraordinary Form Missa Cantata at Saint Joseph in the evening. In each form of the rite, the priest is allowed to celebrate three Masses for […]
» Read moreThe Benedictine monks of the Benedictine Abbaye Saint-Maurice de Clervaux chant the Dies Iræ, the traditional sequence for Requiem Masses and the Masses of All Souls.
» Read moreLet’s talk Purgatory. We have to, to make any sense at all out of today’s feast. Today is officially “The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed”, but like most folks, I’ll stick with the simple version – All Souls’ Day. Over the years, I’ve heard numerous homilies and essays that mix this day up with yesterday, All Saints’ Day. Somebody […]
» Read moreHappy Feast of All Saints! This is the day where we celebrate all the saints, known and unknown: the Church Triumphant. This day has been a feast since the sixth or seventh century, and it was fixed on November 1 in the Roman calendar by Pope Gregory III in the mid 8th century. Yesterday, of course, was the vigil or […]
» Read moreFrancine injured her foot a ways back, and we have not been training as we ought. Yesterday, however, we had a nice hike with full Camino packs through Point Defiance Park. There was some trouble with water. At some point in transit to the trailhead, Francine’s backpack water bladder leaked about a liter of water into her pack. After a […]
» Read moreJoseph Stalin famously demanded to know “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?” Stalin was, of course, asking the wrong question, as the saint whose feast is today finally proved. When Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II in October of 1978, I was not only just 11 years old – I wasn’t even Catholic. It’s safe […]
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If we believe that God created the world and us in it, if we believe that He did so out of an overflowing of divine love, if we believe that we were created that we might return that love to God and to His creation, then these facts should inform everything we do. Most especially, it should permeate how we […]
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