Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Happy Saint Nicholas Day! How Saint Nicholas was transmogrified into Santa Claus, I’ll never know. “Jolly Old Saint Nick” was by all accounts a thin man, most famous for giving gifts to prostitutes and punching heretics. That whole “eight tiny reindeer” thing seems like a bit of a come down. Wait, prostitutes? Well, almost. That was the plan of the […]
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Today is the great feast of Christ the King. In years past, we’ve held our “Franksgiving” feast on this day. This year, due to logistics, we held it last week. As it is every year at this time, Pistachio House was transformed into a great feasting hall of the ancient of days. And it is right that we celebrate God’s […]
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Today is the 602nd 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 the joy of the feast! Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten […]
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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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Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has granted to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Seattle a dispensation from the obligation to abstain from meat on Friday, March 17, the commemoration of Saint Patrick. Western Washington Catholics can enjoy their corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day this year without worrying about breaking their Lenten (sic) Friday commitment. Seattle Archbishop J. […]
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Today is both the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, and the ninth 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”. Francine and I have a funny tradition. When I proposed to her, I distracted her for a moment […]
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On this day in 1892, J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The Professor is 125 today! All around the world, at 9pm local time, the Tolkien Society and the Professor’s many other devotees will celebrate his birthday with a toast to “the Professor”. I will join in, and I encourage you to do the same. The Professor’s writing, […]
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Happy Saint Nicholas Day! How Saint Nicholas was transmogrified into Santa Claus, I’ll never know. “Jolly Old Saint Nick” was by all accounts a thin man, most famous for giving gifts to prostitutes and punching heretics. That whole “eight tiny reindeer” thing seems like a bit of a come down. Wait, prostitutes? Well, almost. That was the plan of the […]
» Read more
Yesterday, on the great feast of Christ the King, we held our annual feast of thanksgiving at Pistachio House as we do every year. Daughter Raine and I went to the Noon Mass at Holy Rosary. There were some additions to the Mass, as we closed out the great Jubilee Year of Mercy. In the afternoon and evening, we had […]
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The Catholic Herald published an article this morning on one of today’s saints that absolutely delights me: Of all the great characters from children’s literature, who better to have a namesake to intercede for us in heaven? (At least, in the absence of a St Bofa of Sofa.) After all, it was she, of all the Pevensie children, who first […]
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Today is the 601st 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 the joy of the feast! Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten […]
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Today in both the Extraordinary Form and the Benedictine Ordo is the Memorial of the Seven Holy Maccabees. Their story may be found in the Bible – provided you’ve got a Catholic or an Orthodox one. Martin Luther removed these books from his Bible – so if you don’t know their story, go read it! I happened to mention this […]
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Today in the calendar of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and on the Benedictine Calendar is the feast of this blog’s patron, Saint Bede the Venerable. For no reason that I understand, in 1970 his feast was moved to the day before yesterday. This sort of silly confusion should really be cleared up. One calendar for the Roman […]
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March 25 is the usual date for the great feast of the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, but it is transferred to the Monday after the Easter Octave whenever it falls within Holy Week. Very rarely, Good Friday – the date of Our Lord’s Crucifixion – is also on March 25. Conception and death, all in one day. This is, […]
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The thing about Holy Week is that its liturgies – if they are to be done well and worthily – require practice and rehearsal. We had two on Saturday (for Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil), and I’m going to one for Holy Thursday in about an hour. We’ll probably sneak in a quick one before Tenebræ. Friday is the rehearsal […]
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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 […]
» Read more