Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
It’s one month since we arrived in Santiago de Compostela as pilgrims for the third time. Every pilgrimage is different. You’re a different person with different concerns and worries and joys each time. And the Lord gives you different graces and consolations each time. It normally takes me a month or longer to process our Caminos. Re-entry is difficult. This […]
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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 Francine and I embark on our pilgrimage today, we will certainly be asking their help. As it says […]
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We leave for Spain on Tuesday, and we’ve definitely entered into scramble mode. Equipment purchases, refinements, and testing has gone on for months, but it always seems like there’s something breaking or not working at the last minute. Our rigourous training schedule has gone by the boards this week due to increasingly frantic work pressures. And of course, there’s always […]
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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. But the child had the great fortune to be born in 1013, a much […]
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Prior to each of our previous Camino pilgrimages, I’ve tried to articulate why it is that we walk. Everybody’s answer is, of course, different. It has ever been thus. Before my first Camino, I had this sense that God was calling me to it, and maybe that was enough of a reason. Maybe it was partly the sense of adventure […]
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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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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 the Precious and Life-creating Cross”. The feast commemorates a number of events: the finding of the True Cross in 326 in Jerusalem by Saint Helena, the later dedication […]
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So saith today’s saint, the incomparable Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407). He was, of course, himself a bishop. It seems that this pithy quote is a popularization of the full (attributed) quote, where the saint is talking about the relatively few in number who will be saved and the bad shepherds who are responsible: The road to Hell is paved […]
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Twelve years ago, on September 10th 2006, I made my final oblation to Saint Martin’s Abbey in Lacey. I am an Oblate of the Order of Saint Benedict. Much has happened in those years, but much remains the same. As an Oblate, I promise to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict inasmuch as it applies to my state in life. […]
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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. Scripture tells us very little about the early life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Tradition tells us that she was […]
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Today is one of the more interesting feasts on the liturgical calendar, for today is the feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. OK, nowadays they’ve slightly sanitized the name; it’s now officially called the “Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist”, but for the sheer Catholic joy of calling a spade a spade, I’m sticking […]
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In this very volatile moment in history, where so much anger rises to the surface so quickly, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the meaning of our times. Anger and factionalism and the accompanying doom-saying – even within the Church – is hardly unique to our age. Charles Dickens’ great classic, A Tale of Two Cities, begins with […]
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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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“I am a Polish Catholic priest. I would like to take the place of this man, since he has a wife and children.” (Saint Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Con., taking the place of fellow prisoner Franciszek Gajowniczek at Auschwitz.) Saint Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan Friar and priest who spent much of his life as a missionary. He returned to his […]
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Depending on your particular calendar, today or yesterday was the feast of Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), a great saint and Doctor of the Church who founded the Redemptorists and wrote on the spiritual life. I particularly enjoy his Way of the Cross and a short book (pamphlet, really) called How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God. Yesterday I found […]
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Today is the memorial of one of my favourite saints, Saint Thomas More, who died at the hands of King Henry VIII (that villain). That is, today is his memorial in the modern Roman calendar, which he shares with Saint John Fisher, also executed by the same king. In my Benedictine ordo, however, it is no such thing – you’d […]
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As we approach the town of Villafranca del Bierzo, we pass through an old farmstead that includes this building. I want to say something about this, because while it is an extreme example, you see this sort of thing all over the Camino. Indeed, in a sense you see this wherever humans live. Was the original wall medieval, or was […]
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