Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Today’s transferred Solemnity of the Annunciation comes just one day after Divine Mercy Sunday this year. There’s a certain poetry in this, for the the flip side of God’s infinite mercy to us is that we must accept His mercy. And make no mistake, the mercy of God is a scandal – Christ offers His infinite mercy to every worst […]
» Read more
Today, the Second Sunday in the Octave of Easter, is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday. Pope Saint John Paul II proclaimed the Sunday after Easter as the Sunday of the Divine Mercy (Dominica II Paschæ seu de divina misericordia) in accord with the visions of the Divine Mercy received by Saint Faustina. But what is the Divine Mercy? In […]
» Read more
Today, a week before Good Friday, the Church has traditionally remembered the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin. While the commemoration was removed from the calendar in 1970, it survives in the Extraordinary Form, as well as in many local calendars including that most Catholic country of Malta and many Hispanic countries. The commemoration is so widespread, in fact, that […]
» Read more
Today on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, we would do well to meditate on the life of the man who helped raise the Son of God. It can’t have been easy. Tradition holds that Joseph was already an old man and a widower when he married the Blessed Virgin, who was very young, perhaps 16 or so. He had several […]
» Read more
Today is Ash Wednesday. “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 […]
» Read more
This past Saturday, on the Memorial of Saint Scholastica, I received my letter from the Archdiocese of Seattle regarding my application for formation to the Diaconate. The answer, as it was eight years ago, was no. This time, there was no real explanation, just a carefully worded form letter. The last time my application was rejected, I wrote a heartfelt […]
» Read more
I can’t speak for anybody else, but I need all the help I can get. As a writer, I often find that I love having written much more than actually writing. I distract myself easily. It doesn’t help, I suppose, that I tend to write in bursts, like I’m emptying my brain. Then I rather need to recharge the brain […]
» Read more
On this day in 1892, J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The Professor is 131 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 plan to join in, and I encourage you to do the same. The Professor’s […]
» Read more
a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien Grim was the world and grey last night:The moon and stars were fled,The hall was dark without song or light,The fires were fallen dead.The wind in the trees was like to the sea,And over the mountains’ teethIt whistled bitter-cold and free,As a sword leapt from its sheath. The lord of snows upreared his head;His mantle […]
» Read more
Today’s reading from the Holy Rule is from chapter 64, “Of the Election of the Abbot”. I was particularly struck by Saint Benedict’s admonition of how the abbot should act, which I think is good advice for all leaders. Here’s the relevant bit. [W]hen the Abbot hath been elected let him bear in mind how great a burden he hath […]
» Read more
Today is the memorial of the great Doctor of the Church, Saint Ambrose of Milan (340-397). As is my custom on this day, I’m posting the second reading from today’s Office of Readings. Although Ambrose is specifically addressing bishops in this letter, his call to evangelization is for all of us, for all time. Saint Ambrose of Milan, a contemporary […]
» Read more
Happy Feast of All Saints! This is the day where we celebrate all the saints, known and unknown: the Church Triumphant. We ask them to pray for us. I for one could use all the help I can get! This day has been a feast since the sixth or seventh century, thanks to the abbots of Cluny, and it was […]
» Read more
From August 18 through October 23, 2023, I walked from Le Puy-en-Velay in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain on pilgrimage to the tomb of the Apostle Saint James the Greater – Santiago. During this pilgrimage, I walked 1,633.8 km, or just over 1,015 miles. This doesn’t count walking around and exploring the many cities, towns, and villages where […]
» Read more
“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.) On today’s Vigil of the Assumption, we celebrate also the memory of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan Friar and priest who spent […]
» Read more
Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Mary Magdalen. In the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, this is indeed a feast again, rather than merely a memorial, thanks to a change made by Pope Francis. In the Extraordinary Form and in my Monastic Breviary, it is a Class III feast, through prior to the reform of 1962, it was […]
» Read more
Saint Bonaventure, whose memorial is today in the Ordinary Form, received his (much delayed) doctorate in theology in Paris in 1257, in the same class as Saint Thomas Aquinas. Later that same year, he was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order. Bonaventure spent much of his life as a theologian at the university, living in poverty as a Franciscan […]
» Read more
Today is the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia, who can safely be said to be the father of western monasticism. His monastic Holy Rule, still followed today after almost 1,500 years, spread throughout the west as the Roman Empire collapsed. Pope Pius XII lauded him, for in the perilous times that followed Rome’s fall, it was Benedictine monks who […]
» Read more