Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
The memorial of Saint Valentine was removed from the Roman calendar during the calendar reform of 1970. It seems a shame, since this is one of a vanishingly small number of saint’s feasts that have remained in the secular culture. It seems to me that it could be used as a touchstone for the new evangelization. Mind you, he’s still […]
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Vatican News is reporting that Saint Teresa of Calcutta has been added to the General Roman Calendar. The Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments releases the decree inscribing St. Teresa of Calcutta in the General Roman Calendar, along with the liturgical texts to accompany her feast day on September 5. You can read the full story […]
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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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Today is the anniversary of the death of Saint Brigid of Kildaire. She founded the first monasteries in Ireland shortly after Saint Patrick’s mission. She was named after an ancient Celtic goddess, and over the course of history many of the attributes of the goddess have been attributed to her as well. As you might imagine, this makes a mess […]
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Today is the 150th anniversary of the death of Servant of God Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB (1805-1875). He refounded Solesmes Abbey, from which an entire Congregation of Benedictine monasteries has since sprung. He is responsible for the restoration of monastic life in France, as well as promoting the sacred liturgy and spearheading the revival of Gregorian chant. I have quoted from his […]
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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 […]
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Today is both the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, and the seventeenth 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”. It’s important to mark those changes in our lives. Francine actually changed the trajectory of my life not […]
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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 […]
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Happy Saint Agnes Day! Saint Agnes was a young Roman lady of 12 or 13 years old who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian in about AD 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 […]
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Today in the United States, we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so I thought I’d tackle the question “are there non-Catholic saints?” Seems like a simple question. First off, what’s a saint exactly? We turn to our trusty Catechism once more and find the following: 823 “The Church . . . is held, as a matter of faith, to […]
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Today is the feast of the man many consider to be the founder of Christian monasticism, Saint Anthony the Great of Egypt, the “Father of Monks”. He was born in the middle of the third century in decidedly Pagan Middle Egypt to a well-to-do, comfortable family. He spent much of his life avoiding the sorts of comforts available to him […]
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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. Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (by Amabilia Filicchi, 1888) She was born in 1774 and grew up in a home in upperclass New York society. Her father was frequently absent in London […]
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Happy Ninth Day of Christmas! Today is the Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church. Saints Basil and Gregory Nazianzen were contemporaries from Cappadocia and great theologians of the early Church. They were lifelong friends and cohorts in fighting against the Arian heresy. Their names are sung together in the Litany of […]
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Happy seventh day of Christmas! Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Saint Sylvester I, pope and confessor. He was born in the southern Italian town of Sant’Angelo a Scala to two Roman citizens, Rufinus and Justa. He was ordained by Pope Saint Marcellinus just before the persecutions of Diocletian got underway. He survived those years of terror and saw […]
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Happy sixth day of Christmas! Today is the first day of the Christmas Octave that is not otherwise also a solemnity, feast, or memorial. That does not mean, however, that there aren’t other saints we could celebrate today in the midst of our Christmas joy. Today might be a good time to talk about the Roman Martyrology. This is one […]
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Happy fifth day of Christmas! Today, the Church usually celebrates the memorial of Saint Thomas Becket. Because it’s the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas, it is instead the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In the Holy Family, God gives us a living icon of family life: child, mother, father. Russian Icon of the Holy Family […]
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In our life of faith, we are given a name at Baptism, and we choose a new name at Confirmation. It was a little different for me, as I was baptized and confirmed on the same day as an adult. My mother gave me the name Thomas at my birth, and for my confirmation, I took the name of John […]
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