Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
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 […]
» Read moreEach year on this, his feast day, I write a short article about Saint Thomas Becket. Having the birth name “Thomas”, I take Becket and Aquinas as patrons. Previous articles on Saint Thomas Becket: 2012: Becket and Chaucer (A meditation on pilgrimage) 2011: Saint Thomas Becket (G.K. Chesterton on Becket’s martyrdom) 2010: Becket (Becket, More, and Henry VIII (that jerk)) […]
» Read moreIn 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 baptised 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, […]
» Read moreThe rest of the world thinks Christmas is over, with the possible exception of those who celebrate Boxing Day today or those fond of partridges in pear trees. Oh, how wrong they are! For like Easter, Christmas isn’t just one day, but a whole season! It continues from Christmas Day through the Epiphany (January 6). In some places, this season […]
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Today is the name day of one of our cats. Her name is Lucy, and most days she’s dumb as a bag of rocks. In her kittenish youth, she was quite acrobatic and active – in fact, she was named after Lucy Liu, rather than the more famous Lucy pictured here. The original Lucy, however, was a Sicilian martyr. She […]
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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 their father’s plan, since […]
» Read moreIn addition to being the first Monday of Advent this year, today is also historically the memorial of Saint Edmund Campion. If the paintings of him are to be believed, he is a man to whom I bear more than a passing resemblance. Today I’m going to upset some of my (Protestant) Christian friends who see the Reformation as a […]
» Read moreCecilia is one of the most famous and most venerated of Roman martyrs, even though the facts of her martrydom are a little vague. Legend has it that she, her husband Valerian, and her brother-in-law Tiburtius were martyred during the reign of Emperor Alexander Severus, about the year 230. Her name appears in the First Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon) […]
» 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 moreHappy Feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian! Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work to-day! KING. What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; If we are mark’d to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if […]
» Read moreSaint Luke is my kind of writer. Luke the historian and Luke the lyrical poet are both in evidence in his New Testament writings, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He freely admits that he never met Christ in the flesh, that he was not a witness to the events he describes in his Gospel. Like any good […]
» Read moreEverybody knows a guy who just won’t shut up. Sometimes it’s not even that he has something to say, or that he likes the sound of his own voice. Sometimes these are the folks who are genuinely frightened by silence. Sometimes, they just don’t know how not to talk. If those folks had a patron saint, it would no doubt […]
» Read moreMy parish of Holy Rosary will hold a Blessing of the Animals on Saturday, October 4 from 10:00 to 11:00 AM in celebration of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Holy Rosary is located just north of I-5 overlooking downtown Tacoma, at 424 South 30th Street. You can’t miss it. Everyone is invited to bring their animals, as Holy […]
» Read moreThis dreary, foggy Monday is the “Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels” or, in the old calendar, the “Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Michael the Archangel”. Whatever you call it, the most common name is Michaelmas. It is one of several harvest festivals celebrated throughout Christian Europe. In England this is one of the “quarter days”, which […]
» Read moreWhat 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 […]
» Read moreToday at 10:12AM, a small vial of dried blood in Naples turned to liquid, as it has done several times a year since at least the 1380s. A great crowd had gathered to witness this event. The man holding up the vial is Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the Archbishop of Naples. The announcement is traditionally greeted by a 21-gun salute from […]
» Read moreOnly a handful of Popes ever get named “Great”. Today is the feast of one of them, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, confessor and doctor of the Church (540 – 604). Gregory had been born into an ancient and wealthy Roman family. Before he was 30 years old, he had been a Roman Senator and then Prefect of Rome. He […]
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