Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
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 pilgrimage of penitence. Let […]
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Today, we begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday. The modern Roman Missal has a set of rubrics that cover the whole of Lent, before digging into each day separately. Most folks are familiar with number 4, and I’d venture to say that 3 is not exactly unknown to priests and ministers, if not the folks in the pews. […]
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Leading up to the great celebration of the mysteries of the death and resurrection of Christ during Holy Week, the Church calls us to forty days of penitence. The Lenten Season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving has been observed by Christians since Apostolic times. Indeed, Christ himself retreated to the desert for forty days, where he was tempted by the […]
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Arms of Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle By I, SajoR, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link Fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are the three traditional disciplines of Lent. The faithful and catechumens should undertake these practices seriously in a spirit of penance and of preparation for Baptism or of renewal of Baptism at Easter. (Code of Canon Law, 1249-1252) Ash Wednesday, February 26, […]
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Most folks have seen some variation of this photo of Bernini‘s “Chair of Peter” in the Vatican. It’s a masterpiece of baroque art, found in every art textbook covering the period. The chair in question is carried aloft by four saints. The image of the dove in the Holy Spirit window has been duplicated and copied all over the world […]
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Saint Valentinus of Terni The feast of Saint Valentine was removed from the Roman calendar during the reforms of 1969. 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 […]
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On this, the memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, it seems opportune to post an update on our Camino plans, or lack thereof. Back in 2018, we started making plans for a 2020 Camino. The basic idea is that I would start in Saint-Jean, and Francine would rent an apartment in Burgos or, more probably, Santiago, where she could do […]
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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 Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of a liturgical season known as Septuagesima or Fore-Lent or Shrovetide. It consists of the three weeks immediately before the start of Lent, and indeed the name Septuagesima means seventy, in reference to Quadragesima – forty – which is the proper Latin name for Lent. This liturgical season, meant to prepare us for the […]
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Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. In memoria æterna erit iustus, ab auditione mala non timebit. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon him. He shall be justified in everlasting memory, and shall not fear evil reports. Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in æternum, quia pius es. […]
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My monastic Breviary contains memorials and feasts for many saints who fell off the General Calendar in 1969 (or who had their feasts demoted and/or moved). Since I don’t know much about many of these saints, I’ve been frequently supplementing with the Matins readings of the day. These readings often give short hagiographies of the saint. Today is the feast […]
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In addition to being the feast of Saint Blaise, today is the memorial of Blessed Iusto Takayama Ukon. He was a Catholic samurai, pledged to Clan Toyotomi, as well as Daimyō of Takatsuki and Akashi. In 1587 his daimyō, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, banished Christian missionaries from his lands and ordered all his Christian daimyōs to renounce their faith. Although many nobles gave […]
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Today was once one of the most solemn feasts of the year. It’s gone by several names over the millennia: the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Candlemas. Coming forty days after Christmas, it was even once the end of the Christmas season. Even today there are relics of […]
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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 Catholic […]
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Today is both the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul and the twelfth 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. Francine and I have a funny tradition. When I proposed to her, […]
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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 who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian in about the year 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 her wedding feast. […]
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