Our Lady and one of her knights

This is a statue of Our Lady. Queen of Palestine. Geoffrey Gilbert is a Catholic man and a Knight of the Holy Seplucher and he is going on a Hike for the Holy Land. He's going to do a grueling walk to raise money and awareness for our Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land. I think it's shameful how Christians in America have forgotten these people.  Life being caught between the Palestinians and the Israelis is miserable and getting worse. Much of the population has decided to get out.

 If you would like to help Mr. Gilbert, donation information can be found here.  If you can't spare money and a lot of us can't these days he and the largely foresaken people he's trying to help need your prayers and please pass his story on to others.


HT TLM-MD blog

Sr. Louise of Moret

This painting was done in 1680. Sr. Louise was a Benedictine nun living in France. How I wish there was more known about her. All that history really gives us is a legend that she was the illegitimate daughter of Queen Maria Theresa. This of course is ridiculous. It was impossible to carry on an undetected affair in Versaille and the Queen was known to be a deeply pious, no nonsense woman. How Sr. Louise got to France and her life in the convent is just one of those mysteries of history.

Our Lady of Tenderness

TMI or "I don't believe I'd a told that"

Once a woman at a party blurted out something about her relationship with her husband that really should've been kept between them. There was silence and then finally an older gentleman responded by saying, "Ma'am, I don't believe I'da  told that." Reading this story about a Deacon and his wife  who mean well brought the phrase to my mind. What the heck has happened to privacy? Does everybody have to spew out their personal business?  Really, Sir and Madam, God bless your hearts but your conjugal relationship is none of my business and frankly, I don't think anybody really wanted to hear about it.

 

 

 

 

 

Two March for Life moments and one foul man

Yesterday as I was on my way to work, two young women were talking rudely about the March for Life and about babies. No one smiled, no-one made eye contact. The train seemed to be more quiet than usual. I got off before my stop because I just didn't want to be near them anymore.  Later that day I met two beautiful young ladies who asked me which way Madison Street was because they were lost and trying to get to the March. I gave them directions and prayed for them.  It's funny but they were about the same age as the women on the train but they looked so different. Their faces were younger, happier, hopeful. 



At work I read about the comments of "Sir" David Attenborough. He thinks humans are a plague on the earth and that the West should stop helping Ethiopians whenever a drought occurs. Since I live in Northern Virginia and work in DC I meet people from around the world. Most of my neighbors are Ethiopian. I happen to think there is nothing cuter on the planet than a fat, smiling Ethiopian baby and I'd rather hear one Ethiopian baby giggle than a hundred David Attenboroughs saying anything. I'd rather wave goodbye to the last Panda  and Snail Darter than consign one human infant to death. Perhaps his comments would've sounded better in the original German or whatever language the Devil speaks when he's in Hell but the bottom line is that ole Dave doesn't think his precious children are a plague nor is he volunteering himself for suicide. No, he wants the brown and black kids dead. What a foul man. I'll never watch one of his shows again.
 Our Lady of Africa, pray for us.

Our Lady of Africa

An English Pieta

 

 

Michaelangelo's Pieta is the more famous and far more beautiful but this version may be more accurate becuase it shows the rigor mortis that Our Lord's body must have been in by the time He was take down from the cross.

Five minute hates and other random thoughts

* I think that every now and then Americans need a five minute hate to distract us from our own lives. Tiger Woods commited the sin of adultery but the way the media covered it and the way the public ate it up you'd think he was John Wayne Gacy or Timothy McVeigh. Now it's Lance Armstrong's turn. I'm not defending either man but the frenzy surrounding their falls is ridiculous and very telling. While people are frothing at the mouth over Lance, nasty little men in Washington and New York are plotting very bad things for this country.

* Rocky chatted with a nice young lady at church who is considering becoming Catholic. Sadly, until she met him, all the Catholics she knows (including her boyfriend) are  are so lukewarm that they're actually holding her back from converting.  She's been going to an enquierer's class for months and so far they havne't taught any of the basic things Rocky spoke to her about. Good grief.

* Feminsim seems to have produced three kinds of young men. The repulsive man-boys  who only seem to get excited about playing video games for days, woman haters and feral brutes.


*The Nazis lost the battles of WWII but in many ways they won the actual war. They preached that some lives were unworthy of life and today we have legal abortion and euthanasia is becoming more and more acceptable to many people.



*Please pray for our priests. A termite might say to you, "Sure I eat wood but I'm tiny. It's my nature. I can't help it. Besides, what harm do I really do? You're just being a mean old entomophobic." If you listen to the termite and leave it be, you should not be surprised when you discover that  that the termites have multiplied, taken over and your whole house is a brittle shell. When men like this get ordained they cause a lot of misery and destruction in God's house. I bet you that someone discovered what was going on in the rectory and tried to get the Monsignors superiors to correct him. I also would not be surprised if that person--- a layperson or a fellow priest was told to shut up, mind their own business and be kind to poor Monsignor Wallin.


*I got an idea from Old Bob. He commented that he once made Christmas cards showing the Nativity and the Crucifixion and I thought that was wonderful. I searched for cards that would show the beauty of the Nativity and still remind us of what the Babe in the stable was born to do. I found this and bought a box for next year.



*To the people of both sexes who spend time obsessively oggling Archbishop Ganswein.  What you are doing is not cute.  In fact, it's a sin.

*Since God never does anything for no particular reason it should be noted that Christ chose to make His divinity known to ordinary people at a wedding. Notice that the artist shows the Jewish custom of the ladies and men celebrating in separate areas. Our Lady didn't turn to Jesus at the dinner table and casually ask for a miracle. She had to either call Him over to the partition or she must have asked someone to have Him come close enough for to ask. This is profound. A priest, and I can't remember who it was once said that at the Baptism in the Jordan God makes it clear that His Son's holy mission has begun and at the wedding in Cana Mary too, does this. For the sake of the bride and groom she she asks her Son to show His power. She must have known that this would be the end of their quiet life in Nazareth forever but she did it anyway. Somehow she sensed that it was time.

This is beautiful

 Flowers for St. Dorothy's Feast Day (the real St. Dorothy, not the proposed one)

Spanish Pieta

A Russian Madonna

 

 

I've just discovered Mikhail Nesterov. Unknown the West, the Russians produced awesome realistic religious art. We could learn a lot by studying them. 

Daughters of Charity

 

 

 

 

I was taught by Daughters of Charity in high school. I'll always be thankful to the order.

 

Wisdom from Father Lasance..

Out of the Catholic Church none can be saved. This proposition, which highly displeases all ‎sectarians and infidels, is not only clearly established by the authority of Scripture, and by the ‎perpetual and constant belief of the Catholic Church, but it is also evident from reason itself, so ‎that one must needs be blind who does not perceive its truth. This, however, applies only to ‎those persons who culpably and willfully adhere to heresy, or schism, or infidelity, but by no ‎means to those who have been imbued with errors and prejudices from their earliest years, and ‎to whom not even a doubt occurs that they are involved in heresy or schism, or who, if any ‎doubt arises in their minds, earnestly and sincerely seek after the truth; such persons we leave ‎to the judgment of God, to whom it belongs to penetrate and search  the thoughts and ‎dispositions of hearts. For it is incompatible with the divine goodness and clemency that any ‎one should suffer eternal torments who is not guilty of a willful transgression. To assert the ‎contrary would be against the express doctrine of the Church. ‎

‎"Let us hear St. Augustine: We must not, says he, class among heretics those persons who, ‎without willful obstinacy, maintain a false and perverse doctrine, especially if it is not the off-‎spring of their bold presumption, but a legacy from their deceived  and mistaken parents, and ‎who search after the truth with earnest care, being disposed to renounce their error as soon as ‎they are apprised of it. 

Reading this from Father Lasance's famous prayer book is a huge comfort whenever I worry about my Baptist relatives.

I am the Immaculate Conception

Baptism of the Lord

Mary, the Dawn

Mary always goes to her Son

 

 

You can never go wrong when you follow her footsteps.

Sacred Heart of Jesus!

Wise words from Pope Pius

My doctor cheerfully announced that my thyroid is somewhat underactive and I'm too anemic again. I guess that's why I just want to go to bed as soon as I get home from work...oh well, Pope Pius IX knows what to say....

random thoughts for 2013

*Rocky and I went to the Caledon Wildlife Area in King George County and afterwards we drove over to Maryland to go to Mass at St Ignatius Loyola at Chapel Point, Maryland. The parishioners are so friendly. I love colonial era churches and the closed cozy pews. Afterwards we drove down Route 301 and ate dinner at the Wayerfarer restaurant in the Colony South hotel. It was a lovely day.


*I wish the more um...extreme Tolkein fans would take it down a notch and go for a walk in the fresh air.Yes, J.R.R. was a literary giant but he wasn't a doctor of the Church and his work is not holy writ. When you start ranting about how Tom Bombadil and Goldberry were left out of the LOTR movies it makes the rest of us want to run for the door.


*I just ordered the St. Edmund Campion missal from Watershed Press. I'm looking forward to trying it out.


*If I could give one piece of advice to the single folks at my parish it would be for the young ladies to ignore the dried up old harpy feminists and for the young men to stay away from the viciously hateful manosphere blogs. I'm not saying the whole man blog phenomenon is bad but run away from the immoral ones that teach their readers to use women and pay each one back for the one who hurt you back in high school. That's dangerous. Eve was made for Adam and Adam needs Eve. ANY movement that teaches you to despise the opposite sex is twisted and pathetic.

*I saw a mouse in the living room a few days ago and immediately bought a trap and placed it where the mouse had been. While I was cleaning the bathroom I heard a scream. No, not a squeak, a scream. A mouse was on the trap and he wasn't dead. He kept on screaming and it was astonishing how loud that tiny little thing could get.

Mice are disgusting vermin. They urinate constantly, leave piles of droppings, have an unpleasant odor, and carry fleas and disease and yet I felt terrible listening to that creature struggle for its life. I thought about the millions of babies that have been slaughtered in this country. If one of the lowest of the mammalian life forms can suffer and strain for its life how can people believe a human baby---the highest form of life doesn't feel pain or suffer horribly in abortion?


*How do you know you've hit middle age? When you realize that you are two years older than your pastor. Oh gee....

The Trinity by Vasnetsov

Lectors in space

 

Rocky and I went to the Mary, Mother of God vigil Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral.  I have not read all the Vatican II documents but I'm fairly confident that the council fathers and Pope Paul VI did not say that you had to act out the readings during Mass. One of the lectors had a fine barritone voice but as I sat in the pew all I could think of was William Shatner reading the Preamble of the Constitution  and the Dramatic gopher. If anyone at Mass happened to notice me and by chance wondered why I had such a stupid look on my face well, this is why:

The Egypt years by James Tissot

Looking at these paintings I admired the authentic details. Tissot spent many years in Jerusalem and the surrounding Middle East and I wondered what Our Lady and St. Jospeh said to their neighbors about their time in Egypt. The question must have come up.

 

The Flight into Egypt by James Tissot

 

 

The Sojourn in Egypty by James Tissot

 

The Return from Egypt by James Tissot