Vespers at St. Francis Church

Gethsemane

...And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.  Luke 24:14

O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow: for he hath made a vintage of me.. Lamentations 1:12

Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord.. Psalm 130

He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things?  Romans 8:32

One of the Sweetest Holy Family paintings I've ever seen

A rather sobering Last Supper

This drawing of the Last Supper is interesting and in particular because of the way the unknown artist portrays Judas. Obviously, he's the only one in the dinning room with no halo but look at his body posture.  Everyone else is following Jesus with rapt attention. They are leaning towards Him with hands either clasped in prayer or outstretched in supplication  but Judas sits stiffly with his elbow on the table and his knees crossed in a studied imitation of casualness. One hand is  directed away from the Lord and the other is clinching his precious blood money.  He is in the room with the Lord and the others but inside he's already gone.  This drawing  deftly illustrates the hardened, smug sinner who does not even acknowledge to himself that he is a sinner, at Mass.

Some such as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom say that Judas took Communion  and was the first to eat and drink condemnation for this profanity. Others speculate that Judas left before Our Lord instituted the Holy Eucharist or defer to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich who said that the bread  fell from Judas's hand before he could consume it.  Either way is a rather sobering lesson and a warning about the deadly seriousness about receiving Our Lord's precious blood and body while in a state of mortal sin.

Conowingo

Last week, Rocky and I went on a day in Western Maryland to look at bald eagles at the Conowingo Damn. It was incredible. I got to see them flying and sitting  and heard them for the first time. They seem to take little interest in humans but vocalize to each other quite a lot.  We also saw vultures, cormorants, a peregrine falcon hunting pigeons and a slew of different gulls and terns. Afterwards we went to the charming town of Port Deposit, MD and ate an excellent meal at  the Union Mill hotel.   We took photos of the local Catholic Church, St. Theresa of Avila, which has been around since 1866. It's only used on Sundays and shares a pastor with two other parishes. God bless that priest. He must be in constant motion.

Prayer For Priests

-St. Therese of the Child Jesus

O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests;

for your unfaithful and tepid priests;

for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields.

for your tempted priests;

for your lonely and desolate priest

for your young priests;

for your dying priests;

for the souls of your priests in Purgatory.

But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me:

the priest who baptized me;

the priests who absolved me from my sins;

the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;

the priests who taught and instructed me;

all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way (especially …).

O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart,

and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen

Treasure and Tradition: The Ultimate Guide to the Latin Mass

I just found a fantastic book.   It's a guide to the Tridentine Mass that has clear black and white drawings that explain what everything is on the altar, what the priest has on and why and what the Mass is.  It also has gorgeous photos of each part of the Mass and shows the words of the Mass in two ways. First you can see the Latin words with the English translation right underneath and if that doesn't work for you the author, Lisa Bergman has the parts of the Mass in English alone on the same page. Another very helpful feature is a chart a the front and the back that helps you find your place should you get "lost" during Mass. The book is absolutely beautiful to look at and it's a hardback which makes it durable and a lovely gift for someone. Rocky was fascinated just leafing through it and I've learned so much.  Thank you Lisa Bergman!

My King

Um...Simcha?

Seriously, can someone explain Simcha Fischer to me? Other than being an insult comic what is the point of her act? I think I understand what she loathes, but I'm fuzzy on what she loves about the Faith and the people who actually practice it.

Prayer

Christ and His Mother

Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation is quite well known but I've never seen this one which shows Mary and her Divine Son a few years later.  

random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

1. Is the proposed by certain Cardinals attitude of "mercy" toward adulterers  a Trojan Horse? Is it really a way to introduce homosexual "marriage" in the Church?
   
2. Have you noticed that the people who used to say that Hispanics were the future of the Church in the US have fallen quiet? Is it because Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are racing through Latin America?
   
3. I read that there are going to be showers set up at the Vatican for the homeless. That sounds nice but I hope there is a plan for the problems that will come with the showers. Homeless men and women present a huge challenge. Why are they homeless? Because, in most cases,  the mental or drug and/or  drink induced  behavior or the plain criminal behavior that binds them is so bad that their own relatives and old friends can't deal with them. There will be drugs in the shower area. There will be crime.  Some of the homeless will become prey. Other will be agent of chaos themselves. Women tourists would be best served if they are told to stay away or only walk in groups near the showers. Volunteers  of both sexes will need a full course of safety training.
   
   At my old parish I had a number of homeless pals that I chatted with, donated to and tried to comfort but I knew, and the folks in charge of the homeless ministry said straight out that females should not be alone in a room with the clients. My husband Rocky used to check the restrooms and unused conference rooms before and after the bible study he attended at our old parish. After bible study he also escorted the usually young women who attended, to the door lest any of them be cornered by a client.   I am not saying fear the homeless. Many of them are pitiful victims who are afraid of you but you need to be realistic. No matter how many years you've been a lion tamer, you don't casually stroll into the den. I hope nobody gets hurt in and around the shower area and if they do, I hope it's not covered up.
   
4. Yesterday I read part of an article about a spate of snatch and run attacks on women in NYC. I stopped reading when one of the victims was quoted as asking where the men were? Since each attack happened in the middle of busy sidewalks why didn't any man step in to help? I thought, "My sister, you can't have it both ways". Today's young man has probably seen his mother, his aunt or his sisters trade Dad  in for a check from the government or a support check and has grown up seeing the women in his life go from man to man.  Even if the women in his life were chaste while he was growing up he's seen that a single woman can take care of herself . All of his life he's been told that  womankind's biggest hindrance is man. One example of the the toxic atmosphere in this country between the sexes is a  t-shirt that was sold in  major clothing store chains. It  bore the words, "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them." Many people thought this was cute and ridiculed the people who found these shirts offensive. With all the poison  let loose in our society, why, my sister do you expect a man to step forward  to save  you? There are good men who would come to the rescue but they are thin on the ground and won't be around when you need one. Our feminists sisters think that's just great. I'm going to cheerfully use a cliche  here:  we can not put the genie back in the bottle.
   
   
5. In your charity please pray for my uncle in the nursing home.  They found blood in a stool sample and he's scheduled for an ulcer test and a colonoscopy. I'm not sure how we are going to be able to get the Golightly prep formula into him because it doesn't taste good and he is not going to understand why he's being forced to fast. Fortunately both tests will be done at 6AM so he'll be able to eat as soon as possible.
   
   
6. Every time you go to Mass the most glorious thing in the world happens. Bread and wine turns to the Flesh and Blood of Christ. We don't see it like St. Gregory did, but it happens just the same. 

Mass of St. Gregory

Porn is not just a man's sin

Usually whenever there is a discussion, sermon or online commentary about pornography it is about men and boy and only mentions women and girls as victims. It's very rare that anybody brings up women's pornography. If you read 50 Shades of Gray and swooned you indulged in pornographic material. The woman reading "mommy porn", "erotica" or mainstream "spicy" romances is just as big a sinner as a man looking at filthy photos on his computer but so many of us treat this like it's cute. It's not.

The Rescuers

In this dramatic painting, artist, Carlo Dolci shows four Franciscan  monks who have come to the rescue of a family who took a wrong turn on a mountain.  I can not know if it was the artists's intention but this is a beautiful allegory for what  good priest can do for a sinner.

suicide is not dignified or pretty

I was thinking about Brittany Maynard and I wonder if she had any idea of what suicide really looks like. I once had a relative, who decided to end things. The death was not like a sentimental movie. The spouse of this relative was left to clean up feces from the carpet. The body does some ugly stuff after death and it's not a charming memory for your loved ones.

Death and the Maiden by Marianne Stokes

Requiem Missa Cantata

To the Blessed Sacrament....

I

 I adore Thee profoundly, my Jesus, true Victim of expiation for our sins; and I offer Thee this act of adoration in compensation for the sacrilegious outrages Thou dost receive from so many of Thy ungrateful people, who dare to draw nigh to Thee and receive Thee in Communion with mortal sin upon their souls. In reparation for these hateful sacrileges, I offer Thee those last drops of They most Precious Blood which Thou didst shed from the wound in Thy Side; and, entering therein, I approach Thee with acts of adoration, love, and thanksgiving, and with all holy souls who are devout to Thee in the most Holy Sacrament, I say:
Blessed and praised every moment
Be the most holy and divine Sacrament.
Pater noster. Ave Maria. Gloria Patri.


This prayer can be found in The Raccolta

random thoughts on All Saints Day

Feast of All Saints

• I've noticed a lot of attempts at man shaming going on in Catholic blog land. In the 70s and 80s a lot of men  were disgusted by the shenanigans in their parishes but kept on going to Mass and refused to help with anything, (the guys who were active beyond ushering or putting up the altar Christmas tree, were chuckled at and the adults use the word "hen pecked" to describe them ). Other men and boys simply stopped going to Mass as soon as they turned 18, and would only return for weddings, funerals, graduations, the occasional baptism and perhaps a Christmas Midnight Mass. As a girl,  I never got the impression that any of the ladies really missed them. Anyone who had a problem with the pastor, the church musician or the deacons behaving in a womanish manner had two choices: Shut up or don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya,  and until the pedophilia/ephebophilia  scandal burst open like a rotten watermelon this was all A-okay.   Frankly, instead of these sermons, essays and not so cute memes to shame men into coming back to Mass how about begging their pardon and asking them to come back for the sake of their souls and because we need them? Steve Wood has an interesting essay on the subject at his site. 
• 
  
• The annual fight about whether to let the kids participate in  Halloween didn't happen in Catholic blog land this year. Things in the church and the secular world are so bad right now that people had other concerns.
• My parish is having a missa cantata on November 6, at 7:30.
  
• Rocky and I went on vacation last week and on the way back we stopped at the church we were married in for Sunday Mass. I couldn't wait to leave. The cantor came darn close to giving up a lounge act but the priest gave a good homily. As I sat there I thought of my own pastor and decided that I should thank him for the way he celebrates Mass and if I get chance I'll thank our church musician, who is highly talented, for never cutting loose and dominating the Mass.
  
  
• I realized something on my vacation. I felt physically great for the entire week. I'm not sure how to do it but I'm going to have to figure out a way to lower my stress level at work.
  
  
  
• I feel embarrassed for Michael Voris.