For love of thee and me....

Random thoughts in a a rough week

• Have you ever had someone tell you the famous St. Francis quote, "Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary use words,"? It's pretty suspect.  First off, there is no proof that St. Francis ever actually said this. None of his early biographers including Franciscans who knew him record this statement. It sounds more like a faux folksy Hallmark saying rather than the words of the seraphic holy man. Secondly, it always seems to be an excuse for the person who says it to do absolutely nothing.
• Whenever someone says "Don't judge me," take a deep breath becuase usually means they're about to tell you something that you really would've preferred not to have known. 

St. Stephen's Cathedral

I'm not sure if this shows Adoration or Benediction.

• St. Corbian's Bear has decided to take a break from Pope Francis news for Lent. That's not a bad idea at all. I think a lot of people would  find some relief by doing the same.

• St. Dymphna, pray for me. It's been a heck of a week. 

A word from Pope Pius XI

"With God and Jesus Christ,"...."excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."



Pope Pius XI

But, but I like rabbits

Seriously, could someone please keep the media away from the Holy Father when he's on the plane? God bless you, parents of big families.

Visit to St. Thomas Moore

I went to my uncle's nursing home on Saturday instead of my usual Sunday this week. It's a good thing to shake up your schedule when you have a loved one at a nursing home. You don't ever want the staff to get casual about your comings and goings. If they think that you only show up on Tuesdays for all you know your loved one is left unclean all week and only cleaned up on Tuesday morning.

At any rate, everything was fine. Rocky picked me up and we went to St. Thomas Moore which is less than a mile from the nursing home for Mass.  If I said St. Thomas was in a rough neighborhood that would be an understatement. Decent people have to be very careful and observant over there. The vigil Mass is held in the rectory chapel and it's very cozy and a sweet, sweet experience. The parishioners are so kind and friendly. An elderly priest, who is fighting a serious illness offered the Mass and his homily was outstanding.  Because the rectory chapel is so small I don't think I'll bring my uncle to Mass there. If he's having a bad day or just wants to fuss he'd disturb everyone so I'll stick to taking him to Annunciation, the other church that's near the nursing home. 

Nope, I'm not Charlie

Notre Dame's bells rang in honor of the dead at the satirical nasty French magazine Charlie Hebdo. This was the surly response from the latest issue.

The Golden Arrow prayer

MAY the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. 
Amen.

random thoughts and nope, I'm not Charlie

A lot of people, impotent in the face of Islam are comforting themselves by  jumping up and down on  Bill Donohoe of the Catholic League but I'm inclined to give the poor old man break. He's not media savvy and never seems to learn a thing from his encounters with the secular press and he probably should've retired years ago.  But never mind Bill, let's be honest about something.  It is a horror that 12 people at the magazine and hostages were murdered by terrorists. May God have mercy on their souls and strengthen their families.  However, don't make saints out of  the staff  at the French satirical magazine--- they  were not nice folks. They regularly blasphemed Our Lord and Our Lady. If you can stomach it, Father Blake in England has posted images of their vile, humor.  Looking at these drawings is an occasion to say the Golden Arrow prayer of reparation for blasphemy because the stuff is satanic. Frankly, upon viewing the magazine's merely offensive drawings on other subjects I was mystified. This is art? This is humor? The subscribers of this crap consider themselves sophisticated? THIS is what they think is worth dying for?  The magazine is not about freedom of speech. It's about license. Those who in their stirred emotions are crying, "I am Charlie," ought to familiarize themselves with what Charlie is.



It was very cold and it snowed for Epiphany. There were the usual car accidents  and  bad judgement on the part of school administrators. Tragically, a number of kids got hurt going to school. The Virginia Department of Transportation blew it and didn't have the roads cleared and the Metro was a nightmare. Rocky and I did not expect to see a lot of people at the Epiphany Mass but the church had a good amount of people, God bless them. We were flirting with the idea of going to Holy Comforter in DC for Mass but the parking situation is hit or miss on Capital Hill and neither one of us was interested in wandering around when we had the chance to go to a beautiful Mass in our own parish. I hoped that someone would take professional photos of the Holy Comforter Mass and a very talented young photographer named Renata Grzan Wiczorak did just that. Feast your eyes on this beauty offered to the Lord. 




There are several things I need to do today but some sort of gastrointestinal plague attacked me around two this morning and has not let up.  I drank a bottle of water, and ate some quiche and went back to bed exhausted.


Sunday is the Feast of the Holy Family or the Baptism of the Lord depending whether you follow the Ordinary form or Extraordinary form calendar.

Baptism of the Lord by Tissot


or 

The Holy Family

Sojourn in Egypt

Riu Riu Chiu from the Monkees

This Spanish carol refers to Our Lady's Immaculate Conception and the nativity of her glorious Son. 

Riu, riu, chiu

The river bank protects it,

As God kept the wolf from our lamb

The rabid wolf tried to bite her

But God Almighty knew how to defend her

He wished to create her impervious to sin

Nor was this maid to embody original sin

Riu, riu, chiu……

He who's now begotten is our mighty Monarch

Christ, our Holy Father, in human flesh embodied

He has brought atonement by being born so humble

Though He is immortal, as mortal was created

Riu, riu, chiu……

Many prophecies told of his coming,

And now in our days have we seen them fulfilled.

God became man, on earth we behold him,

And see man in heaven because he so willed.

Riu, riu, chiu……

A thousand singing angels I saw passing,

Flying overhead, sounding a thousand voices,

Exulting, "Glory be in the heavens,

And peace on Earth, for Jesus has been born."

Riu, riu, chiu……

Happy Epiphany

Your personal taste is not the Faith.

Looking back at 2014, I was struck by how many Catholic writers made the mistake of confusing   tackiness with unrighteousness. Here's a red pill thought for those people: You know that woman who sits in the front pew with her Precious Moments rosary, her grimy Ugg boots and her obviously fake fur coat? She has one of those horrible Jesus playing baseball with little kids figurines at home and a Jesus at the dentist's office painting on her wall. She has bad taste, but that doesn't make her a bad Catholic. In fact, for all you know, her soul is so purified that she's going to be with the good Lord in Heaven 100 years before you even get out of Purgatory.

What if I told you...

The Christ Child

 Melchior Paul von Derschvanden  painted Baby Jesus alone rushing into the arms and hearts of the Faithful. It's interesting how he contrasts the darkness of the landscape and the exquisite brightness of the Holy Child.

Favorites of 2014

My favorite blogs in 2014

Les Femnes 

Fide Cogit Actio 

Restore DC Catholicism

Ann Barnhardt 

(She's as subtle as a punch in the mouth but every time I mutter, "Oh come on now, Ann", six months later she turns out to be absolutely right.)

TLM Maryland 

(My all time favorite and the one site I check everyday)

 Best New Discoveries in 2014

Most people who have a link to the Douay Rheims bible link to the site that promotes the  "Poem of the Man God" by Maria Valtora.  I find this vulgar book to be stomach turning  and I don't want to use any site that supports it in any way so I went looking for an alternative. I found several and didn't really like any of them. Finally I came upon this one. It's clean, has lots of lovely white space and is readable. It has ads but they aren't offensive. 

Joseph Sciambra's blog. This man gets no attention in Catholic media, either printed or online but he's an important voice. He doesn't want to be your mascot, he's not cleverly injecting poison into the minds of Catholic laity and clergy and he calls sin, sin. He's also perfectly frank so if your computer is in the living room and you have children you should read him only when the little ones are not looking over your shoulder. 

David L. Gray He's taken his message to Twitter, on his blog, Facebook and has a phone app. He's not tame, and since he doesn't claim to live an idyllic life on his cozy estate in Catholic dream land, ordinary young Catholics or seekers can relate to him. 

Be Not Afraid: a book of quotes for Catholic men.  It's PDF only and is pretty inspiring for ladies too. 

Well, that was uh, interesting.

Because of Rocky's schedule and traffic we couldn't make it to our own parish for the vigil so we went to another church that we've been to many times before. They had a guest priest and Mass was all over the place. Rocky and I kept looking at each other and the conversation from our pew to the front door went like this:

Dymphna: "Was there a penitential rite?"
Rocky: "No, I'm not sure what that was. I think he combined the opening remarks with the Kyrie."

Dymphna "Oh."

Rocky: "That Gloria went on entirely too long. It was longer than the first and second readings together."
Dymphna "It was call and response style. I don't think the angels sang that long at Bethlehem."

Rocky: "There's no collection? But they're always saying they need money."
Dymphna: "I think it was to save time. Good homily but he raced through it."

Rocky: "Do yo want me to ask about the penitential rite?

Dymphna "No.  I don't want to make him mad."

January 1-- Holy Mother of God or Feast of the Circumcision

Whatever you call it, it's an obligation day so.... get to church. Happy New Year!