A Cuzco school Immaculate Conception

Easter

Holy Saturday

What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. from an ancient Holy Saturday Homily

Consummatum Est

Is Your Sorrow Like Unto My Sorrow?

Good Friday

Could you not watch even one hour with Me?

The Hours of the Passion begin

Holy Thursday

Spy Wenesday

Holy Tuesday

Palm Sunday

This painting by Bradi Barth really got to me. It shows Our Lord starting out of Palm Sunday and His mother watching. Never-mind that crappy "Mary Did You Know," song, Our Lady did know that this is day is part of what the angel and Simeon were talking about.

Dear beloved and esteemed priests, if you are determined to wash any women's feet at least keep your lips to yourself.

 In no gospel does it mention Our Lord kissing the feet of the apostles. The gospels do not state that He kissed any female feet either. That's all I'm going to say. I'm so disgusted that's all I can say.

At prayer

Passion Sunday

Go and sin no more

Pray for bad priests

A few days ago I read a blog by an elderly man who is chronicling the ruin of his parish. It's very sad. He and his wife now take an hour long drive to get to the next parish on Sunday and frequently find no priest for daily Mass at their parish because Father, who is something of a celebrity in this diocese,  is busy with one of his cool causes.

We need to pray very much for celebrity priests because they are usually not good priests. A priest who can rarely be found in his rectory, the parish hall or the homes of his parishioners is a priest on the road to trouble.  A priest who manages to pump out daily and substantial blog content  about non-holy things, such as Star Wars or airport food, politics, people he doesn't like and his totally secular adventures on his day off  is telling his readers something whether he realizes it or not.

If you know what your favorite celebrity priest's most liked food is, or his preferred non-clerical clothing brand or all about his comic book collection, scratch the surface and you will find that his parochial vicar or his deacon, like Thomas Merton's friar brothers had to do,  are picking up his slack while he pursues fame. This is not good. It's not good for the priest. It's not good for his fans. And it's not good for his parishioners, if he even has any. One young priest in my diocese used to write a travel blog. It was inoffensive but after a while it began to seem to me that young Father was not all that thrilled with his "job," and that the day off was a huge relief to him. He stopped the blog, took some time to think and decided to leave the priesthood. Did this episode help the spiritual life of his parishioners or harm it?

Unless the blog is about homeletics or apologetics I've stopped reading priest blogs. If you really are a fan of a particular blogging priest don't make offerings to his vanity or act like  girl squealing at her favorite pop star. Instead, imitate the holy women who ministered to Our Lord. Serve. Pray for him. Sacrifice for him. Give alms to help him do some good. And when he chooses to not act like Christ, if you can't stop reading then at least comment and let him know what's he's doing in a decorous, humble way.

St. Therese's prayer for priests 

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 priests;

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

A nun

Saint Joaquina Vedruna Vidal de Mas

This holy woman was the mother of nine children. After her husband died she became a nun and founded the Institute of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity. Her order was dedicated to teaching children and nursing the sick. 

Good golly Miss Molly, where were you in 2008?

Molly Oshatz says if you vote for Trump you are a lukewarm Catholic.   That's a serious admonition. Our Lord will cast the lukewarm from Him with such speed and force it will be as if they were vomited.  I don't do politics on this blog. It no longer interests me and I think this country is long past the point of secular help but I find Molly's opinion and George Weigel's  appeal to Catholics essay to be really quite distasteful. Neither brings Catholicism to mind so much as the image of an exasperated nanny lecturing a half witted sullen child who does not have sense enough to come in out of the rain.

Rest in peace, oh holy women of God

A group of males, (they are not fit to be called men) most likely Muslim showed what big, brave  "warriors" they were by attacking a nursing home in Yemen. Yes, a nursing home. They massacred 16 people including eight residents of the home and Missionaries of Charity nuns who were tenderly and bravely caring for the elderly. The one surviving sister did so because she hid in the refrigerator. She had time to do so because a Yemeni guard managed to warn her before he was either killed or wounded himself. A priest who was in the chapel is missing.

Oh God, have mercy on the souls of Sister Judith, Sister Reginette, Sister Anselm and Sister Marguerite. 

A Daughter of Charity