1. A blessed Feast of the Sacred Heart, and month of the Sacred Heart! This is one of my favorite devotions, partly on its own merits, partly because of its associations (though of course, these are not unrelated). What is the heart? It is the core of a man, the source of life, the seat … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Sacred Heart, Fr. Kapaun, More Japan
Saints
Saturday Flotsam: Late, Haphazard Edition
1. I missed yesterday owing to poor time management. Oh, well. 2. I'm officially on a 3-week Christmas break from work. A break I'll need to use to find another part-time job and get myself onto a good schedule so that I can be more successful in the next semester. Not that this past semester … Continue reading Saturday Flotsam: Late, Haphazard Edition
Friday Flotsam: Teaching, St. John Vianney, and Beavers
1. This week was training for my new teaching job. It looks like it'll either be an amazing experience or a catastrophic disaster. I guess we'll find out. 2. At the very least, I won't have to worry about what I should read for a while; it's pretty much all read books and discuss, and … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Teaching, St. John Vianney, and Beavers
St. George at C365
Late in posting this owing to a busy day, but for today's Catholic 365 post I did a piece on St. George: It is further related of him that, one day in his travels, he came to a place by a great lake, wherein there dwelt a dragon who envenomed the whole district. To appease … Continue reading St. George at C365
Feast of St. Joseph: Church and State
The other day I described the Protestant mentality as a kind of separation of Church and State within the individual. That, of course, itself depends on the idea that there is something like Church and State in the individual, which I seems to me almost self-evident. There is in man that which seeks the ultimate … Continue reading Feast of St. Joseph: Church and State
All Saints’ Quote of the Day
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant … Continue reading All Saints’ Quote of the Day
Feast of St. Boethius
There are a surprising number of people whom even knowledgeable Catholics don't realize are Saints, and Boethius is one of the more prominent. While secular scholars loftily debate whether he was even Christian (which seems to me absurd given even a cursory reading of De Consolatione), the Church has recognized him as a Saint and … Continue reading Feast of St. Boethius
Friday Flotsam: Bl. Karl, Lasik, Tolkien, and Anime
1. First and foremost; today’s the feast of Bl. Karl of Austria, whose prayers we desperately need today as the wreckage of Christendom spirals ever more wildly out of control. Just learned of a quote of his that has immediately become one of my favorites: “We are bearers of culture even in the land of … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Bl. Karl, Lasik, Tolkien, and Anime
Friday Flotsam: Some History, Headspace, and More
1. Most of my reading this week was more stuff on colonial and early American history, which I don’t want to talk about right now because I’m a little tired of controversies on the subject. That’s kind of a pattern with a lot of these Flotsams and, heck, life in general; most of the stuff … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Some History, Headspace, and More
Newly Blessed Martyrs
Thanks to Caroline Furlong for sharing this: ten holy Polish sisters who were martyred by the advancing Red Army in 1945 were Beatified last weekend. The group of Elizabethan martyr-sisters is headed by the youngest of them, Blessed Sister Maria Paschalis (Maria Magdalena) Jahn. She was born on April 7, 1916, the eldest of four … Continue reading Newly Blessed Martyrs