Thoughts on writing, living, and believing…
I need a break—how ’bout you?
This is the point in the afternoon when my eyes start to cross (more than normal). I’ve ingested enough caffeine to keep a platoon of Marines awake for a week. I can’t go outside cuz, well, it’s February. There’s only one other solution…
We need some tunes up’n dis hizzie…
Benedict XVI is a week away from his abdication, and the media is in its normal lather about all things Roman Catholic. When they’re not slamming the Church over sex-abuse, womens’ ordination, married priests or another of their favorite straw-men, they mostly prefer to pretend that Catholics don’t exist, or at best are a quaint bunch of superstitious people who pray to Mary and follow a man in a white hat. That is, until there’s a papal election to cover, and then they fall all over themselves 
Dan-Browning the secrecy, antiquity, and mysterious nature of a ritual that is more spiritual than temporal.
Of course, the most titillating storyline is, who will it be? Vegas bookies already have odds on the top candidates and will happily take your action. I’ve heard all kinds of names bandied about, including one that I’ve been talking about for the last four years, Timothy Cardinal Dolan. I met Cardinal Dolan when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee. He is a big, loud, genial, unpretentious, scholarly, and most of all a very holy man. I could see then that he was a man on whom God had laid His hand for greater service.
We’ll see.
The Italians, who are pretty used to this sort of thing, have a saying that the cardinal who goes into conclave a pope, comes out a cardinal. There is great wisdom in that on many levels. I was a little over one year old when Pope Paul VI was elected, but I do remember the elections of John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What I have seen and what the media often misses, is that the conclave is a work of the Holy Spirit. The man who stands on that balcony will be the pastor of 1 billion souls. May God have mercy on him!
For those who are interested, here’s a neat little interactive graphic on how popes are elected.
Jesus is Condemned to Death
Patiently, silently, you stand there, determined to do your Father’s will for love of me. Even though your human nature recoils at the pain and humiliation you have undergone, and have yet to face, you do not waver.
You hear the crowd’s jeers. A few, short days ago, they greeted you with, “Hosanna!” You see the desperation in Pilate’s cringing eyes, so full of fear and confusion. You know he doesn’t have the courage to pronounce you innocent and set you free. He takes the coward’s way and washes his hands of your fate. He wants nothing more to do with you.
Jesus, did you see me hidden in the crowd too? Cursing you, when only a short time ago you healed me of my blindness and sickness. And did you see me in Pilate’s chair, washing my hands of the responsibility for the horror you now face for my sake?
And yet, this is all done according to Your will. Oh have mercy on me Lord, a sinner and a coward!
FoB, Paulist Prison Ministries, is in the midst of a project to produce daily prayer books for distribution in our nation’s prisons and to parishes around the country. You can see a sample below the fold. As of today, they are able to print and deliver ~20,000 copies; however, PPM serves some 650 prison chaplains who will no doubt want these for the men and women they serve which means they’ll need to print a lot more!
It’s also available to the general public! This is a great way to cultivate the habit of praying the hours without the need to learn a lot of complicated rubrics often necessary for using a conventional breviary.
In addition to 31 days of morning, midday, evening, and night prayer, there is a section in the back with more prayers for daily use and special needs. This is a great tool for keeping prisoners connected to God, exercising their faith, and fighting off the temptation to despair. Whether their doing short time or hard time, prison is a miserable place. This little book could be a lifeline thrown to a drowning soul. Please, won’t you consider helping with a donation today?
I was in prison and you visited me.
~ Matt 25:36
This little, uh, dog is the Best in Show winner at Westminster this year.
So did they run out of real dogs?
To add to the poor thing’s national humiliation, his owners named him…Banana Joe.
Good grief!
You can see more of, ahem, Joe here.
And no, I don’t mean the cheesy version hi-jacked by Hallmark and Flowers.com…
Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him ren
ounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards, to be beheaded, which was executed on February 14, about the year 270.
Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo, formerly, Porta Valetini. The greatest part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes.
His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman Missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker and all other martyrologies on this day.
To abolish the heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls, in honor of their goddess Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.
You can read more about St. Valentine here. Below is my Valentine to all of you…
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church and others (for our Orthodox brethren, Great Lent begins at the end of February this year; the 27th I believe).
For those who aren’t Roman Catholic, it’s easy to tell what day it is because suddenly there are a bunch of people walking around with smudges on their foreheads. So what’s up with that?
When I was a boy in school, I used to love arithmetic. It gave such a sense of satisfaction when you found the correct solution to a problem. Ya know? I still feel that way. Let’s try some simple equations together:
See? That was easy. Let’s do a harder one:
That means that 75 is 44% MORE than 52. Why, that’s almost half again as much! Neat huh?