A Holy Week Morning Offering

Good morning, good God!

It has begun, Lord: the week we call Holy...

I've read that theologians argue
over whether or not time, or some unit of time,
can actually be holy...

I'll leave that to the scholars this morning
and simply wonder about my growing in holiness
in the week ahead...

Just shy of four days left in Lent, Lord,
and those are my last four chances in 2011
to live as a Lenten Christian...

Four days to be more faithful to prayer,
morning or night or in between,
or whenever you and I can sit down
and just have a chat, one-on-one,
just the two of us, Lord...

Four days to deny myself
some taste or sip, some pleasure or toy,
and experience the emptiness denial creates,
the hunger it leaves to be fed
and the chance to wonder
how I might fill and feed the void...

Read the rest here.

h/t Whispers.

How can women rule the world?

To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Cloche tip to Jennifer Fulwiler

St Margaret, Queen of Scots

She was also a pioneer in another sphere. Bands of women met together at her invitation to study, discuss the Scriptures, and embroider vestments and altar cloths for the churches. So we can call Margaret the inventor of the Women's Club.

[Phyllis McGinley, Saint-Watching]

When tempted, invoke your Angel.

He is more eager to help you than you are to be helped!

Ignore the devil and do not be afraid of him:

He trembles and flees at the sight of your Guardian Angel.

St. John Bosco

An appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity

"I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it"

Blessed John Henry Newman (as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI at the Mass for his beatification)

St Bernard

"And I glory in tribulations if I have been counted worthy
to endure any for the sake of the Church.
This, truly, is my glory and the lifting up of my head:
the triumph of the Church.
For if we have been sharers of her troubles,
we shall be also of her consolation.
We must work and suffer with our mother."
[St Bernard of Clairvaux]

Cistercian Vocations
The Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank (monks)
The Abbey of the Genesee (monks)
Valley of Our Lady Monastery (nuns)
Santa Rita's Abbey (nuns)

Feast of the Assumption

"What son would not bring his mother back to life
and would not bring her into paradise after her death if he could?"
(St Francis de Sales)

Feast of the Assumption links:
*Pope Pius XII's Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus: Defining the Dogma of the Assumption (November 1950).

*Celebrating the Feast of the Assumption in the domestic church (Mary Reed Newland)

*Catholic Cuisine's Feast of the Assumption recipes

Image source:
Pietro Perugino, "Assumption of the Virgin"
c. 1506

A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit

But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others.

... We should be displeased with ourselves when we commit sin, for sin is displeasing to God. Sinful though we are, let us at least be like God in this, that we are displeased at what displeases him. In some measure then you will be in harmony with God's will, because you find displeasing in yourself what is abhorrent to your Creator.

From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop
(An excerpt from the Office of Readings, 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Image Credit: Norman Rockwell, Gossip

Lest we forget

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

Rupert Brooke

Image source

Nuns Go Places Where Few Dare to Go

Have any of our dear readers seen the Women and Spirit exhibition yet?

Nuns Go Places Where Few Dare to Go
by Father Eugene Hemrick
written for The Tablet

Inspiring and admirable best describe the exhibit “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. A more awesome collage of the work, devotion and enormous impact women religious have had on our church and nation cannot be found!

I was amazed to learn that four Holy Cross sisters were among the U.S. Navy’s first nurses. During the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, there were more than 20,000 casualties. Sister Anthony O'Connell of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati lobbied and won to have nuns nurse the wounded. For her efforts, she was dubbed “the angel of the battlefield.”

The monument “Nuns of the Battlefield,” which is situated across the street from St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, commemorates 600 nuns who were nurses during the Civil War. Stories of nuns fighting poverty, racism and illiteracy in squalid conditions dominate the exhibit. We are reminded that they not only served the downtrodden but marched side by side with them for equality and rights.

We seldom think of nuns as lawyers lobbying Congress, but there they are in the exhibit, doing just that.

The history of nuns who braved the rigors of travel and difficult living situations to teach and evangelize fills the exhibit. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, also known as Mother Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, came from Italy and founded hospitals, schools and orphanages throughout this country.

Mother Joseph of the Sisters of Providence, who was born in Canada, ended up in the state of Washington. Not only did she establish the same kind of institutions as Mother Cabrini, being a carpenter she built them with her own hands!

What particularly touched me was the promotion one religious order used to attract other members:
“We offer you no salary, no recompense, no holidays, no pensions. But much hard work, a poor dwelling, few consolations, many disappointments, frequent sickness, a violent or lonely death, an unknown grave.”

It was a call for complete commitment!

A video presentation shows one nun saying that suffering has the power to make us one with humanity.

As I exited the exhibit, I felt a deep sense of pride in the spirit of our nuns, which affirmed my belief that nuns are not only praying communities, but also down-to-earth, devoted women who bring God to places where few dare to venture.

Image Source:
Sr. Dolores Bundy (pictured) listens intently at a 1970’s religious vocation conference, showing support for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent movement for change. (Photo courtesy of the Oblate Sisters of Providence.)

Quote of the Day

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This "fine picture" happens to be St. Cecilia with Two Angels, by Antiveduto Gramatica. The host site, Web Gallery of Art, suggests you listen to "a little music" by Girolamo Frescobaldi as you contemplate the details of this lovely painting. (You're on your own for the poetry today, but I have every confidence you can do it!)

Cloche Tip for the quote goes to Francesca.

Pope Benedict on the new year

(I meant to post this several days ago, but couldn't find it until just now.)

...For a moment we become conscious of the strange thing called "time," which otherwise we simply use without thinking about it. We feel both the melancholy and the consolation of our own transiency. Much that caused us distress, much that weighed us down and seemed to make progress impossible, has now passed and become quite unimportant. As we look back, difficult days are transfigured in memory, and the now almost forgotten distress leaves us more peaceful and confident, more composed in the face of current threats, for these too will pass. The consolation of transiency: Nothing lasts, and therefore along with the old year not only difficulties but much that is beautiful has passed away... We cannot say to any moment: "Stay awhile! You are so lovely!" Anything that is within time comes and then passes away.

...A new beginning is something precious; it brings hope and possibilities as yet undisclosed... What can we as Christians say at this moment of transition? First of all, we can do the very human thing the moment urges upon us: we can use the time of reflection in order to stand aside and widen our vision, thus gaining inner freedom and a patient readiness to move on again.

-Pope Benedict XVI

(as found in the December 31, 2008 Magnificat reflection)

St Francis Xavier

"I love St Francis Xavier because of many things- his zeal, his charity, his footsore journeys across the world to bring light to the pagan. But I cherish him chiefly because his nature was so affectionate that, thousands of miles away from home and his brother Jesuits, he cut the signatures from their letters to him and pinned them inside his habit, next to his heart."
[Phyllis McGinley, Saint-Watching]

Image Source: Death of St Francis Xavier