Ite ad Joseph

This one interests me because it predates the large oratory’s construction.

At the shrine featured in the vintage holy cards.  Summer 2011. 

And remember…it’s a Solemnity…which means that for day..it’s like it’s not Lent! Feast away!

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Out on a Limb

I have, generally, no use for papal prognostication.  Most prognosticators are engaging in wish-fulfillment anyway. Including me, of course.

But…here goes:

Deep breath….

Either Ouellet, Ranjith or Scola.

Name: Gregory or Leo, with more money on Leo.

Watched this tonight.  What a day that was.  Electric. Watching it made me sad (that he resigned) and grateful (for his work, witness and papacy).

Well…onward…Veni Creator Spiritus

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Books…Books…Books

I have some books left from a talk I gave today…if you’re interested, you can find and purchase them here, along with some other random stock. 

What I have:

• Wish You Were Here (special price for bulk orders of 10)
• Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints 
  
• Loyola Kids Book of Heroes
• Prove It: Prayer (it’s the only Prove It I have on hand)
• The How to Book of the Mass
• How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist
• The Pocket Guide to the Mass
• Various Pocket guides by Peter Kreeft, Scott Hahn & Patrick Madrid (a shipping error – and since I never bothered to return them…here you go!)
• The Church’s Most Powerful Novenas.

On other book-related matters:

• Come Meet Jesus is out of print, but I discovered a possible stash today.  A woman came to my talk with a copy she’d recently purchased at the EWTN bookstore.  It’s on their website.  I don’t know how many they have, but they apparently do have some, and at a reduced price (4.99).  And you can get 
  it free, here, of course.
  
• Mary and the Christian Life - available here. 
• Power of the Cross - free, here. 

I don’t have any copies of the Pope Benedict XVI children’s books, but you can follow the links on the right sidebar.  They are really nice, and perfect for First Communion…even now.

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For Friday

This is from a couple of years ago –  pre-K work.

 

 

 

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

What a strange week.  I would say “sad,” but – well, okay, I’ll go ahead and say “sad” – but let me qualify that.     I will miss Pope Benedict.  His resignation is really quite a sobering moment.  This is not a normal transition and I think it says quite a bit about the Church in 2013. I’m really interested to see how the College of Cardinals respond.

So, “sad” on a few different levels, but not a crisis or a tragedy.  It’s not time to wallow, it’s time to listen and look forward.  Eyes on Christ, just as he’s been telling us to do all this time.

THAT SAID – I’m going to fill up most of the rest of this space with a smattering  of some of my favorite quotes.  There are loads, and more to discover as I continue reading his work for years to come, but here are a few:

— 2 —

 But the Lord also knocks with his Cross from the other side:  he knocks at the door of the world, at the doors of our hearts, so many of which are so frequently closed to God. And he says to us something like this:  if the proof that God gives you of his existence in creation does not succeed in opening you to him, if the words of Scripture and the Church’s message leave you indifferent, then look at me – the God who let himself suffer for you, who personally suffers with you – and open yourself to me, your Lord and your God. (source)

— 3 —

To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask for the superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God. We must learn to purify our desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the hidden lies with which we deceive ourselves. God sees through them, and when we come before God, we too are forced to recognize them. “But who can discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults” prays the Psalmist (Ps 19:12 [18:13]). Failure to recognize my guilt, the illusion of my innocence, does not justify me and does not save me, because I am culpable for the numbness of my conscience and my incapacity to recognize the evil in me for what it is. If God does not exist, perhaps I have to seek refuge in these lies, because there is no one who can forgive me; no one who is the true criterion. Yet my encounter with God awakens my conscience in such a way that it no longer aims at self-justification, and is no longer a mere reflection of me and those of my contemporaries who shape my thinking, but it becomes a capacity for listening to the Good itself. (source)

— 4 —

In the procession we follow this sign and in this way we follow Christ himself. And we ask of him: Guide us on the paths of our history! Show the Church and her Pastors again and again the right path! Look at suffering humanity, cautiously seeking a way through so much doubt; look upon the physical and mental hunger that torments it! Give men and women bread for body and soul! Give them work! Give them light! Give them yourself! Purify and sanctify all of us! Make us understand that only through participation in your Passion, through “yes” to the cross, to self-denial, to the purifications that you impose upon us, our lives can mature and arrive at true fulfilment. Gather us together from all corners of the earth. Unite your Church, unite wounded humanity! Give us your salvation! Amen. (source)

— 5 —

Dear friends, life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose  ! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this – in truth, in goodness, and in beauty – that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.

Christ offers more! Indeed he offers everything! Only he who is the Truth can be the Way and hence also the Life. (source)

— 6 —

Friends, again I ask you, what about today? What are you seeking? What is God whispering to you? The hope which never disappoints is Jesus Christ. (source)

— 7 —

I will simply be a pilgrim who is beginning the last part of his pilgrimage on earth. (source)

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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Busy Day

So all I have for you is this.  To my mother from her older cousin.

“Say a short prayer for me from time to time…”

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Le Chemin de la Croix

I have a stash of vintage holy cards.  Some were mostly from my maternal grandmother’s cache – she died thirty years ago, in her early 90′s – and some are from an interesting Catholic-heavy estate sale I went to last spring.   There’s no paucity of vintage holy card imagery out here on the Internet, but I’m going to post a few of mine that I particularly like.  Some have English text, but most are either French (my grandmother’s) or German (the estate sale stash).

But this first isn’t a holy card – it’s a Stations of the Cross for children from 1911.   Which is why I intended to post it on Friday, but..well..it’s still Friday in California.

It’s in French, but you can probably get the gist, if you’re interested enough to try.  It evidently belonged to Aline Langlois who would have been my great-aunt – yah, I’m that old (my mother was in her late 30′s when she had me, and her mother was in her early 40′s when she gave birth to my mother).  She died the next year, at the age of 17 – I’ve included images of her memorial card as well,  to make that connection.  It’s poignant.  My mother was named after her.

All images are clickable for a larger view. 

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Old Birmingham

Well, the structure is still there, of course, and the interior has not changed that much, but I thought Birmingham-ers might be interested in this image of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  It’s a postcard I picked up at an estate sale.

Click on image for larger version.

The features that you would expect to be different today are just so – altars, pulpit.   I can’t reproduce it here, but this photo by Flickr user “BamaCam” gives you a good idea of what it looks like now.  The photo was taken in 2008, and there have been a  few changes since – the paint job(s) in the sanctuary, most noticeably.  Those upper panels – in the postcard bearing images of Christ, and at some point obviously painted over (for whatever reason…) were last year repainted with symbols of the sacraments.  They are okay – nowhere near as colorful as the original images and a little hard to make out from a distance.

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Cooking for Christ (updated)

Well, I was going to go crazy and scan all sorts of pages from this for your benefit and enjoyment, but then I discovered...it’s still in print!  Which is a good thing, because it’s a treasure, but it also means it’s copyrighted, so I can’t scan with abandon.

(Update:   See update below before you order…it’s apparently not the exact same)

This was one of my mother’s many cookbooks.  I don’t think she ever used it, but it was there, stuffed on the shelf between various very mod 60′s volumes about chafing dishes, fondue pots and gelatin molds and such.   It was published by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference in 1945, and while it doesn’t feature those great  woodcuts of which I’m such a fan in earlyish and mid-century Catholic lit,  it’s an invaluable glimpse into the era, as the first sentence of the Preface indicates:

This book is an extension of the Missal, Breviary and Ritual because the Christian home is an extension of the Mass, choir and sacramentals. 

That era being clearly resistant  to stereotype and caricatures of an unengaged laity.  As the author herself says in the very next paragraph, We need not shed tears over the past; neither should we exalt the present as the zenith of perfection or condemn it as the nadir of depravity. 

Anyway – the first Lent page is below.  The text is substantial, the recipes – for the most part – still interesting.  On the page that follows this one, the difference between now and then is unmistakable as the author encourages the consumption of whole wheat bread during Lent despite the relatively high cost and difficulty finding it!

There may be a health food store in a town of 1000,000 which bakes a whole grain loaf at 23 cents, but that is not for the majority nor for the poor….

(She recommends, of course, baking it yourself – after you find a miller who can grind the flour for you!)

I’m assuming the new edition is identical to the original – the reviews on the site indicate as much – but no promises, of course, since I’ve not seen it.

So ends the year with Christ in the kitchen.  What we have cooked we have made for His glory and the spread of His kingdom.  This way of living is but one path which leads our minds and hearts to His love.  We have not “feasted sumptuously every day,” but we have held both fast and festival in due season.  When great occasions arise, as they do so often in the liturgical year, “it is fit to bring hither the fatted calf and kill it and eat and make merry.” For Christianity is a happiness untold, not only to be tasted at the eternal banquet, but also in some small measure at our little festivals in time.  So with Christ at our table may He bless us and say:

“Eat thy bread with joy and

Drink thy wine with gladness,

Because thy works please God.” 

Update:

Apparently the reprint is not…a reprint.  From the comments, Jennifer of the blog “Family Food for Feast and Feria”

This is my favorite cookbook of all time! It’s also my favorite liturgical year book. I based my whole history undergrad thesis on this book and the publisher, NCRLC. I’ve written about this book several times,http://familyfoodfeastandferia.wordpress.com/2006/04/19/my-favorite-cookbook/, this being my sadly neglected food blog.

This book stemmed from the Liturgical Movement, and was the first American Catholic cookbook of its kind. All other liturgical cookbooks that follow never reach the heights of this book. It’s so family oriented, and helps connect the American to her rich Catholic culture. But Florence Berger makes you realize this isn’t a dead culture, not looking back in the past, but it’s a living connection, because we are part of the Mystical Body.

Sadly, the book that is currently being reprinted is not the original. All the recipes are revised, and if that isn’t good enough, the text is edited, chopped up, and lovely bits and pieces are removed. You will get some taste of the beautiful book, but not the fullness of the original. I can’t understand how they can label it a reprint if it’s fully revised. I’ve compared the original with the revised and just cried to see how much was changed.

While this book does not treat only Florence Berger’s books, “Cultivating Soil and Soul: Twentieth-century Catholic Agrarians Embrace the Liturgical Movement” by Michael J. Woods gives some background history “Cooking for Christ” that I find so interesting! The entire book is wonderful as it really gives an understanding of the Liturgical movement and the connections and role of the NCRLC.

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Lent is coming,…..

…hard to believe, isn’t it?

Here’s a small Pinterest board I’ve started with some resources- enjoy.  

And specifically, you might want to check out The Power of the Cross   –  found here on Scribd and here via a pdf download. 

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