Knox - Learning

There is no learning, where men do not rise gladly to their books.

- Ronald Knox

..and His Loving Wife

Monk with Manuscript Illuminator & his Loving Wife

Gratefully ripped from the never-to-be-missed blog of artist-art historian Daniel Mitsui, The Lion & the Cardinal. Is that a flagon of ale in her right hand? "Here, dear husband, refresh thyself."

Good News Friday

The faith of an abuse victim who met with the Holy Father on Malta is restored after the meeting. "You have a a saint," he says. We knew that.

Bells stolen from the Dormition of the Virgin Mary in Cumberland, R.I., valued at over $100,000 are recovered. Police were tipped off about their location at scrap metal yards.

And finally, the Denver Broncos know a good deal when the see one; regardless of the clueless ninnies on ESPN.

Saint George

Bulgarian Orthodox icon of St. George fighting the dragon

St. George and the Dragon - Briton Riviere

And for your reading sustenance from The Shrine of the Holy Whapping, George the Victorious

Doomed to Failure

"... force without spiritual foundation (is) doomed to failure," wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. Of course, basing his Third Reich on a kind of kitsch German paganism was not sufficiently endowed with transcendence either. However, any governmental leader ought to heed his advice; in particular, those who assume they can will to power their regime in a sort of functional atheism. This is the recent and peculiar dream of Gnostic secularists who try to lift humanity - and themselves - by their own bootstraps.

"When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it
roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, 'I
shall return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in
order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that person is worse than the first." (Lk 11:24ff)

The vacuity of such endeavor will quickly be filled, as Our Lord warns (above), with the spiritual entities that C. S. Lewis warned of in his book, That Hideous Strength, and mortals had best steer clear of. Selah.

Kensett

Mount Washington - John Frederick Kensett

A Santa Gift

Matt C. Abbott at Renew America gives a fine piece of advice from Father Thomas Santa, C.Ss.R., here.

Battling to the End

I had an MRI with contrast this evening. While waiting, I read Girard's Battling to the End. Its scope is breathtaking; its depth and perspective vast.

It gives a respite to the evanescent handwringing so common to the internet. I recommend it highly as an antidote to, yet understanding of, the maddening crowd.

A Busy Forty Days

Christ Appearing to the Virgin ( 1475)

- Follower of Rogier van der Weyden

To the Youth (and the rest of us, too)

And, in case you missed it, here is the full text of Pope Benedict XVI's talk to young people on Malta. The Holy Father has that astounding ability to make you think, "Yes, of course. Why didn't I see that connection before?" [h/t: Curt Jester]

Tuesday Good News

You want some good news on a Tuesday morning? Okay, I've got yer good news for ya right here.

Why wouldn't this be the case? After all, the Christian faith is about hope. Love. Non-coercion. Mercy. Redemption. A Savior. Not a warlord.

Read not the Times, Read Eternity

The Holy Father hits the nail on the head: Let's not be afraid to think and talk about Eternal Life. It is amazing how much muck and mess is cleared away when worship of Mammon and fear of death are seen in the "normal" lives of people, high and low, important and not so. We are, and allow ourselves to be, distracted to death.

McDonnell - End State Funded Abortion

Be storming Heaven with your prayers on this one: Governor McDonnell of Virginia proposes a pro-life budget amendment - vote Wednesday.

And Many More

Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing admonishes us to set aside our cares for a single day and rejoice in five years of Benedict's pontificate in Ad multos annos.

Duffy - The Medieval Mass

THE LITURGY LAY AT the heart of medieval religion, and the Mass lay at the heart of the liturgy. In the Mass the redemption of the world, wrought on Good Friday once and for all, was renewed and made fruitful for all who believed. Christ himself, immolated on the altar of the cross, became present on the altar of the parish church, body, soul, and divinity, and his blood flowed once again, to nourish and renew Church and world. As kneeling congregations raised their eyes to see the Host held high above the priest's head at the sacring, they were transported to Calvary itself, and gathered not only into the passion and resurrection of Christ, but into the full sweep of salvation history as a whole.

- Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars

Scruton - Scimitar Difficulties