Benedictus Deus

Yesterday was the feast of St. Bernard. Formerly it would have fallen within the Octave of the Assumption which is appropriate for one who is sometimes called “the Herald of Mary.” He preached many homilies on our Lady, including a series on the Assumption itself. Sadly his writings do not seem to [...]

Today is the feast of St. Laurence, one of the greatest staints in the ancient church, and in former times one of the most celebrated.  His name is in the Roman Canon.  There are more churches in Rome dedicated to St. Laurence than any other saint, including one of the five major basilicas.  He was [...]

The month of August has a lot of great feast days.  But before getting to the official feast days, I would like to point out two that are not on the calendar anymore, not even the trad (1962) calendar.  Prior to John XXIII’s changes in 1960 August 1 was the feast of St. Peter in [...]

Ok, I am finally getting around to post I started over a month ago, for the Nativity of John the Baptist.  As I have noted before, this has become one of my favorite feast days.  To emphasize how important it was in ages past, I will start with this quote from, you guess it, Dom [...]

Although the Feast of the Sacred Heart was not made universal until 1765, there were much earlier saints who observed this special devotion. Most notably the Benedictine nun St. Gertrude the Great. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the “characteristic of St. Gertrude’s piety is her devotion to the Sacred Heart”.  In honor of what would [...]

Wow, it seems I have never done a post on Saint Anthony. Today would have been the feast of St. Anthony but it gets overruled by the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost. FishEaters has most of the good stuff covered.
Aside from that, here is the “Miraculous Responsory” from the Franciscan breviary on St. Anthony’s [...]

Happy Octave of the Ascension!  From St. Andrew Missal entry for the Octave Day of the Ascension (emphasis original):
Jesus ascended into heaven, there to prepare a place for us, for His Ascension is but a type of our own. Also He will come again to take us to Himself and introduce us into His [...]

Tempus Fugit!  It is once again Ascensiontide (a word that made more sense when there was an octave for this great feast) and Pentecost is drawing near.  Dom Gueranager notes that in the middle ages there was a solemn procession before Mass to commemorate the procession of Our Lord and his disciples from the cenacle [...]

As I have been trying (and mostly failing) to get more spiritual reading in this Lent, I have not really had time to blog much. But I just wanted to wish everyone a fruitful Holy Week. Ideally this week should be a retreat for us, at least insofar as our secular duties allow. [...]

Today is the Feast of St. Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas among the twelve.  His selection as the first “apostolic successor” is recorded in Acts 1:15-26.  According to St. Clement of Alexandria (as well as Jerome and Eusebius) tell us that he was one of the seventy two disciples sent out by our Lord [...]