Benedictus Deus

Just a reminder that this is the first Emberday of the Advent Embertide. See “Featured posts” on the sidebar for past Embertide posts. You can also search “Ember” for more.  Also, the “Advent with Leo the Great” post below features his homilies that are actually directed toward this Embertide fast.
Also checkout the nice [...]

Today is the feast of St. Lucy. This a favorite around our house, since Lucy is the patron saint of our oldest daughter. It’s also a generally popular feast day with many nice traditions associated with it. If you are trying to avoid premature Christmas celebration this is another feast that gives [...]

Continuing from the same chapter as the previous post:
This first duty complied with, we must next turn our minds to the coming which our Savior wishes to accomplish in our own hearts. It is, as we have see, a coming full of sweetness and mystery, and a consequence of the first; for the good [...]

From Abbot Gueranger’s Liturgical Year, volume 1, chapter 3 Practice During Advent:
If it is written that the Saviour hath purchased the Church with His own blood [Acts 20:28], may not each one of us say of himself those words of St. Paul, ‘Christ hath loved me, and hath delivered Himself up for me’?[Gal 2:29] [...]

From Abbot Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year, volume 1:
But if the exterior practice of penance which formerly sanctified the season of Advent, have been, in the western Church, so gradually relaxed as to have become now quite obsolete except in monasteries, the general character of the liturgy of this holy time has not changed; and it [...]

It’s time for Advent again. Since you are reading this blog, you probably already know that Advent is a penitential season, much like Lent. That means it is a time to emphasize prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As Pope St. Leo I points out in his sermons on Advent Embertide, these three duties [...]