Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline. (G.K. Chesterton)
Year: 2019
Martha, Mary and Ill-Fated Marriage
Our Lady of Fatima purportedly revealed to young Jacinta that many marriages are not willed by God, the truth of which may be borne out by a mere cursory glance around the world. Today is the anniversary of what seem to have been two such ill-fated unions. On July 29th, 1565, Mary, Queen of Scots,[…]
For nothing so much wins love as the knowledge that one’s lover desires most of all to be himself loved. (Saint John Chrysostom, +407)
The Evisceration of John Paul II?
The plot of this Pontificate thickens, as news of the summary and forthwith firing of two pillars of the Pope John Paul II Institute in Rome, Monsignor Livio Malina and Father Jose Noriega, who have built up the marvellous educational apostolate, which has done so much good under the patronage of the great pontiff in[…]
Charbel’s Hidden Fruitfulness
Today is the memorial of Saint Charbel Maklouf (+1898), an ascetic, chaste, humble example of monastic sanctity, who spent his life as a priest-hermit in a monastery in Lebanon, a hidden life, praying and sacrificing for the world and for souls. Saint Charbel’s life was completely devoted to God from his early youth, fruitful far[…]
Bridget the Charitable Bibliophile
Saint Bridget of Sweden (+1373) was known for her kindness, her patience, her good works, first, as a wife and mother of six children, all of them surviving infancy, which was rare at that time (and up until modern obstetrics), including one canonized saint, Catherine, also of Sweden. After her husband’s death in 1344, she[…]
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. (Edmund Hilary, born July 20, 1919)
The Trudeau Reckoning
When Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould publicly accused Justin Trudeau and his senior aides before a Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee in February of pressuring her to not criminally prosecute the Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin engineering firm for a host of corruption charges, Tory leader Andrew Scheer declared that the prime minister had lost the moral authority to govern[…]
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven[…]
Musical Offerings, Sixteenth Sunday
A few musical gifts recommended by Pater Ignotus – who is himself musically quite gifted, we may add – for your Sunday enjoyment: https://youtu.be/HUbT7WLagRc