Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Today is the feast of Saint John Neumann – whom we should distinguish from Saint John Henry Newman, the English Oratorian and fellow saint; as well as from the non-ordained layman John von Neumann, the great Hungarian-American mathematician and scientist, who helped devise what we now know as the ‘computer’. Today’s John Neumann was born[…]
A blessed and joyous Epiphany to all our readers, at least to those in Canada and other regions, where this solemnity is moved to the nearest Sunday. For the universal Church, it’s on the proper day the twelfth of Christmas, January 6th. However and whenever, we celebrate, the Epiphany is the culmination of the great[…]
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians, 2:9-11) And[…]
On this last day of the calendar year, we celebrate in muted tones the mysterious and shadowy Pope Saint Sylvester I, who reigned from 314, the year after Constantine made Christianity legal after his momentous victory at the Milvian Bridge, until his death on this day in 335. In the commemorative reading from today’s Office,[…]
A blessed continuing ‘Merrie Christmas!’ to all our readers, on this sixth day of the Octave, and then on through the the twelve days, right up to the Epiphany and the Baptism of our Lord. So keep those lights and candles burning, the decorations, the Nativity set, the tree…Christmas has just begun! In the midst[…]
On this third day of Christmas, we not only get three french hens, but, far better, we get to celebrate the beloved Apostle, Saint John the Evangelist, whose Gospel signifies most clearly the eternal existence of Christ as the Logos, the eternal, subsistent Word of the Father, Who has always been ‘with’ the Father from[…]
As the mid-19th century hymn has it, Good King Wenceslaus first went out, on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay ’round about, deep and crisp and even…a hymn, published in 1853, which has the English lyrics of Thomas Helmore set to the 13th century melody Tempus adest floridum, which had in turn later[…]
The beloved hymn Silent Night was first performed on Christmas Eve, 1818, fittingly at Saint Nicholas parish in Oberndorf in what was then the Austrian empire. The music was composed by the organist and schoolmaster Franz Xaver Gruber, and the words by Father Joseph Mohr, the parish priest, who had penned the six stanzas, in[…]
On this Eve of Christmas Eve, we celebrate in a subdued manner the commemoration of John of Cantius (1390 – 1473), or ‘Kanty’ in the original Polish transliteration – a scholar, teacher, gentleman, priest and, most of all, a saint, who spent his whole life as a professor at the Krakow Academy, later named the[…]
While we’re on the topic of chant with the Alma Redemptoris, this December 20th also marks the commemoration of Saint Dominic of Silos who died on this day in 1073, at the monastery he had founded in the southern part of northern Spain. His early life was spent as a shepherd, which seems a theme[…]
