July 2015 - New Song

Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

[I wonder why Martha’s feast ranks ahead of the others in this trio?]

July 29

The memorial of Saint Martha, who in Bethany near Jerusalem received the Lord Jesus into her home and, when her brother was dead, confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.”

The commemoration of Saint Lazarus, the brother of Saint Martha, whom being dead the Lord mourned and resuscitated; and of Mary, his sister, who when Martha was bustling about in constant work sat at the Lord’s feet and heard his word.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

One less reason to dislike Thomas More

In his good piece on the “Escriva Option,” Austin Ruse mentions that he dislikes St. Thomas More:

I am reminded of one of the reasons I do not care for St. Thomas More (heretical, I know). More longed to have been a Carthusian, who are tougher even than the Trappists, and he imposed Carthusian practices on his family including, cruelly I think, interrupting their sleep at 1 a.m. to chant the Night Office. Such a thing is not natural for someone in the lay state.

His point is well taken, but his view of More may be mistaken. We tend to interpret such things through the lens of our own sleep customs, forgetting that sleep worked very differently before about the year 1800. Before the advent of artificial lighting, people slept in two segments. They would sleep for a while, get up for a while in the middle of the night to do this and that, and then sleep for a long time again. So the middle of the night was a common time for story telling, love making, prayer, and so on and so forth. Wikipedia lists some of the studies on this; another helpful presentation is here.

Notice that the custom of prayer in the middle of the night has almost died out even in monasteries. The reason we lay people find it strange to get up and pray at 1:00 a.m. these days is not that we’re lay people, but that we live in these days. St. Thomas More was not being cruel; he was not even being unusual.

Sts. Joachim and Anne, St. Erastus

Scripture nowhere describes Mary’s childhood, gives her genealogy, or even names her parents–which is remarkable, given that they are the biological ancestors of Christ! But Scripture focuses instead on Joseph’s ancestry, through which Jesus takes his place as heir to King David. For the sake of the Biblical Saints project, however, I am counting Joachim and Anne as “biblical”.

July 26

The memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, parents of the immaculate Virgin Mary the Mother of God, whose names have been preserved by ancient Christian traditions.

The commemoration of Saint Erastus, who was the treasurer of the city of Corinth and ministered to blessed Paul the Apostle.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

Saint James

July 25

The feast of Saint James, Apostle, who, being Zebedee’s son and the blessed evangelist John’s brother, was together with Peter and John a witness to the Lord’s transfiguration and to his agony. When he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa near the time of the festival of the Passover, he became the first of the apostles to attain to the crown of martyrdom.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

No need to drop “Benedict” from the “Benedict Option”

Over at Crisis Magazine, Austin Ruse has written a nice piece about the “Escriva Option.” I get Ruse’s weekly Letter from the UN Front, but their tone is so hyper that I usually ignore them. This article, however, is worth a read: he urges that one way to pursue Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is by following St. Josemaria Escriva. The more ways we can get of describing and approaching what is needful in our times, the better.

But there is one point where I want to take issue with the article. He makes a big deal of saying that laypeople should not look to religious orders for the way to live the lay state:

The question becomes: is St. Benedict a proper model for the laity? Whether there is withdrawal to the mountains or not, the implication of the Benedict Option is that laymen can somehow follow a monastic model. Certainly there are third order Benedictines, there are even third order Trappists, though I suspect they are chattier than those behind the walls. But, laymen need not ape the practices of those we may think are spiritual athletes to live out our vocation as laymen.

Continue reading “No need to drop “Benedict” from the “Benedict Option””

St. Ezekiel the Prophet

July 23

The commemoration of Saint Ezekiel the prophet, son of Buzi the priest, who in the time of the exile in the land of the Chaldeans was distinguished by a vision of the glory of the Lord and set forth as a lookout to the house of Israel. He rebuked the chosen people’s infidelity and foresaw that the holy city Jerusalem would be overthrown in ruins and that the people would be deported; stationed amidst the captives himself, he nourished their hope and prophesied to them that the dry bones would rise to life.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

St. Mary Magdalene

July 22

The memorial of Saint Mary Magdalene, who, having been freed by the Lord from seven demons and become his disciple, followed him all the way to Calvary and early Easter morning merited to see the Savior rising and to bear the news of his resurrection to the other disciples.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

Sts. Elijah and Joseph

July 20

The commemoration of Saint Elijah the Tishbite, who, being a prophet of the Lord in the days of Ahab and Ahaziah, kings of Israel, vindicated the rights of the one true God before an unfaithful people with such strength of soul that he prefigured not only John the Baptist but even Christ himself; he left no written oracle, but his memory is faithfully preserved, especially at Mount Carmel.

The commemoration of blessed Joseph, who was called Barsabbas and whose cognomen was Justus, a disciple of the Lord, whom they put together with the blessed apostle Matthias so as to choose one of them to fulfill the apostolate of Judas the betrayer; but when the lot fell to Matthias, Joseph devoted himself nonetheless to the office of preaching and of holiness.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

Quaeritur Utrum Sim—The Problem of My Existence

My attention was recently drawn to studies on whether prayer really works. Scientists track a bunch of people with problems who pray about them, follow a control group of people with problems who don’t pray about them, and compare results to determine whether Anyone out there is listening. This clear and simple approach eliminates the guesswork in religion.

Since my attention was on the question, I began tracking how many times I said “yes” to my children’s requests as compared to how many times I said “no.” The results were discouraging. Children approaching me have about a fifty-fifty chance of getting what they want, and younger children have even slightly worse odds. It’s pretty much what you would expect from flipping a coin. But the experiment has led me to an important conclusion:

I don’t exist.

At first I was deflated, even though non-existence, according to experts, is something I have in common with God. But then I realized that, as a non-existent person, I do a lot of important things for the family. At our place, you see, Nobody cleans the kitchen floor regularly, Nobody tends the garden, Nobody reads to the girls at night—the list goes on and on!

And the beauty part is, I have discovered a phenomenal time-saving technique. Instead of fielding requests from my kids, I give them each a quarter and tell them “Heads means ‘yes,’ tails means ‘no.’”

St. Epaphras

July 19

The commemoration of Saint Epaphras, who labored greatly for the gospel in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, and whom blessed Paul the Apostle calls a most beloved fellow servant, a fellow prisoner, and a faithful minister of Christ.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in pace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]