THIS 2015 speech at Boston College by politician and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes on the subject of marriage is outstanding and gets to the heart of why there's no such thing as a marriage between two men or two women. "It doesn't matter how many people put their hands together to say something God hasn't said, that doesn't make it true." To deny the essential nature of marriage is to deny the essential nature of God. It was heterosexuals who changed the definition of marriage first, by denying its primary end of procreation.  

I HAVE a great devotion to this saint because I have so often experienced that he can obtain so much from God. For many years I have been accustomed to ask a special grace on his festival, and my prayer is always answered. -- St. Alphonsus de Liguori  

(more…)

THOMAS H. Kinane wrote in St. Joseph: His life, His virtues, His privileges, His power: In the supernatural, as in the moral and physical order, the infinite wisdom and power of God suit the means to the end. God gives grace and sanctity to His Saints to fulfill the office and rank for which His Divine Providence has destined them.* The nearer a soul is destined to approach God, and the more intimately and largely she enters into the scheme of Redemption, the greater is her dignity, and in proportion is her sanctity. In the above principles we have the origin and the source of the sanctity, privileges, and choicest graces, showered, in all the plenitude of their abundance, upon the soul of St. Joseph by the Almighty. Devotions to St. Joseph for today his feast day and everyday can be found here. And some customs of his feast day.  

 Prayer to St. Joseph O my beloved Saint Joseph! Adopt me as thy child; take charge of my salvation; watch over me day and night; preserve me from occasions of sin; obtain for me purity of body and soul, and the spirit of prayer, through thy intercession with Jesus. Grant me a spirit of sacrifice of humility, and self-denial; obtain for me a burning love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and a sweet tender love for Mary, my mother. Saint Joseph, be with me in life, be with me in death, and obtain for me a favorable judgment from Jesus, my Merciful Savior. Amen  

His Meditation Upon Death
—by Robert Herrick

Be those few hours, which I have yet to spend,
Blest with the meditation of my end:
Though they be few in number, I’m content:
If otherwise, I stand indifferent.
Nor makes it matter Nestor’s years to tell,
If man lives long, and if he live not well.
A multitude of days still heaped on,
Seldom brings order, but confusion.
Might I make choice, long life should be withstood;
Nor would I care how short it were, if good:
Which to effect, let ev’ry passing-bell
Possess my thoughts, “next comes my doleful knell”; (more…)

FROM The Contemplative Observer:

Based on the removal from the West’s eyes of the communist threat, Moscow went one decisive — and very bold — step further: They shape-shifted, more than under Yeltsin, into a “Russian-nationalist and Christian nation”. This was of course all eyewash. The Party people weren’t even able to properly cross themselves. Church attendance throughout so-called “Russia” remained as miserable as in Soviet times. If you think abortion is bad in America (and it is), look at the numbers in Russia. And Russian society stayed what it had been in Soviet times: dysfunctional and rotten to the core. But this new theme of alleged Russian traditionalism (with strong Stalinist characteristics!) opened new strategic avenues for Moscow to even further shake up and confuse the West: They were now infiltrating and manipulating the Western Right. Communism was gone, it was believed, and the Russians were all just wonderful, weren’t they? (more…)

FOR three centuries, the Irish refused to give up their Catholic altars on pain of heavy fines, imprisonment and death. The practice of their religion was strictly prohibited by the British crown and their churches, including St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, which was dedicated in 1191, were all taken over by the new clergy. It is one of the great mysteries and miracles of history that the Irish persisted for so long, establishing secret altars in homes, on rocks, in caves, in ditches and even in holes in the ground. Those who could not find their way to these hidden places often turned toward the direction of those sacred altars and prayed their Spiritual Communions as the unseen Host was lifted. "From the golden hour in which St. Patrick as bishop said his first Mass on Irish soil down to the coming of the Normans, love of the Blessed Eucharist was one of the dominant characteristics of the Irish race," Fr. Augustine Hayden wrote in 1933. This devotion was never diminished by oppression. On April 14, 1655, to cite one example of that oppression from Hayden's book Ireland's Loyalty to the Mass, three priests were brought before a Protestant jury in Wexford. The jury concluded that no crime had been committed, to which the judge replied, "No crime could be more heinous than to be a priest," and the three priests were hung. Priests and bishops were constantly on the run…

St. Patrick's Day means not much more than green beer and drunken reveling for many people today, but in late-19th century America it was --- believe it or not --- a day to honor moderation and total abstinence from alcohol. In the Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day parade of 1875, some 10,000 people marched and "the majority parading walked with the thirty-nine marching units of the [Catholic] Total Abstinence Brotherhood, an organization with strong religious backing and a missionary zeal for temperance crusading.," according to Dennis Clark.  It was after the Civil War that parades of all kinds became a sort of national craze. Veterans of the conflict turned out and, in Philadelphia, General St. Clair Mulholland and other heroes of the war stepped smartly along on St. Patrick's Day each year. Temperance organizations became a big component of the March 17th Parades from 1870 through the turn of the century. Father Matthew of County Tyrone (above) was the popular founder in Ireland of organized temperance earlier in the century and it spread to this country with the creation of state groups and then the national Brotherhood in 1871. On July 4, 1876, the Catholic Total Abstinence Centennial Fountain was dedicated in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, featuring a marble statue of of Father Matthew. From the May 1887 edition of Catholic World: The saloon has fastened itself upon society as an ulcer living upon the life-blood of the people. The saloon, building…

  

“Patrick, a native of that part of Britain now called Scotland, was born about the middle of the 4th Century. The Romans having left this Island naked and defenseless, it’s inhabitants were an easy prey to their troublesome neighbors the Irish, who made several incursions, and carried off considerable booty. Our Saint was sixteen years old, when he fell into the hands of those plunderers; and was carried into Ireland, where the hardships of slavery were to prepare him for the labors of an Apostle; and the experience he had of the spiritual necessities of that people was to inspire him with the charitable design of carrying the Light of the Gospel amongst them. (more…)

ST. PATRICK’s BREASTPLATE

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, (more…)

Image credit

Image credit

(more…)

"AND Jesus said: For judgment I am come into this world; that they who see not, may see; and they who see, may become blind. And some of the Pharisees, who were with him, heard: and they said unto him: Are we also blind? "Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you should not have sin: but now you say: We see. Your sin remaineth." --- John 9:39-41  

"IF some rich and powerful friend were to enter your home, you would quickly clean the entire house for fear something there might offend your friend’s eyes when he entered. Let anyone then who is preparing his inner house for God cleanse away the dirt of his evil deeds." -- St. Gregory the Great