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A READER sends his version of Hail, Holy Queen in honor of yesterday's Feast of the Annunciation:    

Hail Gabriel, hail; a thousand hails
For thine whose music still prevails
To charm the list’ning ear;
Angelic word, sent forth to tell
How He the Eternal Word should dwell
Amid His creatures here.

Heaven’s voice of sweetness, uttered low,
Thy words like strains of music grow
Upon the stilly night;
Clear echoes from the mind of God,
That steal through Mary’s blest abode
In pulses of delight. (more…)

  "IF you wish it, the blood of your Lord was given for you; if you do not wish it, it was not given for you." -- St. Augustine  

"EARTH may be an unhappy place; but it is not the pressure of God's providence which causes most of the unhappiness, nor the roarings of the devil going about seeking whom he may devour. It is the human spirit operating in quarrels, coldness, conceit, rivalry, envy, strife, jealousies, misunderstandings, and an exaggerated idea of little slights and wrongs. Now the suffering of all these things, and it is very acute, comes from fretfulness about our reputation. The excessive care of our reputation is naturally a besetting sin of times whose spirit of publicity does really make a Christian duty of the preservation of our good name. But let us consider what this fretfulness brings in its train. It is obviously quite inconsistent with interior peace, which is the soul of the spiritual life. For how can we be at peace if we make ourselves responsible for what is not in our own power, but escapes from us on all sides? It breeds an exaggerated idea of our own importance, and so destroys humility." -- Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in holiness; or, The progress of the spiritual life, 1864  

"ALL life is a tension of apparent opposites. Life abides and life advances by a sort of counter-pull -- what I have called a tension -- between forces that seem to be the negation of each other. Thus our life is conditioned by death: the animal dies and the man eats it and lives; man dies to himself in order to live to God, and living to God finds himself too. Again our freedom is made perfect by obedience; thus a man is free to live if he obeys the laws of nutrition, is free to build himself a home, to sail the oceans of the world, to fly in the air, if he obeys the laws that govern the universe. One might go on endlessly listing such things. And no one of them is accidental or incidental. Our life is truly seen as a tension of opposites. We ourselves, like all created things, exist because omnipotence made something of nothing. We are best expressed as nothingness worked upon by omnipotence, the two most ultimate of all opposites." --- Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity (Sheed and Ward, 1946)

Video link

WAS THE Cold War a lie?

This video presents the evidence that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were firebombed, not destroyed by nuclear weapons. (more…)

A YOUNG child on a subway learns about the double standard in social manners.  

SPRING
—— Christina Georgina Rossetti

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.

Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again. (more…)

  "FROM the moment that the angel had revealed to him the mystery of the Incarnation accomplished in his august spouse, his life was a continual contemplation. What did he contemplate, if not the love of God for us, impersonated in the Word made flesh? 'God has so loved the world.'" ----  Pierre Chaignon, 1907; Source  

"SLOWNESS is the grand characteristic of the Creator as seen by the side of His creatures. Were it not for His slowness, where should we have been long since? We forget this, when His slowness makes us impatient. He is slow; we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been from eternity. Thus grace for the most part acts slowly, and mortification is as long as levelling a mountain, and prayer as the growth of an old oak. He works by little and by little, and sweetly and strongly He compasses His ends, but with a slowness which tries our faith, because it is so great a mystery. We must fasten upon this attribute of God in our growth in holiness. It must be at once our worship and our exemplar. There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them." — Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in Holiness, or the Progress of the Spiritual Life  

  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.  St. Joseph: His life, His virtues, His privileges, His power, Thomas H. Kinane Meditations on St. Joseph for March 20th, his Feast Day this year.    

FROM The Liturgical Year by the Very Rev. Dom  Prosper Guéranger:

The blessing of the Golden Rose is one of the ceremonies peculiar to the Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is called on this account Rose Sunday. The thoughts suggested by this flower harmonise with the sentiments wherewith the Church would now inspire her Children. The joyous time of Easter is soon to give them a spiritual Spring, of which that of nature is but a feeble image. Hence, we cannot be surprised that the institution of this ceremony is of a very ancient date. We find it observed under the Pontificate of St. Leo the Ninth (eleventh century); and we have a Sermon on the Golden Rose preached by the glorious Pope Innocent the Third, on this Sunday, and in the Basilica of Holy Cross in Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages, when the Pope resided in the Lateran Palace, having first blessed the Rose, he went on horseback to the Church of the Station. He wore the mitre, was accompanied by all the Cardinals, and held the blessed Flower in his hand. Having reached the Basilica, he made a discourse on the mysteries symbolised by the beauty, the colour, and the fragrance of the Rose. Mass was then celebrated. After the Mass, the Pope returned to the Lateran Palace. Surrounded by the sacred College, he rode across the immense plain which separates the two Basilicas, with the mystic Flower still in his hand. We may imagine the joy of the people as they gazed upon the holy symbol. When the procession had got to the Palace gates, if there were a Prince present, it was his privilege to hold the stirrup, and assist the Pontiff to dismount; for which filial courtesy he received the Rose, which had received so much honour and caused such joy. (more…)

“With the EUA COVID shots now being added to the CDC Childhood Vaccination Schedule, a baby born in the United States can now have 42 doses of vaccines injected into them before the age of 5. (Source.)

“And if a child misses a few vaccines, or misses their “well-child” appointment with their pediatrician, no problem! As you can see from the image at the top of this article, pediatricians are trained to inject multiple doses into babies and toddlers during a single office visit, even though there are ZERO studies on the effects of injecting multiple doses of vaccines at the same time into babies and toddlers.

“If the baby or toddler dies after these injections, it will be classified as “SIDS”, sudden infant death syndrome. (more…)

"THEREFORE may it never befall me to be separated by my God from his people whom he has won in this most remote land. I pray God that he gives me perseverance, and that he will deign that I should be a faithful witness for his sake right up to the time of my passing. "And if at any time I managed anything of good for the sake of my God whom I love, I beg of him that he grant it to me to shed my blood for his name with proselytes and captives, even should I be left unburied, or even were my wretched body to be torn limb from limb by dogs or savage beasts, or were it to be devoured by the birds of the air, I think, most surely, were this to have happened to me, I had saved both my soul and my body. For beyond any doubt on that day we shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him and for him and in him. "For the sun we see rises each day for us at [his] command, but it will never reign, neither will its splendour last, but all who worship it will come wretchedly to punishment. We, on the other hand,…

Irish Lullaby (To-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral)
Music and lyrics: James Royce [Shannon] (1881-1946).

Over in Killarney
Many years ago,
Me Mither sang a song to me
In tones so sweet and low.
Just a simple little ditty,
In her good ould Irish way,
And l’d give the world if she could sing
That song to me this day. (more…)

From

St. Patrick’s Confessio

“MY NAME IS PATRICK. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments. We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved. The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth. It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.

“It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognised my failings. So I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God, and he looked down on my lowliness and had mercy on my youthful ignorance. He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.

“That is why I cannot be silent – nor would it be good to do so – about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven. (more…)

"BUT let us obtain a clear idea of the nature of temptations. It seems an obvious thing to say that in the first place they are not sins; yet in nine cases out of ten our unhappiness comes from not discerning this fact. Some defilement seems to come from the touch of a mere temptation; and at the same time it reveals to us, as nothing else does, our extreme feebleness and constant need of grace and of very great grace. We are like men who do not know how sore their bruises are until they are pressed, and then we exaggerate the evil. So when temptation presses our fallen and infirm nature, the tenderness is so sensible and so acute that it gives us at once the feeling of a wound or a disease. Yet we must be careful always to distinguish between a sin and a temptation. "Temptations are either in ourselves, or outside of us, or partly the one and partly the other. Those from within ourselves arise, either from our senses, which are free and undisciplined, or from our passions which are wild and uncorrected. Those which are outside assail us, either by delighting us, as riches, honours, attachments and distractions, or by attacking us as the demons do; and those which partake of the nature of both possess the attractions of both. In one sense, however, all temptations consist in an alliance between what is…