Poetry Contest

Christopher, grade 4, won first place in a poetry contest recently with this poem:

The weather outside has been freezing
I'm coughing and blowing and sneezing
The strong wind is bold
The snow is so cold
This winter does not waste time teasing!

Catholic Family Life

This is not our family, but it all sure looks familiar (perhaps not the waxed mustache)!

The Fight for the Interior Life

A man who is determined to acquire an interior life must take, for his ideal, unremitting domination of self and complete control over his environment, in order to act in all things solely for the glory of God. To achieve this aim, he must strive, under all circumstances, to keep united with Jesus Christ and thus to keep his eye on the end he has in view, and to evaluate everything according to the standard of the Gospel. Quo vadam, et ad quid? he keeps saying, with St. Ignatius. And so, everything in him, intelligence and will, as well as memory, feelings, imagination, and senses, depends on principle. But to achieve this result, what an effort it will cost him!
-Excerpt from Dom Chautard's The Soul of the Apostolate

If anyone reading this blog might keep our oldest son in their prayers, it would be appreciated. He is having some serious difficulties and needs the grace of a supernatural motivation and strength.

-Albert

Ash Wednesday - The Season of Purification

Another version of the Miserere Mei, Deus

If your fast is without humility, it is worth nothing and cannot be pleasing to the Lord. Pagan philosophers fasted this, and their fast was not accepted by God. Sinners fast in this way, but because they do not have humility it is of no profit at all to them. Now, according to the Apostle, all that is done without charity is not pleasing to God; so I say in the same way, with this great saint, that if you fast without humility your fast is of no value. For if you have not humility, you have not charity, and if you are without charity you are also without humility. It is almost impossible to have charity without being humble and to be humble without being charitable. These two virtues have such an affinity with one another that the one never be without the other.
- St. Francis De Sales, From his Sermon for Ash Wednesday on Fasting

-Albert
+Ash Wednesday

Shrove Tuesday

In just a little while, the Hickmans will be enjoying chocolate chip pancakes and ice cream for Shrove Tuesday. We wish everyone a holy Lent. Following is a little history courtesy of our good friends at Fisheaters.

The Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday are known as "Shrovetide," from an old English word "shrive," meaning "to confess," a name gotten from the tradition of going to Confession in the days before Lent started. Shrovetide is traditionally the time for "spring cleaning," and just as we clean our houses in these days in prepation for Lent, we also "clean our souls" through confession so we can enter the penitential season fresh.

Shrovetide is the last two days of "Carnival," an unofficial period that began after the Epiphany and which takes its name from the Latin carnelevare, referring to the "taking away of flesh" (meat) during Lent which begins on Ash Wednesday, the day following Shrove Tuesday. Catholics want to eat while they can and get the frivolity out of their systems in preparation for the somber Lenten spirit to come.

The Tuesday of Shrovetide is a particularly big party day known as "Mardi Gras" (French for "Fat Tuesday") -- or "Pancake Tuesday" because fats, eggs, and butter in the house had to be used up before Lent began, and making pancakes or waffles was a good way to do it. In many places, especially in England, pancake races became popular and remain popular today. In these races, women must run while flipping a pancake so many times, and whoever crosses the finish line first wins. The largest pancake race in England is in Olney, in Buckinghamshire. There, the women must wear a dress, apron, and bonnet, and flip the pancake three times -- while ensuring it is intact after they cross the finish line, of course. The story told to explain the origins of this race is that in 1445, a homemaker heard the shriving bell (the bell rung to summon people to confession on this day) as she was busy working in her kitchen. Not wanting to be late, she rushed about and ran off with her skillet still in hand.

At Westminster School in London, the "Pancake Grease" is held, an event during which the schoolmaster tosses a very large pancake over a bar that's set to about 15 feet high. The children make a mad scramble for it, and whoever emerges with the largest piece is the winner.

-Albert

Truth and Beauty

Reflect on the sterility and incomprehensibility of many works of modern art compared to what was produced by the masters of the past. It has been said that the art is a reflection of the condition of the artist's soul. I believe that assertion to be true and it explains much of what one sees in modern museums and galleries today. How much art (and that term need now be defined very liberally) is produced by those who live an eccentricity and hedonism that bankrupts their poor souls and robs them of the great art that their talent was given to produce.

The diabolical is also there of course. I was strolling through a gallery in San Francisco a few years ago and happened upon a work that was a blasphemous mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. I suppose to compensate for a lack of genuine talent, the "artist" needed to resort to the "shock factor" as is seen everywhere now in contemporary culture, from talk radio, to movies, television and popular music. How sad for humanity and a modern culture whose artists can only lower and debase man rather than raise him to the heavenly heights for which he was created. Fundamentally, it is a disease of the soul. But what is the disposition of the soul of today's artist compared to many of those in the past?


PETER PAUL RUBENS "Daniel in the Lion's Den", 1577-1640

Guercino spent much of his mornings in prayer; Bernini frequently went on retreats and practiced the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius; Rubens went to Mass every day before beginning work. This conformity was not based on fear of the Inquisition, but on the perfectly simple belief that the faith which had inspired the great saints of the preceding generation was something by which a man should regulate his life. The mid-sixteenth century was a period of great sanctity in the Roman Church...such people as Saint Ignatius Loyola, the visionary soldier turned psychologist. One does not need to be a practicing Catholic to feel respect for a half-century that could produce these great spirits.

-Kenneth Clark, Civilisation

Bernini's Louis XIV

Lead Kindly Light (Part 3)

I had mentioned in previous posts that little seeds were planted in my journey to the Catholic faith over the course of many years. It should be encouraging to all those who try to impart Truth but are frustrated by the seeming lack of result and progess. Conversion typically happens over time (perhaps a long time such as in the case of St. Augustine), and certainly in God's time, requiring much patience. Although we are expected by our baptisms and confirmations to labor diligently in the vineyard, we do not ultimately do the converting. Only the Holy Ghost works the real conversion and only with the willful cooperation of the soul that He is trying to win.

I mentioned the writings of Cardinal John Henry Newman, and the professor who introduced me to those writings, as an influence that helped plant important seeds in my thinking and in my soul. There was also another, introduced to me by the same professor, the great 20th century Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn wrote of his experiences in communist Russia under Joseph Stalin, in particular his accounts of life in communist labor camps after being convicted for critical comments that he made about Stalin in a letter to a friend.

There were three works that I read, beginning with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This is the smaller of the works and is probably the best introduction to Solzhenitsyn in my estimation. I went on to read The Gulag Archipelago and then Cancer Ward.

What were the seeds of these works that helped transform my thinking? The foremost I would say is learning that suffering has value, a concept foreign to me at the time. Suffering is understood by few today; but, a devout Catholic understands suffering well. We live in a world that avoids suffering and ignores the suffering around us. Heretical theology, the media and self-help propaganda represent suffering as an evil, and in some cases a punishment. The Catholic, however, knows that suffering has a purpose. Not only does it contribute to the economy of salvation (for our own salvation and that of others), but foremost, it conforms us to our Divine Savior who suffered the ultimate for us: "If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (St. Mark 8:34)".

Solzhenitsyn understood suffering and its value; it comes through clearly in his work and in his own personal victory over oppression and despair. Through suffering, Solzhenitsyn said, "one must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being." Consider that statement carefully. According to Solzenitsyn, to become a true human being, one needs suffering. Why? Because suffering accepted with resignation to God's Will purifies and perfects. It conforms us to our Saviour and completes the man. As my father used to say to me growing up, "No pain, no gain".

Solzhenitsyn had much to say in the realm of politics. He gave a blistering speech at Harvard in 1978 critical of modern American democracy/capitalism. I will end this post with two quotes from that speech which would, in addition to the books mentioned above, be an edifying read.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

Given that we now have an administration in this country that seems to favor Socialism in various aspects, this comment, as those above, should be well considered:

Many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current. … Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

Solzhenitsyn Harvard Address: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html

With continued thanksgiving,

Albert

Mr. Belloc, Again

A couple short dramatizations of Hilaire Belloc in true form courtesy of Dale Alquist of The American Chesterton Society.

Happy St. Valentine's Day

Few know, especially non-Catholics, the reason we celebrate love and relationships on this day. Here is a little history courtesy of the Fisheaters website. May our love for each other, for our neighbor, always be a charitable and proper extension of the love we have for Our Lord Jesus Christ.

St.Valentine (Valentino) was a Roman priest who performed marriages in spite of Claudius II's law against such (Claudius believed that marriage was distracting to his soldiers, so outlawed it to them for a time). Fr. Valentine was martyred in A.D. 270 on the Flammian way, and at the site of his martyrdom, Julius I built a popular basilica.

Other than this, little is known. Because two other St. Valentines share this Feast day ("Valentine" was an extremely common name for Christians as it has the same root as the word "valor"), often their stories are confused, but it is the Roman priest-martyr whom we honor during the liturgy.

The relics of St. Valentine -- at least a great majority of them -- are, interestingly enough, in the Whitefriar Church associated with the Calced Carmelites in Dublin, Ireland. They were excavated from the Cemetery of St. Hippolytus, on the Triburtine Way in Rome in 1835 and were then given to Fr. Spratt, an Irish Carmelite, by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836. The relics, "together with a small vessel tinged with his blood," were deposited "in a wooden case covered with painted paper, well closed, tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with our seals and we have so delivered and consigned to him, and we have granted unto him power in the Lord, to the end that he may retain to himself, give to others, transmit beyond the city (Rome) and in any church, oratory or chapel, to expose and place the said blessed holy body for the public veneration of the faithful without, however, an Office and Mass, conformably to the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, promulgated on the 11th day of August 1691," as the letter accompanying the relics reads. On this Feast Day, his relics are carried in procession, and a special Mass is offered for young people and lovers.

Grant, I beseech Thee, O almighty God, that (Name of loved one), who celebrates the heavenly birthday of blessed Valentine, Thy Martyr, may by his intercession be delivered from all the evils that threaten (him/her). Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Mr. Belloc and the Skepticism of the Stupid

Has anyone ever encounted the form of skepticism described below when trying to have a reasoned discussion with someone on a serious matter of principle and/or belief? As an experiment, choose someone at random and posit the following:

"A child is a gift from God and we should not reject God's gifts"

And then see where the conversation goes. Now for Mr. Belloc:

The Skepticism of the Stupid is that denial of an unaccustomed statement which is based upon an undefined, but nonetheless real, belief that the hearer is possessed of universal knowledge. It is a common error in our day...

The test of this kind of Skepticism [which, like other manifestations of stupidity, presents a formidable obstacle to human conversation] is the misuse of the word "reason."

When a man tells you that it "stands to reason" that such and such a thing, to which he is unaccustomed, cannot have taken place, his remark has no intellectual value whatever. Not only would he be unable to analyze his "reasons" for rejecting the statement, but he would, if pressed, be bound to give you motives based upon mere emotion. For instance, if a man tells you it "stands to reason" that a just God could not allow men to lose their souls, he suffers from the Skepticism of the Stupid.

~Hilaire Belloc, The Approach of the Skeptic

-Albert

Peter Under Siege

The enemies of Holy Mother Church, those who in these last several decades have infiltrated the Church herself, are now in open warfare against the Fisherman. It is not surprising that those showing most support for the Holy Father are those holding to Tradition. Pray hard for the Holy Father and those clergy standing behind him! This is a fight that will be to the death and all faithful Catholics must engage. Vivate Christus Rex!

An inteview of note from a prominent New York Jewish Rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, nails the crisis at hand. A few excerpts (emphasis mine):

Rabbi Levin suggests that there is a "silver lining" within the crisis. "It has now become very clear, for all to see, the extreme danger that having some who hold high positions in the church seeking to destroy their own church and attack their own pope." He added: "The silver lining is that its now that the battle lines have been drawn."

"The remedy, I believe," said the Rabbi, "is that church hierarchy should take strong action in dealing with this type of insurrection." He added: "This should be a significant signal to the Pope, that it is absolutely essential that the right people be appointed in every place all over the world. And church faithful need to have unambiguous leadership that's totally in line with traditional church teaching."

The entire interview can be found here: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021007.html

PRAYER FOR THE POPE:

V. Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto.

R. Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius. [Ps 40:3]

Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Deus, omnium fidelium pastor et rector, famulum tuum Benedictum, quem pastorem Ecclesiae tuae praeesse voluisti, propitius respice: da ei, quaesumus, verbo et exemplo, quibus praeest, proficere: ut ad vitam, una cum grege sibi credito, perveniat sempiternam. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen.

-Albert

Confirmation Pictures and Sermon

God mercifully answered our prayers in the affirmative and both Amanda and Christopher skirted around the stomach flu for a day to receive their Confirmations at the hands of His Excellency Tissier De Mallerais. Apparently, His Excellency himself was suffering from a stomach ailment last night. It never ceases to amaze me the fortitude and self sacrifice that these bishops exercise as they endlessly travel the world in sickness and in health to ordain and confirm. God bless a true shepherd!

His Excellency's sermon is posted in the sermon links. Congratulations to our new Confirmands Christopher and Amanda and all those receiving their Confirmations last night at St. Therese's!

Confirmation Day

Therefore we may say that, at least virtually, Confirmation is the Sacrament that consecrates the heroes and the martyrs of duty, for it gives man the strength to live in open profession of his faith, even at the cost of great sacrifices, not excluding the sacrifice of his life, if this were necessary.

When cowardice or human respect tempts us to waver, we should repeat St. Francis of Assisi's daring words: "Knight of Christ, are you afraid?" And recalling the happy day of our Confirmation when we were solemnly consecrated a soldier of Christ, we shall find the strength to continue the battle and to win.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

Confirmations, Health Check and Sermons Posted

There are a few new audio postings in the sidebar beginning with today's sermon. In addition, there is a three part Parish Mission that was preached by Fr. Helmut Libietis this past week. Be sure to pick up and listen to the mission in particular. It is a hard hitting wake up call to all Catholics to live their Confirmations and to be true soldiers for Christ. Father reminds us of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in St. Matthew's Gospel chapter 25 where the goats in that parable are not condemned for what they did do, rather they are condemned for what they did not do. We must do all that we can to help save souls. Come Holy Ghost!

It continues to be a rocky road health wise for the family. After arriving home last Monday from La Salette Academy, I was hit with a stomach virus that clung to me for a few days. It is not wasting any time working through the rest of the house. Leslie started with it last night and Amanda just started with it tonight. We are praying that Amanda and Christopher will be in good health tomorrow to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation in the evening. If anyone could say a quick prayer for that intention, I would appreciate it. Amanda's Confirmation saint is St. Maria Goretti and Christopher's is St. John of the Cross.

I hope to catch up with the blog more regulary (and thoughtfully) in the days to come.

Ephesians 4:30 "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption."

Marian Joust

NOTE: I've just learned from Fr. McMahon at La Salette Academy that school policy prohibits the publication of video footage of school events to a public forum. Therefore, I have removed the Joust and HMS Pinafore segments from YouTube and consequently this blog. This is just one more good reason to go out to the school and see the great things happening there first hand.

Here is video of the Marian Joust competition with the same video processing disclaimer as the last post. The first video has about 30 seconds of unrelated footage at the beginning and the last has some of the freshman basketball practice at the end. All of the works recited by the students are original, including the work in Latin. Father explains what a Marian Joust is in the first segment.







I will try to post some of the Varsity basketball game footage shortly.

Below are several video segments of the HMS Pinafore musical performed by the La Salette Juniors this past weekend. These videos are very raw since I do not have the time nor the software for adequate editing. After struggling for hours just to get the videos processed and uploaded, I can see why people buy Macs. So here they are, seven segments from the beginning of the play at about 5 minutes per segment.

Visit with Andrew at La Salette Boys Academy

Our boys

Our trip to La Salette Academy this past weekend for Homecoming was wonderful! It was great to get to see Andrew and meet all his teachers. There was a play, HMS Pinafore, which was very well done and extremely funny. There were also several basketball games. Andrew played with the freshmen team.Getting to see him play was a treat .

The Varsity basketball game was exciting! The entire school painted their faces and cheered through the whole game.

We also saw the Science Fair projects (a picture of Andrew's is below) and spent some time with Andrew. Hopefully Al will get to post some of the videos soon.

Andrew's Science Fair Project