If your life feels impossible, that’s either coming from yourself or others. Never from God. The Holy Ghost will guide you in creating a new life that you can manage. It might mean making painful decisions for the overall good. He will also give you the grace you need. Trust and never give up. Hope is a virtue.
Thought for the Day
“If there is memory, there is a way back.”
(I’m sure this has been said many times.)
Another Post-Holy Door Thought
To be a saint is to live fully in reality.
More Thoughts for the Day
Holiness is not necessarily choosing the harder thing.
The internet is a school that doesn’t tell you when you’ve graduated.
Thoughts for the Day
My dear readers, this is what is on my mind today, as my first offering after passing through the Holy Door at Saint Peter’s Basilica…
Anything you can’t take with you is not your life.
And on this feast of Saint Margaret Mary…
The Sacred Heart is the one and only refuge.
A Jubilee Year Meditation: The Holy Door of Your Life
This is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life!
As I contemplated my impending trip to Rome, where I will pass through the Holy Door in Saint Peter’s Basilica, opened specifically for the Jubilee Year, I realized that right now in my life, I am walking through another door. A door of change, in several ways. A door of newness that takes courage and discipline. A door of challenge. I know I am not alone. Perhaps all Catholics this year, are called to do the same thing, whether or not they can get to Rome or another place with a Holy Door (apparently, all cathedrals have one). It’s not the door that really matters, it’s what it symbolizes. It’s the change it encourages in one’s life. Holy Church invites us to cross a great threshold of holiness in this year of graces, at a time when it is most needed.
Of course, the spiritual is of greater importance than the temporal. However, it is often mundane matters that require the analysis and discipline which leads to spiritual growth. So we might wish to ask these types of questions:
What is my door?
What are my goals? What must I change in my life? How hard am I willing to work? (Maybe it won’t require working harder, but smarter.) What needs to shift? What must I let go of? What’s working in my life? What isn’t? What obstacles need to be removed? What structures need to be built?
“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.”
Frances Willard
3 years ago, late at night, I slipped in the doorway between my kitchen and the hallway and received a bad concussion. It was life-changing, not only because of the physical and mental effects (some of which I still suffer from), but because of how it challenged me and was part of a spiritual transformation in my life. Every night I walk through that same doorway on my way to bed and remember that rite of passage. That doorway hurt me but it also mysteriously helped me.
“And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints.”
Romans 8:28
Life has many doors…reminds me of Mary Hopkin’s beautifully haunting song, “Water, Paper and Clay.” Water representing Baptism, paper representing the wedding day and clay, burial…universal, speaking to the deepest parts of us. Each of these doors creates instant change. But the kind of change we must initiate through force of the will and maintain, is difficult. The Holy Door concept gives us the encouragement and motivation we need. We can all traverse our own Holy Doors, whether they are actual ecclesiastical doors, or something more personal. Holy Church during this privileged Jubilee Year beckons us all to a renaissance of the soul…a resurrection in some way resembling Our Lord’s, bringing us closer to Heaven.
Meditation on the Resurrection
From EWTN Vatican, with brief commentary and stunning photos…
Pilgrims From All Over The World Pass Through Holy Door Of St. Peter’s Basilica
From Pilgrimaps, a respectful article on the Holy Doors, including history, symbolism, and the universality of such passages across cultures (sorry about the flashing thing on this website, but it’s worth reading)…
The Holy Door: The Meaning of Crossing the Threshold
“I am the Door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures.”
John 10:9
Thought for the Day
We are now immersed in an omni-front attack vector world. This is war. Just getting through the day is now a military-grade evasion operation. If you don’t understand this, you have not been paying attention and you need to get up to speed really fast.
And if you don’t believe the world is that dark, just take a look at Our Blessed Lord upon the cross once again.
This Is What It's All About!
See our previous post promoting the Catholic Land Movement’s upcoming summer conferences. Here’s a great excerpt from director Michael Thomas’ opening talk at last year’s NY conference. It is so inspiring and I think he is right in saying many Catholics are coming to dream of a very different world and a very different life: The Authentic Life! There is more footage of last year’s conference on the YouTube channel (I’m probably in there somewhere LOL). And maybe I will see you at the New York one day conference next month!
Catholic Land Movement Conference Summer 2024 ~ Short Video Clip
Text:
“Am I alone in dreaming of a world, where I wake up to the sound of bells calling me to Daily Office, and then leaving there for a meal with my family, and then leaving there to meet my brothers in the field, where we work by the sweat of our brow and pause to say the Angelus at 12, and then return to the field?
And then go to the home where my wife is productive with my children in a domestic setting where things are being made, where the children work on dresses and canning and pickling food.
And I went out and milked the animals at the end of the day.
And then I went to the monastery, which was right down the road and caught Vespers at night. Maybe there was a Mass.
I lived an agricultural life layered on top of a liturgical life where Ember and Rogation Days really meant something in my life because the blessing of my fields was critically important.
When fast days really actually helped keep my larder full.
When Lent was really about making it through Spring.
I dream sometimes of living that simple life. Am I alone in dreaming that? Anybody else feel like they want that?
I think there's something deep in all of us as Catholics that calls us to that that idea of a life of a cadence of seasons, of a deepness in our prayer and liturgical life, a deepness in our relationship to our labor and its dignity, and an ordering, a natural order to our family that is beautiful and touched by God's grace. I believe that many of us as Catholics hold that dream.
For 3 days at this conference squint your eyes and just pretend that that's what we live like. Let yourself live that dream that I think we all carry about what Catholic community could be like.
Then we're going to go out into the world and make it happen.”
Is that beautiful, or what?
Trad Youth in Rebellion?
“The Tridentine Mass will return because youth is always in rebellion.”
Laurence Lesser
No, Mr. Lesser was not famous. He was a family friend of my parents, who we always called Uncle Larry. I became close to him later in his life and would visit him in a nursing home upstate, NY. We would correspond, and in one of his letters (early 90’s, only several years after Pope John Paul II liberalized the old Mass and I started attending it), he wrote the above quote, which I have never forgotten. I found him a rare encouragement in the Faith and particularly in my interest in the Tridentine Mass. The very last time I visited him, he said he had lost his Rosary beads in the nursing home. I had a pair of white plastic ones in my car and ran out to get them. It was a very short visit, as we were pressed for time. I remember placing them in his hand and then saying “Goodbye.” What a beautiful memory and I feel so blessed to have been able to do that for him in his final days.
As we see young people flocking to the “Mass of the Ages,” looking for something with true meaning, it would seem Uncle Larry was a prophet. They are indeed rebelling against a culture of narcissism and nihilism. They want happy, faithful marriages. They want children. Quite frankly, they want a normal life. I personally know many of these young people. I’ve seen them grow and blossom as they practice a truly devout Catholic life. I’ve seen them lovingly holding their children in their arms. I am always captivated by the babies at Mass, knowing it is to them, that I have a responsibility-that is why I do this work. I have only to look at these holy innocents and it is enough of a motivation.
As modernists see their “utopic” vision vanishing before their very eyes, they are unleashing their final attack. They can’t quite handle the cognitive dissonance that the great “Age of Aquarius” they were mind-controlled into slavishly working toward…is dead and dying. They just can’t face up to the fact that their whole lives were a mistake…and that they fell for a lie. Modernism bore no fruit-it had no roots. The plant itself is withering. Who knew that those who despised tradition would one day cling with draconian rigidity to their own traditions? The future belongs to those of the counter-rebellion.
“Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.”
Matthew 7:20
That doesn’t mean we are in for a cakewalk. But it does mean there is hope and certainty, in fact…that what was purchased with the Blood of Christ will prevail, because it must.
Please keep dear Larry and his family in prayer-much thanks. Please know we do take prayer requests and will post them if you like.
Thought for the Day
Integrity must be extremely strong when one is alone with oneself, when one is alone with one’s own thoughts and being. Because out there, all the winds and slippery streets, will tend to cause us to lose our footing.