God’s Timing Is Impeccable

First, pray please for Jorge Bergoglio. Anyone facing serious illness or worse needs our prayers for conversion of heart, final repentance, and the grace of a happy death.

Second, April 3rd doesn’t seem like such a menacing date after all now.

We wait, watch, and pray.

A Note of Encouragement

I wanted to take a moment today to remind any and all of you who have entrusted your prayer requests to me via the St. Rita Novena that your prayers are still being offered daily. I do not forget, nor do I take lightly that promise I have made. If your prayer has been answered in your favor, please say a prayer of thanksgiving obviously and then help by spreading the story of St. Rita that others might avail themselves.

God bless and thank you!

Men Are So Violent

I called it the second I heard this.

Leave it to a dude to shatter that glass ceiling. I wonder how much trans-violence against cis-kids will figure into every headline and sanctimonious social media slogan over the next few days.

Folks, I spent 15 years as a teacher and administrator. It was my job to keep my kiddos safe not only as the site manager in the classroom (which we’ve been conditioned to accept as cinderblock coffins thanks to cower-in-place lockdown drills) but also as the guy creating and implementing the response protocol for these horrific events.

This is why I homeschool.

It was bad enough when self-righteous teenagers started to argue with me about how many sexes there really are. It was bad enough having to worry about lunatics bursting in and killing people. Put the two together and it’s a special kind of nightmare scenario I refuse to face.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us!

This Is Just Too Cool

My friend Andrew from St. Luke’s Gallery sent me something really awesome today.

It turns out that Philadelphia really loves their St. Rita…

Statue of St. Rita from St. Augustine Catholic Church, Philadelphia, PA

I have never been inside this particular church in the City of Brotherly Love. However, I have seen the inside of this church many times. You may have as well. The interior was used in the 1999 movie The Sixth Sense.

She’s right there behind Bruce Willis!

Saintly shout-outs aside, I hope you all had a blessed Passion Sunday. It is most definitely NOT too late to ratchet up your Lenten disciplines. Two weeks left, friends. With April 3rd now just a week away, we need to do all the fasting we can. Let’s get at it.

My own St. Rita Shrine at home for the next two weeks (along with all the crucifixes and other statues and images) are now “hidden” as was Our Lord.

Dear Jesus, Please Help Them!

This, my friends, is the simple and beautiful nature of a truly humble and pious prayer. God bless this weatherman and all those who lost loved ones and livelihood in this terrible storm.

Et Verbum Caro Factum Est et Habitavit in Nobis!

Saturday March 25, 2023 is the First Class Feast of the Annunciation (Solemnity for those of you still following along with the 1983 home edition). This is the day when we commemorate the moment when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took on our flesh and truly “dwelt among us”, as St. John’s Gospel tells us. In the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Fairest of our Race – He Who IS Truth became man by becoming her little boy.

Think about that incredible, indescribable beauty! I think about it at least three times a day when I pray the Angelus. Side note: if you aren’t praying the Angelus, you need to commit to this beautiful prayer. Fr. Ripperger tells us that demonic attack seems to almost disappear when a person commits to commemorating the Incarnation at 6, noon and 6 every day through this prayer.

As I was thumbing through pictures on my phone looking for an appropriate shot for this post, I came across something most interesting. Take a look…

Tomb of Mother Angelica, crypt of the shrine church, Hanceville, AL. Eternal rest Grant into her, O Lord!

A few years ago I stopped in to the shrine church that had been built under the direction of the saintly Mother Angelica, the foundress of EWTN. Full disclosure, there was a sign nearby strictly forbidding photography. Whoops, huh? “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…” It’s just that I had a feeling I’d need to use this image one day.

What I did not even catch until now was her full name. She who had been known to the world as – wait for it – RITA Rizzo had taken the name Mary Angelica of the Annunciation! So not only does my favorite saint and patroness, St. Rita, make another appearance but also Mother’s name was in honor of the feast we celebrate today.

And speaking of Mother, I wonder what she would think of the state of the world and of the Church today. I will never forget her “I’m tired” monologue from 1993. I’m embedding it below.

Introduced by a much younger future-Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Mother unleashes on everything wrong at that time. She missed a mark here and there especially when she refers to “those beautiful documents of Vatican II” but I think we can all admit to having been suckered on that front. The documents – presumably the four constitutions – are loaded to the gills with ambiguity at best. Nonetheless, her assessment of the nonsense and her own no-nonsense approach in righteously letting them have it inspire me daily.

Yes, Mother, I’m tired too. But that one event in history, that one instant when light eternal became flesh and blood, when the Most Pure Virgin uttered the words of ultimate humility and thus perfect sanctity – “Ecce, ancilla Domini, FIAT mihi secundum tuum”, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, Be it done unto me according to thy word” – reassure me that Truth is knowable and that there is always hope.

Let it be done to me, O Lord, according to Thy Will!

O Mary conceived without sun, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Thank You St. Rita!

My ongoing novena to St. Rita continues. In the meantime, please send me any prayer intentions. Today, I received a beautiful testimony of someone’s prayer having been answered. Thank you, St. Rita!

St. Rita, pray for us!