Sunrise in Rome was at 5:50 and sunset will be at 20:24.
The Ave Maria is in the 20:45 cycle.
It is the traditional Feast of St. Robert Bellarmine and the Feast of the Dedication of Santa Maria “ad Martyres” (the Pantheon) in 609.
‘Tis also the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
Welcome registrants:
blackscholescat
Catulus domini
Hillbilly Pappy
Speculum Iustitiae
In Afghanistan, the Taliban has outlawed chess because they consider it to be gambling. This was a problem in the Church for a while, too. For some time, chess also used dice! Games of chance were forbidden for clerics and religious, but many simply played anyway, including St. Teresa of Avila, who cites chess imagery in Interior Castle and who is the Patron Saint of Chess Players. A couple of the more famous openings for white are named after priests, the Ruy Lopez (aka The Spanish) and the Ponziani (after a priest who became Vicar General of Modena and with two others a member of the so-called Modena School of Chess, in vigore after Philador).
Lunch today, nothing special. I made a sauce with garlic, hot pepper, and fresh basil. I like “fat” spaghetti. Easier to get here.
Supper… after a couple of days of eating out, salad. The dressing: macerate cherry tomatoes with salt, white wine vinegar, finely chopped garlic. Crunchy and soft, salty and sweet. Red wine: cesanese. I have some gorgonzola and a pear.
Priest have asked if on Sunday they can add a collect for the new Pope under one conclusion. Yes. You can. And you should!
The entrance to my very humble (not Casa Marta humble) abode. I’m the second door on the left.
Tired again.
It’s like… this huge weight is gone and now I just want to rest, sleep, be normal without the worries of the Stasi fueled by lunatic catholic “New Red Guards” who for years have been on my case trying to ruin my life. Today was rainy so I basically just slept a lot.
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I, too, have sensed a collective sense of relief. It’s universal. I’m not even sure if I’m going to like many or any of the decisions that will be made in the future, but I still feel like I no longer have to wake up worried that something I believed or loved will suddenly be stripped away.
Your “nothing special” lunch looks tasty to me!
It seems like most of us are out of fight-or-flight mode and we can feel safe again. I am happy you have relief, Father!
It has been incredibly comforting and affirming to hear of other people having had the experience of feeling a tremendous spiritual malaise lifted. These past years have been very trying to my faith, and, as Robbie pointed out, each day left me wondering just how close to the edge things were going to end up. In those times I took comfort in remembering how St Alphonsus’s crisis of belief got so intense that he sewed the creed inside his coat against his heart.
Thank you, Father!
Yes, I too feel weightless.
It’s nice to know that we have both a mathematician and a canon lawyer as Pope!
He knows that 2+2=4 not 5.
Exactly! Relief, as in the proverbial ton of bricks being lifted from my shoulders. I wasn’t expecting this, but it’s unmistakable; relief.
Yes, tremendous sense of relief. It’s only been a few days, but there are already many good signs and portents that the Pope is Catholic! May we have a few years of a Pope that truly cares about the Church and its people.
I find these words from Leo XIV in his speech to the Eastern Churches encouraging…”The Church needs you. The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty! It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)! It is vital, then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism.” May these words offer you some comfort while you rest.
“. . . It’s like . . . this huge weight is gone and now I just want to rest, sleep, be normal without the worries of the Stasi fuelled by lunatic catholic “New Red Guards” who for years have been on my case trying to ruin my life.”
Can’t stop laughing, Fr. Z, about your pithy commentary, above.
Rest assured that many people also feel the “relief” that you mentioned and are also delighted that the “ . . . lunatic catholic “New Red Guards” have, very suddenly, gone awfully quiet !!!
What does a “lunatic catholic “New Red Guard” do when their reason to exist has gone ?
Form another Protest Group, presumably.
Watch out !!! It might be an “Anti-Chess Campaign”, next !!!
“What does a “lunatic catholic “New Red Guard” do when their reason to exist has gone ?
Form another Protest Group, presumably”.
For heaven’s sake, Zephyrinus – don’t give them ideas!!!