Fr. Z's Blog

06:03 was sunrise. 20:12 will be sunset.

On this Feast of St. Athanasius the Ave Maria bell should ring at 20:15.

A big shout out to Bp. Athanasius Schneider, whose name day it is.  Check out his book.

US HERE – UK HERE

What to report from my Roman Sojourn?

Today Holy Mass was for a man with stage 4 cancer.  May God give him and his friends and loved one many graces to persevere.  Through the intercession of Bl. Pauline Jaricot, if it be God’s will, I pray that he will receive miraculous healing, sudden, complete and lasting.

I’ve been very social lately.   Quite a few people have been in contact to meet up and I’ve rather uncharacteristically made more social engagements than for quite some time.   This resulted in eating out more times than during my last few Roman Sojourns.  That has taken some pressure off of my stove, though I enjoy the tasks of cooking (except for dishes).

Here was something I had “in”.  Insalata caprese.  I was in my favored “deli” and the mozzarella looked so good and oozy that I had to have one.

This is an object lesson about how we human beings react to seeing things.  We tend to want what we see.  This is why it is important to maintain “custody of the eyes”, especially in regard to certain alluring things.

The other day a new restaurant opened in a space that had an eatery I had frequented for some decades.  I had the pleasure of being their first paying customer: as they were setting up for their first evening, I bought a glass of wine, thus making me their first paying customer.   The wine that time was the same as the wine in the photo below, from lunch yesterday, a Lazio white called “Arciprete”.   Yesterday lunch was with a young man from NY who has been a reader for some time.  We met at this new place.

I was favorably impressed.  One of the things on the menu for starters is fava beans with pecorino!   This is super Roman!

The key is to eat the raw beans with the same amount of cheese.  The white wine, dry and minerally, binds it all together in springy Roman perfection.

For primi we wound up having two courses, each divided in two so we could each try more than one thing.  This was interesting and quite good and hearty: a Milan-Rome fusion, risotto with saffron, alla milanese, and Roman ossobuco with marrow.

Serving the coffee in little moka pots is a little gimmicky but fun.

The evening took me to a favorite neighborhood place for another meet up.  This resto has Roman and Sicilian dishes.  Behold their sea critter soup.  I hadn’t had it before.  It was terrific. (NB: All mussels and clams were open.)

My friend had a spaghetti concoction with critters of the sea.

The waiter nearby was dressing out an orata.  Gotta be careful with those orata bones, sonny.

Lest I be overwhelmed with food, my main course was an appetizer: a small slice of eggplant parmigiana and caponata and an arancino (which I opted to take home).

You’ve seen my favorite flower stand by day.  Here it is by night.

My freesia has gone to its reward.   I want to pick up more tomorrow after Mass and post office errand.

It rained most of yesterday afternoon and evening.

Tonight it’s going to be eating in: LEFT OVERS!  Do not pity me.  No, really.  Don’t.  That’s not so bad, since that means tidying up  slices of sausage and a little taleggio and gorgonzola, some olives and a few remaining marinated anchovies and the tail end of a good red.  Should I make a spaghetto? Or maybe two? … Nah.  I could make aglio olio pepperoncino with just a touch of acciughe. Nah.  Another day, for lunch maybe.  Although… it is also a great dessert option.

Meanwhile, I worked on the QGD a bit today (so many lines to look at – how do they do it?  For one thing they start when they are FIVE and then don’t stop for several DECADES) along with my daily quota of puzzles.

Here is a puzzle for you.  White to move.  Your eye sees that black’s king is still centralized, uncastled.  You see that black has offered a queen trade, hoping to simplify into an end game to get those pawns moving without that terrifying queen to deal with.  Black’s M40 episcopal sniper rifle is zeroed in long distance on the g pawn and his M252A1 81mm rook can fire for effect on h4 when Her Majesty wanders away.  And what are those ponies doing back in the Rank 3 Corral?  They’d be a lot more useful if they were centralized, especially against an inevitable black pawn storm on the king’s side, charging when the whistles blow, afraid to be shot if they don’t run forward to pick up the rifle left by fallen comrades.  Such drama on these boards.

What to do?

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Will you visit the Dominican sisters’ shop and see what is available? Help them out.

Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE  These links take you to a generic “catholic” search in Amazon, but, once in and browsing or searching, Amazon remembers that you used my link and I get the credit.

And I hope you will get some chess gear.  I heard from someone that a bunch of the seminarians at the North American College are playing OTB, which warms by beady black heart.

Chess is a thing.

I can imagine St. Athanasius spending evenings playing chess while in exile.   Of course he didn’t have modern chess, did he.  He died in 373.  But I can picture it, him drinking coffee (which he didn’t have any coffee as Preserved Killick would say) out of one of my Clement XIV mugs (who wouldn’t be Pope for well-over another thousand years).  St. Athanasius, too, would have suppressed the Jesuits (who also wouldn’t be founded for another thousand years).   But in exile he would have been playing chess with coffee from a Clement mug because that’s the sort of guy he was, no question!  I see him now: St. Athanasius scanning through my little online shop for Papa Ganganelli gear: HERE and ordering one of the shirts with the text of Clement’s Bull that suppressed the Society, sending one to St. Hillary over in Poitiers.  Maybe sending a Custos Traditionis shirt to St. Basil of Caesarea.  So many things to choose from, but always using Father Z’s links when shopping online.

Thanks, Athanasius!

And thanks to all of my benefactors who made this time possible  You are dear to me.  Mass for your intention Thursday at 0700.

I have often asserted in these pages that St. Joseph is a powerful intercessor.  I have received amazing interventions by this great saint, who is the earthly father of the Son of God.  I recently committed my material cares to him in this time of need.  Since then I have experienced his intercession as at no other time in my life.  He has interceded in ways that are so obvious – it is so clear that it is he doing things – that it’s funny.

Pray to St. Joseph, especially in your needs concerning your work and your vocation.  St. Joseph is a powerful intercessor.  He comes through for you especially when you are specific about what you need and when you need it.

I recommend St. Joseph especially for fathers in families.  Fathers, GO TO CONFESSION!  I think that would please Joseph.

May I suggest that you pray, often, the Litaniae Sancti Ioseph?

And remember the mighty Bux Protocol™.  This is more needed today than ever before.  Joseph is the Patron of the Church, after all.

Today’s feast of St. Joseph, the Worker, is modern.  It was given to the Church by Ven. Pope Pius XII in 1955.

We celebrate Joseph today especially as a patron of workers.  No doubt the thought behind the feast was, among other motives, to offset the incorrect atheistic, materialist view of work and workers presented by Socialism and Communism.

May Day had been a civic feast in many places since ancient times and festivals were held.

COLLECT 1962MR:

Rerum conditor Deus, qui legem laboris humano generi statuisti: concede propitius; ut, sancti Ioseph exemplo et patricinio, opera perficiamus quae praecipis, et praemia consequamur quae promittis.

Do not to confuse the verbs condo, condere and condio, condire, both of which give is “conditor“… one being cónditor and the other condítor.

SLAVISHLY LITERAL VERSION:

O God, creator of things, who established the law of labor for human kind: grant, propitiously; that, by the example and patronage of Saint Joseph, we may bring to completion the works which you command, and we may attain the rewards which you promise.

At the heart of our vocation as images of God we all have work to do.  God, our Creator, “worked” and then rested and saw that His work was good.  This is also our paradigm as His images.

When our First Parents revolted against God’s command, the entire human race fell.  The human race consisted of only two people, but it was the whole of the human race.  In their fall, we fell.

As a consequence of the Fall, man is now out of sync with God, himself, others and nature.  We do not live in the harmony that would make the tasks of stewardship of the gift of life and the honor of being at the pinnacle of material creation without sorrow, toil and pain.

And yet even before the Fall man had been given labor by God the Father.  Man had duties in the Garden.  It was our Fall that transformed that labor into toil.

God knew every one of us from before the Creation of the universe.  He calls us into existence at the exact point and place in His plan He foresaw in His providence.  We have a role to play in God’s plan.  We have work to do.

When we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling our part in God’s plan according to our vocations, whatever they may be in our own circumstances, God will give us every actual grace we need to do His will and come to our perpetual reward in heaven.

He gives us the work, the grace and the glory.  The harder the times and work, the greater the honor and glory.

With our wounded nature, our disordered passions and appetites, it is hard to understand that the work we do in life is a manifestation of both present grace and anticipated glory.

As an early American preacher once said,

“grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected”.

Put another way, God gives us the work and then He makes our hands strong enough for the task.  The achievement is therefore both His and truly ours.

As St. Augustine says, God crowns His own merits in us.

Two last things.

Try to wrap your head around the paradox in the vocation of St. Joseph.  Firstly, he was a relatively poor craftsman, a tekton, which in Greek is “builder” and certainly includes “carpenter”. However, when you consider the implications of the genealogy at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph was also the true heir to the Davidic throne!  And we don’t have in Scripture a single word spoken by him.  Hidden vocation and hidden thought.  The fine scripture scholar Brandt Pitre has a recording of talks he did on St. Joseph which I highly recommend: HERE.

Also, you will love Fr. Calloway’s book on Joseph.

We being the month dedicated to the Mother of God by venerating St. Joseph, under the title of Worker.

If not for the clouds, today we would have seen the sunrise at 06:05.  It will probably still be cloudy at 20:11 when the sun is to set.

The Ave Maria doesn’t depend on clouds and it should ring at 20:15.

Please consider saying the Rosary daily during May if you don’t already.

The last couple of days have been rainy.  Rome is a rather awful place when it rains.  The cobbles, “san pietrini”, can be slippery.  Cars passing splash you.  Etc.

Rome at its most treacherous, when it starts to rain after a long dry period, before rain can wash the dust, and the grease and oil of vehicles away.

Sun one way and clouds in the other.

Just a great view.

You can see in this typical Roman fountain, “nasone”, the little hole on the top of the curved spout.  By blocking the spout, water squirts up and you can drink from the stream. It is very good water.

Mary, help us all.  Help me with my petitions.  Intercede for my benefactors.

There are different ways to lay out vestments for the priest.  Here is one way (mine).

Here is another way (the sacristan’s).

Here’s a puzzle.

White to move.  You are down a piece but that enemy king is exposed to attack.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

I’m now a chess.com affiliate, which uses House of Staunton, which is super-reliable.

Get some training from Igor.  Try THIS.

And get some great beer from the traditional Benedictines of Norcia! Invite friends over for a Rosary and to play chess over the board while enjoying a brew with savory sausage and cheeses.

Rome enjoyed a new sunrise at 06:07 and looks forward to another beautiful building hue changing sunset this evening at 20:08. Seven minutes later the Ave Maria is supposed to ring… but won’t… mostly.

In the Novus calendar it is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Patroness of Italy. In the Vetus calendar, she is celebrated tomorrow bumping the Sunday of Eastertide. Today, however, is the Feast of St Peter Martyr, who was killed, if memory serves, with a sword to the head by a Cathar assassin.  Those Cathars!  He is said to have, in life, conversed with Sts. Catherine of Alexandria, Agnes and Cecilia.

Welcome new registrant:

RikiPotsticker

There is a new Chinese potsticker place (and other dim sum) nearby at P.za Farnese.

I’m writing this part in the morning.  Today I have to finish a weekly piece for One Peter Five and get into Game 14 between Nepo and Ding.  This is it.  The last classical game for all the marbles.   A draw will result in a tie-break.  This has been a really exciting match.  In a way, I’m sort of glad that what’s his face isn’t in it.

Morning Mass brought me to look longer at a painting by the altar I used that I thought was St. Rita of Cascia.  It is really St. Giacinta (Hyacintha) Marescotti (+1640), a Franciscan.

Here are two photos of the painting, one with my older, Italian iPhone XR and one with my little Canon SX720 which you might remember that I (thanks to readers) repaired. HERE

What do you think?  Which is better?  Same position, same light, default settings. No touch ups.

And this…. 5.67MB

And this 1.91MB.  A quarter of the size of the first.  There has to be more data in the first, right?  However, it gets the colors right.

Here is a touch up of the first, using Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.

What say you?

More about her.  She was a bad nun.

Her given name would have pleased Dr. Lector, Clarice.  She was a frivolous thing even after a life-threatening event.  She had her heart set on a young Marquis who dumped her for her younger sister, so, to whitewash her shame she went into the convent.  She kept stashes of good stuff for herself, had only the highest quality of habits and received lots of visitors.  One day when she was ill a priest brought her Communion, saw her stuff, and read her the riot act.   Total conversion resulted.   She got rid of the stash and finery and during plague served the poor and sick in fasting and great mortifications.  When she died she had a terrific “fama sanctitatis”.  She is one of the patronesses of the Archconfraternity of the Pilgrims and Convalescents which is now revived at the parish.  Surely this is because of her work with the poor and ill.

After Mass I went, as one does, to my fishmonger.  Tonight, I told myself, its spaghetti with clams, vongole veraci, “da Zeta” and not in a restaurant where they charge criminally high prices for things you ought to be able to make yourself.   But, alas, most people roaming about for restaurants are tourists or short-stay folks, constrained to eat out.

This is one of the reasons I am so grateful for your donations so I have have a longer term place with a kitchen: I save huge money by cooking for myself.  Not only save, I enjoy it from the planning to the shopping to the prep to the execution and to the consumption.  Dishes, not so much.  I have, however, learned how to say “I am washing the dishes” in Hungarian: mosogatok (accent on the first syllable).

This morning, therefore, off to the fishmonger where I was greeted by the usual chorus, with a hearty, “What’up?”

Bye to the fish guy:

Hello to the veg stands.  A couple of shots.

Look at these baby artichokes.  Do you imagine them to be good?  Gotta get me some.

Hi to the flower guy, Pippo… and (I think) Milagra.

As usually happens, I catch myself smiling as a progress through the streets which sight, a grinning priest in a cassock carrying the groceries around elicits a great many “Buon giorno, padre!”s, also from the Carabinieri and soldiers on security around the area.

Purging the clams even more.  They say that they are purged.  Uh huh.  Trust, but verify.  You have to be careful with shell fish.

Speaking of, I was invited to a genuinely good restaurant recently and I had a bit of a fit.  Normally when something isn’t quite on par you can shrug and go “meh!” and move on.  However, this was with mussels, cozze.  They sent out some pasta with cozze and about a quarter of them didn’t open.   made serious and pointed comments to the waiter when he asked how it was.

Mussels are not mysterious.  You heat them.  They open.  If they don’t open, do NOT pry them open and – quod Deus avertat! – eat them.

From my point of view, having worked as a cook for years before seminary, it was not the fact that I got fewer mussels in my serving than I should have (that too, of course) but mainly that a cook would send out a dish with something so obvious that could make an unsavvy customer seriously ill.

If you have ever gotten sick from bad seafood, mussels, oysters, clams and the like, you know what I am talking about.  You feel like death might just be an attractive option.

Thus, I shall carefully purge my evening’s vongole for a few hours more. I will be careful not to attempt any that don’t open well.

I still have a few things to gather for the vongole feast this evening: white wine, bread.  I have in the wings some itty-bitty strawberries, fragoline, which I plan to dress with a little sugar and perhaps white wine, as the Romans do, instead of lemon, which is never bad.

Meanwhile,  white to move.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

GAME 14 TODAY!

I am now a chess.com affiliate which is handled by House of Staunton.