Just arrived back from a visit to Ireland last Friday (18 days). We stayed in Co Leitrim up north and were able to receive the BBC that is broadcast into the Six Counties. The bitter, vitrioloc, hateful and slanderous coverage was repulsive. There was no news of the beatification of JHN, just lots of face/screen time for anti-Catholic diatribe against the Holy Father.

JHN was right in the Apologia: it is always the Catholic Church that is being opposed.

Prayed for all at Knock. EJG Catholic has the right attitude.

PAX

Bene, optima est!.

Awesome. As always. Our Lord bless you both for ALL you do!!

It was one of the greatest priviledges on my life to sit at then Prof. John Saward's feet (quite literally at times) and be truly discilpled to Christ.


P.S. I am deeply grateful for these postings

Dom Prosper Gueranger of Solesmes actually penned a small work entitled The Medal or Cross of Saint Benedict. This work remains little known, compared to his magnaum opu, The Liturgical Year. This small book is still in print by Loreto Publications. see. www. loretopubs.org , loretopubs.org/index.php

I can personally attest to the positive, proper use of this sacramental. I have worn, distributed and used the St. Benedict Medal to good effect for the last 15 years.

St. Teresa de Avila's Devotion to St. Joseph

[The following quotes from St. Teresa de Avila about her devotion to St. Joseph are taken from her autobiography, and were quoted on St. Teresa of Avila's devotion to St. Joseph.]

"I took for my advocate and lord the glorious Saint Joseph and commended myself earnestly to him; and I found that this my father and lord delivered me both from this trouble [a temporary paralysis] and also from other and greater troubles concerning my honor and the loss of my soul, and that he gave me greater blessings than I could ask of him. I do not remember even now that I have ever asked anything of him which he has failed to grant. I am astonished at the great favors which God has bestowed on me through this blessed saint, and at the perils from which He has freed me, both in body and in soul. To other saints the Lord seems to have given grace to succor us in some of our necessities but of this glorious saint my experience is that he succors us in them all and that the Lord wishes to teach us that as He was Himself subject to him on earth (for, being His guardian and being called His father, he could command Him) just so in Heaven He still does all that he asks. This has also been the experience of other persons whom I have advised to commend themselves to him; and even to-day there are many who have great devotion to him through having newly experienced this truth."

"I wish I could persuade everyone to be devoted to this glorious saint, for I have great experience of the blessings which he can obtain from God. I have never known anyone to be truly devoted to him and render him particular services who did not notably advance in virtue, for he gives very real help to souls who commend themselves to him. For some years now, I think, I have made some request of him every year on his festival and I have always had it granted. If my petition is in any way ill directed, he directs it aright for my greater good."

Highly Recomned THE SECRET OF NEW YORK REVEALED by Thomas Howard. The Forward by Fr. Benedict Groeschel alone is worth the consideration.

Howard's book is based around finding the Holiness in everday life. A very large theme in the writings of Charles Williams (an major "Inkling"). Howard, while doing his Ph.D on Williams in NYC, discovers the "Secret of NY City".

“More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. He is a man of many excellent virtues; I know not his fellow. For where is the man (in whom is so many goodly virtues) of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability, and as time requires, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes and sometime of steadfast gravity — a man for all seasons.”
--Robert Whittington, Vulgaria, 1520

“…it would be hard to find anyone who was more truly a man for all seasons and all men…”
(…omnibus omnium horarum homo…: Here Erasmus alludes to
1 Corinthians 9:22, “I become all things to all men, that I might save all.”) --Erasmus, Letter to Guillaume Budé, 1521.