Stand Together For Life (February 24, 2024)

More than 50 people braved the near zero windchill to take part in the February 23, 2024, Stand Together for Life. Catholics and Protestants gathered together in front of Rochester's Planned Parenthood headquarters to pray, sing, hear speakers, and witness.   

They heard a talk by Father Anthony Mugavero, OFS, that included a warning about the very-pro-abortion New York Equal Protection of Law Amendment that will be on the ballot this November.. 

There was a small collection of infant items for Focus Pregnancy Help Center.

Music was provided by Dan Celso.

We also got to see the ultrasound van purchased with pro-life funds to provide an alternative to Planned Parenthood.

Pax et bonum

Tree (Outside the Chapel)

When I am volunteering at the St. Padre Pio Chapel, if there are no visitors, I say a Rosary. While I pray the Rosary, I walk up and down the aisles.

As I walked by some windows, I spotted a tree in the field just outside the Chapel. I paused to look at it.

It stood out, leafless, in the field.

Each time I walked by those windows, I glanced again at the tree. 

It became part of my prayers. Like the Tabernacle with it's flickering electric candle, and the large Crucifix at the front of the Chapel, and the Statues of various saints, and the paintings of Mary and Jesus.

And I think of Joyce Kilmer's "Trees": 

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

 

Thank you God.

Pax et bonum

America First?

America First?

No.

God First.

Pax et bonum

Unborn Lives Matter Cartoon

Pax et bonum

Alabama Supreme Court Rules Frozen Embryos are Unborn Children

Alabama Supreme Court Rules Frozen Embryos are Unborn Children

About that blurb ...

I already offered my assessment of  Winter's Child by Margaret Coel (basically good, but ended the series with things unresolved). but there was one other observation I did not share.

The book was published in 2016 . On the cover was a blurb from Tony Hillerman. "[Coel is] a master."

It made sense to have a comment about a reservation-based mystery from the renowned author of the great Navajo mysteries.

But ... Hillerman died in 2008. Eight years before Coel's book was published.

Yes, given the nature of the quotation, he likely said it at some point about her. But still, eight years after he died?  

My sarcastic side wondered if maybe he supplied it for this book through a seance.

Whenever he said it, it seemed kind of sketchy that they used it after he was dead.

Now if I can only get Dickens to provide a blurb for one of my Christmas tales.

Pax et bonum

Baptism and Confirmation Dates Plus First Communion Date

Pope Francis once said that we should celebrate our Baptismal dates.

"It is like a birthday because baptism makes us reborn in Christian life," he said to parents on January 8, 2023. "That is why I advise you to teach your children the date of their baptism as a new birthday: that every year they will remember and thank God for this grace of becoming a Christian.“

I decided to dig out my Baptismal record. I found it, as well as my Confirmation certificate.

I looked up what is celebrated in Church history on those dates.

I was Baptized on July 17, 1955, at St. Margaret Church in Brockton, Massachusetts., and was pleased to discover it is the feast of Saint Charbel Makhlouf, a Lebanese Maronite Catholic monk.

I had first become aware of Saint Charbel at the Fatima Shrine in Lewiston, N.Y. They have a statue of him there, and I was impressed by his beard!

And a couple of years ago, some local Lebanese Catholics donated a statue of him and some prayers to him to the Saint Padre Pio Chapel where I volunteer and where my Secular Franciscan Fraternity meets. I took information about a Novena to Saint Charbel, and I have been saying it every day since as part of my night prayers.

My First Communion took place May 27th, 1962, at Sacred Heart Church in Brockton, Massachusetts. 
 

There are no major feasts on that day that struck me, except that it is the feast day of St. Augustine of Canterbury. He helped to bring the Catholic faith to the Anglo-Saxons. I pray that England with convert again!

My Confirmation date was October 13, 1965, at St. Stephen's Church in Geneva, N.Y.  That date jumped out at me immediately.

On October 13, 1917, thousands of people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima.

The Apparition of Our Lady at Fatima has been declared worthy of belief by the Church. On the anniversary of that Marian day I chose as my Confirmation name Joseph. How appropriate.

So now I have added reasons to mark the dates of my Baptism and my Confirmation.

Thank you Pope Francis!

Pax et bonum