Category Archives: Devotional

Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst: Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best. (Christina Rossetti, “Cardinal Newman”) When near to death, perhaps he saw the veil Lift off from Moses’ face, reveal the shine Which glimmered there, the presence of the Light – The kindly light of truthContinue reading “The Best We All Can Do (For John Henry Newman)”

How many hearts have burned, though dead, to hear the truth that they have died amidst their riches, and felt sparks of life fly into their dead hearts when they put to flames their deeds of wealth? How many nobles have thrown down the gauntlet of their wealth and died the death of all theirContinue reading “Garden of the Poor Clares (For Clare of Assisi)”

And then they came to judgment. And he was inquired again of the treasures, and Laurence demanded dilation of three days, and Valerianus granted him on pledge of Hippolitus. And St. Laurence in these three days gathered together poor people, blind and lame, and presented them tofore Decius, in the palace of Salustine, and said:Continue reading “The Fire and the Treasure: A Rondeau for Laurence of Rome”

All this day O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen (A Prayer of Mary Sumner) God of all generations, all mothers and allContinue reading “Silence and a Candle (For Mary Sumner)”

If we picture him, as so many do, seated with the red inquisitors, seeking heretics in each closet, proud in righteousness and judgment, we must not silence in memory the man who fought with truth as his sharp weapon and never took a place of power but kept his mouth a flaming torch; or theContinue reading “Dominic and the Inquisitors (For Dominic, Priest and Friar)”

Who was he, do you think, when he shone there that day, whiter than all the world’s bleach could make him, when we climbed up the mountain and he was ablaze and our hearts were dilated within us? Why was he joined up there, on that stark mountain-top with those prophets, Elijah and Moses, whoContinue reading “Who Was He? (For the Transfiguration of the Lord)”

I. David tore his clothes and cried to God for mercy, though his sin had dwelt within the heart of him for many days and years. For God had said through Nathan that the sins that he had kept in private would be shown throughout the lands when his enemy would take King David’s wivesContinue reading “Bread in the Springtime Part 2 (Tenth Sunday After Pentecost)”

Where others had forsaken heaven’s king on gaining earthly kingdoms or had fled further into their monastic realm, Oswald, son of Aethelfrith, though gaining lands that reached out far and wide, did not forget the kingdom that no human eye could see. And one day, so Bede relates, he sat at table with a silverContinue reading “The Ageless Kingdom (For Oswald, King and Martyr)”

Today the church remembers a French priest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Vianney, who helped restore the church after the French Revolution. Poem for John Baptist Vianney The years since he had hidden from The army he’d deserted Had seen the people dance amidst The decadence of peace. The little Corsican Emperor, Falling downContinue reading “Poem for John Baptist Vianney”

If they believed as through a cloud or through the mist, tenaciously clinging onto prodigious light and glimpses of the city through the haziness of law and death; If they lay like Jacob on their deathbeds, prophesying of what great lions would grow from the children he had raised and how Egypt soon would fadeContinue reading “The Tenacity of Belief (For Men and Women of the Old Testament)”