Take a moment from your busy day to say the Lord’s Prayer for your loved ones in purgatory. It will also warm our Lord’s heart.
A shameless plug for a timeless gift: get your gifts here.
Who will come to the stable
On Christmas Day?
And what will they take away?
Wise men, steadfast and earnest, came,
Instead of palace music,
They heard the donkey brae.
A lowly sound and sight,
Yet their wonder un-allayed.
Many come rejoicing,
To behold the Newborn King,
Bowing low,
While angels sing.
Christ’s comes for all
But not all come.
Some come, behold, then fall away,
Being rootless, they merrily go their way.
Father God prepared a voice
To announce His Only Word,
A messenger, born before, to go before.
Another child, spared Ramah’s plight
To live and pierce Sin’s long night
John, O, John, still cries, “Repent!”
Prepare if you would follow.
At Jerusalem’s Gate,
Many cried, “Messiah,”
Who would soon cry, “Crucify.”
Whose will will you do,
When the music fades in life?
Pride prides itself on ‘my way,’
Confounds with will and strife.
Without a ready, willing heart,
Nothing changes Christmas Day.
Corrupt hearts go on corrupting,
All the while the kingly Infant cries,
As throughout His life,
“I am the Way.”
Whose heart will live in yours
As angelic songs fade away.
Will you simply leave the stable
To follow your own way?
Come, O come, rejoicing!
Praying for a change.
Receive the Babe within your Heart.
The humble He teaches His Way.
©2011 Joann Nelander
I love Carmel, its saints and its spirituality. Take a peek!
via Reaching for the Summit of Mt. Carmel with John of the Cross and Teresa of Jesus | Shrine Tower.
I followed John of the Cross
and Teresa of Jesus
inside the Carmelite Monastery,
seeing their pleasant ways
I ran up the mountain
following their path
seeking Almighty God
reaching for the
Summit of Mt. Carmel.
Here’s what I found…I. Spiritual Guides: St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross
Opening Prayer: Love and honor to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, to Saint Joseph, Saint Anne, to our Holy Mother Saint Teresa, to our Holy Father Saint John of the Cross, whose powerful intercessions we invoke that the spirit of prayer, penance and apostolic zeal may flourish in the community. Amen
TThe Triumphal arch, with crucifix suspended, inspired by the crucifix of Fra Innocenzo de Palermo (1637) in the Church of San Damiano, Assisi. – Holy Spirit Chapel Sanctuary at Philadelphia Carmel. Photo courtesy of Friends of Carmel Pinterest.
Read more via Reaching for the Summit of Mt. Carmel with John of the Cross and Teresa of Jesus | Shrine Tower.
via Evangelical Catholicism by George Weigel | Articles | First Things.
Evangelical Catholicism enters the public square with the voice of reason, grounded in gospel conviction.
Because it lives under two sovereigns, Evangelical Catholicism is bilingual. The gospel cannot be preached in any other language than its own: a language deeply shaped by the Sacred Scriptures, a language that has been revealed and received and is not to be recast when the culture suggests that the Church do so. Yet in addressing public policy in pluralistic and secular societies, Evangelical Catholicism speaks its second language, which is the language of reason.
The ordained leaders of the Church, and the laity who are Christ’s principal witnesses in the public square, do not enter public life proclaiming, “The Church teaches . . .” When the question at issue is an immoral practice, they enter the debate saying, “This is wicked; it cannot be sanctioned by the law and here is why, as any reasonable person will grasp.” When the issue at hand is the promotion of some good, the first thing they say is, “This is good; it’s a requirement of justice that the law acknowledge it; and here is why it’s both good and just.”
This use of the language of reason is a matter of good democratic manners, of speaking in such a way that our arguments can be engaged by our fellow citizens. It is also a matter of political common sense: If you want an argument to be heard, engaged, and accepted, you make it in a language that those you are seeking to persuade can understand. It is, furthermore, a matter of calling the bluff of those who insist that the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, and marriage is a “sectarian” teaching that cannot be “imposed” on a pluralistic society.
Evangelical Catholicism draws the will, the energy, the strength, and, if necessary, the stubbornness to continue defending and promoting the dignity of the human person from the power of the gospel. It speaks publicly in secular, pluralistic democracies in such a way that its words can be heard and the truths they express can be engaged by everyone. Only religious and secular sectarians will find a contradiction here.
Evangelical Catholicism awaits with eager anticipation the coming of the Lord Jesus in glory, and until that time, Evangelical Catholicism is ordered to mission—to the proclamation of the gospel for the world’s salvation.
The Church does not have a mission, as if “mission” were one among a dozen things the Church does. The Church is a mission, and everything the Church does is ordered to that mission, which is the proclamation of the gospel for the conversion of the world to Christ. Thus mission and mission-effectiveness measure everything and everyone in the Church.
via Evangelical Catholicism by George Weigel | Articles | First Things.
Lifted up,
You hang above the world.
Your outstretched arms
Measure the breath of Your Love.
How great the distance between us,
Yet, greater still,
Your unquenchable thirst for me.
I am a child, a lowly one,
Troubling you yet and always.
I tug at the hem of Your garment
While You tug at my heart.
Lord of my hopes,
Lord of my longing,
Lord of my sorrows,
Lord of my weeping,
Ruler of all Time and Space,
You draw me to an Eternity in Your Embrace.
©2014 Joann Nelander
Jesus, You didn’t rush through the moments of Your Passion on the Way of the Cross.
You didn’t hurry through Your Suffering on the Cross on the way to Your Resurrection.
Rather, You embrace the whole of each morsel of Time to sanctify the whole.
In Your steps along Your Way, may I walk embracing You,
In Your Passion, my passion,
In Your cross, my cross,
In Your Resurrection, my resurrection.
© 2011 Joann Nelander
Guardian Angel from heaven bright,
Watching beside me to lead me alright.
Fold thy wings round me and guard me with love
Softly sing songs to me of heaven above. Amen.
DNA Confirms: Here Lieth Richard III, Under Yon Parking Lot
The king’s genes also raise some royally embarrassing questions about the legitimacy of the Tudors who ended his reign.
On the left a photo of the skull. On the right a photo of a wood engraving of Richard III.
Researchers conservatively estimate that the chances of the skull at left not being that of Richard III (right) are 6.7 million to 1.
Photographs by University of Leicester and Universal History Archive, Getty Images
Dan Vergano
National Geographic
Published December 2, 2014
Ancient bones discovered under a parking lot have been confirmed as those of the medieval king Richard III, through a DNA test that also raises questions about the legitimacy of Henry VIII and other famous English royals.
The team of genetics detectives reported Tuesday that DNA from the skeleton shows that the bones were Richard III’s, with a probability of 99.9994 percent. This is the first genetic identification of a particular individual so long after death—527 years.
Archaeologists had peeled back a parking lot in 2012 to excavate the skeleton, which was among buried relics of the Greyfriars Friary in Leicester, England, long the reputed burial site of Richard III. (See “The Real Richard III.”)
Most people know the hunched-shouldered king through Shakespeare’s play Richard III, in which the maligned ruler utters such memorable lines as “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York,” and “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
Earlier this year, a forensic study of the remains revealed that the doomed king—the last English monarch to die in combat—suffered 11 wounds at the time of his death, in a 1485 battle with the Tudors that ended England’s War of the Roses
But there had been lingering questions about whether the skeleton was really that of Richard III.
“The evidence directly indicates that these are the remains of Richard III,” says geneticist Turi King of the University of Leicester in the U.K., who led the team reporting the results in the journal Nature Communications. (Related: “Richard III Mania: Understanding a Kingly Obsession.”)
The scientists examined DNA inherited along maternal lines, known as mitochondrial DNA, from two distantly related modern-day relatives of Richard III’s sister. That DNA is a near perfect match for the maternal genes of the hunchbacked skeleton buried at the friary. What’s more, the DNA was “unusual,” King adds, containing stretches that don’t quite match anything in registries of European genes.
A statistical analysis led by David Balding and Mark Thomas of University College London took those genetic results and calculated the chances that a man of Richard III’s age with battle wounds and a curved spine could turn up at Greyfriars and not be the slain king. They conservatively estimated that chance at 6.7 million to 1.
“It is surprising how many people initially argued that these skeletal remains weren’t those of Richard III,” says bioanthropologist Piers Mitchell of the U.K.’s University of Cambridge, who was not part of the study team. “Well, here it is.”
In 2012 archaeologists peeled back a parking lot to excavate this skeleton, buried among relics of the Greyfriars Friary in Leicester, England. Photograph by University of Leicester
Photo of the skeleton at the burial site.
In 2012 archaeologists peeled back a parking lot to excavate this skeleton, buried among relics of the Greyfriars Friary in Leicester, England.
via DNA Confirms: Here Lieth Richard III, Under Yon Parking Lot.
Joann Nelander Studio 