At Immaculate Conception Church, in Columbia, Illinois.

Dad…

…HERE IS HOW you can print these posts cleanly.  Down at the bottom of the posts I put a new control:



Click it (not this one, but the one down there), and you will be brought to a new screen which reformats the posting, without the header and sidebar wasting ink and paper. There is some advertising that pops up after printing, but I have no control over that. Please let me know if you have any problems with this. It does appear to rearrange the photos somewhat.

Here are the “gadgets” which are located under each posting:


You can click on various items:

• “comments” will take you to the comments on the post.
• “Links to the post” will show if any other website has linked to this.
• “Labels” is a list of categories for this post. If you click on any of the labels, it will pull up a list of similar articles here.
• Clicking “Location” will bring up a map of the location.

Here are the other buttons you can click:

Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha

Here is a photo of the mosaic of Saint Isaac Jogues, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, and Saint René Goupil, at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. Sts. Jogues and Goupil were early missionaries in New France (a region which included parts of Canada and much of what is now the central United States, including the Saint Louis area) and are two of the North American Jesuit Martyrs.

Blessed Kateri — or Catherine — was a virgin belonging to the Mohawk tribe. Undergoing extreme mortification for her love for Christ, and suffering persecution from her people, she had the reputation for great holiness during her life and was a subject of veneration immediately upon her death.

I took this photo yesterday, and learned that Pope Benedict today approved the cause of canonization of Bl. Kateri, and so may soon be known as Saint Kateri. Among other causes moved forward were 64 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

Waiting...

At Saint Joseph Church, in Clayton, Missouri. Taken on the Fourth Sunday in Advent.

Saint John of the Cross

IN THE NEW calendar, today is the feast day of Saint John of the Cross (24 June 1542—14 Dec. 1591), co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites and great Doctor of mystical theology.



Photo taken in July 2006, at the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Ladue, Missouri.

Mysticism, broadly speaking, is the understanding or experience of the unseen and underlying unity of all things. Saint John of the Cross’ mystical theology is of union with God, Who is the Source of all things. From his book, Ascent of Mount Carmel:

The reason for which it is necessary for the soul, in order to attain to Divine union with God, to pass through this dark night of mortification of the desires and denial of pleasures in all things, is because all the affections which it has for creatures are pure darkness in the eyes of God, and, when the soul is clothed in these affections, it has no capacity for being enlightened and possessed by the pure and simple light of God, if it first cast them not from it; for light cannot agree with darkness; since, as Saint John says: Tenebroe eam non comprehenderunt. That is: The darkness could not receive the light.

The reason is that two contraries (even as philosophy teaches us) cannot coexist in one person; and that darkness, which is affection set upon the creatures, and light, which is God, are contrary to each other, and have no likeness or accord between one another, even as Saint Paul taught the Corinthians, saying: Quoe conventio luci ad tenebras? That is to say: What communion can there be between light and darkness? Hence it is that the light of Divine union cannot dwell in the soul if these affections first flee not away from it….