This post is linked to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Please join us and comment.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had the great pleasure of corresponding with an exceptional Norwegian photographer who specializes in the Northern Lights but also has other great work.  You can find a few of his photographs and an interview with him at The Photography of Bjørn Jørgensen. Serious amateurs, professionals, and photography junkies will find it very interesting.  Others will find the images just plain gorgeous.

Fundamental Spiritual Truths is a meditation on part of the Prologue of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict.

At Sabbath Moments I wrote a little about wedding rings, a book by Pope Benedict XVI, and thoughts on the crucifix linked to part of the Prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule.

The House Built on Rock talks about dealing with temptation.

I don’t know how the techies and scientists at NASA produce these images, but this, taken in January, is from the Suomi satellite launched last October. Read more about it here.

If for no other reason than the kind of data we can gather about the universe and earth, NASA should be kept alive.  And I can see North and Central America from my living room!

Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)

Thanks to RAnn at This That and the Other Thing for hosting this meme.

This week I introduced two blogs.  One is new and one has been around awhile.  Fellow bloggers will want to check out Catholic Bloggers Network because it offers a diverse way of sharing posts and eBooks. Sucipio is a blog by and for Catholic women. Jenny, who is expecting her 7th child, started it with friends.

I finally got my Gluten Free Stroganoff Soup recipe the way I like it and hubby thinks it’s great.  His stamp of approval means it’s good.

The Leper, the Centurion, and Jesus is a meditation on Matt. 8:1-13, last Sunday’s gospel in the Extraordinary Form.  The art I use to illustrate the post is by William Brassey Hole, an artist known for authentic depiction of the time and place of Jesus.  His depiction of the centurion reminds me of how even today in Korea, China, and Japan people bow their heads before one of higher position when asking for something.

Trivia: in Korea people still go down on their knees in desperation before someone to beg earnestly for a favor or to beg forgiveness for a serious offense.  It’s a really big deal for the person asking and the person granting when that happens.

At Sabbath Moments I wrote a bit on cooking, recommended a couple of Catholic blog posts for humor and inspiration, and included another bit of commentary on the Holy Rule of St. Benedict.

Click on the image below to get the explanation.

Cygnus X: The Inner Workings of a Nearby Star Factory

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn over at This That and the Other Thing.  Please join us by sharing your posts for the week and commenting on others’ posts.

This week I wrote a book review of He Came Looking for Me.

Two other posts feature thoughts on readings from the Rule of St. Benedict: Divine Eavesdropping and Sabbath Moments.

The mess that’s left when a star explodes (click on the image to go to APOD’s explanation):

M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to RAnn’s meme hosted at her blog, This That and the Other Thing. Please join the rest of us over there to read other bloggers’ posts for the week.

At Christmas Photos: Treasured Memories I shared some pictures taken Christmas Eve of my grandneice.

I also wrote about some things I learned from Blessed Veronica of Milan.

At Sabbath Moments I shared a meditation on the Rule of St. Benedict concerning obstinacy and hardness of heart.

I ask readers to pray for a couple of friends of mine who are suffering with severe health issues and major family problems.  Also, my hives have returned with a vengeance so please kindly remember me, too.

The Little Ghost Nebula was discovered by 18th century astronomer William Herschel.  Read more about this image at APOD.

Little Ghost Nebula NGC 6369

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Visit her to pick up on other Catholic blogger’s posts for the week.

When I got back from Christmas vacation I caught a cold so my blogging has been pretty light.  But I’m back in the saddle and looking forward to participating in the blogosphere again.

This week I wrote about The Holy Name of Jesus, my plans for improvement in 2012 in Renunciation, and a little of this and that at Sabbath Moments. I wish more Catholic bloggers would participate in this meme hosted by Colleen.

Jesus Our Mediator is a reflection on being part of the Holy Family, and since today is the feast of the Holy Family in the 1962 calendar (we celebrated Epiphany on Friday), the theme fits the liturgy.

Happy New Year and all the best to everyone!

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Join us, won’t you? Share your posts for the week or just comment.

Monday I wrote a little about Our Lady of Guadalupe and included links to other posts regarding her that I’ve written.

For some lovely Advent and Christmas music, visit my posts: Mannheim Steamroller: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and Sabbath Moments. You might get hooked as I have been.

If, by any chance, you are going to see some quirky relatives over the holidays, St. Benedict has some really good advice I wrote about in Patiently Bear Weaknesses.

Since we are going out of town over the holidays, at most I’ll have only one or two additional posts until after Christmas.  To all my readers, may the Christ Child come into your hearts and bless you abundantly in the coming year.

Christmas Carol - Wislawa Kwiatkowska

In winter, Jesus is born in a manger; watching with fear over the Child,
a multitude of angels bow. Mary, like a lily, wraps the Child in swaddling clothes.
Brightness pulses from the candles, from the stars, from the snow.
Give warmth to your little Son, Mary, full of grace.
Let the angels in silver armor withdraw.
Let the compassionate animals draw near and warm the baby with their breath.

Kazimiera Illakowiczowna, Z pastoralki

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a weekly meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Won’t you join us over there and see what other Catholic bloggers wrote about this week?

Sensus Fidelium and the Immaculate Conception has a bit about the dogma and my favorite image of the IC by Reubens. I would love to have this painting on a holy card.  The ones most commonly reproduced are by Murillo.

In Sabbath Moments I write about the Mass I attended on the feast of the Immaculate Conception and about St. Benedict’s caution against evil zeal.

I’m ready for winter to be over and it’s hardly begun!  This image from the Marianas makes the cold weather endurable.  I’d love to go swimming in the warm Pacific water.

Sunset over Saipan, (c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/)

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to our weekly Sunday meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  Join us with your own contributions and comments, won’t you?

Off the subject: today is the feast of St. Barbara who was unceremoniously removed from the Roman calendar in 1969 under the guise that, even though many churches since the 600s have been dedicated to her and she has appeared to other saints, we have no proof of her existence.  Our Eastern brethren have venerated her since the 800s.  I’ll let God have the last word on that and continue to pray to her and thank her for watching over me all these years.

Virgin and Child with Sts. Barbara and Dorothy, 1450s, Master E.S., engraving, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

St. Barbara’s father was one bad dude who chopped off her head during the persecution of Diocletian because he was extremely angry that she became a Christian.  He had plans for her to marry a nobleman (this is about earthly wealth and land) but she was determined to remain a virgin.  Two big counts against her.  Legend has it that immediately upon her death, her father was struck by lightening and died on the spot.  She is the patroness of artillerymen, military engineers, miners, and mathematicians to name a few.

I hope that if anybody ever wants to chop off my head for the sake of Christ that I will be as courageous as St. Barbara.  In fact, I’m counting on her being there with me.

This week I wrapped up November with the Prayer of St. Gertrude the Great, Pope Pius XII and the Jews, and Recommended Blog.

At Sabbath Moments I observed the potential for the new Mass translation to increase piety and our ability to witness to the Faith.

It’s cold and rainy here in southern Missouri, so how about enjoying with me the view of the sea from Taketomi-jima, an island of Okinawa?

View of the sea from Taketomi-jima, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, (c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/)

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

This post is linked to RAnn’s place, This That and the Other Thing, where you can find many interesting posts from the participants in Sunday Snippets.

This week I continued with the purgatory theme by focusing on how to avoid it with help from Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, another interesting Carmelite.  Carmelites are the prayer warriors of the Church and I’m thankful for all that I’ve learned and will continue to learn from them.

Ridding Ourselves of Rust

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

Prayer to the Holy Trinity

Then there’s a bit about elderberries and the Catholic Church in South Korea at Sabbath Moments.

Here’s NGC 6302, The Butterfly Nebula.  I wonder what poet and saint, John of the Cross, would have written about this from the Hubble.

NGC 6302, The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, the weekly meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Visit her to read other Catholic bloggers’ posts for the week.

Since it’s November, I continue to occupy myself with thoughts and reflections on purgatory.  In St. Catherine of Genoa Explains Purgatory I include quotes from her treatise on the subject.  I highly recommend that everyone read it more than once as it contains many gems worthy of discovering again and again.

A rerun of my Easy Chaplet for the Poor Souls completes this week’s ruminations on purgatory.

Sabbath Moments contains comments on the death of my friend, Shirley, and a little about the conversion to Christianity by one of the Tianamen Square student leaders of 1989.

It’s the time of chrysanthemums, perhaps the last flowers of the year for cutting.  Here’s a lovely photo from Tokyo by Yun [(c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/) used according to license].

Chrysanthemum by Yun

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever!

(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, our weekly meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Please join us, read others’ posts of the week, and comment if you like.

This week I worked on a vocation series.  If you think it’s only about priests and nuns, you’d be surprised.  I wrote these posts to encourage more conversation in families and parishes on this important subject.

What is a Vocation?g

Distinct Vocations

Vocations Are Not…

Discerning One’s Vocation

Also, because November is the month dedicated to the Poor Souls I wrote Why the Catholic Church prays for the Dead.  This is about as close to apologetics as I’ll probably ever get.  If you’ve ever encountered non-Catholics who deny the existence of purgatory, this article may help you.  As I wrote in How to Get More From Reading the Bible, God shows us some things without using specific words.

Another awesome image from the heavens and APOD:

HH-222 The Waterfall Nebula

HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula
Image Credit: Z. Levay (STScI/AURA/NASA), T.A. Rector (U. Alaska Anchorage) & H. Schweiker (NOAO/AURA/NSF), KPNO, NOAO

Explanation: What created the Waterfall Nebula? No one knows. The structure seen in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great Orion Molecular Cloud complex is one of the more mysterious structures yet found on the sky. Designated HH-222, the elongated gaseous stream stretches about ten light years and emits an unusual array of colors. One hypothesis is that the gas filament results from the wind from a young star impacting a nearby molecular cloud. That would not explain, however, why the Waterfall and fainter streams all appear to converge on a bright but unusual non thermal radio source located toward the upper left of the curving structure. Another hypothesis is that the unusual radio source originates from a binary system containing a hot white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, and that the Waterfall is just a jet from this energetic system. Such systems, though, are typically strong X-rays emitters, and no X-rays have been detected. For now, this case remains unsolved. Perhaps well-chosen future observations and clever deductive reasoning will unlock the true origin of this enigmatic wisp in the future.

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Please join us at her place to read other Catholic bloggers’ posts for the week.

26 Martyrs is a link to a trailer for a short that will accompany All That Remains.  The animators have done a great job bringing this small part of Church history to us.

A Hermit in Our Midst is about the vocation of present day hermits. This first person account opens a window onto something rare but growing in the Church today.

Sabbath Moments mentions a few times this week when God was with us in a special way.

God bless all my readers and have a beautiful Sunday.

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  I’ve met so many really neat bloggers participating in this roundup, and learned a lot, too.  Why not join us with your contributions and comments?

This week I excerpted some of Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.’s exegesis on last Sunday’s Gospel, The Man Sick of Palsy. Any time I can understand the Bible better, it’s exciting and my prayer life improves.  The post led me to dust off an old article and rewrite it for this blog on How to Get More from Reading the Bible.

I’ve been meaning for quite some time to write about The Vocation of the Consecrated Virgin, something the Church revived in 1970.  If you’ve never heard of it, don’t be surprised.  I hadn’t either until I met one and we got to talking.  Every diocese should have as many of these wonderful women as possible.

At Sabbath Moments I wrote a little about friendship with God and our apostolate as Christians.

Finally, the Rule of St. Benedict prompted me to write a short post on Refraining from Doing Good? A quote from St. Bernard puts everything into perspective.

God bless all my readers.

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme originating at This That and the Other Thing.  Please join us over there for links to other Catholic bloggers’ posts for the week.

This week I had a bit of an Asian flavor at my blog with:

All That Remains - info on an upcoming film being made about Dr. Paul Takashi Nagai whose cause for sainthood is moving forward in the diocese of Nagasaki.  Nagai’s story is great so if you like stories about saints you’re going to want to see the trailer.

Moon Over a Ruined Castle is a bit about Japanese composer Rentaro Taki and his famous composition.  I embedded a YouTube video of this played on kotos.

Hot and Sour Cabbage Soup is my simple recipe for a Chinese flavored favorite fall meal.

We leave east Asia and visit St. Teresa of Avila in Spain and St. Francis de Sales in France at Sabbath Moments – Spiritual Progress.

Finally, I wrote about Repeat Offenders – we sinners, of course, and why God allows us to fall.

God bless all my readers.  Thanks for stopping by.

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Join us over there to catch up on other Catholic bloggers’ posts for the week.

I’m still battling hives so my posts are few.

Road Number One is a commentary on a line of dialogue spoken by a North Korean communist in the series of that name.  Our Lady of Fatima said that unless converted, Russia would spread her errors throughout the world; she wasn’t and she did. Road Number One is one of the best depictions of the Korean War I’ve seen with many teachable moments from a historical and moral viewpoint.

Christian Patience in Suffering was a particularly appropriate meditation for me and may be helpful to you, too.

Sabbath Moments: Perseverance highlights this useful virtue that we need when we’d rather yell, “Stop the world, I want to get off!”

Last week I posted a gorgeous photo of the northern lights by Stephane Vitter at Nuit Sacrées. October, the month of the Holy Angels, is coming up and here is a striking image Vitter took at Burnkirch, Illfurth in Alsace one July night. If we are to keep ourselves going in this mad, mad world, it’s always good to feed ourselves on beauty.

Un Ange foudroye, Burnkirch, Illfurth

This photo is of Mont Sainte Odile taken during the conjunction of the moon, Jupiter, and the Pleiades by Vitter.  A famous monastery in Strasbourg, Alsace, Mont Ste. Odile is a favorite place of pilgrims.  St. Odile is the patroness of Alsace and also of the blind.  I wonder how many other places on earth can say this: they have had Perpetual Adoration at Mont Ste. Odile since 1931.  If you’d like to know more about the long history of this place or plan a trip there, visit here.

Mont Ste. Odile during the conjunction of the moon, Jupiter, and the Pleiades by Stephane Vitter

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)