Suffering With Joy

Feast of St. Agnes, New Articles

January 21, 2010

Today is the feast of one of the most famous early Virgin-Martyrs, St. Agnes.  She is an icon of purity and courage and is often pictured with a lamb and a palm frond to symbolize her virginal youth in martyrdom.

Butler’s lives of the saints tells us that Agnes was only 12 years old when she was led to the altar of Minerva in Rome and ordered to offer sacrifice to the idol. She instead made the sign of the cross and refused.  The authorities bound her hand and foot, but the shackles slipped off her tiny wrists.  After being threatened by the judge with all kinds of torture and remaining invincible, Agnes was stripped and stood in the street, but she was undaunted. Even the crowd turned away in embarrassment and shame (would that be done today?) for the young girl, but a young man who dared to gaze upon her with lust was struck blind.  The governor’s son asked for her hand in marriage but she refused because she had consecrated herself to Christ alone.  After all of this she was beheaded.

On this feast each year the Pope blesses lambs less than a year old in the chapel of Urban VIII at the Vatican Apostolic Palace.  They are then sheared and the wool used to make palliums for bishops to be consecrated on June 29 in Rome. (HT CNA)

St. Agnes, St. Bartholomew and St. Cecelia with an unknown Dominican, 1485-1510, artist unknown, color on wood, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The painter of this panel was probably from Utrecht and arrived in Cologne between 1485 and 1510.  He is known as “The Master of the St. Bartholomew Altar.” St. Agnes with her symbols is on the left, St. Bartholomew with his knife and book of the Gospels in the center, and St. Cecelia with her organ and angel is on the right.  St. Cecelia is also a Virgin-Martyr whose feast is November 22.

The only Gothic church in Rome, a minor basilica called Santa Maria Sopra Minerva was built over the temple of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, where St. Agnes met the beginning of her martyrdom.  The original building was started in 1280 and finished in 1370.  It contains the tombs of St. Catherine of Sienna, Fra Angelico and two of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII.

ceiling, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva

Let us pray to St. Agnes, the wise virgin who kept her lamp burning for Christ, that purity and chastity according to our respective states in life be restored in today’s culture.

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!

New Articles Posted at Helium

This week I have four (so far) new articles up at Helium.  If you are interested in them have a look and pass them on to others who might be interested with my thanks.  It takes hours to write informative and useful articles on the Catholic faith, and I hope these will be good tools for evangelization.

The Meaning of the Rosary in the Roman Catholic Church

Tips on Getting More from Reading the Bible

The Symbolism of Liturgical Colors in Catholic Worship

Does Praying a Novena Work?

Tags: Fra Angelico, helium, St. Agnes

Pray for Haiti

A person would have to be totally incommunicado for the past week not to know that Haiti is a total disaster.  The suffering defies description.  Those of us who have never faced such loss of life and property cannot know what it is like for them.  Since I got involved with Food for the Poor some years ago I receive their mailings and have never failed to be inspired by the faith of the poor they serve in the Carribean and Latin America.  There are many ways to give to help the Haitians.  Food for the Poor has a button to click on their home page, and Catholic Relief Services does, too.  Either organization puts the majority of the money towards the relief effort.

I am praying for the people and hope this tragedy will turn into something good for a nation that has been served with such terrible corruption nationally and internationally.  The politics of how their construction was so shabby that beyond a hundred thousand will have died before it is all over is more than I can cover here.  It’s time for the terrible cycle of poverty and victimization to end.  Mother Mary, Comfort of the Afflicted, pray for them – from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Yesterday I posted two new articles at Helium.  The titles are not mine – somebody else dreamed them up and others have written to these titles as well.  Just click on the link to go to the articles and scroll to my name if you are interested.

1.  Why Priests Wear a White Collar

2. Understanding the Purpose of the Beatitudes

Thanks for stopping by and please pray for me.

Tags: Blessed Virgin, helium, suffering

New Items

#1 Based on what some bloggers whom I respect are doing, I added the Google Friend Connect to my sidebar.  I may add another gadget associated with it in the future, too.  For now, though, this about stretches my capacity to deal with new things and see how they work.  Sign in on the gadget if you wish.

#2 Helium is a kind of writers’ “co-op” which I joined just before Christmas so I can write articles that interest me, especially ones that would be longer than what I want to have at my blog or subject matter that doesn’t quite fit here.  I’m keeping blog articles short enough to allow for people’s busy schedules, except for an occasional “rant” when I just can’t restrain myself on some pro-life issue.  Here are links to the titles I’ve written to at Helium.  You may see other people’s articles under the same title, too.  If so, just scroll down the list to find mine.

1.  The Five Precepts of the Church

2.  What is Catholic Mental Prayer?

3.  How to Engage in Catholic Mental Prayer

This world boasts an unconscionable amount of media dreck yet the media is exactly where we need to be to bring Christ to others.  Pope John Paul II encouraged us to use contemporary technological methods to reach the masses and so I’m doing my little part.  If you like my articles there, please pass the site information on to others or link to them in your blog posts.  I don’t get paid to write articles, but according to Helium’s rules I can earn money by meeting certain criteria which is way too complicated to get into here.  No, I won’t get rich writing for Helium.

#3 For over ten years now I’ve been writing a monthly newsletter about the Traditional Mass movement and Catholic tradition, but only those from July, 2006 on are available on the web.  If I can remember to do so, I will include the link each month to the Una Voce Arkansas Ozarks Regional Newsletter.  When you get to the web site, scroll down the page for the latest newsletter.  If you like it, you can subscribe from the UVAO site and I’ll put you on the regular mailing list. Right now, all articles are in Microsoft Word format. At some point, I hope to be skilled enough to put them into PDF format and still meet my layout standards.

St. Isidore of Seville, Murillo

#4 The Observation Service for Internet, who drew it’s mission from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, researched the Internet and related technologies to select a patron saint that best reflects the concerns and ideals of computer designers, programmers and users. The saint chosen by the Observation Service for Internet was Saint Isidore. “The saint who wrote the well-known ‘Etymologies’ (a type of dictionary), gave his work a structure akin to that of the database. He began a system of thought known today as ‘flashes;’ it is very modern, notwithstanding the fact it was discovered in the sixth century. Saint Isidore accomplished his work with great coherence: it is complete and its features are complementary in themselves. — From St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Picayune, Mississippi.

St. Isidore, pray for me!

Tags: Catholic Church, helium, St. Isidore, UVAORN