The One Great Thing

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth..."
- J.R.R. Tolkien

What to Exalt, What to Forbid

"It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility." - G.K. Chesterton (G.K.'s Weekly, Nov. 1933)

Grey, RIP

In your charity, kindly say a prayer for an old friend, Grey. He died this morning after a recent stroke. He and I were friends since about 1982, and he was the best man at my wedding. He leaves behind a wife, four children, and several grandchildren.

Requiescat in pace...

Grey and Himself
August 17, 1991

Clutching Faux Pearls

Sad news today in Boston, one of my favorite cities.

Said Paul: "Let's not have a culture that embraced 'The Company You Keep' now clutch its pearls over 'incomprehensible' bombings...anger at killers, and at those who hold their coats, is a proper and necessary reaction to murder...for license to engage in post-terror film criticism I take the example from Foggy Bottom after the Benghazi invasion last September. All I can say is that plenty of thoughts are going out to victims as if they died from an act of God."

Well put. Boston deserves better.

Bad Egg

Inevitable easy divorce precipitated by casual promiscuity and routine infidelity; children – if they must be mentioned – frequently characterized as an interruption of adult epicurean pursuits; an orthodoxy of ennui about the millions of little ones – mostly minorities – chemically and surgically evacuated and discarded annually; the mothballed institution of polygamy soon to be aired out under cover afforded by official same-sex arrangements; the creation and sustenance of life axiomatically denigrated or even banished in pursuit of the pleasures of life.

Well, no doubt one must discard a few old-fashioned eggs to concoct a progressive cholesterol-free omelet. In fact, I'm reminded of the chestnut about how we've seen progress of this variety before in an egg - it's called "going bad."

Bip Called

Sometimes when marketers telephone your house they rely on robots to dial your number. When the machine on their side detects a human voice on your side after you pick up, the call is quickly routed to a human on the marketer's side who can carry on a conversation with you.

I say quickly, but the truth is that there is a moment's lag while the switching takes place. It's not a terribly long time, but it is enough to tip off the person being called.

This moment of silence at the beginning of many marketing calls happens sufficiently often that I have a gag for it: I say that I have the ghost of Marcel Marceau on the line, and I've given such interactions the descriptor of "Mime Calls."

Prayer to St. Joseph for the Spirit of Work

Feast of St. Joseph

Pope St. Pius X composed this prayer to St. Joseph, patron of working people, that expresses concisely the Christian attitude toward labor. It summarizes also for us the lessons of the Holy Family's work at Nazareth.

Glorious St. Joseph, model of all who devote their lives to labor, obtain for me the grace to work in a spirit of penance in order thereby to atone for my many sins; to work conscientiously, setting devotion to duty in preference to my own whims; to work with thankfulness and joy, deeming it an honor to employ and to develop by my labor the gifts I have received from God; to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience, without ever shrinking from weariness and difficulties; to work above all with a pure intention and with detachment from self, having always before my eyes the hour of death and the accounting which I must then render of time ill spent, of talents wasted, of good omitted, and of vain complacency in success, which is so fatal to the work of God. All for Jesus, all through Mary, all in imitation of you, O Patriarch Joseph! This shall be my motto in life and in death, Amen.

St. Joseph