A Prayer Before Using the Internet

 Father Z has written a prayer to say before using the internet. He invokes St. Isadore of Seville. Follow this link to see various translations and recordings of the prayer (including Lithuanian and Klingon!)

Oratio ante colligationem in interrete:
Omni­potens aeterne Deus, qui secundum imaginem Tuam nos plasmasti et omnia bona, vera, et pulchra, praesertim in divi­na persona Unigeniti Fi­lii Tui Domini nostri Iesu Christi, quaerere iussi­sti, praesta, quaesumus, ut, per intercessionem Sancti Isidori, Epi­scopi et Doctoris, in peregrinationibus per interrete, et manus oculosque ad quae Tibi sunt placita intendamus et omnes quos conveni­mus cum caritate ac patientia accipiamus. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Give the Guy a Hand!

Ottawa, Canada, Dec 5, 2017 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News). While he was alive, St. Francis Xavier never got to ride in an airplane. They would not be invented for 400 more years after his death.
But now, his severed arm will get to take a trip across Canada in its very own seat.
The relic of the Jesuit missionary, ordinarily kept in the Church of the Gesù in Rome, will be making a cross-country trip through Canada this winter, as part of an initiative from the university group Catholic Christian Outreach.

 Angèle Regnier, co-founder of Catholic Christian Outreach, told CBC radio that travelling with the saint’s arm will be "like doing a road trip with a friend."
"I mean, I know it's bones, but connected to that is a living friendship with St. Francis Xavier," she said.
In the Catholic Church, relics are physical objects that have a direct association with the saints or with Jesus. The arm of St. Francis Xavier is considered a first class relic, which is the body or fragments of the body of a saint. The practice of venerating relics has been a Scripture-based tradition in the Church for centuries.
Regnier will be accompanying the saint’s arm on its trip from Rome to Canada, where the relic will make a month-long tour through much of the country.
The fragility of the relic, which is encased in a gold and glass reliquary and has its own padded duffle bag, necessitated that it travel in its own seat on Air Canada.
"We can't put it underneath. We can't even put it in the overhead bins. Like, he has to have his own seat," she told CBC radio.
"You're trying to explain this to Air Canada. We need to book a seat. He is a person in a way, but it's not a person, it's an arm."

I've Been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow.....

 

Bi-locating Lady in Blue

San Angelo, Texas, Sep 14, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the 1620s, while the pilgrims were landing on Plymouth Rock and having the first Thanksgiving, the Jumano tribe in Texas (before it was Texas) were allegedly having mysterious encounters with what they called the “Lady in Blue.”
A young, ethereal lady, dressed in a habit with a blue cape, is said to have appeared to the Jumano Native Americans numerous times during these years, speaking to them in their native language and instructing them in the Christian faith.
Thousands of miles away, in a cloistered convent in Spain, Sr. Maria de Agreda was reporting mystical visits that would occur during prayer, often during Mass after receiving communion, to a tribe of native people in what was called New Spain at the time.
“She would have these prayerful, mystical experiences of coming here to the New World and visiting these people and evangelizing them, sharing the faith with them,” Bishop Michael Sis of the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, told CNA.
 

Bi-locatting Lady in White

According to records kept by the missionaries in the area, Sr. Maria’s promptings led as many as 2,000 Jumano natives to be baptized.
Most of their ancestors in the San Angelo area are still Catholic, and still have a strong devotion to the “Lady in Blue” who brought them the Catholic faith, Bishop Sis said.
Regarding her possible bi-location, Fr. Cecchin added: “There is a lot of proof that the Lady in Blue appeared to the Jumano Tribe.”
The Vatican has never ruled definitively on whether her apparitions to what is now present-day western Texas and eastern New Mexico constitute a true instance of bi-location. However, there are some remarkable connections between Sr. Maria’s mystical experiences, and the Lady in Blue that the Jumano people saw, Bishop Sis said.
She earned the name “Lady in Blue” because the Jumano natives reportedly saw a woman wearing a blue cape. Sr. Maria belonged to a Franciscan order of nuns called the Conceptionistas, who wear a white habit with a blue cloak. The order still has convents in Spain and Latin America today, including Sr. Maria’s convent in Agreda.  
From her cloister, having never traveled to the New World, Sr. Maria was able to describe the new plants and animals there, as well as the way the people dressed and painted themselves. She described the landscape as a place where two rivers meet – and in San Angelo, the Middle Concho River is joined by the South Concho River.

Of Bread and Chickens

A participant in the ''Bread Procession of the Saint'' takes part in a ceremony in honor of Domingo de La Calzada Saint in Santo Domingo de La Calzada, Spain. 

OK then.  So the question is, "What is the Brad Procession of the Saint"? We don't know. There's a procession with women wearing baskets on their heads.

And on top of the basket...bread.

What does any of this have to do with Saint Dominic de la Calzada? I don't know.The only thing I can figure that SHOULD be associated with St. Dominic is chickens.


After Dominic's death numerous legends developed regarding miracles obtained by those who prayed to him. Two of them involve the resuscitation of a cooked rooster.

In one, a Moorish chieftain who is holding a young prisoner from Rioja is warned one evening at dinner that the youth has been praying to St. Dominic; perhaps the saint might free the captive. The Moor says that is as likely as that the roasted rooster on his plate should get up and crow. Suddenly the rooster does just that, and when the Moor looks in the prison the young man is in fact gone, his cell filled with a great light signifying the presence of St. Dominic.

In the other legend, a 14th-century pilgrim family stops in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, and the young man of the family catches the eye of the innkeeper's daughter. Because he refuses to sleep with her, she hides a silver cup in his hood and later has him arrested for theft. The judge condemns him to death. The distraught parents continue to Compostela, pray to St. James for their son, and return again by way of the town. On the outskirts they see their son hanging from the gallows but alive. He says that Dominic and the Blessed Virgin have kept him alive and that they should go tell the judge.

Like the Moor, the judge is having a chicken dinner and dismisses the story with the same remark about the cooked rooster and hen on the plate before him. But the chickens do indeed rise up, fully feathered, and the rooster crows loudly. So the judge goes to the gallows, where he finds the young man living and has him released.

In both stories, the people of the town adopt the rooster and hen and make a place for them in the church. Today an ornate Late Gothic henhouse in the Cathedral houses a rooster and hen said to be descended from the chickens of the story.

Lowe's Feast Day of St. Vincent Ferrer

St. Vincent Ferrer is a Spanish Dominican who is the patron saint of builders, but is also invoked against lightning, earthquakes and epilepsy.



He is not to be confused with Jose Ferrer.

Jose, not Vincent