What is good and pleasing and perfect

The Evening Prayer for today (Monday, First Week of Lent) has one of my favorite passages from Scripture and the first one I ever attempted to memorize. To me, it is at the heart of being a person in recovery: Romans 12:2 “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of …

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16th Bloggaversary of Sober Catholic: How I stayed sober for almost 21 years

Today marks the 16th Bloggaversary of Sober Catholic. In honor of that, I’ve edited and cleaned up a messy note I wrote who-knows-when on “The Sober Catholic Way.” It is a summary of everything I’ve been doing since I became sober on May 22, 2002. Some I do better than others.  This was originally a …

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How St. Rita can help those of us in recovery

St. Rita, whose feast day is today, May 22nd, is the patroness of ‘impossible cases,’ as well as women in abusive marriages, mothers and those with serious illnesses and especially of wounds. A lot of that is appropriate for anyone in recovery, since we’ve experienced abuse and have given it, as well as succumbing to …

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On humbly submitting to Church authority on private revelations

In a recent post, Plenary Indulgence for Cemetery Visits in November Extended, I mentioned something at the end about coping in these uncertain times (please note the bold italics: “Hang tight, pray the Rosary daily and stick close to the Church. And by that I mean the Mass and Sacraments, your Catholic Bible, the Catechism (The ‘Roman …

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Following Christ like St. John the Baptist

Today is the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. I feel it is important for us to consider him as a patron and intercessor. Some thoughts along this theme came to me while praying the Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours (for today’s Solemnity.). What do we know of the …

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The Little Way, the Incarnation and the Passion

Today is the feast day of St. Therese of Lisieux according to the liturgical calendar of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. The “Traditional Latin Mass” calendar, in other words. I mentioned in the “Little Flower and the Story of Her Soul,” that today I’d write something on her Little Way. Commonly understood, her Little Way …

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Divine Mercy Sunday: A great day for those who’ve really messed things up

There was a windstorm where I live last Wednesday and we lost power for just over two days. I actually did have some plans for blogging, but with no power, there’s no Internet and so no blogging. Today is Divine Mercy Sunday and I do hope that you took advantage of the tremendous source of …

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The wounded prodigal

Today’s Gospel Reading for the Saturday of the Second Week of Lent is a popular one involving mercy and forgiveness. It is the story of “The Prodigal Son.” I wrote about it before: Prodigal Alcoholics. In that post I focused on mercy and forgiveness. There is also another point: the longing to belong and rejoin …

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How devoted you are

The First Reading from today’s Mass for the Second Sunday of Lent is the well-known one concerning Abraham being asked by God to offer up his first born son Isaac as a sacrifice, only to be prevented from doing so by an angel of the Lord. It as a test of Abraham’s faith. In the …

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Love your enemies

In this excerpt from the Gospel for the Mass of Saturday of the First Week of Lent (Matthew 5:44) Jesus exhorts us to: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who persecute and slander you.” Courtesy: Sacred Bible: Catholic Public Domain Version Not easy for anyone, especially those …

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