Mother Angelica is as helpful and inspiring today as she was decades ago

 I couldn’t this morning decide what to watch on TV during the time I set aside for that before ‘beginning my day.’ Old reruns of “Sliders?” How about “Farscape?” “Babylon 5?” Maybe pick up where I left off during an interrupted binging of the original “Quantum Leap?” No, no, no, and no. I was restless …

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October 13th: the Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary! Part 12

Today is October 13th, the day we recall the “Miracle of the Sun” event at Fatima in 1917. This was intended to be a warning. Our Lady said at Fatima, ‘War is punishment for sin.” World War I was raging at the time and among her warnings was that a worse war would take place …

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Crying out full-throated and unsparingly!!

An excerpt from the First Reading of the Mass for Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isaiah 58:1 Thus says the Lord GOD: Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. OK! So I will!  We are a culture that …

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Ash Wednesday 2023

Since this blog is about “Conversion, Prayer, Fasting, Repentance, and Penance,” amongst other things, Lent is a natural time to blog a lot since those ‘abouts’ correspond to the season. I have often in previous Lents blogged daily, or at least a few times a week, taking inspiration from the daily Mass readings or the …

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St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, patron saint of drug addicts?

St. Mark Ji Tianxiang was born in Hebei, China on 1834 into a Catholic family where he was raised in the Faith. He was a doctor, and in his early thirties he suffered from a stomach ailment for which he treated himself with opium. This cured him, but he developed an addiction to it. In …

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The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima

Note: this was originally posted in different form long ago here at Sober Catholic: On October 13, 1917 the final Marian Apparition at Fatima, Portugal took place. I know the anniversary was a few weeks ago, but I decided to post this today, the Feast of All Hallow’s Eve (a/k/a “Halloween”). I’ll explain at the end. …

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Holy Saturday and the Harrowing of Hell

Today is Holy Saturday and I hope that your Lent has been a fine and fruitful one. I didn’t blog except for a few times (I was ‘around’ but taken up with things.) The seasons come and they go; we as Catholics learn to live with the Liturgical Year as it helps us with the …

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St. Felix of Valois

Today is the feast day of St. Felix of Valois on the liturgical calendar for the Extraordinary Form of the Holy Mass. St. Felix was a hermit and a co-founder (with Saint John of Matha) of the Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (a/k/a “The Trinitarians”). The Trinitarians were devoted 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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Emergency Fatima Novena!!!

There seems to be numerous novenas at this time of year. That is possibly just my imagination, but nevertheless today begins another novena. This one is to Our Lady of Fatima for the commemoration of the Miracle of the Sun Apparition on October 13, 1917. I know that the typical Fatima novena  celebrates the first …

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