Blog

Merry Christmas to all! An encouraging quote from today's Office of Readings by Saint Leo the Great, pope, as we begin this Christmas season:

Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.

What wonderful gifts we have today—not only the gift of the Holy Spirit we received at Baptism, but also the birth of our blessed savior, Jesus Christ. Be sure to give thanks to God in prayer today, and often throughout the Christmas season, for the gift of the Word becoming flesh through Mary. Even without any other gifts, we can have immense pleasure and happiness knowing that God is with us today in a special way as we commemorate Jesus' birthday.

Happy birthday, Jesus!

Even though we still have about an hour left until Christmas season begins (well, at least an hour left in litugical time), I thought I'd wish everyone a Blessed Christmas season—it's only just begun! I plan on celebrating every day of Christmas in a special way through devoting more time to prayer. I feel this Advent has been a very fruitful time for me, and I hope it was for you, too!

(Ignore the Magi for now — he's not actually there yet...)

Other Completely Unrelated News: Only one semester left until graduation! (My fellow college seniors and I have been keeping a countdown—we have less than 130 days left...).

In researching for a paper I'm writing on C.S. Lewis and Mythology, I found an interesting quote, from one of his many letters to children:

"They tell me that one should never try to learn Spanish and Italian at the same time. The fact that they are so alike of course helps one a bit over the meanings of words (but Latin would help you almost equally for both) but it makes confusion in one's mind about grammar and idioms—in the end one makes a horrid soup out of both... By they way good easy Latin reading to keep one's Latin up with is the New Testament in Latin. Any Roman Catholic bookshop will have one: say you want a copy of the "Vulgate New Testament." Acts goes specially well in Latin" (72, Letters to Children, Dorsett & Mead).

Indeed, I find Lewis' advice very practical. The Vulgate is one of the more accessible works in Latin, and is readily available online and in bookstores. Just thought you might be interested.

The Bilingual version of the PROLIFE wristbands have arrived, and are available for sale via the Vida Humana website (English | Español). You can still order the original PROLIFE wristbands through the wristband website.

St. Louis has been thoroughly iced these past few days. Starting with a huge winter storm that rolled in Wednesday night (which began with rain, then changed to freezing rain, sleet, and finally snow), everything in St. Louis that was exposed to the elements began to freeze. Trees and power lines did not interact too well... and over 500,000 customers were without power at the height of the power outages. Thankfully, there are very few reports of medical problems resulting from the storm so far.

Taking advantage of the beautiful ice God gave us, I decided to snap some pictures - here are a few of my favorites:

 
This leaf has no chance of surviving.

The seminarians took advantage of the ice/snow mix.

The 2006 Christmas Novena at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, December 4, and continue every night until Tuesday, December 12. All are welcome to join the seminarians and the seminary choir as we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ during this Advent season. You can find more information on the Novena website, and you can see pictures and hear audio from last year's Novena here.