Caryll Houselander

I had an incredible day at the Lunatic Asylum yesterday.  Met several Queens--female ones--one, the "Queen of the Whole Earth" whose hand I was allowed to kiss and who conferred many titles upon me!   Half, more than half, of the lunatics are practically sane, except on one point, and some even go out to work every day.  I've seldom, if ever, been present at anything so moving as the prayers in the tiny Catholic chapel in the evening, organized entirely by the patients, the prayers of their own choosing and said aloud: and what a mystery and what an example--an ex-Trappist monk, a young girl, an old lady bent double nearly, but in spite of it and in spite of being insane, beautiful, and a handful of others--all people who had started out in life intent on a high vocation, and given it indeed--utter abnegation, put away in a lunatic asylum.  And this is the point--they reached out in their prayers to the whole world.  As I knelt among them, listening at first and in the end joining in unconsciously with them, I grew more and more amazed at their petitions:


"For Russia"
"For the suffering people of Europe"
"For the sick"
"For prisoners"
"For the conversion of the world"
"For purity of heart in the world"
"For purity of heart here"--


and then, to me the most moving petition of all, "That we here in this little chapel dedicated to Your divine Heart may have perfect abandonment to Your dear will."


[...]


But no, it was simply an almost unbelievable showing of the heart of the Mystical Body of Christ, literally bleeding before God with the wounds of the world!


From The Letters of Caryll Houselander: Her Spiritual Legacy, ed. Maisie Ward (Sheed & Ward, 1965), pp. 91-92 (letter to Henry Tayler)

Our Lady in East Boston

The late Msgr Frank McFarland (1931-2001), quondam director of Boston's CatholicTV, gives a reflection on the role of Our Lady in our redemption.  The video begins with the history of the sculpture at East Boston's Madonna Shrine -- sculpted by one Arrigo Minerbi, an Italian Jew who was sheltered during the Second World War by Don Orione Fathers.  (Length of video: One half hour.)

A Redemptorist at Okinawa

Fr Philip Dabney, CSsR, tells of his uncle Fr Lawrence Lynch, CSsR, who was killed at Okinawa at age 39. Fr Lynch was very devoted to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

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More Chocolate Drops

"Hit Em Up Style":

"You'll fit right in"

Cool quotation found on tumblr:

To the drunks, the addicts, the perverts, the victims, the porn stars, the prostitutes, the adulterers, thieves, the obese gluttons who think a waste is a terrible thing to mind, the Twilight fans, the murderers, the mommy’s boys, the losers, the freaks, the geeks, people who think wrestling is real, red necks, guys who own action figures, chain smokers, everyone who does not use a turn signal while texting and talking on the phone in their car, men who live with their mothers, women who get paid in dollar bills, dudes in dresses (seen it at Mars Hill), democrats, republicans, the guys at the gym who walk around the locker room naked singing Bon Jovi’s "Living on a Prayer," Mormons and anyone else who wears sacred under breeches, whoever is responsible for the creation and ongoing sale of men’s Lycra biking shorts… yoga instructors, witches, pot heads, meat heads, crack heads, dead heads and meth heads… people who don’t recycle, the rainbow-loving tree-hugging … lefters, and religious people who do not know what I am talking about because these subjects were not on The Little House on the Prairie or covered in their Home School co-op — I have good news for you: Jesus loves you. You’ll fit right in. And because He died for your sins, you get to repent.

~ Mark Driscoll, Jesus Loves Sinners