3 September: Musings from the Sanctuary

This isn’t the first time I’ve shared an article by Father James Kurzynski, who writes on the Catholic Astronomer website. This time he is writing from the Rockies, where he tacked a holiday onto officiating at the wedding of friends.

Whether you contrived to get away this August or not, take a walk with Fr James through the Sanctuary of the Sorrowful Mother in Oregon. An armchair pilgrimage in the spirit of Laudato Si!. Follow the link!

Musings from the Sanctuary 

MMB.

Not one of Fr James’s pictures, but they convey a sense of place. Follow the link!

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Changing everything

I just opened this post from Fr James Kurzynski at the Catholic Astronomer blog. It makes for good reading alongside Fr Austin’s post this morning. The way Fr James sees Jean Vanier within his own scientifically informed view of the world will appeal to many of our readers.

God bless,

Maurice.

God changes everything

Truth and Power, from a L’Arche perspective and a scientific one.

Since we are in a short series of posts about L’Arche, I thought you might appreciate Fr James Kurzynski’s reflections about L’Arche, natural selection and associated topics for the Catholic Astronomer site. We are fans of both L’Arche and the CA team. Follow this link: faith-science-power.  

I have been reading of the terrible consequences when Mussolini used a Social Darwinism ideology to justify invading Ethiopia, committing war crimes, and throwing people off their land with no compensation. But it was never just Italy …

MMB

Expect the Unexpected.

Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse over America has caused great excitement over the weeks before it happens.

Enjoy this post from someone taken by surprise by a partial solar eclipse.

And if you’re watching the eclipse tomorrow, enjoy it. May the clouds part for you!

WT

 

http://www.vofoundation.org/blog/unexpected-eclipses/

17th April: Losing sight of the light of the night.

The Milky Way is lost, says Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory. Do read what he has to say about our world-wide obsession with not being in the dark and how the deeds of darkness are committed by streetlight. Did not God create and separate light and darkness, and

God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: To shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. And it was so done. And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars. And he set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth. And to rule the day and the night, and to divide the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:14-18

If the darkness was not good, God would have chased it away entirely. We all need it and yet we are trying to do away with it.

MMB.

Dark is a creative time

It’s St David’s Eve. The Welsh side of this blog insists that the Bible black dark is not to be feared as Lord is creating all through the night. Laudato Si’!

Fr James Kurzynski’s mother confirms this for us in this story of his recent visit home. Enjoy the story of turn right at the cow

WT

14 November: Another Polish Door of Mercy

As we entered this Door of Mercy at Krakow Cathedral, we found ourselves processing, or at least moving at a processional speed, pressed in on every side. It seemed that half of Poland was there, visiting the national shrine, site of royal coronations, resting place of saints, Poland’s Westminster Abbey.

Is a royal shrine the place to look for mercy? This Church is a baroque fantasia: silver, gold, marble wherever you turn. Where could I sit quietly to pray, as I can do in Canterbury Cathedral crypt?

Later I noticed this inscription along the external wall below a golden dome:

NON-NOBIS-DOMINE-NON-NOBIS-SED-NOMINI-Tuo.

This comes from Psalm 115:9:

 At the presence of the Lord the earth was moved, at the presence of the God of Jacob:

Who turned the rock into pools of water, and the stony hill into fountains of waters.

Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to thy name give glory.

 For thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake: lest the gentiles should say: Where is their God?

But our God is in heaven: he hath done all things whatsoever he would.

The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men.

They have mouths and speak not: they have eyes and see not.

They have ears and hear not: they have noses and smell not.

They have hands and feel not: they have feet and walk not: neither shall they cry out through their throat.

Let them that make them become like unto them: and all such as trust in them.

Puzzle this out: Glorify your name for the sake of your mercy – or for Israel to earn the respect of the gentiles? Would we not be better channels of mercy if we were humbler than that?

And Yet.

Saint Jadwiga, a young Queen of Poland buried within  this church, was called the spiritual mother of the poor, weak and ill: where she has passed is therefore a Door of Mercy. We can learn mercy from her, getting alongside the poor, weak and ill.  And that is half an answer to the conundrum; do what we can, where we are. And ‘non nobis, Domine’ indeed!

MMB.

 

21 September: Intergalactic Discoveries, IX: California Dreamin’.

 

August 10 came, and with it a beach barbecue. Mrs Fox and the Chihuahuax were there, of course. Ajax worried that in Cornwall it would all be sardines and shellfish, but Larry the chef knew his market and was flipping burgers and bangers on one grill, seafood on the other. Mrs Fox made sure they had a burger and a banger to share, served on shiny new dishes that would keep their food free from sand. A gesture the boys appreciated, as they still preserved some of the daintiness of Ossyrian dining etiquette and loathed the feel of grit on their teeth and tongues.

The Doom Bar and cabernet flowed ever more freely once all had eaten. Ajax and Alfie sidled away behind a dune. Together they emptied their minds and waited for T to contact them. They could only receive T intermittently, as the meteorites that provided distraction for the watchers of the night also interfered with their own thought beams.

T had had a frustrating time. He hawked his neatly typed manifesto for the Ossyrian-Earthling Friendship Pact around the studios but those that let him past the reception desk took him for a would-be script writer and asked to see a fuller treatment of the theme. Hengecliffe Artists arranged a discussion with one of their writers, but after half an hour of his vision of the US Cavalry being zapped by the Ossyrian Gubernatorial Guards, T got up to go. These seemed no point in trying to harness Hollywood. T could take no more.

‘We know how Margate works’, he told Ajax and Alfie. ‘Let’s return to our upstairs room and wait for reinforcements, or another flight home.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ protested Ajax, ‘You’re surfing USA, sucking ice-creams, sipping cold beer… get on that plane!’

‘I can’t go till my booked flight leaves, and don’t forget I hear regularly from Mrs Fox, my friends. You are not doing too badly; ice-cream and doggy treats if not cold beer. It’s a dog’s life, as they say in England. And next week you have a special treat…’

At this point the meteorite shower combined with the midnight barking to white-noise T from the air waves. What was going to happen next week?

WT.

Interruption: We have always been tiny.

Nasa Image.

‘For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.’ Psalm 103:11

Let me share a beautiful explanation of why the Ancients did not believe about the Universe what some scientists and commentators believe that they believed. Our ancestors were less naive and ignorant than we might think. Christopher M. Graney is professor of physics and astronomy at Jefferson Community & Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky and writes for the Vatican Observatory blog. Click here to read his article:  We have always been tiny

MMB.

Interruption: Laudato Si – Faith and Science

Fountain, St Maurice, Switzerland. MMB.

Later in the year we will spend time contemplating The Year of Mercy, and around the feast of St Francis in October, we’ll look at Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’.

I recommend, in the meantime, this article from the Catholic Astronomer, which shows how space exploration is helping to give water to the thirsty, one of the corporal works of mercy.

give drink to the thirsty

MMB.