On the 30th of March, 2013, I made the profession of faith at the Easter Vigil and received the sacraments of Confirmation and First Holy Communion from then-Bishop-Elect David Talley. I can still remember the night well. It was raining hard outside, and so we had to light the Paschal fire at the church door. We catechumens and confirmandi huddled in darkness while the rites began. It was a moment of profound holiness, and an Easter liturgy I will never forget.
Much has happened since that night. I am still a sinner, much as I was then. Perhaps I am a bit more aware of the fact, though. That’s a grace in itself. I have been a student, a pilgrim, and a devotee. I have made many friends in heaven and earth who have helped me along the way to God. I am grateful for every one of them, and I hope I have been able to do the same from time to time.
Ever since 2014, I have consecrated every year of my life as a Catholic to some Holy Person. My second year was dedicated to Our Lady, the third to the Holy Ghost, the fourth to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the fifth to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Keeping in this vein, I hereby consecrate my sixth year as a Catholic to the Most Chaste Heart of St. Joseph.
St. Joseph has been a great friend to me in the past, and has proven the power of his intercession on more than one occasion. I ask my readers to join me in praying now that St. Joseph will bless this coming year with abundant graces proper to my state of life, and especially an outpouring of those virtues which he so admirably exemplified: humility, purity, simplicity, detachment, submission to the will of God, reverence, and a constant, attentive devotion to Jesus and Mary.
Richard Crashaw, one of the great Catholic poets of the seventeenth century, is a perennial source of inspiration. His verse preserves a mystical sensibility that is as refreshing today as it was when it was first composed in the Baroque era. This selection, “A Song,” is one of my favorites. I first had to memorize it many years ago in an English class on prayers (at Mr. Jefferson’s famously secular University, no less). I keep returning to it only to find new riches and new consolations. It seems eminently suited to our mid-Lenten moment, when the faithful yearn to see the face of the Resurrected and Glorified Christ.
Fra Angelico, Christ the Judge (detail) – (Source)
LORD, when the sense of thy sweet grace Sends up my soul to seek thy face. Thy blessed eyes breed such desire, I dy in love’s delicious Fire.
O love, I am thy Sacrifice. Be still triumphant, blessed eyes. Still shine on me, fair suns! that I Still may behold, though still I dy.
Though still I dy, I live again; Still longing so to be still slain, So gainfull is such losse of breath. I dy even in desire of death.
Still live in me this loving strife Of living Death and dying Life. For while thou sweetly slayest me Dead to my selfe, I live in Thee.
I am pleased to announce that I have accepted an offer to pursue a Ph.D. in History at Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA, having been awarded a University Graduate Fellowship. I will be working with Dr. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, known for his scholarship on transnational Catholic reform and mission work in the early modern world. I have had the chance to meet with Dr. Hsia a few times now, and I am really looking forward to engaging with him and the rest of the faculty. The graduate cohort really impresses me, too. On a recent trip to State College, I was happy to discover that my future colleagues in the doctoral program were not only brilliant, but very friendly as well. All in all, it’s a great opportunity. I’m both honored and excited to join the intellectual community there.
My work will probably focus on what I currently study: Catholicism in the long 18th century, with a thematic focus on discourses of the supernatural and gender as well as a regional focus on Western Europe, especially France. My hope is to become more global as I advance in language skills and crystallize my theoretical and methodological foundation.
For me, going to Penn State is something of a homecoming. My ancestors lived in central Pennsylvania for generations. My father grew up in State College, and I still have some family in the area. There are photos of me as a kid standing behind the lion paws at the Palmer Museum of Art; my new office will be located in an attractive old Spanish revival building just across the street. I take this coincidence as a sign of Providence. I thought the same thing when, walking into the Corner Room for lunch, I discovered a large sign over the bar with the words “Haec Olim Meminisse Juvabit” – the motto of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society. There’s a sense of circularity in the journey to Happy Valley.
I’m very grateful to everyone – family, friends, mentors, recommenders, advisors, and others – who have helped me along to this point. I truly could not have gotten here without so many incredible people supporting me. And of course, I am grateful to those heavenly friends who interceded for me along the way – especially at key moments of this last application process. With them, please pray for me as I commence the final act at Oxford and begin a new chapter in my life at Penn State.
And yes, I realize what this means – the Amish Catholic returns to Amish country. Go figure.
Robert Campin, Triptych with the Annunciation, aka “The Merode Altarpice,” c. 1430 (Source)
Today I am pleased and proud to announce The Amish Catholic Patreon. If you like the content you see here, would like more of it, and want to help make the blog a success, go over and become a Patron! You can either pledge at $3 a month, as a Donatore, $5 a month, as a Cardinal Patron, or $10 a month, as a Patron Saint. Since I am launching it publicly on the 25th of March, 2019, I place this new venture under the Patronage of Our Lady of the Annunciation. Thank you to all my readers and those who encouraged me in this idea. I hope I can keep delivering quality content – including exclusive material available only through Patreon – with your generous support. May God bless you all
Christ on the Cross, from the Isenheim Altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald (Source)
As part of my Lenten Spirituality Series, here is Dame Julian of Norwich’s meditation on the thirst of Christ, Chapter XVII of Revelations of Divine Love:
“How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, and all my bliss, and all my joy suffer?
And in this dying was brought to my mind the words
of Christ: I thirst.
For I saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily; another spiritual…
For this word was shewed for the bodily thirst: the which I understood was caused by failing of moisture. For the blessed flesh and bones was left all alone without blood and moisture. The blessed body dried alone long time with wringing of the nails and weight of the body. For I understood that for tenderness of the sweet hands and of the sweet feet, by the greatness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails the wounds waxed wide and the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging. And [therewith was] piercing and pressing of the head, and binding of the Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging, and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh drying; and in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and the blood, was all raised and loosed about from the bone, with the thorns where-through it were rent in many pieces, as a cloth that were sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off, for heaviness and looseness, while it had natural moisture. And that was great sorrow and dread to me: for methought I would not for my life have seen it fall. How it was done I saw not; but understood it was with the sharp thorns and the violent and grievous setting on of the Garland of Thorns, unsparingly and without pity. This continued awhile, and soon it began to change, and I beheld and marvelled how it might be. And then I saw it was because it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight, and set about the Garland. And thus it encircled all about, as it were garland upon garland. The Garland of the Thorns was dyed with the blood, and that other garland [of Blood] and the head, all was one colour, as clotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that shewed (of the face and of the body), was small-rimpled [1] with a tanned colour, like a dry board when it is aged; and the face more brown than the body.
I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness;
the second was pain following after; the third,
hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the
fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was
no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe
and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but
much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture
failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head:
the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture;
and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, [and] with
blowing of the wind from without, that dried and pained
Him with cold more than mine heart can think.
And other pains—for which pains I saw that all is
too little that I can say: for it may not be told.
The which Shewing of Christ’s pains filled me full of
pain. For I wist well He suffered but once, but [this
was as if] He would shew it me and fill me with mind
as I had afore desired. And in all this time of Christ’s
pains I felt no pain but for Christ’s pains. Then thought-me:
I knew but little what pain it was that I asked; and,
as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had wist what
it had been, loth me had been to have prayed it. For methought
it passed bodily death, my pains.
I thought: Is any pain like this? And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see thy Love suffer. How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here felt I soothfastly [2] that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to [see] Him in pain.
On March 16th, 1583, St. Philip Neri worked one of his greatest miracles. Having been called to the deathbed of Paolo, the young scion of the noble Massimo family, he arrived to find that he was too late. The youth was half an hour dead and, what’s worse, unshriven. But time and its corrosive powers are nothing before the grace of the Almighty. Thirty minutes of sorrow were given as the short prelude to a feat that would win this servant of God a heavenly renown and, for the youth himself, an eternity of joy.
We can imagine the scene well enough. The wailing mother, pressing her tear-stained face into the breast of her grieving husband, the servants praying for their dear lost lord, the doctors already retreating with a grimace of embarassment at their failure. Into this scene walks the silent old priest, calm as the eye of a hurricane. He receives the news with a stoic frown. Then, lifting his eyes in prayer, imploring the power of the hand that once raised Lazarus, he breathes upon the eyes so lately shut. He whispers,
“Paolo…Paolo…”
This invocation brings forth a mystery beyond reckoning – the boy stirs and wakes, as if he had only nodded off a few minutes before.
We can only imagine the joy that fell upon the hearts of the mourners. What stunned clamor must have erupted in that little chamber! Yet the saint is ever in control. He commands all to leave, that he might hear Prince Paolo’s confession. Having cleansed the boy’s soul with the assoiling balms of penance, St. Philip spoke to him for thirty minutes. Would that we had some record of their conversation! There can be no doubt that the solicitous confessor was preparing the soul to meet God.
For that is the strangest thing of all in the story of the Paolo Massimo’s resurrection. It was only temporary. The thirty minutes of death are undone, yes, but only for about another thirty minutes of life. The parents of the young prince were, no doubt, bitterly disappointed at this second loss, a departure made even more painful by the desperate hope it stirred in their hearts.
Yet it was a miracle indeed – and it shows us a salutary truth about miracles. They are not for our comfort. They are not granted to appease our desires, however noble. Providence instead works all things, natural and graced, with only one end in view – the greater glory of God. St. Philip was sent to bring Paolo Massimo into eternal life, not to grant him any more time on earth. That was his duty, the quintessential duty of every priest.
We live in an age when the priesthood seems so mired in scandal and banality, torn this way and that by the worldly ambitions of the clergy, stained with sins of every kind. Lust, violence, abuse, pride, vanity, greed, division, cruelty, party faction – all of these wicked tendencies and more have obscured the nobility of the sacerdotal office, a dignity drawn entirely from the crucified Heart of our Great High Priest.
That is why we must remember the story of St. Philip and Paolo Massimo. It reminds us of why we have priests – of what the priest must do, and of what he must be.
The priest is a conduit of grace. His steps, his works, his words, his hands do not belong to him, but to God. They step into the wounded rhythm of our natural life and bear the healing presence of the supernatural. They raise us from the dead, but only that we might make a better death in the end.
St. Philip’s miracle today is commemorated with a proper Mass. May he pray that all of us might rise from the living death of sin and enter a dying life of grace.
Mesdames Victoire, Adélaide, and Louise, three of the pious daughters of Louis XV, known collectively as “Mesdames de France” or “Mesdames Tantes” after the accession of Louis XVI. Only Adélaide married; Louise later became a Carmelite prioress at Saint-Denis before having the extremely good fortune to die in 1787. Source
The inimitable John McManners, late Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford, provides a window into the world of late Ancien Régime piety (or, rather, its dearth) in his monumental Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. He writes:
“To what extent was the fast of Lent observed? It was commonly said that the austerities of the penitential season were endured only by the poor. According to the Lenten pastoral letter of the archbishop of Sens in 1779, the rich often obtained medical certificates allowing them to eat what they liked. This was the fashionable thing to do. ‘Look at our bourgeois citizen and his wife in their (draper’s) shop, observing Lent strictly,’ said teh Jesuit Père Croisset in his Parallel des moeurs de ce siècle et la morale de Jesus-Christ (1727): ‘their fortune changes…and scarcely has the tape measure dropped from their hands than you see them putting on airs like people of quality and asking for dispensations from fasting.’ This class distinction was observed even in the kitchens of the Bastille: on the first Friday of his imprisonment, Marmontel gloomily at the meatless meal provided, not knowing that it had been meant for his servant. In any case, there were plenty of succulent dishes within the rules, for those who could afford them.
Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the garb of a penitent (Source)
“Lent was the season to have tubs of fresh butter sent in from the countryside, and to ensure plentiful supplies of fish and water birds (the tes of an allowable fowl was: did the gravy remain uncongealed after fifteen minutes? – so a bishop gravely advised Mme Victoire, Louis XV’s pious but comfortable daughter). The peasant, whose existence is a perpetual Lent anyway, said Voltaire, awaits episcopal permission to eat his farmyard eggs, while the bishop himself looks forward to expensive dishes of soles. Certainly, things were well organized at Versailles. ‘A ray of grace has descended on us,’ wrote the duc de la Vallière in April 1756; ‘we fasted for three days a week during the whole of Lent, but on condition that we suffered no deprivations.’ Preachers were well aware that those with money and leisure could organize an attractive Lent for themselves: an occasional walk in a procession (a penitent’s garb was no disadvantage to a good-looking woman), extra time in bed to recuperate from privations, and food more delicately cooked and served than usual. ‘For some – God grant that there are none in my congregation today,’ thundered the Oratorian Surian, ‘Lent is a more agreeable time, in a sophisticated way, than the other seasons of the year.'”
Let the Gentleman Saint help you this Lent. (Source)
SHOULD it happen sometimes, my daughter, that you have no taste for or consolation in your meditation, I entreat you not to be troubled, but seek relief in vocal prayer, bemoan yourself to our Lord, confess your unworthiness, implore His Aid, kiss His Image, if it be beside you, and say in the words of Jacob, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me;” or with the Canaanitish woman, “Yes, Lord, I am as a dog before Thee, but the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.”
Or you can take a book, and read attentively till such time as your mind is calmed and quickened; or sometimes you may find help from external actions, such as prostrating yourself folding your hands upon your breast, kissing your Crucifix,—that is, supposing you are alone. But if, after all this, you are still unrelieved, do not be disturbed at your dryness, however great it be, but continue striving after a devout attitude in God’s Sight. What numbers of courtiers appear a hundred times at court without any hope of a word from their king, but merely to pay their homage and be seen of him. Just so, my daughter, we ought to enter upon mental prayer purely to fulfil our duty and testify our loyalty. If it pleases God’s Divine Majesty to speak to us, and discourse in our hearts by His Holy Inspirations and inward consolations, it is doubtless a great honour, and very sweet to our soul; but if He does not vouchsafe such favours, but makes as though He saw us not,—as though we were not in His Presence,—nevertheless we must not quit it, but on the contrary we must remain calmly and devoutly before Him, and He is certain to accept our patient waiting, and give heed to our assiduity and perseverance; so that another time He will impart to us His consolations, and let us taste all the sweetness of holy meditation. But even were it not so, let us, my child, be satisfied with the privilege of being in His Presence and seen of Him.
“What a shock, Maximiliana has to be the life of the party AGAIN.”
“I think the real trouble in the Church today is the shortage of lace.”
Princess-Abbess Christina zu Mecklenburg isn’t angry. She’s just disappointed.
“I’m not like a regular Princess-Abbess, I’m a cool Princess-Abbess. Observe my nude statues, dogs, and trendy collection of seashells.”
Winged headdresses are in this year.
“This crosier was made by fifty leper goldsmiths on a Greek island owned by the Doge of Venice. My uncle, the Cardinal of Trieste and Titular Abbot of Unter-Festschrift, gave it to me at my accession.”
Therese Natalie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Princess-Abbess of Gandersheim, with her pendulous string of pearls, miniature portrait bracelet, powdered blue watered silk sash, ermine, and bejewelled Bible, is a model of noble simplicity.
“Well, grey is a penitential color, after all. More than what you’re wearing, heathen.”
“They told me it was the crown or the hair. I chose the hair.”
The face when you realize that someone has spilled ketchup and mustard everywhere.
Marie Elisabeth von Holstein-Gottorf, Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg, knows what you did. And she is not amused.
“What cloister is ever complete without tropical plants?”
“The Fight Between Carnival and Lent,” Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Recently seen by the author in Brussels. (Source)
The pious among my readers will no doubt be aware that Lent will soon be upon us. Here are 100 ideas for how to have a successful and most fruitful season of penance.
Give up meat
Give up chocolate
Give up alcohol
Give up social media
Give up being a social media influencer
Give up films
Give up naughty films
Give up films that are very naughty but not the ones that are naughty while also being either smart or funny or historically dramatic in a passingly educational sort of way
Give up comic books
Give up music
Give up secular music
Give up Christian praise and worship music (for the love of God and all that is holy)
Give up lobster, though not on Fridays
Give up dairy
Give up various soft cheeses
Give up all cheeses from Poitou-Charente but not anywhere else in France
Give up Netflix
Give up “Netflix”
Give up petting zoos
Give up marsupials
Give up giraffes of any kind
Give up your ignorance of the various kinds of giraffe
Give up spy novels
Give up surprising all of your friends by suddenly screaming at them, apropos of nothing, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”
Give up your longstanding telenovela addiction
Give up trying to learn Portuguese in favor of Esperanto
Give up learning Esperanto
Give up reading the poetry of William McGonagall, the Apollo of Dundee
Give up the various birds, stuffed and otherwise, that you are hoarding in your attic and basement
Give up your deeply-rooted habit of eating little fragments of ceramic statues
Give up your swimming lessons
Give up your avoidance of Luton, Slough, and Swindon
Give up the American news cycle
Give up the Busby Berkeley marathons you play in your living room every Friday evening
Give up pretending you are, in fact, the reincarnation of Senhor Doutor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Give up whining
Give up long walks in the park
Give up spitting in public
Give up gossip
Give up gossip about me, please
Give up your general wanton demeanor and frowsy mien
Give up the chips
Give up all professional sports
Give up your various simultaneous affairs with the members of the Swazi National Curling Team
Give up the ghost
Give up your collection of Rococo snuff boxes depicting various prince-bishops in ermine
Give up practicing the kazoo at inappropriate hours of the night
Give up Morris dancing
Give up peanut butter and eel jelly sandwiches
Give up your place in line
Give up the furious Mah-Jong tournaments you regularly host for gangs of aged nuns
Give up reciting the poetry of William McGonagall, Bard of Dundee
Give up your participation in the capitalist system enslaving us all
Give up toast
Give up the secret alien knowledge you acquired through highly illegal methods of infiltrating government files
Give up felonies in general
Give up all the Skittles you have hoarded in your closet
Give up the various coffee table books of early brutalist architecture that you have received from work colleagues, many of whom have since passed on
Give up on modern architecture in toto
Give up writing emoji haikus
Give up your shoegaze band, Emoji Haiku
Give up on romance
Give up on romantic comedies
Give up those trashy bodice-rippers they sell in the supermarket book aisle (you know the ones)
Give up your seat in the Académie française
Give up your seat on the train to Timbuktu
Give up your seat on the Parish Council (here’s looking at you, Susan)
Give up your operatic emotional troubles
Give up addressing everyone in song
Give up asserting that you are, in fact, Madama Butterfly
Give up counting time in anything but the Mayan calendar
Give up your general estrangement from Mesoamerican culture
Give up your allergies
Give up your obstinate refusal to learn the Sasquatch language
Give up your unreliable narration
Give up your postmodern metairony
Give up your Twitter account
Give up treating your dogs like children
Give up treating your children like dogs
Give up treating your children better than your cats
Give up your claim to the long-defunct throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Give up your alarming habit of musical flatulence
Give up your covert addiction to locomotive erotica
Give up your understated unibrow
Give up your long-awaited nose job
Give up your embittered attempt to remain Dean of a prominent English Cathedral
Give up memorizing the poetry of William McGonagall, the Orpheus of Dundee
Give up any expectations of amusement
Give up the pipe dream of tenure
Give up your position to the various paramilitary forces that are hunting you through the tundra
Give up break-dancing in public parks
Give up attending Hare Krishna services
Give up any association with the Libertarian Party
Give up all hope, ye who enter here.
Give up the secret recipe
Give up the art your late uncle Oswald took from various museums over the course of his long and chequered career as a forger and art thief
Give up approximately 1/4 of your bone marrow
Give up being lame
Give up all the excuses you always make for not keeping your Lenten penance
The Amish Catholic 
