"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Having established that suffering is an inevitable part of life and that it can be used both for our transformation and the glory of God, we now consider the attitude we should adopt when going through times of trial and temptation….
Hippolytus was an Early Church Father who lived in 3rd Century Rome and the story of his life is a particularly colourful one. He was the first Anti-Pope of the Catholic Church, setting himself up as Bishop of Rome in competition with with Pope Callixtus, and later with his successors Urban and Pontianus.
Yet, despite all this, we also call him Saint Hippolytus. How did the first Anti-Pope also manage to be declared a Saint of the Catholic Church? Good Question! Jimmy Akin has the Catholic answer…
Quite some time ago in the JP2 Group we read through Apostolic Tradition, a work attributed to St. Hippolytus. I have just finished recording the text onto MP3:
Apostolic Tradition – St. Hippolytus of Rome
Many thanks to the members of the JP2 Group for being my congregation! 😉
Last week we had a meeting of the Young Adult Commission. At these meetings we go over the current Young Adult initiatives in the Diocese and plan the new events for the months ahead.
At these meetings I’m often inspired. It’s encouraging to be with other Young Adult leaders who are passionate about what they’re doing. It’s great to feed off one another’s energy and catch a vision of “what could be…”.
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11
At last week’s meeting we came up with some superb ideas. Let me tell you, there’s some really good stuff in the pipeline for this summer…
In the parish where I grew up it was understood that, upon receiving their First Holy Communion, boys were then eligible for training to become altar servers. I followed in this tradition and became an altar boy at the age of eight. Even after we changed parishes, every week I served on the altar and did so for many years. I continued to serve regularly until after I completed university and, even then, when I was back home visiting my family I would typically don my cassock and carry a candle on Sundays.
I loved being an altar server and I think that all parents should consider encouraging their sons to become altar boys. In this post I’d like to share my top ten reasons why altar serving is great…
Have you ever tried to do a novena and failed? Maybe it slipped your mind for a few days, or maybe you did remember, but only at inconvenient moments when you didn’t have the novena text with you? If what I’m describing has happened to you, then I have a suggestion for you: use Google Calendar as your prayer buddy.
When I intend to do a novena, I create a repeating event in Google Calendar to remind me. The wonderful thing about it is that you can synchronize the calendar with your cell phone so you have you’ll see the reminder wherever you are. If you include the text for the novena in the event’s description, you won’t even have to go hunting around to find the prayer for that day. Google Calendar will work with both iPhone or Android devices.
If you’re not sure how to do this in Google Calendar, here are the steps necessary to setup a novena reminder:
1. Create new event
Click at the first day when you’ll be doing the Novena. I’d suggest picking a time when you know you’ll be consistently free over the course of the nine days. Enter the name of the novena and then click the “Edit Event” link:
2. Enter event description
In the “Description” field, enter the text needed for the novena, or include a link to a website which contains the text. Then click on the checkbox next to “Repeat”:
3. Setup Repetition
Clicking on the checkbox next to “Repeat” will cause a new dialog to appear. On this dialog you can setup how this event repeats. Since we’ll be praying a Novena, set it to “Daily” repetition and to end after nine occurrences. Once this is completed, click “Done”:
4. Jesus saves… and so should you
Everything is now correctly setup, so click “Save” and you should see the sequence of reminders created.
Hope this helps. Happy praying!
Last night I gave a talk for The Goretti Group. This was a variation on a talk I gave at the Southern Kansas Young Adult Conference.
Is there life before marriage? (Download)
I’ve written a couple of articles for the Goretti Group in the past which you might like to read: Dear Miss Lawrence and “I waited until my wedding night to lose my virginity and I wish I hadn’t”.
On this blog I regularly share edifying resources that I’ve come across in my Internet wanderings. Today I’d like to publicise a site that is probably my favourite Catholic blog on the Internet:
Shameless Popery is written by a chap in the DC area named Joseph Heschmeyer. He posts articles pretty much every day on a wide range of subjects pertaining to the Catholic faith. He’s a lawyer by training and his systematic and methodical writing style is testimony to his logical and orderly way of thinking. I want to keep him humble so I’ll cease the adulation here, but I’d strongly encourage everyone to go subscribe to his blog.