"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 has been to “Make an effort to dress well for Mass”. Some of my friends expressed surprise when I said that this was one of my resolutions, since they assumed that I was the sort of person who would naturally dress smartly for Mass.
I was trying to work out how my laxity came about. Here’s how I think it happened…
This past week I was being interviewed on two episodes of The Counsel of Trent, the podcast by apologist Trent Horn. Needless to say, we chatted a lot about C.S. Lewis…
Episode #190: The Secret Life of C.S. Lewis (Download)
Episode #191: The Genius of C.S. Lewis (Download)
Question: “How do we grow in knowledge and understanding of Scripture?”
Answer: “Ask more questions”.
If you want to grow in knowledge and understanding of anything, asking questions is a great way to go about it! The sure and true way to stagnate in anything is to simply be satisfied with your current level of development and understanding and let yourself slowly atrophy.
So, if you want to grow in your knowledge and understanding of Scripture, ask questions about it! If you read a passage which contains lots of things in it that you don’t understand, get a good study Bible, find a Bible geek and keep asking questions until you’re satisfied with the answers!
I was looking at my post from a couple of days ago and noticed something about the icon of Polycarp that I didn’t initially notice…
If you look carefully, you will see on the left the emblem of a bird, peaking out from underneath Polycarp’s robes. I believe this bird is the Phoenix. If you don’t know the mythology surrounding the Phoenix, it is described in the letter of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (96 AD):
“Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years.
I’ve been playing around with the graphics program Canva recently and if you’ve looked at the Restless Pilgrim Facebook page recently, you’ll have seen the fruit of this.
One of the graphics I produced has been particularly popular so I thought I’d share a high resolution version of it here on the blog, together with a printable PDF version. I’ve also made a version for the iPhone “Locked” Screen.
I spent the last few days in Vegas on vacation so I’ve been catching up with my blog reading and found that, a couple of days ago, Joe Heschmeyer from Shameless Popery wrote a great post entitled Preparing Ourselves as Tabernacles For The Lord. This is a subject related to my post below. I began writing this entry about a month ago and scheduled it for publishing today – I’m not copying you Joe, honest!
A couple of weeks ago it was the feast day of St. Philip Neri.
Philip was born in Florence in 1515. At about the age of eighteen he experienced a deep conversion of heart and moved to Rome with no money or plan, but simply trusted in God’s providence. He worked for two years as a live-in tutor, but otherwise led a simple life of solitude and prayer.
He studied Philosophy and Theology for about three years but then brought his studies to an abrupt close. He launched a mission to the people of Rome, which was fortunate since, at that time, both the people and the Church of Rome were in a particularly shabby spiritual state.
There are many praiseworthy aspects of Philip’s life which are worth sharing, but the episode I would like to recount here is one which demonstrates his rather cheeky sense of humour…
I have rather mixed feelings about Michael Voris. Many times he’s often spot on with his criticism, but I often find him unhelpfully aggressive and combative. Since we’ve just had the 40th Anniversary of Roe v Wade, I thought I’d post this video of his where he talks about the relationship between contraception and abortion:
Here’s the document that Mr. Voris quotes:
“In some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail“
– 1992 Casey vs. Planned Parenthood
The link between contraception and abortion is undeniable.