+JMJ+ Oh, my, how do I love thee, Elizabeth Lev? Let me count the ways. I love reading your essays, I love reading your books. I love watching your interviews. But most of all, I love watching how you light up when you have free range to talk and share stories about Italy, especially Rome, and about art and about artists, especially about Catholic art and Catholic artists, and how you light up—and light up a room—especially when you talk about Michelangelo, Catholic artist par excellence.
+JMJ+ Oh, my goodness, where to start? First, I need a fresh cuppa. Ah, now, let me get situated here and I’ll tell you what happened. I was searching for info on the Magi (there’s a pun to be made there but I’m not making it) and then Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died, may he rest in peace. So I wanted to write something about him and decided to post some quotes and began another search.
+JMJ+ It’s here! The week leading up to Christmas! Whew! We’ve had some cold weather here and we’re expecting a few days of lows around 16-18 degrees for Christmas Eve and Christmas night. But it’s not so brutal right now and pretty comfy in the den where I’m writing this. Let’s get a fresh cup of tea, then we can take a quick look at a book in my favorite devotional series, In Conversation with God, Daily Meditations, Volume One, Advent and Christmastide, and the reading for yesterday, the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
+JMJ+ May is the month devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 2019 I wrote a series, a post for (almost) every day in May. This time around I’ve been doing some spiritual reading, going through my shelf of Marian books and I thought I’d share a longish quote from a book about Marian feasts. I’ll include links to the book at the end of the post.
+JMJ+ I hope your Divine Mercy Sunday has been filled with joy and grace and graces. There are many misconceptions about the Divine Mercy feast and devotion. I hope this brief post will help to clear up some of those. It really is a beautiful thing, the feast, the devotion, the book, all of it.
+JMJ+ I’m working on a post about Fatima but I’m not ready to publish it on the blog yet. So tonight I’m going to link to a couple of posts about Fatima from a series I did a while back, Something About Mary Every Day in May.
+JMJ+ Thanks to everybody who responded to the Flash Giveaway celebrating my three anniversaries.* I assigned numbers to the entries in the order received, then used the Google Random Number Generator to select two numbers. And here they are, the winners of the Lent Giveaway 2022.
+JMJ+ Join me as I celebrate the 26th anniversary of my reception into the Catholic Church, my 13th year as a Catholic blogger, and my 3rd year owning this site, with a Flash Giveaway. Drawing will be this Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. I’m hoping that way the winners might receive their books by Ash Wednesday, or close to it.
+JMJ+ I’ve been listening to Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible In A Year podcast. I wish I’d realized that he was uinsg the Great Adventure Bible, the one Jeff Cavins came up with. What a cool Bible study tool his Bible Timeline is. I took a course of that at a parish back in 2010 (that long ago?) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I still have the workbook, dug it out this weekend. Got my Great Adventure Bible a few days ago, too. Not for doing the podcast, at the time I ordered it I had no idea he was using it. I almost didn’t even listen to the podcast because I wanted to use the Bible Timeline method. Little did I know!
+JMJ+ When I began studying the Bible as a Catholic in 1996, I found a lot of tapes (yes, tapes) of Scott Hahn and a few others, but there was nowhere near the wealth of resources then that are available to us now. In the past few years Catholic studies have really taken off. But with all of these resources around us it can be confusing to know where to start. Listed below are three ways you can get started studying the Bible as a Catholic, right now, today.
“If repentance is the foundation of the spiritual life, the commandments are the entryway.”
Introduction to the Spiritual Life, 160.
+JMJ+ Welcome to part 5 of our Catholic Book of the Month where we are using Brant Pitre’s book, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus, as our guide on our Quest for holiness and to become saints. Yes, SAINTS. Last week Dr. Pitre showed us that before we can begin our journey in earnest, we have to repent, but that is not enough. We also have to remove mortal sin from our lives.
+JMJ+ Welcome to part 4 (and the First Step) of our sixth Catholic Book of the Month, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus, by Brant Pitre. I’m on a quest to get more serious than ever before about the spiritual life, my spiritual life, and I’m inviting you to come along with me as I stumble my way along. If you ever felt intimidated by people who seemed to be further along than you are, you won’t have to worry about that here with me. Nope, not at all. Because I am a beginner, too. I have made all the excuses and put off my practice until I was too pooped to pray. In short, I have been a miserable disciple not worthy of the name. That’s why I chose it for my handle on social media, to keep before me my lack of progress and sincere effort and keep me humble. I’d rather read about spirituality any day than have to live it. I understand exactly how that is. That’s why I am doing this now. Time is short, the day is already far spent, and I ain’t gettin’ any younger! I’ve already landed in the hospital twice and the most recent time I was not expected to live. And STILL I have been a lazy sorry excuse for a disciple.
Catholic Heart and Mind 