A Time of Hope

On December 19, 2022December 22, 2022 By Lee (@disciple96)In Advent, In Conversation with God, In Conversation with God, SeasonalLeave a comment

+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.

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Join me to pray the Rosary in honor of the Assumption

On August 14, 2022August 14, 2022 By Lee (@disciple96)In Mary, Rosary Project2 Comments

+JMJ+ You are invited to join me Monday, Aug. 15, on Twitter at 8pm ET/7pm CT, to pray the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I tweeted a thread about it, too, containing links to some videos by Scott Hahn, Steve Ray, and Brant Pitre, about Catholic teachings on the Blessed Virgin and her Assumption. I hope you’ll join me.

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Octave of Christian Unity – Mary, Mother of Unity

On January 24, 2021January 18, 2023 By Lee (@disciple96)In Catholic Doctrine, Christian unityLeave a comment

+JMJ+ Welcome to Day 7 of the Octave of Christian Unity. In Conversation with God, volume 6 (ICWG, 6) by Fr. Francis Fernandez Carvajal, is what I’m using as a jumpstarter for this series of posts. Keywords for tonight are, well, in the title: Mary and Mother of Unity. Notes and links will be at the end of the post.

“The disciples devoted themselves with one accord to prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.”
ICWG, vol. 6, p. 57.

Pentecost by Jean Restout - Public domain

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The NT shows Mary as the Ark of the Covenant

On May 31, 2019July 27, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Books, Catholic Doctrine, Hail, Holy Queen, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In May3 Comments

This is the last of the Something About Mary Every Day In May (2019) series.

Growing up as a young Methodist I heard very little about the Blessed Virgin Mary. After discovering the Catholic Church I began to hear about her a lot. But I didn’t know what to make of all the things I was hearing, and I made the not uncommon mistake of thinking that I didn’t need to pay much attention to all of that because all that mattered was the truly important stuff. This is an understandable mistake for a newcomer to Catholicism to make, but over the years I’ve heard plenty of Catholics mistake the Marian doctrines of the Church for lower level unnecessary (even optional) doctrines, too. I’ve heard Catholics and non-Catholics alike say, “as long as we agree on the essential things we’re all okay,” but that’s just it: we do not agree on the essentials. We don’t even agree on what the essentials are.

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The Mother of Jesus

On May 29, 2019July 27, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Catholic Church History, Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In MayLeave a comment

A post in the Something About Mary Every Day In May series.

I just discovered a treasure trove of audio: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Life is Worth Living talks in MP3 format and especially for our series on Mary, his talk on The Mother of Jesus. I’m listening to it now. In these Life is Worth Living radio talks, Archbishop Sheen is not speaking before a live audience but is, if memory serves, sitting at a desk and speaking into a microphone. The recordings would then be pressed onto discs. (Disks? I can never remember which spelling is which, and I think I’ve read conflicting things anyway.) The audio can be scratchy at times but I don’t care. I feel like he’s sitting down and talking with me. (Links and notes at the end of this post.)

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Bishop Sheen, Fatima, and the Conscience of the West

On May 28, 2019May 13, 2022 By Lee (@disciple96)In Apparitions, Atheism, Communism, MaryLeave a comment

I never got to watch Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen when I was growing up. I think I’d only heard about him and I’d seen photos of him. Sometime around my conversion (give or take a few years) I saw his program, Life is Worth Living, on EWTN and realized what I’d been missing. (Video of Bishop Sheen below, links at the end of this post.)

Our Lady of Fatima, Portugal, 100 year anniversary. Free wallpaper from WallPaperCave.

At that time I still didn’t now what to make of Marian apparitions and it would be some years before I would dip my toe in the water. But now that I have, one apparition in particular means a lot to me. In Catholic-speak I would say I have devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. This talk by Archbishop Sheen will go some way in revealing why I like him so much and why Fatima means so much to me and not just me but countless others. And to the world, whether it knows it or not. Especially now.

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Queen Mother, Mary and Rachel

On May 26, 2019July 26, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Bible study, Books, Catholicism in the Bible, Dr. Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In MayLeave a comment

Contrary to what many non-Catholic Christians charge, we do not honor Mary at the expense of Jesus. We do not give her too much honor thereby taking away from the honor due her Son, as if it were some zero sum game with only so much honor to go around. “Oh, no, I’ve given too much honor to Mary, now I don’t have enough left to give Jesus, oh, no!”

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Warrior and Queen of the Angels

On May 24, 2019July 26, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In May, Spiritual Warfare, Spirituality, Videos1 Comment

I watched a video about the Blessed Virgin Mary and I want to share it one with you: Mary is a Warrior Queen battling the Dragon, by Bishop Robert Barron, referring to The Woman in Revelation 12 and promised in Genesis 3:15. The video is less than 13 minutes long and well worth the time it takes to watch. (Video below, links are at the end of this post.)

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For the thousandth time, we Catholics do NOT worship Mary

On May 23, 2019July 26, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Books, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In May1 Comment

Non-Catholic Christians on Twitter ask me this question a lot: “So why do you Catholics worship Mary?”

And I answer: “We do not worship Mary.”

Non-Catholic: “You sure do seem to.”

Me: “But we don’t.”

NC: “I think you do.”

Me: “And I know we don’t.”

This can go on for as long as we can both stand it. Which usually isn’t very long. So let me address it here: The Catholic Church does not consider the Blessed Virgin Mary to be someone to be worshiped. She is someone to honor, someone we have great, deep, abiding affection for, someone who knew and knows the Lord better than any other human person alive.

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Madonna and Child, some favorite paintings

On May 22, 2019July 26, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Books, Sacred Art, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In May, The Mother of God - Art Celebrates Mary, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In the previous post I shared a little something about one of my new used books, The Mother of God: Art Celebrates Mary, but I didn’t have time to do much more than mention it. Tonight I want to begin looking inside it and I’ll share that with you. I can’t reproduce the works from the book without violating copyright, but I’ll share what I can find in the public domain where possible. (Links at the end of this post.)

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Beauty: Catholic Art vs Iconoclasm Past and Present

On May 20, 2019April 4, 2022 By Lee (@disciple96)In Books, Catholic TV and Video, How Catholic Art Saved the Faith, Mary, Sacred Art, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In MayLeave a comment

Just watched an episode of Catholic Answers Live with Elizabeth Lev talking about her latest book, How Catholic Art Saved the Faith. Oh, my goodness, I’m enjoying this interview. When they were talking about Caravaggio I had tears in my eyes. Still do. (Video below. Links at the end of this post.)

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Purest of All Lilies

On May 19, 2019July 26, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Divine Mercy, Mary, Purest of All Lilies, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In MayLeave a comment

I wonder when I’ll get used to having anything delivered on Sunday. This time it was a used book: Purest of All Lilies: The Virgin Mary in the Spirituality of St. Faustina, by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC. (Links at the end of this post.) The back cover reads that “the Virgin Mary is a spiritual mother of St. Faustina and us” and that the book is an “in-depth study of the very special relationship between the Virgin Mary and St. Faustina.”

“Before Holy Communion I saw the Blessed Mother inconceivably beautiful. Smiling at me She said to me: ‘My daughter, at God’s command I am to be in a special and exclusive way your Mother; but I desire that you, too, in a special way, be My child” (Diary, 1414).
Fr. George Kosicki, CSB, quoted on the back cover of Purest of All Lilies.

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