More Merriment

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

P. G. Wodehouse, Uneasy Money

Giving Thanks!

Giving Thanks! A Prayer for After Holy Communion: Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for your very self -- your flesh and blood, body and soul, humanity and divinity -- for you are all good and the source of all that is good./ Thank you for your very self, dear Lord, for you are the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the sin of disobedience and death; happy are we who are called to this supper of love and life./ Thank you for yourself, dear Jesus, for you are the Bread of Life, the new manna who comes down from heaven to nourish us unto life everlasting; for your flesh is food indeed and your blood is drink indeed, so that, in a most intimate way, we partake of the divine nature./ Thank you for yourself, dear Jesus, for you are the son of the Father -- the only-begotten son, one in being with the Father -- you are God! And yet you deigned to become man, to live for us and to die for us, because you love us; so that we too might be children of the Father and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven./ Thank you for yourself, dear Jesus, for you are the son of Mary, you are truly man, like us in all things but sin. And on the Cross, as you suffered the most horrible pains for our sins, agonies of body and soul, you made sure to bequeath to us Mary to be our spiritual mother, to help us to follow you always, in good times and in bad. May we cherish our mom, taking her into our homes and hearts, and appreciating more and more the warmth and sweetness of her maternal embrace. Amen

Merriment

"Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
there's always laughter and good red wine,
At least I've always found it so,
Benedicamus Domino! [Let us Bless the Lord!] "
Hilaire Belloc
Once upon a stormy summer, an earnest handful of aspiring scholars, a diverse half-dozen hailing from divergent points in the northern continent of the New World -- and unbeknownst to each other -- assembled in a small, remnant outpost of Christendom hidden in the mists of the Shenandoah Mountains. They were each, in his or her own way, on a common quest for goodness and beauty and truth; and as they met and mingled and mixed, it seemed to them, at some undefineable, grace-filled moment amidst the frequent rains they experienced, that a streak of lightning had been captured in a bottle (an empty wine bottle from an excursion to Rappahannock Cellars), a bolt of illumination and inspiration from above, creating in them a camaraderie and a synergy that they wanted to share with any passers-by in the cosmos of cyberspace. We humbly hope, though we are only apprentices in the school of the Lord, that you may find at this site a small but significant vestige of a once-magnificent but long-forgotten land, a flawed but flourishing civilization of light and warmth, blessed with knowledge and wisdom, mysticism and mirth, owing to the beneficent rain and benevolent sun of its most majestic King -- Jesus -- who came to us as a servant, a victorious victim, to save us from ourselves and to show us a new heaven and a new earth. It is the lost land of Christendom, and we are graduate theology students of Christendom College. We welcome you to join us, in one way or another, as we strive to contribute to the recollection and rehabilitation of this homeland to its former glory. This home is not of earthly domain, but a transcendent culture and a congenial climate, a place of surrender and fulfillment, of sacrifice and joy, inviting to one and all, made incarnate in this fallen world to provide us with a generous measure of real merriment in the here-and-now, and with a boundless abundance of eternal bliss in the hereafter. Please, pour yourself a glass of wine, or a cup of hot chocolate, blog on, and make yourself at home.