Our Lady - Saturday

Image used with permission from Joyce Images

Fine Art Friday - Rembrandt

"Art as well as science has been God's greatest gifts to mankind"...Pope Benedict XVI

The artist we are spotlighting this week is one of the most famous in the world...Rembrandt van Rijn.

...(July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.[1] His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.

Source: Wikipedia
Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Supper at Emmaus
The Jewish Bride
St. James the Greater
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer
Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves

Feast Day - St. Mark the Evangelist

Source: The Real Presence

Spiritual Moms, Priests and the Holy Father

Benedict XVI gave his support to an initiative from the Congregation for Clergy that called for spiritual mothers for priests and Eucharistic adoration for their sanctity.

The Pope, who repeatedly stressed the need for holy priests during his trip to the United States last week, expressed his approval of this project promoted by the Vatican's clergy dicastery.

Read the rest of the Zenit article here

This latest news is so heartwarming personally, because Easter and I along with many helpful supporters, have been working very hard to make sure all of our priests and seminarians in the Diocese of Honolulu are spiritually adopted. I am happy to report that by today or tomorrow at the latest, all of them will have been spiritually adopted.

It is so important that we pray unceasingly for our priests...not only in our own diocese but all over the world and for our seminarians. Why we have some Catholic bloggers who are either in the seminary now or will be entering the seminary soon, who need our prayers.

Why Join the Third Order of St. Francis?

watch Steve's video and you may just want to become a member...

Saintly Quote - Servant of God

Shared by Sue.

A servant of God signifies one who has a great charity towards his neighbor, and an inviolable resolution to follow in everything the Divine Will; who bears with his own deficiencies, and patiently supports the imperfections of others.

-St. Francis de Sales

Saintly Quote - The Catholic Church

Shared by Sue

The Catholic Church, having received the apostolic teaching and faith, though spread over the whole world, guards it sedulously, as though dwelling in one house; and these truths she uniformly teaches, as having but one soul and one heart; these truths she proclaims, teaches, and hands down as though she had but one mouth.

~ St. Irenaeus in the second century

Catholic Priests and the Holocaust: A Book and A Movie

If you were fortunate to watch Fr. Mitch Pacwa last week, you saw his interview with his guest, William Doino, Jr. His guest spoke with enthusiasm about the book Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau | Fr. Jean Bernard. It was a book written by Fr. Jean Bernard and fairly recently translated into English.

In May 1941, Father Jean Bernard was arrested for denouncing the Nazis and deported from his native Luxembourg to Dachau's "Priest Block," a barracks that housed more than 3,000 clergymen of various denominations (the vast majority Roman Catholic priests).

Priestblock 25487 tells the gripping true story of his survival amid inhuman brutality, degradation, and torture.
This important book, originally published in Germany in 1963, was adapted by director Volker Schlöndorff into the film The Ninth Day in 2004.
Introduction by Robert Royal. Preface by Archbishop Seán Cardinal O Malley, Archbishop of Boston.

The above description from Ave Maria Radio where you can also purchase the book.

To read the first chapter of this book, check out Ignatius Scoop

Fr. Bernard's book was adapted into a film entitled The Ninth Day. To watch the trailer and learn more about this movie, be sure to click on the title above.

Abbé Kremer is released from a living hell in the Dachau concentration camp and sent home to Luxembourg. Upon his arrival, he soon learns that this is not a reprieve or a pardon of his crime – voicing opposition to the Nazis’ racial laws – but that he has nine days to convince the bishop of Luxembourg to work with the Nazi occupiers. Gestapo Untersturmführer Gebhardt is under pressure from his superior to have the Abbé succeed in creating a rift between the Luxembourg church and the Vatican – or be transferred to duty in the death camps in the East. Gebhardt, a former Catholic seminarian, uses theological arguments to bring the Abbé around but when they don’t work he resorts to more draconian measures. The Abbé is torn between his conscience and his horror of returning to Dachau...

I regret that I didn't know about this film when it was first released. I hope to find it on DVD somewhere. I hope you do too.

More on Pope Benedict and His Love of Cats

Our friend Barbara, the one who was responsible for us adopting our new tabby shared the following story with me. I am happy to see the lady in the story lives in Wayne, NJ., a town very familiar to me.

...And in Pope Benedict XVI, Ms. Fredericks, the chairwoman of the fledgling American branch of Catholic Concern for Animals, believes that she has found a kindred spirit: Along with an enormous entourage and a message of peace, the Pope brought with him to the United States a lifelong love of cats.

Benedict’s kindness toward the strays of Rome is already the stuff of Vatican legend. His house in Germany, its garden guarded by a cat statue, was filled with cats when Benedict lived there full time before he was posted to the Vatican in 1982.

And Benedict is, without a doubt, the first pope to have had an authorized biography of him written by a cat — Chico, a ginger tabby who lives across the road from Benedict’s old house in Germany...

You can read the rest of the article Here

Oh, BTW, we did receive Joseph and Chico and loved it!! I don't remember if I mentioned that here before...

Aloha Holy Father...

...and a hui hou! (Until we meet again).

It was so sad seeing the Holy Father climb the steps to his airplane.

BTW, I hope that apostolic blessing which we actually saw live, extended to the families watching because our family stood there for the blessing. We also had the Holy Father extend the blessing to our new addition who hadn't been blessed yet.

Happy Birthday Mother!

May God bless you always and abundantly. Happy 85th Birthday!

Please offer a Spiritual Bouquet of prayers for Mother.