From "The Courtship of Miles Standish"

"No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely.
It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women
Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers
Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful,
Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs."

Now how did Longfellow know that? What woman did he know to tell him that? I shall guess his wife.

I read The Courtship of Miles Standish for the first time tonight and found it a fast and enjoyable poem, with nice description and unexpected insights here and there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote it in 1858, basing it on the history of the Pilgrims. About 102 of them arrived in Massachusetts in the fall of 1620 and half of them died that first terrible winter. Every family lost at least one member. In spring the Mayflower (which had stayed anchored at Plymouth) finally returned to England with its crew, but all of the surviving Pilgrims chose to stay in America. The bereft families combined, widowers marrying the widows. They met Indians who helped them and in fall of 1621 they had a good harvest and thanked God with a feast you've probably heard of. This poem is set right after the first winter. Longfellow uses three actual members of the colony-- Miles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins-- as main characters in his poem. The text is here, but don't read the paragraph at the top if you don't want the story spoiled for you!

Saint Picture Quiz 5

Athanasius nailed the fourth saint picture quiz; it was St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, more commonly called Edith Stein.

I will now post four pictures that would have completely stumped me if I hadn't seen their labels. Anyone who successfully identifies any of these saints will win the valuable prize of my admiration. :) Click for bigger versions:

Friars on Facebook

I think it is cool and quite appropriate that when priests and nuns and other vowed religious fill out profiles on Facebook, they don't list their relationship status as "single", "married", "dating", or any of the usual categories, but rather they make use of that famous classification, "It's Complicated." You'd almost think Facebook came up with that category with them in mind! Almost.

A 1962 Missal and the Mass for public pentients

Then God remembered Rachel, and God gave heed to her and granted her desire. So she came into possession of a 1962 Missal and said, "God has taken away my reproach." (Genesis 30:22-23, RMUV*)

I finally have a 1962 Missal and need no longer be ashamed of myself at traditional Latin Masses. :) I've been making do with a booklet missalette and a printout of the day's propers, but real trads have missals.

(This painting is "The Missal" by Waterhouse; I found it on Wikipedia, where I also learned that President Johnson was sworn in on a Roman Catholic missal from Kennedy's desk because they couldn't find a Bible on Air Force One!)

So I've been browsing through my shiny new 1962 Missal, and of course it's full of cool traditional Catholic stuff. In the Votive Collects section are the proper prayers for Masses for all sorts of intentions and needs and dangers, both physical and spiritual: rain, fair weather, earthquake, famine, storms, a Mass "in time of cattle plague" (which I'm sure was no laughing matter back when food sources were more precarious), for the faithful departed, in honor of the Holy Ghost, in honor of the Most Holy Sacrament, and this interesting little one: "For concord in a congregation." Its postcommunion prayer goes like this: "O Lord, pour forth upon us the spirit of Thy love, that those whom Thou hast fed with one heavenly Bread, Thou mayest, by Thy mercy, make of one mind..."

But the votive Mass that really grabs my attention is the one "For public penitents". Evidently that means a person can do public penance for some sin by having a votive Mass said for that intention? How does that work, exactly? Would you invite everyone you know? Would it be a regular daily Mass? Would there be an announcement about who the Mass was for and what the sin was? How "public" are we talking here? I wonder if that Mass was ever said any time in the last hundred years. I knew public penance was the norm in the early centuries of Church history but I didn't know there was any kind of provision for it in today's liturgy! Anyway, here's one of its prayers: "Almighty, everlasting God, in Thy loving kindness release from their sins Thy servants, who confess their guilt: so that they will not lose more from the pain of remorse than they gain from Thy gracious pardon...."

* Rachel's Made-Up Version

Saint picture quiz 4

I was going to inform Andrew that he has a strange notion of how to spell the name of Saint Clare of Assisi, but then I realized that our Italian seminarian was giving her Italian name. And here I'd thought Chiara (and its many variations) was merely a modern, trendy, made-up name! So the answer to the last quiz is St. Clare (or Santa Chiara), and there's an explanation here of why she holds a monstrance.

New quiz!