Good Old Catholic Links

"The blessing of each communicant at Mass with the Host is a very small detail -- if a blessing imparted by Christ Himself in the Eucharist can be called small. But it does prove that real love resides in and provides for the smallest details, however easy they may be to miss. Real love seeks to satisfy even the tiniest desires of the beloved. Indeed, to real love, nothing is tiny or beneath notice. Real love leaves undone nothing that can possibly be done for the beloved's happiness."

From Anita Moore's excellent post, On Being Starved into Submission.

It's a funny thing, that St. Thomas Aquinas would come to say of his entire body of work that it was as straw, after beholding - as St. Paul before him - the eternal kingdom of God; and that when Jesus appeared to him one day while kneeling in chapel, He would say to Aquinas in regards to his "polemical" writings against those old things that stupid argumentative people call heresies, not "Your entire work, Thomas, is as straw", nor, "You, Thomas, do you think you are significant in doing these things?", nor, "Do you persist in these writings because you think I need you to, who are as a fly in my ray?" but said to him, as one who precedes His eternal authority with the most exquisite courtesy, "You have done well with your writing; what do you wish of Me?"

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I really like this picture of Fr. Longenecker with his altar servers.

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I was at Michael O'Brien's site and came across the Holy Cloak Novena. I seem to vaguely remember coming across it somewhere else a while back. O'Brien writes of it:

"This ancient novena of prayers is called the Holy Cloak of St. Joseph, a particular and special way to merit the patronage of this great Saint while also rendering honour to him.

It is to be recited on thirty consecutive days in memory of the thirty years St. Joseph spent in the company of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If for some reason you cannot recite the prayer on a particular day, you may make up for it by reciting it on the 30th day as many times as the recitation was missed.

The extraordinary graces obtained by this prayer are innumerable. St. Teresa of Avila said: "If you really want to believe in it, prove it to yourself by reciting the Novena and you will be finally convinced."

It is most efficacious to say a prayer for the Souls in Purgatory.

With the same solicitude that we help dry the tears of the suffering souls, so to can we hope that St. Joseph will help dry our tears in our necessities. In this way, St. Joseph's Holy Cloak will spread itself over us and will serve as a shield against all those dangers which beset us so that we may all one day, with the grace of God, obtain eternal salvation.

Our Lord and Our Lady invite us to love and honor and pray to St. Joseph:

Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary, "I wish that every day you offer special prayers to Our mother and St. Joseph, Our most sweet guardian." The Blessed Mother said to the Venerable Maria de Agreda, "You must see to it that you continually increase your love and devotion to this great Saint. In all your necessities, you must avail yourself of his protection, under all circumstances you must encourage as many people as possible toward this devotion . . . for indeed, whatever our devoted spouse requests in Heaven, the Almighty God will grant on Earth.""

I guess it can be started on any day one chooses; and going for thirty days, I'm not sure how that's a novena, but it's called a novena anyways.