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Among today’s saints are two venerable Dominican tertiaries, and I decided to go with Catherine Jarrige because she showed a bit of a sense of humor and mischeif in her life. In the years after the French revolution, she worked to protect clergy who were unwilling to swear an oath of allegiance to the new […]

Today is the feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, so I headed down to Hyde Park. Unfortunately, traffic was such that I ended up arriving fifteen minutes late which had me arrive in the middle of the consecration.  Hyde Park is a notably integrated and liberal neighborhood in Chicago, anchored by the University of Chicago. […]

I decided to go with Saint Bernardino Realino for today’s saint since (a) I’m partial to the Jesuits and (2) he turned from a career as a lawyer to caring for the poor which seems pretty cool.

Antonio Rosmini is a bit of an interesting figure—his writing was initially put on the index of prohibited books and yet he ultimately was not only removed from the index (although there was and is dispute over whether his removal meant that his writing was ok, or just not heretical enough to be on the […]

Nearly every named woman in the new testament, it seems, was named Mary and today’s saint is one of the more obscure of these, Mary the mother of John Mark (generally associated with the Mark who wrote the Gospel of) who gets a single mention in Acts, subtle enough that most people wouldn’t remember her […]

I’ve always believed that good news never comes in self-addressed stamped envelopes. This month, I discovered this was not necessarily true as an SASE I picked up from my P.O. Box turned out to have not only an acceptance inside, but a check as well. I have a poem coming out later this year. Progress […]

Today being the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, I had a variety of options for where to go, but I opted for Saint Paul’s church in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I just checked the website to make sure that I wasn’t mistaken, and there was nothing there to indicate what I discovered when […]

Looking over the options for saints for today (and discovering too late that it’s the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), I stumbled upon Saint Heimerad who, despite his weird name has a kind of cool story, most notably with his nickname, “Fool for Christ.” He apparently had difficulty with living in community, was […]

At this point, I was past the halfway point of summer and looking at my failure to accomplish the goals I’d set out for myself for the summer. I really need to induce more discipline in my life. I know [sic] have six weeks to learn 15 weeks of Algebra. First chapter of BusSongs. Young […]