Category: religion
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Today’s Saint Picture: Blessed Antonio Rosmini
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…
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Today‘s saint picture: Saint Mary, mother of John Mark
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…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Paul
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…
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Today’s saint picture: Saint Heimerad
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…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Sacred Heart
The feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus takes place on the Friday after the feast of the Holy Trinity which makes it one of those movable feasts in the Catholic liturgical calendar (most of these are based on the date of Easter, with the only exceptions I’m aware of being Christ the King and…
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Today’s saint picture: Saint David the Dendrite
Early saints often ended up with rather—eccentric—biographies. The holiness of these figures drew people to them when they just wanted some alone time and in the case of Saint David the Dendrite, his solution to his was to climb an almond tree and live there for three years, thus his title (dendrite coming from the…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint William
Back to a domestic church visit, today I went to the Saint William parish in the Mont Clare neighborhood of Chicago. The church building is a 1959 building with a very mid-century modern aesthetic to it. the tinterior, meanwhile, reflects the final days of pre-Vatican II architecture with side chapels and a sanctuary surrounded by…
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Today’s saint picture: Birth of Saint John the Baptist
Most Catholic religious feasts commemorate the death of the saint. As far as I know, there are only three births celebrated in the Catholic church: Jesus (Christmas), Mary (September 8th) and John the Baptist (today). Jesus and John are mentioned in the Bible and I suppose once we had a feast celebrating the Immaculate Conception¹…
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Today’s saint picture: Blessed Marie of Oignies
I was briefly excited when reading the biography of Marie of Oignies to read about her being married and convincing her husband that they should live in poverty and care for the lepers in Nivelles and this led to her foundation of the Beguines, a lay order that did not take formal orders. Then I…