Venite Prandete

  ST JOSEPH FEAST DAY 19th MARCH Masculinity is denigrated in our culture today – it is disparaged as ‘toxic” and polarised as against the interests of women. With the advent of the sexual revolution, indeed, many aspects of masculinity did, in fact, become toxic – the ready availability of casual sex, without accountability or responsibility, has led to the emotional repression of women, where they are compelled to acquiescence in sexual relationships without commitment, no matter what their genuine desires might be. Even worse, there is a potential physical endangerment to women, to the extent that moral parameters are now mandated, not by genuine respect, but by legal rules and guidelines. There is a crisis of fatherlessness - fathers fail to take up their responsibilities as fathers. This leads to a further consequence - men without a strong father and who lack respect for their mother can become violent against women and other men. Against this - women are frequently treating...

  BLESSED FATHER RICHARD HENKES – THE SECRET PREACHER OF DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP 19th SEPTEMBER I have included this post as a memorial to the priests who died for their fellow man at the hands of the Nazis. Blessed Father Richard Henkes, a German Pallatine priest, was imprisoned at Dachau Concentration Camp for preaching against the Nazis. On this date, 19th September 2019, he was beatified. He was one of 18 priests who volunteered to go to the typhus block in Dachau, knowing that it was a sentence of death. He was called the ‘secret preacher of Block 17’, and he died while ministering to prisoners suffering from typhus. At his beatification, Cardinal Kurt Koch stated that "[t]he real reformers of the Church are the blessed and the saints, for we can only achieve the utmost externally, in structural terms, when we are also prepared to strive to achieve our utmost internally, in faith.” He continued, “Love is not without sacrifice. The Christian martyrdom is only real if it is ...

  ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX- FEAST DAY 20 AUGUST St Bernard was a Cistercian monk and mystic and founder of the Abbey of Clairvaux. His feast day is an opportunity to consider the virtues contemplative prayer. Below is an extract of St Bernard’s work on the Stages of Contemplation, reproduced by John Uebersax (September 10, 2008 at https://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/.../on-the-stages.../ ) From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux: I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me. (Habakkuk 2:1, KJV) LET US take our stand on the tower, leaning with all our strength on Christ, the most solid rock, as it is written: He has set my feet on a rock, he has guided my steps. Thus firmly established, let us begin to contemplate, to see what he is saying to us and what reply we ought to make to him. The first stage of contemplation, my dear brothers, is to consider constantly what God wants, what is pleasing to him, and what is acceptable i...

ST JOACHIM –FEAST DAY 16 AUGUST - FATHER OF OUR LADY A GUIDE TO SPOUSAL LOVE AND CATHOLIC MASCULINITY St Joachim, the father of Our Lady, must stand as a model for spousal love and fatherhood. Granted, he was gifted with advantages over and above the normal parent, being blessed with a daughter completely free of original sin and who lived her whole life free from sin. Granted too, we know little about him, aside from the fact that he was married to St Anne. This being so, his feast day is one which can serve as a mechanism to ponder the nature of Catholic fatherhood, Catholic marriage and the love of a husband for his wife, together with a consideration of Catholic masculinity – a big subject. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides that “[t]he entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church.” (1617). Kevin Wells, in his book, “The Priests we need to Save the Church”, (Sophia Press, at p. 125), spoke of his uncle, a priest, in exhorting newly we...