Divine Mercy Meditation

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A Silent Contemplative Night — Integrated Catholic Life™

A Silent Contemplative Night — Integrated Catholic Life™

Image: Image © by Christos Georghiou | Shutterstock For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,    “In returning and rest you shall be saved;    in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15) How is it that we can experience strength and rest in silence? We find the answer to this question by exploring one of the most familiar Christmas carols of all time. Silent…

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The king of contemplation - Catholic Herald

The king of contemplation – Catholic Herald

Ralph Fiennes’ staging of  TS Eliot’s Four Quartets at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London – which ended its  run just before Christmas –  is a musing on infinite time and how time is redemptive. Eliot thought of it as one meditative poem, not four separate poems, so staging it without an interval (it lasts over an hour) works memorably. That many in the audience wore masks is a reminder of the…

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Christmas Vigil — Integrated Catholic Life™

Christmas Vigil — Integrated Catholic Life™

This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Jenna Funkhouser. Christmas Vigil Night holds this memoryIn its dark box of velvetA cold jewel in the deepPalm of the sky. Every star remembersAnd sings its secretLullaby to to the soft criesOf the newborn moon. The grass still growsIn patches of blue fireAnd lambs still feedOn mouthfuls of sharp astonishment. And man lives on in wideningCircles…

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Look to St Joseph as a model of true courage, says Pope

Look to St Joseph as a model of true courage, says Pope

St Joseph, who protected his family from the persecution of King Herod, teaches us how to respond to our difficulties with courage and to trust in God’s plan, Pope Francis said. During his weekly public audience, the pope spoke about the contrast between St. Joseph, who acted with courage in the face of hardship and fear, and Herod, who acted with arrogance and violence. “The lesson that Joseph…

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The Sign for Us — Integrated Catholic Life™

The Sign for Us — Integrated Catholic Life™

Image: “Adoration of the Shepherds” (detail) by Antonio Balestra | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons We want signs and proof and miracles. But God gives us ordinary life. After four weeks of waiting—if we have really waited well—the words that greet us during the Church’s liturgy on Christmas night might bring joyful tears to our eyes. The Savior has come! The people who walked in darkness…

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The Greatest Gift — Integrated Catholic Life™

The Greatest Gift — Integrated Catholic Life™

“I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) Merry Christmas! I love holidays. I love family. The two just seem to go together, don’t they? Some holidays are joyful gatherings, some not so much. We are all too human, as the saying goes. But I say, give me holidays and family any day; warts and all! Especially give me Christmas, one of the two greatest of all holiday…

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Set Apart for Holiness — Integrated Catholic Life™

Set Apart for Holiness — Integrated Catholic Life™

Image: “The Holy Family with dog” (detail) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons “Jesus sanctified and elevated the family, set apart for noble and holy purpose. So, today, and every day, ask Jesus into your heart. Through the intercession of St. Joseph and Our Blessed Mother, place Jesus at the center of your family.” The Holy Family The Feast of the Holy Family…

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MacMillan’s Christmas cracker - Catholic Herald

MacMillan’s Christmas cracker – Catholic Herald

It’s a brave thing, to compose a Christmas Oratorio when you’re not Bach: the comparisons between his genius and yours are likely to be awkward, and not many in the course of music history have been prepared to risk it. Saint-Saëns tried – congratulations are in order if you’ve heard the piece, it’s rarely done. And in the 1940s Britten toyed with the idea, but reconsidered when the text produced…

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Remembering the Holy Innocents — Integrated Catholic Life™

Remembering the Holy Innocents — Integrated Catholic Life™

Image: “The Flight Into Egypt” (detail) by Carl Spitzweg | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons On the fourth day of our Christmas celebration, the Church reminds us that not everyone is joyful; that there exist those who are not of goodwill who do not wish to receive the season’s glad tidings. Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents in which the Church recalls and honors those baby boys whose…

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Pope preaches peace during Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi blessing

Pope preaches peace during Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi blessing

Giving his traditional Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” blessing, Pope Francis urged leaders to be open to dialogue to resolve the world’s many “conflicts, crises, and disagreements.” Speaking from the central balcony overlooking a rainy St Peter’s Square , the pope said that people had become so accustomed to disputes that “by now we hardly even notice them.” Referring to the baby Jesus, he said:…

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Snowbound Sunday — Integrated Catholic Life™

Snowbound Sunday — Integrated Catholic Life™

This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Peggy Everett. Snowbound Sunday We’re snowbound today,So my spouse and I watch a beautiful Mass on television.Our rosaries,Which hang from the top of the window frame,One on each side of a small statue of Our Lady,Are glinting in the morning sunrise.Mine is blue and his is crystal.I take them down and we say our rosary togetherFor those who do…

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No more Covid 'impositions' on churches, Cardinal tells PM amid surge in omicron infections

No more Covid ‘impositions’ on churches, Cardinal tells PM amid surge in omicron infections

Cardinal Vincent Nichols has urged Boris Johnson not to impose further anti-Covid restrictions on churches in England and Wales. The Archbishop of Westminster insisted that churches were already stringent in taking precautions against the spread of the virus, saying they were “not places where we spread the virus”. The plea from Cardinal Nichols, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England…

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MacMillan’s Christmas cracker - Catholic Herald

MacMillan’s Christmas cracker – Catholic Herald

It’s a brave thing, to compose a Christmas Oratorio when you’re not Bach: the comparisons between his genius and yours are likely to be awkward, and not many in the course of music history have been prepared to risk it. Saint-Saëns tried – congratulations are in order if you’ve heard the piece, it’s rarely done. And in the 1940s Britten toyed with the idea, but reconsidered when the text produced…

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St Bernadette’s relics offer hope to the Church

St Bernadette’s relics offer hope to the Church

A relic from the thigh bone of St Bernadette will go on tour to every diocese of Britain in autumn this year. The Shrine of Lourdes offered to bring the relic, and the bishops of England and Wales accepted. And so, in a reversal of the normal order of things, the object of pilgrimage to the Pyrenees for so many people is coming here. Many people who would normally have visited Lourdes were…

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Don’t they know it’s Christmas?

Don’t they know it’s Christmas?

Compliments of the season to all our readers. This may seem like an odd observation in the January issue of this paper, but it is correct. As Fr Richard Ounslow points out in his scripture column, most of the Christmas season falls in January. Properly, Christmas starts and Advent finishes on the night of Christmas Eve. The 12 Days of Christmas come to a wonderful crescendo on the night before…

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The battle for the heart of Notre Dame

The battle for the heart of Notre Dame

It is symptomatic of the importance of the position of Notre Dame in the cultural life of Paris and of France that the proposals for its redecoration after the fire that destroyed its roof have caused such an unholy row. It is not only Catholics who are agitated by what some critics have called the Disneyfication of the cathedral. The plans elicited a letter of protest from 100 academics and…

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The king of contemplation - Catholic Herald

The king of contemplation – Catholic Herald

Ralph Fiennes’ staging of  TS Eliot’s Four Quartets at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London – which ended its  run just before Christmas –  is a musing on infinite time and how time is redemptive. Eliot thought of it as one meditative poem, not four separate poems, so staging it without an interval (it lasts over an hour) works memorably. That many in the audience wore masks is a reminder of the…

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