Baptized Burgundy and Gold

Redskins picked up defensive end Jason Hatcher from the Cowboys. Doc Walker, the St. Thomas Aquinas of NFC-East theology, determined that this required a baptism.

Oscar Wilde got a lot of comic mileage out of re-christenings in The Importance of Being Earnest. I don’t think Doc intends anything sacrilegious. Football may not involve divine grace, but it does require commitment.

Summa Peregrinationis for the Solemnity

Don’t forget to recite the Act of Dedication to Christ the King today. Click here.

Behold, He is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see Him. (Revelation 1:7)

While we were in Israel, my fellow pilgrims and I saw many of the places and things referred to in the Bible. We saw the hometown of Jesus Christ, and the place where He was born. We saw the Sea of Galilee. We saw the Jordan River. We saw the desert where Christ was tempted by the devil. We saw the pathway on which He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. We saw the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount and Mount Calvary. We saw the tomb where Christ’s body lay.

Continue reading Summa Peregrinationis for the Solemnity”

St. Matthew

In honor of St. Matthew’s feast day, we present El Greco’s portrait of him:

el greco st matthew

This painting is in the El Greco Museum in Toledo, Spain.

As you can see, El Greco’s figures are elongated.

The museum guide in the Prado in Madrid told us that all the people in El Greco’s paintings are 13% taller than they should be.

By the by…El Greco was indeed a Greek. He was from Crete. (He was a Cretan, though hardly a cretin.)

The Spaniards could not pronounce his name, so they called him “The Greek.” (No relation to Jimmy the Greek.)

jimmy the greekJean Poyet was a late-medieval illuminator who produced the beautiful image of the Mass you see below. He also drew a magnificent St. Matthew.

The picture of St. Matthew is in the “Book of Hours of Henry VIII,” which is in the Morgan Library in New York. Alas, I cannot find the image of St. Matthew anywhere on the ol’ internet, so here’s Poyet’s picture of the Holy Mass instead.

Happy feast day to all Matthews!

jean poyet

…With bad luck like this (see below), you are going to lose to the N.Y. Giants, even if you are the Dallas Cowboys in the home-opener in your billion-dollar new stadium:

…These old Bests are retired:

Continue reading “St. Matthew”

Close Call

nighthawks

It was incredibly close. Too, too close. Altogether too close.

Edward Hopper won the Art Lovers’ Poll by a single vote.

And the Hoyas lost to the Pirates by five points.

jt-iii-cufflinksSeton Hall’s luck was charmed by the twentieth-anniversary commemoration of their trip to the NCAA finals.

We Hoyas fans are going to have to re-evaluate our expectations for this season. Now we really do have a losing Big East record.

On the bright side…

Continue reading “Close Call”

October 19, 2008

St. Isaac Jogues with missing fingers
St. Isaac Jogues with missing fingers
Generally speaking, on Sundays we do not keep the saints’ feast days. So today we did not keep the feast of the North American Martyrs. Nonetheless, it is good for us to call them to mind. Their blood shed for the faith sanctified this continent and made it a fertile ground for the Church.

They were Jesuits and lay men who accompanied the Jesuits to New France in the early 17th century. The two most famous among them are St. Isaac Jogues and St. John de Brebeuf. St. Isaac Jogues had two of his fingers bitten off by hostile Indians. He was given special permission by the Pope to continue to say Mass. Then he asked to be allowed to go back to North America, where he was killed.

There are two beautiful shrines of the North American Martyrs, both of which are very much worth visiting. One is located near Albany, New York, in Auriesville. This is the place where St. Isaac Jogues was killed.

North American Martyrs Shrine in Midland, Ontario
North American Martyrs Shrine in Midland, Ontario
Even more wonderful is the shrine in Midland, Ontario, north of Toronto. This is where St. John de Brebeuf was killed.

In addition to the beautiful shrine, there is also a reconstruction of the original Jesuit mission, which is evocative down to the last detail.

The Hurons lived a rough life there. They liked to season the dried fish they ate in the winter, but of course they had no salt. So they used ashes from the fire.

Clinton Portis and Co.
Clinton Portis and Co.

On a much more mundane note: Clinton Portis is awesome! It was not a pretty game. We will, however, take the W.

And poor, poor Dallas…losing to those scrubs, the St. Louis Rams. Maybe the Rams are actually not so bad after all.