Please fast and pray every Thursday for the renewal of the Catholic Church in America. Please note: The Cybersociety will fast on Fridays beginning January 2013, in accordance with ancient custom.

This is not a photoblog; this is not a Catholic trivia blog. The story of our origins.

Friday, October 31, 2014

The Miracles of Exodus

"For Yahweh's cloud stayed over the dwelling during the daytime and there was fire inside the cloud at night, for the whole of the house of Israel to see, at every stage of their journey." (Last verse of Exodus)

Sometimes God is comfortable and familiar; sometimes He is strange and powerful.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Bible Study 3

The Old Testament-- all those wild stories!
And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And Jacob said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me....And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Peniel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. (Genesis 32, 26, 29-31) 

Friday, October 17, 2014

Homeward

                                       
                                                     For I have swift and speedy wings
With which to mount the lofty skies,
And when thy mind has put them on
The earth below it will despise:
It mounts the air sublunary
And far behind the clouds it leaves...

Here the King of kings holds sway...
The Lord of all things shining bright.
If there the pathway brings you back--
The path you lost and seek anew--
Then "I remember" you will say,
"My home, my source, my ending too."

(Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, translation by V.E. Watts. Written in prison in 524 A.D. while awaiting execution on charges of treason trumped up by Arian conspirators.)


Friday, October 10, 2014

Bible Study Continues: Genesis 4-11




O God, who by water didst wash away the crimes of a guilty world, and by the overflowing of the deluge didst give a figure of regeneration, that that one and the same element might in a mystery be the end of vice and the origin of virtue; look, o Lord, on the face of thy Church, and multiply in her thy regenerations, who by the streams of thy abundant grace fillest thy city with joy, and openest the fonts of baptism all over the world. (From the Blessing of the Font, Office for Holy Saturday, translation of Abbot Fernand Cabrol, O.S.B., in 1926 and reprinted by IHS Press, 2013.)

Friday, October 3, 2014

St. Therese the Anti-Blogger

"I love to say the Divine Office every day, but apart from that I cannot bring myself to hunt through books for beautiful prayers. There are so many of them that I get a headache. Besides, each prayer seems lovelier than the next. I cannot possibly say them all and do not know which to choose, so I behave like children who cannot read: I tell God very simply what I want and He always understands. For me, prayer is an upward leap of the heart, an untroubled glance towards heaven, a cry of gratitude and love which I utter from the depths of sorrow as well as from the heights of joy."--Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul.

Her feast day was October 1. With the above duly considered, the Executive Council has nonetheless decided to continue to "hunt through books." There are, we trust, many ways to pray.