A journal of byzantine digressionS
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NYC 1987: Mad as Hell
This started with the idea that our current COVID crisis reminded me of the way we were dealing with AIDS in the 80s. In 1983 we were in denial in exactly the same way Americans were in early March 2020. In 1985 NYC was numb and scared. This time in 2020, it took America about…
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The Rosary: Closing Prayers & Suggestions
When praying the Rosary, it is traditional to do one set of five mysteries (eg, The Joyous Mysteries) – also known as five decades – at a time, although another pious practice is to do three Mysteries a day as a minimum. My personal practice is five decades a day, although I do not get…
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The Rosary: The Coronation of the Blessed Virigin
Our Lady’s coronation by her divine Son as Queen of Heaven is, in fact, the second coronation in the Rosary: the first being that of her Son, himself, by the Romans; but where the Virgin receives a crown of twelve stars from Jesus, he, at the hand of his fellow men, received a crown of…
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The Rosary: Our Lady’s Death and Assumption
Here, at last, is one place where the Romans and the Orthodox might differ in the Rosary – although as recently as the middle of the last century this was not so. When I was a freshman in High School I found at a used bookstore, a book on the Apparitions of Our Lady. It…
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The Rosary: Pentecost
The Mystery of Pentecost, the Out-Pouring of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles and all of Creation, is the beginning of the fruits of Christ’s actions among us. The Holy Ghost makes all of us divine if we will but let Him into our lives and reform, reshape, heal, cleanse, make whole what is shattered,…
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The Rosary: The Ascension
Our Lord’s Ascension is the first evidence that the “key has changed” as I noted in the last mystery: the Eastern liturgical texts speak of how amazed the Angels are at seeing one of our race of men entering into the Heavens. The Psalm text, “Who is this king of glory?” is read as the angels…
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The Rosary: The Resurrection
As the Funeral Mass says, “For thy faithful people, O Lord, life is not ended, but changed.” This Mystery changes the key signature of the entire work. What went before – both joy and sorrow – now has meaning. What comes after now is possible – for it wasn’t at all possible before. I ascend…
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The Rosary: Introduction to the Glorious Mysteries
The Glorious Mysteries are the key to the entire Rosary. The rest of the Rosary is meaningless without these Mysteries. Our Lord’s life and death are in vain without his Resurrection. St Paul, in fact, says the entirety of the Christian teaching is meaningless without this. Calling out again, the Catechism: 516 Christ’s whole earthly life –…
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From the Seven Last Words
This was a meditation was part of the Good Friday Seven Last Words at St Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco. As a result of the current crisis, the meditations were recorded and posted on YouTube rather than preached from the pulpit. The video is shared at the end of this post. I thirst. Many…
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A Devotion on the Symbols of the Passion
From A Book of the Love of Jesus, A Collection of Ancient English Devotions in Prose and Verse, compiled and Edited by Fr Robert Hugh Benson (1915). Retrieved from the Archive, here. I’ve not edited the text at all so some of the words may include off-puttings, odd-spellings, or punctuations. O VERNACLE I honour him…
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Best Hot Fudge Sauce Ever.
This hot fudge sauce is also keto-friendly. I won’t debate if all the ingredients are perfectly keto, but precious few carbs went into this. Start with 4 strips of bacon: I put them in a hot pan at about 200F and let them cook slowly, rendering their fatty, salty deliciousness (or “proving” as the old…
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When or Because?
Did you ever notice that we called these things stoplights even when they’re green? Did you ever wonder about that? We tend to see these things as a hindrance rather than a conveyance, or help. When I was at NYU my Religion Professor, Dr. James Carse asked us one night if we went when the…
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NYC 1985. The Doomed.
Last week when I told you about NYC in 1983, I titled the post Underground and discussed the active sense of denial that many engaged in. I compared AIDS in NYC, c. 1983, to where we were a week ago in this current crisis. Time is telescoping fast. The next stage in NYC in the…
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We’re All Idiorrhythmic Now
Monastics in the earliest Christian Tradition were all hermits. They lived alone or perhaps in groups of two or three, but each in their own cell. In the Egyptian desert, these cells were often not much more than lean-tos against rocks or a small tarp tied up with some woven branches. Although they lived alone,…
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The Rosary: The Crucifixion
The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery is perhaps one of the most visual images of our faith. Everyone seems to know what a cross is, and most people have seen an artistic rendering of Crucifixion. The image below is form Giotto’s Life of Christ, as are many of the works used to illustrate this series. When we…
Orthoparadoxy 