Recta Ratio

This has apparently always been Saint Anne's Day, but Saint Joachim's has bounced all over the calendar over the centuries. His feast has been celebrated September 16, December 9, March 20, and on the Sunday after the Assumption. Finally, it has been joined to that of his spouse. This is another of those reforms of the calendar that actually makes sense (not all of them do).

This is a brief biographical sketch of the parents of Our Blessed Lady, but since the New Testament does not mention them, there is not much that has come down to us, except from dubious sources like the "Gospel of James."

Saint John Damascene had this to say about the blessed couple:

Joachim and Anne, how blessed a couple! All creation is indebted to you. For at your hands the Creator was offered a gift excelling all other gifts: a chaste mother, who alone was worthy of him.

Joachim and Anne, how blessed and spotless a couple! You will be known by the fruit you have borne, as the Lord says: "By their fruits you will know them." The conduct of your life pleased God and was worthy of your daughter. For by the chaste and holy life you led together, you have fashioned a jewel of virginity: she who remained a virgin before, during, and after giving birth. She along for all time would maintain her virginity in mind and soul as well as in body.

Joachim and Anne, how chaste a couple! While leading a devout and holy life in your human nature, you gave birth to a daughter nobler than the angels, whose queen she now is.

Saint Anne, please pray for us!
Saint Joachim, please pray for us!

I see from The New Liturgical Movement that there is now an Oratory in Kingston, Jamaica. Never a thought of one in Boston. http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2014/07/the-oratorians-of-port-antonio-in.html?m=1

It is unusual to observe the feasts of two major unrelated saints on the same day, but today is also the feast of one of the most popular saints, Saint Christopher, the Christ-bearer, who is the patron of travellers.

Those in charge of the reform of the calendar thought they were doing us a favor when they decided that Saint Christopher was legendary, and removed him from the Ordo. But Catholics in the pews, the real John and Mary Catholics, have rejected this "reform" and remain attached to Saint Christopher. His medals are still for sale in just about every Catholic gift shop. And he remains very popular. He was martyred during one of the Roman persecutions of Catholics, that of the Emperor Decius.

Saint Christopher, please pray for us!

Click here to see my post from last year on one of my favorite saints.

And of all the places I would like to go for a pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostella is right up there, right after Rome. A while back, I managed to put together an excellent array of images of this outstanding pilgrimage center. Even I am still impressed with these photos from various online sources.

Now, let us revisit Saint James the Moor-Slayer and his relevance to our times.


July 25th is such an important day, and Saint James has become such an important symbol for the faith. In legend, St. James became the first apostle of Spain. In theory, his remains lie buried at Santiago de Compostela (St. James of Compostela, "Iago" in Spanish meaning "James"). Santiago became the patron of Spain, and Compostela became the thrid most important pilgrimage place in Christendom, after Jerusalem and Rome.

It was during the Reconquista, when Spain was painfully, bit-by-bit, inch-by-inch recaptured from the Moslems over a period of centuries, that St. James allegedly appeared leading the Catholic armies of Spain against the Moslems. That is how he got the title Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moor-Killer.

This July 25th, we are marking the anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War, when the forces of Catholic Spain rallied again to end pagan depridation on the Catholic cultural heritage that is the strength of Spain. Members of my own Irish family played some small part fighting as soldiers in the cause of the Church in Spain in the 1930s.

Spanish nationalist coat of arms, including the Sacred Heart at the center

And today, all is not well again in Spain. It is not the enslaving Moors and the vile doctrines of armed Mohammedanism that are the greatest threat (though Spain, like the rest of Europe has too many Moslems living there and their birthrate is alarmingly high, threatening to overwhelm the native Catholic population and submerge Catholic Christendom into an Islamic state, if measures are not taken to stop the flow into Spain, and reverse it).

It is not the murderous Communists. Franco gave Spanish communism its richly-deserved death sentence in his 30 years in power.

It is the secularizing socialists, stripping Spain of all that is good and pure and pushing filth like gay "marriage," divorce, and abortion onto the Spanish people with the avidity of a drug pusher. And the Spanish people, degenerating from the solid examples of their fathers, are not blameless, since they elected this vile government that now misrules Spain.

And as Spain goes, so goes the US?

Spanish communists shooting at the Sacred Heart statue, which they later blew up, courtesy of Rorate Caeli

Catholic Spain needs a rallying point now. Carlist requites once went into battle against the communists and their thoroughly reprehensible international allies with the Sacred Heart, the Corazon Sagreda, pinned to their chests or in their berets. Why shouldn't the Sacred Heart again serve as a symbol for a revival of Catholic Spain?

And if the cause of Catholic revival is to take on specific meaning for Spaniards and others, why not a rallying cry: "For the Sacred Heart and Saint James!" "Por Corazon Sagreda et Santiago!"

But today, while Spain is a battlefield in the war with Islamofacism, the conflict between Christendom and Islamofacism is global. All of Christendom finds itself fighting against Islamofascism at almost every point of the globe where Islam and Christendom come into contact. The Sacred Heart is the traditional symbol of Catholic counter-revolution. But the Sacred Heart allied to the patronage of Saint James, who aided Spain in its battle against the Islamofacists of his day would be a very compelling and totally politically incorrect symbol of Christendom militant and unwilling to cave into the Mohammedans today.

In Afghanistan, we are still fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In Iraq, we are fighting al Qaeda In Iraq.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In Lebanon, Israel is fighting Hezbollah, and in Gaza, Hamas, both made up of militant Moslems, who, if they didn't have Israel to kick around, would be fighting us in Iraq. Even the supposedly "moderate" al Fatah Palestinian faction is part of the problem, allied as it is with Islamic Jihad and the Al Acqsa Martyrs Brigade. Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

Iran threatens to develop, and maybe use, nuclear weapons. Iran and Syria are supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda in Iraq.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In the Philippines, the Moro Liberation Front, essentially al Qaeda in the Philippines, is fighting the government, which is getting support from the US.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In Pakistan, and Indonesia, and Malaysia, we see Moslem groups, either part of or inspired by al Qaeda, attacking western, and specifically Christian, targets. In Pakistan, they bomb Christian hospitals and schools. In Indonesia, they blow up western tourist resorts.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In every Western nation, growing Moslem minorities threaten the peace, and often serve as recruiting grounds for Moslem terrorists. Look at the rail bombing in Spain which drove the solid previous Spanish government from power, and brought in this "surrender-to-the-terrorists-and-subvert-traditional-Spain" socialist government. In the UK, last July's rail and bus bombs were the work of Moslem terrorists. Numerous plots, all involving Moslems, have been thwarted here in the US since September 11th. Even France, so accomodationist to every enemy, was targeted by Moslem extremists, which caused weeks of destructive rioting by Moslem youths in the suburbs of Paris last fall.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!

In every country of the West, the destructive forces of liberalism and socialism threaten the fabric of Christendom. Growing secularization and moral relativism, feminism and egalitarianism are destroying traditional Western culture, and Christendom along with it. Today, the US is poised to elect as president an individual who represents this threat in the most stark manner we have ever encountered, out of mere ennui with the necessary war we wage, and some legitimate frustration with high prices for oil-based products. It would be the most feckless and irresponsible abdication of responsibility and leadership that the US has perpretrated on the West since the bug-out from Vietnam, and the worst blow it has inadvertently struck at Christendom ever. And western elites think this is the greatest thing that could happen.

UPDATE:
I wrote that 5 years ago. It was all horribly correct, as we see the destruction of the West and Christendom, and especially traditional values under full scale assault both from within and from without.
Help us Sacred Heart and Saint James the Moor-Killer!












SantIago Matamoros, pray for us!

Most Sacred Of Jesus, preserve us!

The Church is under attack everywhere. Most particularly, we see Moslems in Iraq and Syria poised to exterminate the remaining pockets of the Faith there. But everywhere that has a Moslem majority, or even a plurality or a substantial Moslem minority, Christianity is under assault.

Even where Moslems are a tiny minority, the Church is being attacked by the secular state with a newfound leftist consensus that traditional moral objections to homosexuality, abortion, birth control, divorce, etc. will no longer be tolerated in the Brave New Society they are constructing.

As Father Zuhlsdorf often warns, persecution is coming.

How has the Church traditionally dealt with persecution? Well, of course, new orders are founded, and there is a renewed emphasis on correct doctrine and preaching and outright conversion of sinners and unbelievers.

But the most direct response of the Church to persecution has always been harnessing the prayers of the faithful. Most specifically the Church added prayers to the end of Mass asking that the Church overcome persecution. Pope Leo XIII gave us what we know as the Leonine Prayers after Mass. The immediate object of the Leonine Prayers was the Church in Communist Russia. But they would be equally efficacious for all the situations in which the Church is being persecuted.

The Prayers After Mass consist (for they are still said after every Low Mass said in the Extraordinary Form) of three Aves, a Salve Regina, a short untitled prayer beginning "O God, our refuge and our strength...", The Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, and finally a triple invocation to the Sacred Heart.

The time has come, I think, for Pope Francis to harness the prayers if all the faithful throughout the world with the objective of changing hearts and minds everywhere to end the persecution of the Church where she is actively persecuted and to reverse trends against the teachings of Holy Mother the Church so that a new consensus favoring the traditional moral teachings of the Church can be built.

The best way to build a new consensus is to make use of a tool that was once powerfully and efficaciously invoked towards this same essential end. It takes only a few minutes more for the priest to lead the congregation in the Prayers After Mass. Adding it to the end of every Mass, in either Ordinary or Extraordinary Form will greatly help reverse the growing persecution challenging the Church everywhere today.

Talk it up, folks! Let the idea quickly percolate to the top!

July 22nd is the feast of St Mary Magdalene, one of the great penitents, who stood by the Cross with Our Blessed Lady, and her sisters.

Note, there has been much confusion, conflating this Mary with either the woman taken in adultery, or Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. I see that the error about her being the sister of Martha and Lazarus is perpetuated in my St. Joseph's Daily Missal (1959), and in the Roman Breviary. The best scholarship indicates that she is a distinct person, and not either of these other identities.



Saint Mary Magdalene, please pray for us!

July 21st is the feast of this Doctor of the Church, a Capuchin who wrote and preached vigorously against the twin perils of protestant and Moslem heresy.

Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, please pray for us!