August 30th is the feast day of St. Rose of Lima, the first saint born of the Americas. Ad Imaginem Dei shares some beautiful art depicting the Patroness of Peru and of all America in Saint Rose of Lima, The First Saint of the Americas, along with a biographical sketch of the saint. “Rose took Catherine [of Siena] as her model and from this point, modeled her own life very closely on that of Catherine. She too undertook austerities and penances that to our modern eyes seem wild: eating little, abstaining from meat, sleeping little, punishing her body with scourging, holding her hands in the fire, wearing a crown of silver thorns with sharp spikes pointed inward, while placing roses in the spaces between the thorns on the outside.” How desperately our generation needs such reparative acts!
There is no greater motivation, nothing more sure to secure success and lighten a burden, than pure, true Charity. Finer Femininity posted an excerpt from Father Bernard O’Reilly’s “True Men as We Need Them” entitled Christian Youth Must be God-Fearing and Dutiful, in which Father illustrates what love of God can do to produce the kind of young men the world is in want of.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Bishop Sanborn penned a new blog post, Ecclesiastical Materialism at In Veritate. It is an excellent read for anyone who may have the opportunity to converse with conservative Novus Ordites. “…the Novus Ordo conservatives are ecclesiastical materialists. They can see only the continuity of lifeless institutions from pre- to post- Vatican II, and from that they conclude that salvation consists in adhering to these lifeless institutions. They see only the material side of the Church, its visible side, and turn a blind eye to the absence of the invisibles of the Church, especially the assistance of the Holy Ghost in keeping the Church free from error and defection.”
