The scholar Rochelle I. Altman in the Israeli Insider on the ossuary said to be that of Saint James.



Ossuary was genuine, inscription was faked



As an expert on scripts and an historian of writing systems, I was asked to examine this inscription and make a report. I did.



The bone-box is original; the first inscription, which is in Aramaic, "Jacob son of Joseph," is authentic. The second half of the inscription, "brother of Jesus," is a poorly executed fake and a later addition. This report has already been distributed on at least two scholarly lists.



Please note that the fraud is so blatant that I did not bother to go into extreme detail on whether the faked addition is supposed to be Hebrew or Aramaic.



The report follows the article.



Many thanks to Orrin at Brothers Judd for the link.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?

Quem patronum rogaturus,

Cum vix justus sit securus?



What am I who am wretched then to say?

Whom might I seek as my protector,

When even the just man is scarcely safe?





From the Dies Irae of Thomas of Celano, O.F.M.

New York Will Face Bus Bombs, MTA Security Czar Is Warning



Charles linked to this disturbing story this morning at Little Green Footballs. Dozens of comments have been posted in response, none of them reassuring.

The victory of the followers of Constantine over the army of Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge occurred on this date A.D. 312.



. . . Accordingly he called on God with earnest prayer and supplications that He would reveal to him Who He was, and stretch forth his right hand to help him in his present difficulties. And while he was thus praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been hard to believe, had it been related by any other person. But since the Victorious Emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this History, when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his statement with an oath, who could not believe the account especially since subsequent events established its truth?



He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, bearing the inscription IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. At this sight, he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army which was with him on this expedition too and which witnessed this miracle.





"He said that he doubted within himself what importance the vision might hold. He continued to ponder its meaning through until he fell asleep. While sleeping, the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign he had seen earlier in the heavens. God commanded him to make a likeness of that sign which he had seen in the heavens and to use it as a safeguard in all encounters with his enemies."



Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, 28.

Journey To The Center Of The Galaxy

To meditate upon the “joyful” mysteries, then, is to enter into the ultimate causes and the deepest meaning of Christian joy. It is to focus on the realism of the mystery of the Incarnation and on the obscure foreshadowing of the mystery of the saving Passion. Mary leads us to discover the secret of Christian joy, reminding us that Christianity is, first and foremost, euangelion, “good news”, which has as its heart and its whole content the person of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the one Saviour of the world.



The promulgation of the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae and Pope John Paul II's commendation of a series of meditations on the public life of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Luminous Mysteries inaugurated what His Holiness envisions as a year of devotional renewal. Viewed in this light, tomorrow evening's presentation at The International Institute for Culture, the inaugural concert of its Music Program and Schola Nova, featuring choral music inspired by the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary by Schütz, Monteverdi, Lassus and others, should be an even richer experience than it already promised.



As October is the month of the Holy Rosary, it also marks the inauguration of the Music Program at the International Institute for Culture. To celebrate this auspicious confluence, the IIC is pleased to present its brand new resident music ensemble in a debut concert featuring choral works inspired by the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Since the Middle Ages, the joyful events in the early life of Jesus have inspired artists, musicians and dramatists to create an inestimable treasury of masterworks, forever fused with the sacred mysteries of the Christ-event. Likewise, the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary has provided Christians of countless generations a prayer window into these intimate moments in lives of Our Lord and his Holy Mother.

I hope that you've been following the series of vignettes and situation portraits that James Cordrey has been creating at Threshing Floor. They began last month with Station and we've been introduced to several characters -- Rosa, Sam, Charles, Jason -- in the succeeding weeks and have now come to Station 11. Intimate, penetrating, worth your time.

The transformation of earthly things has a purpose. Activities like politics are only the outward manifestation of an inner transformation. We are not trying to create a Christian culture for the sake of having control over society, or even so that Christ’s rule will be acknowledged by our nation’s leaders. We should endeavor to establish a Christian culture because it is the inevitable result of God’s saving grace. Culture is the unavoidable outworking of our worship. And just as worship and the sacraments cleanse the whole man, so our culture must reflect that same holistic redemption. In other words, salvation and worship are the heart of the Christian, but the heart brings life-giving blood to the whole body. The limbs of culture are nourished and move in accordance with the will of the mind - which in this metaphor is God’s prescriptive will.



David P. Henreckson, in his essay Heaven and Middle Earth in Volume II, Issue 4.



Another fine and searching issue of New Christendom Journal is now available. Be enriched.

Five hours on a crisp and sun-drenched Sunday spent aboard an Amtrak Acela Express from Philadelphia to Boston. Slight changes of color in the trees as we moved north and in the mountains to the west the changes are further advanced, but here on the Atlantic Plain the foliage is just beginning the annual show. Other sensations on the trip, too. No matter how many times seen, there are few sights like the Manhattan skyline, but the sense now of what's missing still catches you and leaves the vista suddenly tinged with ache and sadness and loss. It was very good after that to have the immense distances of the blue-grey sea along the Connecticut coast, to see families out for a seaside walk on the shingles, fisherman on the piers or up to their waists in waders, the bright whiteness of boats in the marinas or out on the water, the answering whiteness of church steeples. But I hadn't spent so long on a train since the many rides on the Crescent from Philadelphia to Charlottesville. I'm glad of today's experience -- it's a good train. But, after commuter rail trips at each end of the Acela ride and capped by a taxi to the hotel, I'm glad too to have arrived now in North Andover. I'm entering this at a terminal in the McQuade Library at Merrimack College.



Rev. Vincent McQuade, O.S.A. was the founder of the college and possessed of all the gifts that such a phrase implies. I had the privilege of knowing him in his last years at Villanova University when he was an official of the Augustinian Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova and remember now not only his educational achievements but the dedication of his priestly ministry, as well as his fondness for my sisters and his great personal kindness to me.



I made the trip north in order to be present at the celebration of the priestly anniversary of a friend from prep school and college. The Mass of Thanksgiving will be tomorrow afternoon in the Collegiate Church of Christ the Teacher at Merrimack College.



Be Thou My Vision



Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.



Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;

I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.



Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;

Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;

Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:

Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.



Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,

Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.



High King of heaven, my victory won,

May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

It's a twenty-minute walk from the train to the office up near the Schuylkill River and the area becomes more suburban as the months pass. But there are still echoes of the rural. Groundhog and rabbit still have a presence. The walk is a pleasure more often than not and especially on a crisp October morning under the kind of vivid blue sky that opens the heart. And this morning, and unexpectedly, I shared part of the walk with a wild turkey, beautifully marked and mildly wary. It's made my day.

No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.



.....



The prince of this world is determined to lay hold of me and to undermine my will which is intent on God. Let none of you here help him; instead show yourselves on my side, which is also God's side. Believe instead what I am now writing to you. For though I am alive as I write to you, still my real desire is to die. My love of this life has been crucified, and there is no yearning in me for any earthly thing. Rather within me is the living water which says deep inside me: "Come to the Father."



These passages are taken from the letter of Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Romans, one of a collection he wrote to various churches as he was being taken from Antioch in Syria, where he was bishop in succession to Saint Peter, to Rome, where he was martyred under the Emperor Trajan c. 107. Saint Ignatius, zealous, fearless, and learned, whose memorial and feast is celebrated today, is one of the principal sources for our knowledge of the liturgical practices and daily life of the ancient church.



The Patriarchs of the Syriac Orthodox Church have for more than 500 years adopted the name of Ignatius preceding their own.

That a man might do something very audacious and desperate for money, power or fame, was to the general apprehension quite possible; but . . . that nineteen men could invade a great State to liberate a despised and hated race, was to the average intellect and conscience, too monstrous for belief.



---- from John Brown, an address by Frederick Douglass.





The raid by John Brown and his followers on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, occurred on the night of October 16, 1859.

The text of the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae has been released and the Five Luminous Mysteries differ from those mentioned as possibilities in some preliminary reports. Here is the relevant paragraph from the letter, the point at which Pope John Paul II moves from a consideration of the Joyful Mysteries to the newly introduced Luminous meditations, which commemorate events next in time in the life of Christ, before the Sorrowful Mysteries commemorating the events of the passion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Glorious Mysteries commemorating the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of honor to Mary, the Mother of God.





Moving on from the infancy and the hidden life in Nazareth to the public life of Jesus, our contemplation brings us to those mysteries which may be called in a special way “mysteries of light”. Certainly the whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. He is the “light of the world” (Jn 8:12). Yet this truth emerges in a special way during the years of his public life, when he proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom. In proposing to the Christian community five significant moments – “luminous” mysteries – during this phase of Christ's life, I think that the following can be fittingly singled out: (1) his Baptism in the Jordan, (2) his self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana, (3) his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion, (4) his Transfiguration, and finally, (5) his institution of the Eucharist, as the sacramental expression of the Paschal Mystery.



His Holiness gives extended consideration to the primary purpose of praying the rosary, to the centrality of Sacred Scripture as the basis of meditation, and to the aspects of the prayer that will most surely advance our growth in Christ and in His Love. The letter is rich in its imagery, deep in its understanding, persistent in echoing the call of God to His people.



In Christ, God has truly assumed a “heart of flesh”. Not only does God have a divine heart, rich in mercy and in forgiveness, but also a human heart, capable of all the stirrings of affection. If we needed evidence for this from the Gospel, we could easily find it in the touching dialogue between Christ and Peter after the Resurrection: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Three times this question is put to Peter, and three times he gives the reply: “Lord, you know that I love you” (cf. Jn 21:15-17). Over and above the specific meaning of this passage, so important for Peter's mission, none can fail to recognize the beauty of this triple repetition, in which the insistent request and the corresponding reply are expressed in terms familiar from the universal experience of human love. To understand the Rosary, one has to enter into the psychological dynamic proper to love.

Tomorrow will begin the silver anniversary year of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and reports continue that His Holiness will issue an apostolic letter on the Rosary to mark the event. The reports suggest that he will recommend and inaugurate commemoration of Five Luminous Mysteries to join the Glorious, Joyful, and Sorrowful meditative groupings. The five new meditations may include the Baptism in the Jordan, the Temptation in the Desert, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.



How rich the meditations of the renewed devotion and how fitting the name. Luminous and illuminating. What we are called to be in Mt 5:13-14: You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world. What we can be in Him and because of the life-giving promise of John 8:12: Then Jesus spoke again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Light of the life everlasting.



Light Of The Lonely Pilgrim's Heart



Light of the lonely pilgrim’s heart,

Star of the coming day,

Arise, and with Thy morning beams

Chase all our griefs away.



Come, blessèd Lord, bid every shore

And answering island sing

The praises of Thy royal Name,

And own Thee as their King.



Bid the whole earth, responsive now

To the bright world above,

Break forth in rapturous strains of joy

In memory of Thy love.



Lord, Lord, Thy fair creation groans,

The air, the earth, the sea,

In unison with all our hearts,

And calls aloud for Thee.



Come, then, with all Thy quickening power

With one awakening smile,

And bid the serpent’s trail no more

Thy beauteous realms defile.



Thine was the cross, with all its fruits,

Of grace and peace divine;

Be Thine the crown of glory now,

The palm of victory Thine.

John and Charles Wesley set sail from England for America in the Simmonds on this date in 1735. Here is an excerpt from John Wesley's diary for that day.



Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford, Mr. Charles Delamotte, son of a merchant in London, who had offered himself some days before, my brother Charles Wesley, and myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end in leaving our native country was not to avoid want, (God having given us plenty of temporal blessings,) nor to gain the dung or dross of riches or honor; but singly this, -- to save our souls, to live wholly to the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the `Simmonds' off Gravesend, and immediately went on board.



Here is one of the hymns of Charles Wesley from a few years later, on the text of Luke 15:2: This man receiveth sinners.



Sinners, Believe The Gospel Word.



Sinners, believe the Gospel word,

Jesus is come your souls to save

Jesus is come, your common Lord;

Pardon ye all through Him may have,

May now be saved, whoever will;

This Man receiveth sinners still.



See where the lame, the halt, the blind,

The deaf, the dumb, the sick, the poor,

Flock to the Friend of human kind,

And freely all accept their cure;

To whom did He His help deny?

Whom in His days of flesh pass by?



Did not His Word the fiends expel,

The lepers cleanse, and raise the dead?

Did He not all their sickness heal,

And satisfy their every need?

Did He reject His helpless clay,

Or send them sorrowful away?



Nay, but His bowels yearned to see

The people hungry, scattered, faint;

Nay, but He uttered over thee,

Jerusalem, a true complaint;

Jerusalem, who shedd’st His blood,

That, with His tears, for thee hath flowed.

Visit Davey at Poet Warrior if you've not been there in a few days. Read The Dawning Fire. A vision of Patrick and a liberating Faith, the armor of God that drives out fear.

Jamie mentioned him at The King There In His Beauty and I'd not thought of his work in a while. Jamie and I have different favorites, it seems, and here is the poem of Jacques Prévert called Cet Amour, from the collection Paroles. And a translation into English by Alastair Campbell.



Cet amour

Si violent

Si fragile

Si tendre

Si désespéré

Cet amour

Beau comme le jour

Et mauvais comme le temps

Quand le temps est mauvais

Cet amour si vrai

Cet amour si beau

Si heureux

Si joyeux

Et si dérisoire

Tremblant de peur comme un enfant dans le noir

Et si sûr de lui

Comme un homme tranquille au milieu de la nuit

Cet amour qui faisait peur aux autres

Qui les faisait parler

Qui les faisait blémir

Cet amour guetté

Parce que nous le guettions

Traqué blessé piétiné achevé nié oublié

Parce que nous l'avons traqué blessé piétiné achevé nié oublié

Cet amour tout entier

Si vivant encore

Et tout ensoleillé

C'est le tien

C'est le mien

Celui qui a été

Cette chose toujours nouvelles

Et qui n'a pas changé

Aussi vraie qu'une plante

Aussi tremblante qu'un oiseau

Aussi chaude aussi vivante que l'été

Nous pouvons tous les deux

Aller et revenir

Nous pouvons oublier

Et puis nous rendormir

Nous réveiller souffrir vieillir

Nous endormir encore

Rêver à la mort

Nous éveiller sourire et rire

Et rajeunir

Notre amour reste là

Têtu comme une bourrique

Vivant comme le désir

Cruel comme la mémoire

Bête comme les regrets

Tendre comme le souvenir

Froid comme le marbre

Beau comme le jour

Fragile comme un enfant

Il nous regarde en souriant

Et il nous parle sans rien dire

Et moi j'écoute en tremblant

Et je crie

Je crie pour toi

Je crie pour moi

Je te supplie

Pour toi pour moi et pour tous ceux qui s'aiment

Et qui se sont aimés

Oui je lui crie

Pour toi pour moi et pour tous les autres

Que je ne connais pas

Reste là

Là où tu es

Là où tu étais autrefois

Reste là

Ne bouge pas

Ne t'en va pas

Nous qui sommes aimés

Nous t'avons oublié

Toi ne nous oublie pas

Nous n'avions que toi sur la terre

Ne nous laisse pas devenir froids

Beaucoup plus loin toujours

Et n'importe où

Donne-nous signe de vie

Beaucoup plus tard au coin d'un bois

Dans la forêt de la mémoire

Surgis soudain

Tends-nous la main

Et sauve-nous.

I wrote last month about the exceptional exhibit of the work of Anthony Visco at the Art Gallery of the Connelly Center at Villanova University. The exhibit, curated by the gallery's director Rev. Richard G. Cannuli, O.S.A., closes on Friday, 11 October, and I strongly recommmend that you make time to see it in the next few days if you're in the Philadelphia area.



And on Friday evening, the International Institute for Culture presents another lecture in its series Christianity and the Creative Imagination. Dr. Walter Persegati, retired Secretary General and Treasurer of the Vatican Monuments, Museums and Art Galleries, will lecture on Michelangelo Rediscovered: The Cleaning of Michelangelo's Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

A Moment ... From A Child



And it's both rebuke and bitter irony that the child has been named Samuel. Reminders like this are themselves a call from God and it is we who need to respond as did the first Samuel.



1Sa 3:10: And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, LORD, for thy servant heareth.



Hushed Was The Evening Hymn



With my thanks to Thomas Joseph at The Christian Conscience for the link to this beautiful image and testimony. Fearfully and wonderfully made.

Signs of the growing appreciation of folk art, and the appetite it whets, are everywhere. Starting November 21, the Whitney Museum of American Art will exhibit a collection of quilts sewn by four generations of African-American women in isolated Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The exhibition was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where it is on view through November 10. Debra Singer, the Whitney’s associate curator of contemporary art, acknowledges that an exhibition of homemade quilts in a museum known for its O’Keeffes and Rauschenbergs is "a little unusual. But from our perspective, these quilts are art. The distinctions aren’t so much fine art versus folk art—these quilts are just extraordinary works of art with the high esthetic standards you’d expect from that."



The lure of Antiques Roadshow and of unexpected jewels at neighborhood flea-markets. The desire for the stamp of individuality and the authentic that's found in crafts and primitives. Collectors are paying extraordinary prices for exceptional pieces and museums are rightly seeking to exhibit and preserve the treasures. Anneli Rufus writes on American folk art that is Coming Out of the Attic and into its own.

A more simple and still more elevated way of reciting the Rosary is, while saying it, to keep the eyes of faith fixed on the living Jesus who is always making intercession for us and who is acting upon us in accordance with the mysteries of His childhood, or His Passion, or His glory. He comes to us to make us like Himself. Let us fix our gaze on Jesus Who is looking at us. His look is more than kind and understanding: it is the look of God, a look which purifies, which sanctifies, which gives peace. It is the look of our Judge and still more the look of our Savior, our Friend, the Spouse of our soul. A Rosary prayed in this way, in solitude and silence, is a most fruitful encounter with Jesus. It is a conversation with Mary too which leads us to intimacy with her Son.



-------- Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P.



Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The devotion is strongly identified with Saint Dominic and the feast was instituted by the sainted Dominican Pope Pius V to commemorate the great naval victory of the combined papal, Spanish, Venetian, and Genoese fleets under Don John of Austria over the Turkish fleet at Lepanto on this date in 1571.



The Rosary has been called “the school of contemplation” because it introduces the faithful to meditative prayer on the themes of particular events in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and of His passion, death, resurrection and ascension and on His gracious favor to the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother and ours. Pope John XXIII referred to the Rosary as "the psalter of the poor" and the title of Mary as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary fittingly appears among those others of noble beauty in the hymn to "our tainted nature's solitary boast," The Litany of Loreto.

Jesus of Nazareth was no masochist. He did not seek out his suffering. It came to him--as it comes to people of conscience everywhere--and he accepted it as his Father's will. He asked that the cup of suffering pass him by. And the gospels tell us that he liked his food and wine. It was one of things that his ascetic cousin John found a little fishy at first.



A life thoroughly lived brings quite enough suffering. Parents, for example, say no to themselves in scores of ways through all their years of family life. Anyone who requires a celicia in order to say no to himself must lead a wonderfully privileged life. Forgive me, but these ostentatious mortifications --not to mention the revelation of them--seem to me to be both self-indulgent and sanctimonious.

Moreover, these are pains over which the self-abuser has complete control. He wills his own pain in order to experience himself as holy. There is a good measure of self-regard in such mortification.



In life, pain comes when it chooses and stays for as long as it likes. There is no theatre in it, none of the satisfactions of zealotry. Sorrow is a far greater sanctifier than a celicia.



Maureen Mullarkey, from her beautifully crafted and expressed comment in response to Mark Sullivan's post at Ad Orientem on the active mortification of the flesh practiced by some members of Opus Dei. The practices have the sanction of the group's founder Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, who writes at one point in The Way: Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. . . Glorified be pain!



The canonization of Blessed Josemaría Escrivá will be celebrated on Sunday.

The General Court of the Plymouth Colony instituted a legal code, the first composed in North America, on October 4, 1636. It guaranteed citizens a trial by jury and stipulated that all laws were to be made with the consent of the freemen of the colony. The "General Fundamentals" of the Plymouth Colony are printed in The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth, one of the oldest items in the collection of laws in the Library of Congress.

Human dignity deserves a place as part of our common language only as long as we appreciate that all people hold this dignity in common. A pluralistic society will inevitably hold this standard in tension with competing ideas about what constitutes human dignity. That is why there is a continuing need for dynamic translation of the biblical principles underlying dignity into the common language. Successful translation also requires that Christians lead lives consistent with those principles.



--- from the commentary by William D. Cheshire, Toward a Common Language of Human Dignity, in the latest issue of Ethics & Medicine.

Confessional Poets--particularly those of the suicidal school--John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, are probably not completely responsible for the phenomenon, but do bear a burden of responsibility for the progressive diminution of poetry.



Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli gives a seminar session in modern American poetry in the space of half a dozen paragraphs. And, as in the poetic vision itself, the implications range far beyond the text.

Praised be my Lord and God, with all His creatures, and especially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with great splendor.



O Lord, he is a sign to us of you!



Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for His stars, set clear and lovely in the heaven.



--- Saint Francis of Assisi, Il Poverello, whose memorial and feast is today.



Update 9/5: Bill Cork at Oak Leaves links to three interesting articles on Franciscan themes that he wrote as a Lutheran seminarian and pastor.

Scientists Unveil The World's Funniest Joke



Scientists have unveiled the world's funniest joke at the end of the largest study of humour ever undertaken.



For the past year people around the world have been invited to judge jokes on an internet site as well as contribute quips of their own. The LaughLab experiment conducted by psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, attracted more than 40,000 jokes and almost two million ratings.



---- from London's The Telegraph

Salve Regina!



Aloysius Ong at Life's Crosses writes from Singapore in the month of the rosary.

Matthew 18:10: See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.



October 2 is the feast of the Guardian Angels.

He contents the people where he goes best that ever did Prince, for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days hath been relieved and helped by him and his commands in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he hath refused. On my trouth I liked never the conditions of any prince so well as his; God hath sent him to us for the wele of us all.



Thomas Langton, bishop of St Davids, writing to William Sellyng, prior of Christchurch, Canterbury on the subject of Richard III, who was born on 2 October in 1452.



And when Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, the people of the City of York entered the following in their public records: This day was our good King Richard most piteously slain and murdered; to the great heaviness of this city.



The reputation of King Richard III, that admirable and gracious man, has never recovered from the calumnies heaped on him by the apologists for the Tudor dynasty, and the popular image of him as a twisted and wicked usurper has faded only in the sense that all knowledge of history earlier than the advent of Oprah and MTV has dimmed.



But Truth is the Daughter of Time, as the proverb has it. Read Josephine Tey's illuminating novel of that name, if you haven't already.

On October 1, 1962, Groucho Marx introduced Johnny Carson as the new host of The Tonight Show. The guests on that first program, based then in New York, were Rudy Vallee, Joan Crawford, Mel Brooks, and Tony Bennett.



And, on the same day, Brian Epstein signed a contract to manage The Beatles.

For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.



Let us see life as it really is...It is a moment between two eternities...



October 1 is the memorial and feast of Saint Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus de la Sainte Face, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Carmelite, mystic, poet, the greatest missionary of modern times, The Little Flower, Doctor of the Church.



I understood so well that it is only love which makes us acceptable to God that this love is the only good I ambition. Jesus deigned to show me the road that leads to this Divine Furnace, and this road is the surrender of the little child who sleeps without fear in its Father's arms.