Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me bring love. Where there is offence, let me bring pardon. Where there is discord, let me bring union. Where there is error, let me bring truth. Where there is doubt, let me bring faith. Where there is despair, let me bring hope. Where there is darkness, let me bring your light. Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive, it is in self-forgetting that we may find, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

It is in dying that we are awakened to eternal life.

Ukon Takayama - an authentic Catholic Samurai daimyo (Japanese feudal lord) who was just beautified this year :-)

Mom’s calligraphy: FAITH

St. Brendan the Navigator giving Holy Communion to a mermaid

normiecaths are coping, seething, dilating, etc about this

Are you familiar with Saint Anthony of the Desert’s encounter with a Centaur and a Satyr? https://www.daimonologia.org/2016/08/saint-anthonys-encounter-with-satyr-and.html

i own the physical copy of that! i posted pics the other day

Greek mythology has become Catholic

There's this way of doing female-ness in Christianity that I call "pastel flower journal Christianity." I've got nothing against pastel flower journals per se, but for some reason people believe it's the end all and be all of female spirituality, and I think it's a real disservice towards young Christian women.

One of these days I'd like to start a prayer-and-reading group or something for young women, but there would be no floral themes or over-focus on how "God thinks you're beautiful even if the world doesn't" (a true statement, but it's wayyyyy too often the focus in women's spiritual reading). Instead we would be reading:

(Also they're all getting the porn talk. I don't know why we give the porn talk to young men but not young women. There's this idea that women don't use porn and they only need the talk about "guarding their heart." Bullshit. There's porn on the YA shelves of Barnes and Nobles and before that there were bodice rippers. Young women need the porn talk too.)

Every young woman needs to be getting a basic grounding in virtue ethics, logic, natural law, scholastic philosophy and Biblical hermeneutics if they're going to get by in today's spiritual landscape. Enough faffery and emotionalism in young women's spiritual education! Give them real food to chew on, not pasty sentimentalism!

Saint Anthony the Abbot Tormented by Demons, 1500-1503

Joan Desi, 1481-1520

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

For the purposes of this poll, "veiling" refers to wearing specific types of garments to cover specific parts of your body, usually in a religious or cultural context. Examples include hijab, kippah/yarmulke, a nun's habit, etc.

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We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

I started veiling last year. Here are my veils. I wear the cream and the white ones the most.

“You long to glitter like a star, to shine like a light from high in the heavens? 

Better to burn like a torch, hidden, setting fire to all you touch. That’s your apostolate; that’s why you are on earth.” 

- St. Josemaria Escriva, “Tactics” from The Way, #835

Praying to the Madonna and Child

Spectacular work by South Korean artist 심순화 카타리나, or Shim Soon-hwa Catherine.

**For the purposes of this poll, "vacation" is travel away from home for the purpose of leisure, so a routine trip just to visit Grandma probably wouldn't count**

Feel free to reblog with your answer and specific denomination.

What I find interesting about this is that the results for Catholics and Orthodox has remained fairly consistent in ratio through the duration of this poll. In contrast, the results for Protestants started out as more heavily in favor of attending church on vacation, but over time the "never/not usually" crowd has slowly caught up and now surpassed it.

My theory: since this blog is Catholic, most of the Protestants in my immediate Tumblr bubble are naturally more likely to be associated with devout (which have a stronger sense of Sunday obligation) and/or liturgically high church denominations (who would have an easier time finding churches within their own denomination to attend). As this post got further down the reblog chains, it left my immediate bubble and reached a wider Christianblr audience that has a more laissez-faire approach to church attendance.

I attended Sunday Mass in Singapore several years ago. I was visiting from the Philippines to visit my sister, who was working there at the time. Because of the multiethnic nature of the population, the Mass was in English. I was surprised how diverse the parishioners were. I was honestly expecting the bulk of the parishioners to be mostly Chinese and Filipino. But there were plenty of Indian and Malay people in attendance as well. Everyone was singing the hymns energetically. I felt so at ease and at home despite being a literal foreigner.

"𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐦... 𝐌𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝, 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐇𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐦 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐨."

- St. Cosmas of Aetolia

This might sound silly but I want to start going to Mass, I've only ever been to protestant church services before. I have no idea what to expect or do or wear and I've watched a few YouTube videos but for whatever reason I'm still anxious.

I just have nasty social anxiety and I don't want to stand out as a total newbie who doesn't know what they are doing. Any advice and prayers would be appreciated

I bought this for my husband when he started going to Mass before he converted

It's a little bit difficult to get the hang of off the bat, because there are parts you gave to skip [like for example, 4 different Eucharistic prayers, so you have to skip the 3 that aren't being used. For Sunday Mass it should always be the first one]

But, wear something business to business formal, sit in the back, and just observe. You don't have to participate the first few times you go. My husband wanted to, because he personally felt like it was important, but it isn't mandatory.

You could, if you don't want to spend money, download the ibreviary app instead, however my husband said he didn't like being on his phone during Mass, and felt like it was a little clunky. There are other people who don't feel this way, that's just what my husband said.

If you're concerned about the quality of the Mass, you can look on reverentcatholicmass.com to find Masses in any language that are more conservative/reverant. From there, you can check a parish [church building] Mass times to see what time works best for you :)

Pretty much no one will be paying attention to you, except maybe the ushers in the back, but tbh they don't usually say anything. The more reverent the church, the less they are likely to notice you.

My husband also found it a lot more helpful to read a couple different 'A Minute In The Church' books, specifically the one about the Mass and the one about the Eucharist, so he could more understand why we do things and the flow of Mass. It can be a little overwhelming the first time, just because everyone will know what to do, but it shouldn't take too many times of going to start getting the hang of it. I think it took my husband a month? So going 4 times. And 1 of those times he had traveled to a different state in order to visit his family, and he still went to Mass. He wasn't familiar with any kind of service, except for more of those rock-concert type protestant services, that he had been to occasionally growing up with friends.

Also, if you're able to go to my wordpress/FAQ on my desktop blog, I link to all these things and more :)

@the-magic-school-bus

The Clothing of the Soul

"The clothing of the soul is holiness through the grace of God. This is bestowed on us by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, through whom we possess also peace, charity, goodness, humility, patience, concord, meekness, and the like. These form our interior store of riches, to which we are always adding by good deeds & the practice of virtues.

But if we are in the habit of bickering, murmuring, or quarreling, we deprive ourselves of these good things, since virtues cannot exist with their contraries. "A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump." So each one must examine herself and carefully consider how much is wanting to her, if she indulge in these faults. Let her think what a loss she sustains if she forfeits these elements of true blessedness for the sake of matters of so little moment."

-Hugh of St. Victor in his commentaries on the Rule of St. Augustine

Saint Monica is the first one that came to my mind. I prayed to her for the conversion of my boyfriend, and her intercession worked. Saint Monica is the mother of Saint Augustine. For most of Augustine's life, he was a hedonist. In all this time, Monica prayed and prayed for her son and her pagan husband. Her husband converted at his deathbed. It took a little longer for Augustine to accept God. When he did, he recognized not only his intelligence and eloquence as God's gifts to him, but also his mother's outstanding faith and patience.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary is another "nice" saint that I can think of. Despite her status as a princess, she spent her life feeding and caring for the poor. She loved her husband and deeply mourned his death on his way to join the Crusades.

Saint Dominic Savio, like Blessed Carlo Acutis, went to Heaven at a very young age. But in his short life, he displayed "heroic virtue" that led to his canonization. He once said, "I can't do big things but I want everything to be for the glory of God."

He has Risen!