The seven sorrows of Mary, traditionally, are the following: the prophecy of Simeon (a sword will pierce your soul); the flight into Egypt; having lost the Holy Child at Jerusalem; meeting Jesus on his way to Calvary; standing at the foot of the Cross; Jesus being taken from the Cross; the burial of Christ. However, when we think of the sorrows of Mary we think primarily of her standing at the foot of the Cross. One of the most beautiful... Read more

Today is the day after the Feast of the Holy Cross, and in the Catholic tradition this is, fittingly, the commemoration of the Sorrows of Mary. Historically, this feast originated in 1668, although it drew on a longer tradition of devotion to Mary as the sorrowful mother of the suffering Christ. In the 13th century, a religious order, the Servites, made this devotion the focus of their existence as a community, and the September commemoration was a gift to the... Read more

I didn’t manage to get a post in yesterday, but it was the Feast of the Holy Cross. This is one of those feasts that commemorates an important element of the Christian Faith but is not part of the regular yearly cycles. For those readers (assuming I have any readers so far!) who are not familiar with the traditional Christian liturgical year, there are basically two cycles–one of them based on the celebration of Easter in spring, preceded by the... Read more

After years of hanging out on message boards and engaging in endless (and usually fruitless) religious discussions there, and a couple years of reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, I’ve finally decided to launch my own. It turned out to be very easy, using the Blogger software. The name “Ithilien” is probably self-evident to anyone familiar with _Lord of the Rings_. Ithilien is the border province betwen Gondor and Mordor. It’s a beautiful place, still unspoiled by the ravages... Read more