Sanctus Simplicitus

Happy Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica's of St. Peter and St. Paul! Here are five recipes for Feria (meaning without) Friday.  With the United States celebrating Thanksgiving this coming week I thought I would share agian the writings on the Ember Days as they are the Catholic celebration of Thanksgiving for the abundance in harvest that Our Lord has provided for us.

Find the writings on Ember Days from Catholic Life Impr. 1908 HERE

And from Dom Gueranger on the September Ember Days

As well as the history of the First Thanksgiving being Catholic HERE

May you have a blessed Weekend!

1.) Coconut-Pecan Sweet Potatoes

2.) Southwest Corn Bread Bake

3.) German Potato Pancakes

4.) Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepard's Pie

5.) Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

The First Thanksgiving Was Catholic
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.

 I have been asked to comment on Thanksgiving, the national holiday commemorating the first successful harvest season of the grim Protestant pilgrims of New England.

“It just doesn’t seem right to celebrate the prospering of a Puritan sect that established a Calvinist theocracy in the Massachusetts Colony that would mercilessly persecute Catholics,” one reader argued.

Such Catholics, gathered around their
laden Thanksgiving tables enjoying the company of family and friends, should
know a quite consoling fact of American History: the first Thanksgiving on U.S.
soil was Catholic.  

The epic journey of the first European colonists to the Southwest. The American History books we studied as youth pretend that Colonial American History is exclusively what happened in the 13 New England colonies. This ignores an enormous part of reality - our Catholic History. Little attention is paid to the epic northward advance by Spanish pioneers into the southern tier of States reaching from Florida across Texas and New Mexico to California, today called the Spanish Borderlands. 

On January 26, 1598, a Spanish expedition set out from Mexico with the aim of
founding a new kingdom. Three months later, after a long, dangerous trek forging
a new trail northward, the now famous El Camino Real [The Royal Road], it crossed the Rio  Grande and set up camp south of present day El Paso, Texas. On April 30, a Mass of thanksgiving was said, and the valiant leader of the expedition. Don Juan de Oñate, took formal possession of the new land, called New Mexico, in the name of the Heavenly Lord, God Almighty, and the earthly lord King Philip II.

Then, after the Mass, the Franciscan priests blessed the food on tables abundant with fish, ducks and geese, and the 600-strong expedition of soldiers and colonists feasted. The celebration ended with a play enacting scenes of the native Indians hearing the first words of the Catholic Faith and receiving the Sacrament of Baptism. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Another great article on the first Catholic Thanksgiving can be found here.

So how do Catholics celebrate Thanksgiving? This article on celebrating the Catholic litugical year has some great ideas.

Sent by a friend by an unknown Author
Second Sunday of Advent 
St. Peter Chrysologus - Bishop, Confessor, Doctor 
J.M.J. 
  
LIFE, LITURGY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

 
Alex is only seven years old. Nevertheless, Alex is a heretic. His heresy is 
as much a part of him as the Faith is a part of the children who live next 
door to him. This creates a problem for the parents of those children, who 
are concerned that Alex will jeopardize the faith of their children. So they 
work up the courage to talk to Alex's parents. They fear that Alex, steeped 
in the unbelief that characterizes his whole family, will menace the 
innocence of their children and they would like Alex's parents to counsel 
the boy so as to avoid the unthinkable. The parents are accountable for 
Alex's heresy. They have not merely failed to instruct their boy, they have 
positively inculcated in him utter disbelief in the providence, the 
omnipotence, the goodness, the very existence...of...Santa Claus. Alex must 
be instructed to keep his little secret to himself. Because the neighbors 
cannot abide his heresy. 
Come now, you may be thinking. What harm is there in a cute story? Pehaps 
none at all, but then again, consider this: Our Lord tells us that we adults
must have the faith of little children. The child believes what he is told 

because he is a child. If you tell him that reindeer fly or that a fat man 
living at the North Pole makes toys for all the children of the world and 
delivers them on Christmas Eve, he will believe you because he is a child. 
If you tell him that at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold, God 
almighty, Creator, Lord and Master of the universe was born into this world 
as a tiny baby, he will believe you because he is a child. 
 
God makes children innocent. He makes them guileless. He makes them 
believing - all the better so that they will believe what their parents tell 
them, especially when they tell them the mysteries and marvelous truths of 
the Catholic Faith. For some strange reason, when our children will most 
readily believe whatever we tell them, we tell them this silly story about 
Santa Claus. They accept the Santa Lie with as much simplicity and faith as 
they accept the truth of Christ's birth in a manger in Bethlehem. 
Side-by-side with the Great Truth of the Incarnation, they believe the Santa 
Lie. 
 
Perhaps you may object to calling it the Santa Lie, but from the point of 
view of a child, what exactly is the difference between lying and 
pretending? We tell him that we pretended about Santa, but not about baby 
Jesus. Why should he believe you in either case? It might even be easier for 
him to believe that reindeer fly than that God Himself was born in a stable 
cave. 
 
The child who trusts, who believes so readily, will not always be a child, 
and he will not always have childlike faith. Our children are growing up in 
a world filled with doubt. Doubt is fundamental to modernism. We all 
recognize Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," but we should also know that 
in Descartes' philosophy he might as well have said, "I doubt, therefore I 
think; I think, therefore I am." Doubt itself is given as the rational basis 
of one's existence. Our culture demands that we doubt, and that we doubt 
absolutely everything. In this climate, it is insane to give a child a 
reason to doubt, and to tell a child the story of the birth of our Lord 
side-by-side with the Santa Lie indeed gives a child a reason to doubt. 
 
The problem isn't in pretending per se. It's in pretending in something that 
detracts from the truth. It's in the juxtaposition of the lie with the 
truth, thereby Âcasting doubt on the truth. Christmas celebrates the fact 
that God has become a man. Isn't this marvel enough? Why do we have to 
invent this story about a man who has become a god? Santa is omniscient. "He 
sees you when you're sleeping; he knows when you're awake; he knows if 
you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." Santa dispenses 
justice "You'd, better watch out, better not pout, better not cry. I'm 
telling you why..." And if he's not omnipresent, as is God, then he 
certainly has the agility of the angel: The problem is not that we pretend 
that there is a Santa. The problem is that we do so in opposition to the 
Incarnation. 
 
The name of Santa Claus is a linguistic corruption of Sinter Klaas, itself a 
corruption of the name of St. Nicholas in the Dutch language. Yes, St. 
Nicholas was particularly generous to children. He was not fat, however; he 
was thin from fasting, which he did even from his infancy. He wasn't married 
to a Mrs. Claus; he was celibate. He wore red because he was a bishop, but 
he did not wear a red stocking cap. He did not live at or anywhere near the 
North Pole; on the contrary, he lived in Myra (a provincial capital in Asia 
Minor), and his feastday is nearly three weeks before Christmas. This fellow 
we call Santa Claus is not St. Nicholas, but rather is a perversion of St. 
Nicholas. 
 
We all bemoan the commercialization of Christmas. But to say that Christmas 
is commercialized is to stop short of the bigger problem. We should not 
lament the commercialization of Christmas but rather its paganization. It is 
our duty to restore the truly Catholic observance of Christmas, to strip 
away all that is pagan in its celebration. That duty begins in our Catholic 
homes. 
 
Consider that we hesitate to say "Merry Christmas," in order not to offend. 
Rather, we say, "Happy Holidays," or "Season's Greetings." We would edify 
our neighbor if, instead, we were to emphasize the Catholic nature of the 
feast by wishing him "...a blessed and holy Christ-Mass." It is ironic that 
folks have lost the connection between holiday and holiness. 
 
And so begins the holiday season: There's the office holiday party, the 
neighborhood holiday party, the church holiday party and the club holiday 
party. On it goes, from one holiday party to the next, all during what, in 
days of more restraint, was a penitential season. Then we go shopping. Out 
come the lists. Who did we buy what for last year and who bought what for 
us? How much did they spend, and how much did we spend? There's Mum and Dad, 
Gran and Grandpa, Dad's new wife, Aunt Marie, eight other aunts and uncles, 
and the cousins and the brothers and the sisters. We find ourselves with one 
last thing to buy along with all the other nuts 15 minutes before closing on 
Christmas Eve in the Wal-Mart in a blind stupor asking ourselves why we are 
buying this? Why? Because it's Christmas! 
 
A lady at work told me that her Christmas gift budget for her three children 
was $1000 per child. Here's a lady, a secretary, who has to work a long, 
long time to scratch together $3000 after taxes, and I wondered why she just 
didn't quit work and give her kids some of her time as their Christmas 
present. I suppose we do as we must to assuage our guilt. 
 
During the holiday season, the radio stations play this really silly, that 
is to say, secular, Christmas music. Think of it. Secular Christmas music; 
what a concept. The big day approaches. The advertising section in the paper 
grows bigger; the Wal-Mart becomes intolerably more crowded; the suicide 
rate climbs to its annual peak; holiday music saturates the airwaves. Mommy 
is hyper-baking and sending Christmas cards and wrapping presents. Garlands 
are strung out and so are Mom and Dad. Daddy's putting toys together and 
trimming the tree and hanging the lights and putting up decorations, and now 
its Christmas Eve. The tree is wired up with lights and the kiddies are 
wired up on sugar. The camcorder batteries are fully charged and so is the 
MasterCard. The camera is loaded with film and Daddy's a little loaded 
himself. We've been to all the parties, visited all the friends; the 
presents are under the tree; and now it's the dawn of Christmas Day. And 
after so many days of rabid expectation, it all ends in one anticlimactic 
and disappointing morning. How can Christmas ever live up to our 
expectations? As a metaphor of our disappointment, the exalted tree will be 
out on the curb tomorrow morning. 
 
A Protestant work colleague of mine asked once, "What do you traditional 
Catholics do for holidays? Do you celebrate?" I took a moment to reflect on 
how our holy time, our ChristMass, fundamentally and quintessentially 
liturgical, has been appropriated, perverted, and bastardized by usurpers. I 
shook my head and said to him, "Ray, the problem with you Protestant folk is 
that you just don't know how to party." And I thought about how well-ordered 
and sensible the Catholic Liturgy is. 
 
 
We begin our Catholic observance of Christ's birth with the beginning of a 
new liturgical year. We commemorate 4,000 years of longing for the Messias 
with the four weeks of Advent, a time of penance and restraint. We fast on 
Christmas Eve. There are three separate Masses on Christmas Day; one at 
midnight, one at dawn, and one during the day. All that Christmas means 
could never be grasped and commemorated in a single day. That is why the 
Church gives us the Twelve Days of Christmas to celebrate. Beyond these, we 
have the entire Christmastide in which to rejoice. And when the 40 days of 
the Blessed Mother's purification have been completed, we conclude our 
Christmas season with the blessing and procession of Candlemas (February 2). 
 
No matter what our ethnic background, we all have customs and traditions 
associated with Christmas that are uniquely and distinctively Catholic. What 
customs do you observe for Christmas in your homes? Are they distinctively 
and evidently Catholic? Do you have a nativity scene? It should be the 
outstanding feature of our Christmas decorating. 
 
Yes, Christmas has been commercialized, secularized, and paganized, but that 
is not the whole of our problem; it is only one manifestation of our 
problem. Christmas, like the Mass itself, is part of a greater whole. It is 
only one aspect of the Liturgy. Our problem lies in the fact that we have 
ceased to live the liturgical lives of our ancestors. Their every day was 
quickened by the Liturgy, most of it committed to memory. Their thoughts 
flowed from the wellspring of the official prayer of the Church and from the 
psalms, which they chanted freely in the fields and at the hearth. The 
perennial Liturgy, however, has been snatched from us. We have been robbed. 
The first blow came with the Reformation, when monasteries and churches 
throughout Europe fell to the axe of the so-called reformers. Even in 
countries that remained Catholic, the Liturgy was weakened by the 
rationalism that emphasized action over prayer. The final blow came with the 
liturgical revolution wrought by the Novus Ordo Missae. Without the 
monasteries and convents, the Liturgy lost its substance and objectivity and 
no longer overflows to fill our hearts, our homes, and our entire lives. 
 
If we are to understand the solution to restoring liturgical life and its 
holy days, we must first understand the problem. I believe there are five 
distinct aspects of the same problem. 
 
The first aspect of the problem is that those holy days that have survived 
the onslaught are slowly but surely being secularized and perverted, most 
notable among these, I include Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. 
 
The second aspect of the problem is that new, secular, quasi-religious 
feasts have been introduced, which serve as poor substitutes for genuine 
Catholic holy days. These include Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, 
and others. 
 
The third aspect of the problem is that totally secular or even pagan feasts 
have been introduced that celebrate occasions that are not Catholic, or are 
even anti-Catholic, for example, Independence Day, President's Day, Martin 
Luther King Day, and Earth Day. 
 
The fourth aspect of the problem is that countless saints' days, fasts, 
feasts, seasons, and traditions are completely forgotten or ignored. 
Examples of these include the Ember Days and the Rogation Days. 
 
The fifth and certainly the most far-reaching aspect of the problem is that 
the most important and frequently recurring holy day, namely, Sunday, has 
lost its meaning in the modern world. It is routinely desecrated, and in 
practice has become indistinguishable from the other six days of the week. 
Likewise, the holy days of obligation are ignored and desecrated. 
 
The restoration of Christendom will not happen apart from a restoration of 
the Liturgy. Don't hold your breath waiting for your local Ordinary to lead 
processions through the streets of your city for the Rogation Days or for 
the Feast of Corpus Christi. Monasteries and convents are not going to send 
us robust men and women to teach us Gregorian chant. It would be illegal for 
the civil authorities to declare that, as a nation, we will conform the 
patterns of our daily lives to the Liturgy of the Catholic Church. The 
solution will have to come from within the walls of our own Catholic homes, 
and we should begin by examining how we celebrate holy days and holidays. 
Consider a few cases in point. 
 
What a surprise to find, when one looks at the liturgical calendar, that 
Valentine's Day is, well, the Feast of St. Valentine (February 14). A 
wonderful feast it is, and it has been totally trivialized and most likely 
made lustful. Catholics must not lose sight of the fact that Valentine is a 
great saint of God who gave his heart to the Sacred Heart. This is the 
feastday of a martyr who loved his Beloved enough to die for Him, the fact 
to remember in order to give the observance of St. Valentine's Day a more 
Catholic character. 
 
But if St. Valentine's Day has been trivialized, pity poor St. Patrick. With 
the possible exception of St. Nicholas, no saint has suffered so much at the 
hands of the neo-pagans. In 1994, in Boston, the annual St. Patrick's Day 
Parade was canceled because a group of Irish-American sodomites won a State 
Supreme Court battle to be permitted to march in the St. Patrick's Day 
parade there. The US Supreme Court overturned the State Supreme Court ruling 
so the parade was held in 1995, without the sodomites, but not until May of 
that year. How it must pain St. Patrick and all good Irish Catholics to see 
the mockery that is made of his feastday as the tide of paganism once turned 
back by St. Patrick seems to have turned again in its favor. We are justly 
horrified at the desecration that takes place on his feastday, in parades in 
his honor, and in and about the cathedral that bears his name in New York 
City. There are a lot of fun things to do on St. Patrick's Day (March 17), 
but do not neglect to give proper attention to the heroism and sanctity of 
this truly great saint. 
 
The Feast of St. Joseph is especially dear to Italians. His feastday (March 
19) is the authentic Catholic Father's Day among Italians. The custom of the 
St. Joseph's Altar used to be maintained in their parishes and homes. The 
significance of decking out an altar with food and crafts in thanksgiving 
or St. Joseph's intercession in our temporal affairs is now all but gone. 

It is hard to understand what the world has done to Easter. The Easter bunny 
is a bit too goofy even for modern man. (Little Alex has not gotten in 
trouble with the neighbors for divulging the facts about the Easter bunny, 
as he did for his heretical views on the Santa Lie.) I think the problem 
with Easter is not that it has been co-opted, because it hasn't really. 
Likewise, I don't think that the problem is that it has been commercialized 
or paganized, because it hasn't really, at least not to the extent that the 
other holy days have been. I think that the problem isn't with Easter at 
all; the problem is with Lent. That is to say, we just don't make serious 
Lents anymore. It's absolutely true that the satisfaction of our Easter is 
directly proportional to the austerity of our Lent. The postmodern Catholic 
Church gives up meat on Friday and fasts on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. 
That's all. And that's not very austere. The culmination of the Lenten 
Liturgy occurs during Holy Week and in particular during the Sacred Triduum. 
Now, the rites of Holy Week are opposed by the pagan rites of Spring Break. 
We Catholics used to impose upon ourselves the sweet burden of penance and 
reparation during Lent, sometimes heroically. This included abstaining from, 
among other things, eggs. Come Easter Sunday morning, what else would one do 
with all the hen-fruit but eat it, decorate it, and give it away. Easter 
eggs and the new life cracking its way out of the shell symbolize the 
resurrection and new life that Christ won for us on Easter. Do remember to 
explain that symbolism to your children. Don't have Easter without first 
having Lent and Holy Week. And don't have Lent without having Carnival. The 
Church says to fast well and to feast well, too. 
 
It's May, the month of our Blessed Mother, yet we Catholics are honoring 
earthly mothers. Is this wrong? Surely we traditional Catholics with our 
large families and our heroic mothers should celebrate Mother's Day. But 
there is something wrong with Mother's Day American-style. It is a purely 
secular feast. While it expresses a noble human sentiment, it does so on 
purely a natural level. It does so entirely apart from our Liturgy. Finding 
himself without the religious feasts of the Catholic liturgical year, the 
neo-pagan concocts new feastdays for himself and invests them with a 
non-Catholic, but still quasi-religious, character. When Mother's Day was 
introduced by an Act of Congress in 1913, the reaction of the Catholic 
Church in the United States was to question whether Catholics should 
celebrate the day alongside their Protestant countrymen, precisely for the 
reasons I have mentioned. Catholics better understood their Faith and had at 
least a marginally better sense of the Liturgy and the necessity to resist 
the secularization of culture. Immigrant American Catholics capitulated, 
however, presumably not wanting to appear un-American. In any case, that 
Americans honor mothers and celebrate motherhood one day a year is so 
hypocritical as to be ludicrous. For 364 days a year we denigrate 
motherhood, we despise motherhood and we despise mothers-unless of course 
they have 1.2 absolutely perfect children and full-time jobs. Oh, we like 
single moms, too. And we like the mother that has seven babies all at once. 
We buy her a house and put her on the news every night. But heaven help a 
woman who should have her seven children sequentially. She will certainly be 
subject to abuse, scorn, derision, and ridicule. It has become inconceivable 
that one could suggest that, for a woman to fully realize her womanhood, she 
should be a mother. Why celebrate Mother's Day with a nation that is 
eliminating mothers? What to do about Mother's Day? The answer might be to 
downplay secular Mother's Day. I wouldn't recommend that you stop sending 
flowers to your own mother on Mother's Day unless you have agreed beforehand 
that, in keeping with the Liturgy, there is a more Catholic way for 
Catholics to honor mothers. Two good alternatives come to mind. In many 
countries, even to this day, mothers are honored on December 8, Feast of the 
Immaculate Conception. In other Catholic countries in the past, mothers were 
honored on Laetare Sunday, a day that was known as "Mothering Sunday." In 
the Epistle for Laetare Sunday, St. Paul points out that the Catholic Church 
is a Mother leading us to eternal life. There are many delightful customs we 
must revive for this day, customs that honored our natural mothers; our 
heavenly mother, Mary; Holy Mother Church; and even the mother church of the 
diocese, the cathedral. This is a superior and Catholic alternative to a 
secular sham Mother's Day. 
 
As springtime gives way to summer, we all look forward to fireworks. The 
Fourth of July is the High Holy Day of secularist America, especially so for 
devotees of the goddess Liberty. Let us be reminded that there is no such 
thing as secular. Things are either for God, or against Him, and this 
exalted feast of liberty is anything but for Him. Yet we Catholics eagerly 
celebrate an event (the signing of the Declaration of Independence) that is 
fundamentally anti-Christ, implicitly anti-God, and explicitly 
antiÂCatholic. If you are scandalized by my words, then consider these 
words, written in response to the English Parliament's having passed the 
Quebec Act: 
 
The affair of Canada is still worse. The Romish Faith is made the 
established religion of the land... The free exercise of the Protestant 
faith depended upon the pleasure of the Governor and the Council... They may 
as well establish Popery in New York and the other colonies as they did in 
Canada. Your lives, your property, your religion, are at stake. 
 
These are the words of none other that Alexander Hamilton. He, and the other 
Founding Fathers, used such hyperbole to stir up widespread anti-Catholic 
hatred and bigotry so as to incite the people to break ties with England. 
Much is made of the other four so-called Intolerable Acts, but it was this 
fifth intolerable act that was so offensive to the Founding Fathers. It did 
little more than allow a Catholic in a Catholic land to hold public office 
without having first to renounce his Catholic Faith, which renunciation was 
absolutely required of him in the other colonies and in England in 
compliance with the so-called Test Act. 
 
Perhaps it is unfair to characterize Independence Day with the words of 
Alexander Hamilton, so consider also these words, penned by the author of 
the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson himself, on the 50th anniversary of its 
signing (July 4, 1826): 
 
May it be to the world what I think it will be, the arousing of men to burst 
the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition have persuaded 
them to bind themselves, when the human mind was held in vassalage by kings, 
by priests, and by nobles. 
 
Jefferson understood that the Declaration of Independence was not so much a 
declaration of independence from England but rather a declaration of 
independence from Christendom. We would do well to understand it likewise. A 
cursory reading of nearly all the Founding Fathers will reveal a similar 
hatred for the Catholic Church. 
 
I will leave off the Founding Fathers with these words of Benjamin Franklin 
which are particularly appropriate: 
 
I wish Christianity were more productive of good works and not holy day 
keeping, and long prayers that area despised by wise men. 
 
Roast your weenies, light your fireworks, and go to the parades if you must, 
but when you talk to your Catholic children about July Fourth, stop short of 
canonizing the anti-Catholic Founding Fathers, and do what you can to 
diminish the pseudo-sacred character the day has been given by our national 
mythology. Yes, it is a Catholic's duty in religion to love his country, and 
there is much to love. Look first to honor those who sought to make this 
country truly Catholic: Christopher Columbus, Hernando Cortez, Frances 
Cabrini, Mother Elizabeth Seton, the North American Martyrs, Juan Diego and 
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Juan de Padilla, Junipero Serra, and others. Where 
was the first permanent settlement in the New World? Jamestown, you say, in 
1607? Fifty-six years earlier 1551) Lima, Peru, was already becoming a 
thriving Spanish Catholic cultural capital. As the Jamestown Pilgrims were 
barely surviving their first winter, Spanish Catholics were celebrating the 
42nd anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, Florida. 
 
Catholics don't have to pass mid-summer without serious merrymaking. 
According to our Lord, it is St. John the Baptist (not Thomas Jefferson) who 
is the greatest man ever born of woman. St. John the Baptist was a martyr, 
and typically it is the day of the martyr's death, and hence his birth into 
eternal life, that we celebrate. But St. John was born without original sin, 
sanctified in the womb by the presence of our Lord. So we celebrate his 
nativity (June 24) with a Liturgy that bears a striking resemblance to that 
of our Lord's Nativity six months earlier. As St. John the Baptist's 
feastday comes at mid-summer, St. John begins to decrease so that our Lord, 
the Light of Whom he gives witness, can increase. Thus, the custom in 
Christendom was to celebrate the feast of the Baptist with bonfires. So go 
ahead, roast your weenies, but roast them on the Baptist's fire. Shoot off 
your fireworks, not to announce the coming of the British, but rather the 
coming of the one who would announce the coming of the Messias. 
 
Christopher Columbus brought Christ and the Catholic Church to a land that 
practiced human sacrifice, yet he is despised by the world as the 
quintessentially evil, white, European, Catholic male. Though their motives 
need purifying, many Catholics, particularly those of Italian descent, 
celebrate the voyages and discoveries of Columbus with great merrymaking. 
Catholics must rejoice that he discovered our land, not because it gave rise 
to the political entity that is the United States of America, but precisely 
because he brought the Catholic Church to our shores. 
 
Soon after Columbus Day, it's time for what used to be All Saints' Day, 
preceded by All Hallows' Eve. Now called Halloween, it is an absolute 
inversion of its original intent. Instead of praying for souls and fearing 
damnation, Halloween is celebrated as though we wish to become among the 
damned. Witches, devils, ghosts, ugliness-these things are satanic and are 
often made to appear cute and benign. But to make evil things cute in no way 
mitigates their evil. On the contrary, it makes all the more insidious. 
 
We must reclaim Halloween. One of the most delightful alternatives is the 
All Saints Party. Rather than dressing up like Power Rangers, Pocahontas, 
Godzilla, anti-heroes, children and their parents dress like saints. The 
secular world will never have as much material to choose from as what the 
panoply of catholic saints provides. 
 
Three or four weeks later and it's Thanksgiving. Just what can possibly be 
wrong with a day given thanking God for his bounty? Consider that 
'Thanksgiving was instituted by anti-Catholic Pilgrims as a reaction to and 
a substitute for the "Christmas of the Papists." The celebration of 
Christmas was made legal and remained so in many states well into the 
1800's. Disregarding its anti-Catholic origins, we should also consider that 
Thanksgiving is a favorite event of the ecumaniacs. This is the day when we 
are to put side all religious differences in order to give thanks together. 
This is a secular, quasi-religious feast that I think ought to be downplayed 
if not ignored in the Catholic home. For Catholics, every holy Mass is a 
thanksgiving. Holy Mother Church gives us the Ember Days as our days of 
thanksgiving. The four Ember leeks coincide with the changing of the 
seasons. We thank God for the gifts of nature and seek to use them in 
moderation. And how does the Church require us to give thanks for the 
earth's bounty? By fasting. Catholics show their appreciation not by 
indulgence, but rather by sacrifice. 
 
If, after the 12 Ember Days, you are still not satisfied that you have 
adequately discharged your debt of gratitude, then consider also observing 
the long-standing and Catholic tradition of giving special thanks for 
harvest bounty at Michaelmas, the Feast of the Dedication of St. Michael 
(September 29). If you insist on observing Puritan Thanksgiving, then at 
least baptize it and make it a Catholic day. Sing the Te Deum, go to Mass, 
teach your children about God's providence. Don't fall for the myth about 
the fun-loving bunch of pilgrims who wanted nothing more than religious 
liberty for all. Every last one of them would have despised you and your 
"Popery." Avoid to sin of gluttony. But better still, give thanks with the 
Church on the Ember Days and on Michaelmas. 
 
The most frequently occurring holy day in the Liturgy is Sunday. We should 
pause perhaps and reflect on how we spent last Sunday. Maybe the Sunday 
before that. Then we should consider this from Exodus: 
 
Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day, six days you may labor and do your 
work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. Take care to keep 
my Sabbath, for that is to be a token between you and me, whoever desecrates 
the Sabbath shall be put to death. Six days there are for doing work, but >the seventh day is the Sabbath of complete rest, sacred to the Lord. 
 
But sometimes it happens that our ox ends up in the ditch on the Sabbath 
Day, and we're faced with the necessity of pulling it out. I suppose that if 
this happens every Sunday, we should evaluate where and how we are driving 
our ox. 
 
Have a look at the Wal-Mart parking lot on a Sunday afternoon. It looks 
exactly like the Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Can we 
distinguish ourselves from our pagan neighbors in how we observe the Lord's 
Day? Do we find our ox in the Wal-Mart parking lot on Sunday? Apart from 
assisting at Mass and refraining from prohibited activities, what else might 
we do? Prepare for this holy day on Saturday evening, spending half an hour 
as a family reading and discussing the Epistle and Gospel of the coming 
Sunday Mass. If possible, eliminate certain daily chores for the children on 
Sunday. Listen to some liturgical music in the car on the way to Mass. Put 
on your Sunday best as a tangible way of fostering the proper interior 
dispositions. The idea is to set the day apart by sanctifying it with such 
special gestures. 
 
My wife was talking to a Novus Ordo friend recently, someone with whom she 
likes to get in some friendly taunting about the Faith when they talk. Their 
conversation went something like this: 
 
So, Peggy, what are you all doing for the Rogation Days? 
 
The what kind of days? 
 
The Rogation Days. Three days of prayer, fasting and petition. You know, the 
procession-Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Thursday. By the 
way, your kids are in Catholic schools so they'll be out of school for the 
Ascension, right? 
 
Well, actually, no. 
 
You're kidding; why not? 
 
Well, see, there's the problem of child care. A lot of moms have jobs, and 
if the kids are off and both parents have to work, what are they going to do 
with the kids? They try to keep in sync with the public schools so the 
parents can be off when the kids are off. As a result they've used up all 
the holidays. 
 
What do you mean, "they've used up all the holidays?" You mean they don't 
get off for Ascension Thursday but they get off for other holidays? Were 
they off for Martin Luther King Day? 
 
Well, yes. 
 
A Catholic must question all the underlying assumptions here. 
 
First point: What is the father doing working on a holy day of obligation? 
Of course, If there's a buck to be made, his employer won't be closed to 
commemorate the event. But, the father knows that the Ascension is a holy 
day of obligation. Assuming he gets a few days vacation, shouldn't he have 
planned for the occasion? 
 
Second point: What is the mother doing working on a holy day of obligation? 
Same argument. Couldn't she have arranged to have the day off? 
 
Third point: What is the mother doing working when she has school-aged 
children? Perhaps she means to earn a few extra bucks so the family can send 
the children to a "Catholic" school. But there's something wrong when that 
school doesn't have off on Ascension Thursday. 
 
Fourth point: what is the school doing working on a holy day of obligation? 
 
The children, along with their parents and the school, are celebrating 
secular feasts and desecrating genuine Catholic holy days, all with the 
approbation of the Chancery Office. Do you think it is even remotely 
possible, when these kids leave that school and then their homes, that they 
will have any sense of the liturgical year, any notion of what it means to 
be Catholic? 
 
What is true of Sundays is true of the holy days of obligation. The 
distinction is that most of us do not have to work on Sundays. The fact is 
that we probably don't have to work on the holy days either. We can go 
through our calendars at the beginning of the year and mark the holy days 
(those of obligation and otherwise). We can make our plans to take vacation 
for the holy days. What a message this will send to our co-workers, to our 
bosses, and to our children. And, we might even keep our ox out of the 
Wal-Mart parking lot on holy days, too. 
 
As so-called traditional Catholics, we know the way we pray reflects what we 
believe-Lex orandi, lex credendi. Similarly, the way we celebrate reflects 
what we believe, too-Lex convivendi, lex credendi. 
 
The secular, pagan, anti-Catholic world will have its celebrations, its 
feasts, its own diabolical anti-liturgy And what will we do? Will we 
renounce it in favor of the celebrations, the feasts, the commemorations, 
the prayers of the Catholic Church? As it is natural to man to celebrate, 
likewise it is natural to man to use his celebrations to teach. The holy 
days instruct. They teach us and our children. We must decide which lesson 
plan we will use, which curriculum will form the basis of our instruction. 
 
Holy Mother the Church, guided by the Holy Ghost, has sanctioned the pious 
customs of her people. She has integrated them into her Liturgy, and made of 
her Liturgy a whole that speaks to man as God wants us to hear Him-simply, 
as children, united with Christ, in sorrow and in joy, in prayer and in 
song, in fasts and in feasts. Our genuine Catholic holy days must be 
restored. Our genuine Catholic holy days have been replaced by secular, and 
therefore necessarily anti-Catholic festivals. If our Lord Himself tells us 
we are either for Him or against Him, then there is no middle ground. 
Nothing is neutral. Nothing is truly secular. Secular is a myth. Secular is 
a lie. Secular is not for Christ, therefore, secular is against Christ. 
These so-called secular feasts must either be baptized and made Catholic, or 
they must be eliminated from our homes and our lives. 
 
To make our homes truly Catholic we will have to make radical changes. We 
will have to make concerted efforts to rethink and redirect the focus of our 
holiday celebrations. Change is the mantra of the modern world. We're 
constantly reminded that everything must change, that change is the only 
thing that is constant. The destruction of the Catholic Liturgy took change. 
The destruction of Christendom took change. And, the restoration of it all 
will take change, too. A change back. That will take courage, and it must 
begin with the resolution to change, with the resolution to restore Christ 
first to His rightful place in our hearts and then in our homes. 
 
No one can described our current situation better than did the incomparable 
and prophetic Dom Gueranger: 
 
But now for many ages past, Christians have grown too solicitous about 
earthly things to frequent the holy vigils, and the mystical hours of the 
day. Each new generation increased in indifference for that which their 
forefathers in the Faith had loved as their best and strongest food. 
Chanting, which is the natural expression of the prayers and even the 
sorrows of the Church, became limited to the solemn Feasts; that was the 
first sad revolution in the Christian world. 
 
But even then Christendom was still rich in churches and monasteries; and 
there, day and night, was still heard the sound of the same venerable 
prayers which the Church had used through all the past ages. So many hands 
lifted up to God drew down upon the earth the dew of heaven, averted storms 
and won victory for those who were in battle. These servants of God, who 
thus kept up an untiring choir that sung the divine praises, were considered 
as solemnly deputed by the people, which was still Catholic, to pay full 
tribute of homage and thanksgiving due to God, His Blessed Mother and the 
saints. 
 
Then came the Reformation, and at the outset, it attacked the very life of 
Christianity. It would put an end to man's sacrifice of praise to God. It 
strewed many countries with the ruins of churches. The clergy, the monks, 
the virgins consecrated to God, were banished or put to death, and in the 
churches which were spared, the Divine Offices were not permitted. In other 
countries, where the persecutions were not so violent, many sanctuaries were 
devastated and irremediably ruined, so that the life and voice of prayer 
grew faint. Faith, too, was weakened. Rationalism became fearfully 
developed. And now our own age seems threatened by what is the result of 
these evils, the subversion of all social order (Dom Gueranger, The 
Liturgical Year, Vol. 1, "Advent," General Preface). 
 
And thus it has come to pass. 
 
The world is again as universally evil as it was in the time of Noe. The 
Sacrifice of the Mass is disappearing and the "abomination of desolation" is 
at hand. Once again let us listen to Dom Gueranger: 
 
The Liturgy is essentially and intimately connected with the Eucharist." 
Where the dogma of the Real Presence has ceased to be believed, there also 
have the canonical hours ceased and could not but cease [emphasis added] 
(ibid). 
 
We should not be surprised. The majority of Catholics today no longer 
believe in the Real Presence. And "...there also have the canonical hours 
ceased and could not but cease." 
 
Our world is once again pagan. Our world is once again barbarian. It was the 
Liturgy in the monasteries that rescued the world from barbarism into the 
light of the Middle Ages. It will be the Liturgy that rescues us from the 
barbarism of the postmodern age. 
 
The Reformation began with physical violence and attacks on the Liturgy. The 
violence eventually subsided, but the attacks on the Liturgy continued. 
Again, hear Dom Gueranger: 
 
For when the Reformation had abated the violence of its persecution, it had 
other weapons wherewith to attack the Church. By these several countries 
that had continued to be Catholic were infected with the spirit of pride, 
which is the enemy of prayer. The modern spirit would have it that prayer is 
not action. 
 
There were found men who said "Let us abolish all the festival days of God 
from the earth"; and then came upon us that calamity which brings all others 
with it, and which the good Mardochai besought God to avert from his nation, 
when he said: "Shut not, O Lord, the mouths of them that sing to Thee!" 
(ibid.). 
 
The monasteries are silent; the convents are silent; the seminaries are 
silent; and in our churches we are dumb to singing the chant of St. Gregory. 
The festival days of God have been abolished from the earth, and the mouths 
of them that sing to the Lord God of Hosts have been decisively shut. 
 
Imagine that in the time of David, 4,000 men-ÂLevites-daily chanted the 
Liturgy in the Temple, the type for our holy Mass. Imagine that in the time 
of our Lord, four times a day, 500 priests and 500 Levites, forming two 
mighty and magnificent choirs, chanted David's Psalms together. Their entire 
existence was given over to perfecting the singing of the praises of 
Almighty God. In the ages of faith, hundreds of thousands of men and women 
who had consecrated themselves, who had given their very lives to God, paid 
homage at all hours of the day and night to Him, His Mother, and His saints, 
by chanting the Divine Office. This is how the mighty and good God should be 
glorified. 
 
And today? Today, the monasteries, the convents, the seminaries are 
silent-because they are empty. And they will stay silent and they will stay 
empty until we fill them with our sons and our daughters. But our sons and 
our daughters will not go there if they do not understand what it means to 
be Catholic. And they will not understand what it means to be Catholic if 
they do not understand the Liturgy. And they will certainly not understand 
the Liturgy if they have not lived the Liturgy. And they will never have 
lived the Liturgy if they have not lived it in their own homes-in our homes. 
 
This is not about vacuous customs and quaint ways to pass the time during 
the year. This is about war. And not war against flesh and blood, but 
against principalities and powers. We are in the army and the City of God is 
under siege. This is about restoring the edifice of Christendom, one small 
liturgical stone upon the other. This is about having the courage to change 
our lives to make that happen. The restoration must come, by the grace of 
God, beginning in us and in our homes. Christ must reign. Our homes must 
become the monasteries and convents of our age. 
 
With the help of God we must live fully and entirely Catholic lives, not 
secular lives with a few Catholic adornments. We must live the Liturgy. We 
must make our homes schools wherein the Liturgy teaches us our Faith. Our 
Catholic homes must be islands of liturgical beauty in a sea of secular 
ugliness. Our homes must be havens of godly sanity in a world gone mad. Our 
homes must be bulwarks against barbarism, founded solidly on the Liturgy. 
 
God, give us strength. God, give us the courage to restore Thy festival days 
upon earth, to once again open our mouths and sing to Thee. By Thy good 
grace we will fast, we will pray, and we will sing with the Church, 
sorrowfully, and joyfully, and we will feast; we will feast heartily, like 
good Catholics, in anticipation of the heavenly banquet of eternity. 
.

The Liturgical Year
Time After Pentecost Vol. II Imr. 1927
By: Dom Gueranger

For the forth time in her year, holy Church comes claiming from her children the tribute of penance, which, from the earliest ages of Christianity, was looked upon as a solemn consecration of the seasons. The historical details relative to the institution of the Ember-days will be found on the Wednesdays of the third week of Advent and of the first week of Lent; and on those same two days, we have spoken of the intentions which Christians should have in the fulfillment of this demand made upon their yearly service. The beginnings of the winter, sprint, and summer quarters were sanctified by the abstinence and fasting, and each of them, in turn, has received heaven's blessing' and now autum is harvesting the fruits which divine mercy, appeased by the satisfactions made by sinful man, has vouchsafed to bring forth from the bosom of the earth, notwithstanding the curse that still hangs over her. (Gen.. iii. 17) The precious seed of what, on which man's life mainly depends, was, confided to the soil in the season of the early frost, and, with the first fine days, peeped above the ground; at the approach of glorious Easter, it carpeted our fields with its velvet of green, making them ready to share in the universal joy of Jesus' resurrection; then, turning into a lively image of what our souls ought to be in the season of Pentecost, its stem grew up under the action of the hot sun; the golden ear promised a hundred-fold to its master; the harvest made the reapers glad; and, now that September has come, it calls on man to fix his heart on that good God, who gave him all this store, Let him not think of saying, as that rich man did, after a plentiful harvest of fruits: "My soul! thou has much goods laid up for many years! Take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer!"  And God said to that man: "Thou fool! this night do they require thy soul of thee; and whos shall those things be which thou has provided?" (St. Luke xiii. 16-21) If we would be truly rich before God, if we would draw down His blessing on the preservation, as well as on the production, of the fruits of the earth, let us, at the beginning of this last quarter of the year, have recourse to those penitential exercises whos beneficial effects we have always experienced in the past. The Church gives us the commandment to do so, by obliging us, on these three days, unless we be lawfully dispensed.

We have already spoken of the necessity of private penance for the Christian who is at all desirous to make progress in the path of salvation. But in this, as in all spiritual exercises, a private work of devotion has neither the merit nor the efficacy of the one that is done in company with the Church, and in communion with her public act; for the Church, as bride of Christ, communicates an exceptional worth and power to works of penance done, in her name, in the unity of the social body. St. Leo the Great is very strong on this fundamental principle of Christian virtue. We find him insisting on it in the sermons he preached to the faithful of Rome, on occasion of the fast, which was then called the fast of the seventh month. "Although," says he, "it be lawful for each one of us to chastise his body by self-imposed punishments, and restrain, with more or less severity, the concupiscence's of the flesh which war against the spirit, yet need is that, on certian days, a general fast be celebrated by all. Devotion is all the more efficacious and holy, when the whole Church is engaged in works of piety, with one spirit and one soul. Everything, in fact, that is of a public character is to be preferred to what is private; and it is plain, that so much the greater is the interest at stake, when the earnestness of all is engaged upon it. As for individual efforts, let each one keep up his fervour in them; let each one, imploring the aid of divine protection, take to himself the heavenly armour, wherewith to resist the snares laid by the spirits of wickedness; but the soldier of the Church (ecclesiasticus miles), though he may act bravely in his own private commands (specialibus proeliis), yet will he fight more safely and more successfully, when he shall confront the enemy in a public engagement; for in that public engagement, he has not only his own valor to which to trust, but he is under the leadership of a King who can never be conquered, and engaged in a battle fought by all his fellow-soldiers; so that, being in their company and ranks, he has the fellowship of mutual aid." (St. Leo, Serm. iv., De Jejun. sept. Mensis.)

Another year, when preaching for the same occasion, this eloquent pontiff and doctor of the Church was even more energetic and length, in putting these great truths before the people; would to God the words of such a Pope as Leo the Great could make themselves heard by our present generation, and induce us Christians to mistrust the individualistic tendencies of modern piety. Fortunately, the words of saint exist, and in all their 'pontifical eloquence'; we invite our readers to peruse his sermons; we have only space for short selection from his third sermon on the fast of the seventh month (our September Ember-days).

"God has sanctioned this privilege, that what is celebrated in virtue of a public law is more sacred than that which depends on a private regulation. The exercise of self-restraint which an individual Christian practices by his own will is for the advantage of that single member; but a fast undertaken by the Church at large includes everyone in the general purification. God's people never is so powerful as when the hearts of all the faithful join together in the unity of holy obedience, and when, in the Christian camp, one and the same preparation is made by all, and one and the same bulwark protects all... See, most dearly beloved, here is the solemn fast of the seventh month urging us to profit by this invincible unity... Let us raise up our hearts, withdraw from worldly occupations, and steal some time for furthering our eternal welfare... The plenary remission of sin is obtained when the whole Church unites in the like prayer and the like confession; for, if the Lord promises that when two or three shall, with a holy and pious unanimity, agree to ask Him anything whatsoever, it shall be granted to them, (St. Matt. xviii. 19, 20) what can be refused to many thousands, who are all engaged in observing one and the same practice of religion, and in praying with one and the same spirit? In the eyes of God, my dearly beloved, it is a great and precious sight, when all Christ's people are earnest at the same Offices; and when, without any distinction, men and women of every grade and order are all working together with one heart. To depart from evil and do good (PS. xxxiii, 15),  that is the one determination of them all. They all give glory to God for the works He achieves in His servants. They all unite in returning hearty thanks to the loving Giver of all blessings. The hungry are fed; the naked are clad; the sick are visited; and no one seeketh his own profit, but that of others... By this grace of God, who worketh all in all (1 Cor. xii. 6.), the fruit is common, and the merit is common; for the affection of all may be the same, although all are not equally rich; and those who have less to bestow can rejoice in the liberality of others. There is nothing inordinate in such a people as that; there are no variances; for all the members of the whole body are alkike in the energy of the same piety.... The beauty of the whole becomes the excellence of each memeber.... Let us, then, embrace this blessed solidity of holy unity, and with the same resolution and the same good will, let us enter upon this solemn fast. (St. Leo, Serm. iii. De Jejun sept. Mensis)."

Let us not, in our prayers and fasts, forget the new priests and other ministers of the Church, who, on Saturday next, are to receive the imposition of hands. The September ordination is not usually the most nurmerous of those given by the biship during the year. The sublime function, to which the faithful owe their fathers and guides in the spiritual life, ahs, however, a special interest at this period of the year, which, more than any other, is in keeping with the present state of the world in its rapid decline towards ruin. Our year, too, is on the fall, as we say. The sun, which we beheld risingat Christmas as a giant who would burst the bonds of frost asunder and restrain the tyranny of darkness, now, as though he had grown wearied, is drooping towards the horizon; each day we see him gradually leaving that glorious zenith, where we admired his dazzling splendour on the day of our Emmanuel's Ascension; his fire has lost its might; and though he still on the day of our Emmanuel's Ascension; his fire has lots its might; and though he still holds half has lost its might; and though he still holds half the day as his, his disc is growing pale. All this fortells the approach of those long nights, when nature, stripped of all her loveliness by angry storms, seems as though she would bury herself for ever in the frozen shroud which is to bind her. So is it with our world. Illumined as it was by the light of Christ, and glowing with the fire of the Holy Ghost, it sees, in these our days, that charity is growing cold (St. Matt. xxiv. 12), and that the light and glow it had from the Sun of justice are on the wane. Each revolution takes from the Church some jewel or other, which does not come back to her when the storm is over; tempests are so frequent, that tumult is becoming the normal state of the times. Error predominates, and lays down the law. Iniquity abounds. It is our Lord Himself who said: "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find, think ye, faith on earth?" (St. Luke xviii. 8)

Lift up your heads, then, ye children of God! for your redemption is at hand. (Ibid. xxi. 28-31) But, from now until that time shall come when heaven and earth are to be made new for the reign that is to be eternal, and shall bloom in the light of the Lamb, the Conqueror (Apoc. xxi.), days far worse than these must dawn upon the world of ours, when the elect themselves would be deceived, if that were possible! (St. Mark xiii. 22) How important is it, in these miserable times, that the pastors of the flock of Christ be equal to their perilous and sublime vocation! Let us then fast and pray; and how numerous soever may be the losses sustained in the Christian ranks, of those who once were not faithful in the practices of penance, let us not lose courage. Few as we may be, let us group ourselves closely round the Church, and implore of Jesus, her Spouse, that He vouchsafe to multiply His gifts in those whom He is calling to the now more than ever dread honour of the priesthood; that He infuse into them His divine prudence, whereby they may be able to disconcert the plans of the impious; His untiring zeal for the conversion of ungrateful souls; His perseverance even until death, in maintaining without reticence or compromise the plenitude of that truth which He has destined for the world, and the unviolated custody of which is to be, on the last day, the solemn testimony of the bride's fidelity.