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Two more people have managed the complicated process of getting themselves on the follower list! Welcome Lily and Drew! Glad to have you here at Coffee&Canticles, the online community of Divine Office devotees!

Tonight I’m hosting a barbecue potluck for our parish Fortnight for Freedom committee, to thank them for their hard work earlier this summer. And to maybe figure out what to do next in our efforts to save our country from a threat that very few recognize. …

In case you missed it, today’s Office of Readings has this lovely excerpt from Divino Afflatu. It’s everything you need to know about why the psalms are just about the best prayer in the world.

Last week we discussed what to do when the Liturgy of the Hours becomes–due to our own defects–routine and boring.…

Disclaimer—so that no one will credit me with brilliant spiritual insight, this is a slight elaboration on a sermon my pastor (Father David Poulson, diocese of Erie) gave several years ago. The gospel readings of the last few Sundays brought it back to mind.

Mythology, folklore, fairy tales—stories that tell of man’s adventures in other worlds—have a common thread regarding food. Basically, if someone adventuring in another world eats its food, a bond of some sort is formed with that world. A bond which is not readily broken. The Greek goddess Persephone eats enchanted pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, and is thereby compelled to wed Hades, and live with him for half of each year. (hence the four seasons—the dying off of autumn  and the bleakness of   winter occur when Persephone’s mother Demeter is mourning her daughter’s yearly departure. )

The folklore Britain and Ireland abounds with accounts of hapless people who become captives of leprechauns and fairies once they have partaken of fairy food.

Modern authors have made use of this concept as well. In C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund undergoes a change for the worse after eating the White Witch’s Turkish delight. Mr. Beaver explains, “The moment I set eyes on your brother, I said to myself ‘Treacherous’ . He had the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food. You can always tell…something about their eyes.”

Scholars of myth such as J.R.R.…

You are the bridge of life and the ladder to heaven: you are a boat over the sea of death reaching to immortality. …

In response to my discussion of hymn tunes and the meaning of “Long Meter” two posts back, and helpful reader John Orzechowski sent me a link to this helpful Franciscan website…

From today’s Midfternoon Prayer:

Stand beside the earliest roads,ask the pathways of oldWhich is the way to good, and walk it; thus you will find rest for you souls.

Jeremiah 6:16a

There was never a time when the psalter was not the prayer of the Church. The first Christians brought it with them from Juadaism. Or, to be even more basic, Jesus prayed the psalms and scriptures of his people, thus giving them to us, his body.

St. Benedict and the early desert fathers arranged the psalms into chunks to be recited or chanted around the clock. Other elements were added,subtracted, arranged, and rearranged over the years. Just as a good road will be widened, paved, and periodically get rough spots filled in over the years. But its still the same road.

So…anyone you know looking for a new way to pray? Tell them about the earliest road.

The Liturgy of the Hours.

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You won copies of the Night Prayerbook in the giveaway drawing.…

Some saints get more items unique to themselves in their office than others. St.. Lawrence is certainly one of these.…

Welcome, Jordan and Judith to Coffee&Canticles. Thrilled to have you here. Also thrilled with the title of Jordans blog, An Ever Fixed Mark (“fixed” to be pronounced with two syllables in the archaic fashion: fix-ed. ) That title comes from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, a favorite of mine:

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.…