A Small Apology

Things have been coming to a close at SHC. Studying  and packing and unpacking and organizing and reorganizing have eaten my days. I have a few events that I would like to write about, including:

Rock for Life

My Brother's Confirmation

Things I Learned my First Year at a Jesuit College

Speaking at a Constitution Rally

Setting up a Nice Shrine in my Bedroom

and possibly other things that I know I took pictures of and will post...

May Magnificat

May is Mary's Month, the school I teach at will be having May Crowning this Sunday, May 3rd. Here is a poem by a Jesuit who likes alliteration.

May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

MAY is Mary’s month, and I

Muse at that and wonder why:

Her feasts follow reason,

Dated due to season—


Candlemas, Lady Day;

But the Lady Month, May,

Why fasten that upon her,

With a feasting in her honour?


Is it only its being brighter

Than the most are must delight her?

Is it opportunest

And flowers finds soonest?


Ask of her, the mighty mother:

Her reply puts this other

Question: What is Spring?—

Growth in every thing—


Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and greenworld all together;

Star-eyed strawberry-breasted

Throstle above her nested


Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within;

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell.


All things rising, all things sizing

Mary sees, sympathising

With that world of good,

Nature’s motherhood.


Their magnifying of each its kind

With delight calls to mind

How she did in her stored

Magnify the Lord.


Well but there was more than this:

Spring’s universal bliss

Much, had much to say

To offering Mary May.


When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

Bloom lights the orchard-apple

And thicket and thorp are merry

With silver-surfèd cherry


And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoocall

Caps, clears, and clinches all—


This ecstasy all through mothering earth

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth

To remember and exultation

In God who was her salvation.

Prayer for the Jesuits!

Oregon Jesuits are filing for bankruptcy.

Remember to pray for these Jesuits - the first religious order to file for bankruptcy.

(Also remember that tithing is part of being Catholic...)