The Long Leg

The Long Leg, Edward Hopper, c.1930
via WikiPaintings

God intrudes

Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."

Peter Larson

I keep forgetting how utterly impossible Jesus' life was. By human standards, anyway.

And the Winner Is — 1945

 Our family is working our way through Oscar winners and whichever nominees take our fancy. Also as they are available, since some films are hard to find.

This is the first year that only five films could be nominated. This really cut down on the variety and we missed the wide ranging field from previous years with more nominees.

Nominated films that we didn't watch because we'd couldn't find them were The Pied Piper and Wake Island.

WINNER

After being appointed to a run-down New York parish, a young, hip priest connects with a gang of boys looking for direction and eventually wins over over the aging, conventional Parish priest.

1945 Oscar winner. It did not age well.

 NOMINEES

Fred MacMurray is the insurance salesman who comes up with the perfect murder scheme to rid femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck of her husband's annoying presence. Edward G. Robinson is MacMurray's boss, a wily insurance investigator who feels that things don't quite add up. 

This should have won. A true classic that we didn't rewatch for this because we've seen it so many times. A Movie You Might Have Missed #10.

A newlywed fears she’s going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.

Another one that should have won and it's a classic for a reason. If you only know the term "gaslight" but not where it came from, then you need to watch this movie.  A Movie You Might Have Missed #74.

The political career of Woodrow Wilson is chronicled, beginning with his decision to leave his post at Princeton to run for Governor of New Jersey, and his subsequent ascent to the Presidency of the United States.

We were curious to see what a movie would be like that was made so soon after Wilson's presidency. Oy veh. Hero worship, anyone? Not bad but not really worth watching.

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All the Oscar viewing is here.

Girl Reading

Girl Reading, Georgios Jakobides

She looks so scholarly! I love it!

Not Fairy Tales But Real Life!

Moses said to the people:
"If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God,
and keep his commandments and statutes
that are written in this book of the law,
when you return to the LORD, your God,
with all your heart and all your soul.

"For this command that I enjoin on you today
is not too mysterious and remote for you.
It is not up in the sky, that you should say,
'Who will go up in the sky to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'
Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
'Who will cross the sea to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'
No, it is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out."

Dt 30:10-14

Reading this, I was struck by the similarity to fairy tales where the hero is sent on a quest. Often it is to win the hand of a bride or to gain treasure, but there are usually three tasks that are in far away, unimaginable lands. When I heard, "Who will go up in the sky to get it for us" and "Who will cross the sea to get it for us" that fairy tale mythology popped into my head.

I was in awe. Indeed returning to God with our whole heart and soul is very close. Everyone can do it. We've all got built in translators so we know already what to do. God made it as easy as humanly possible to get close to him. It isn't a fairy tale, it isn't any of the tales of the gods that would have been familiar to the Hebrews from the Egyptians. It is real life and much simpler than that.

Now, whether or not it is easy to do is another matter. 

Captain Blood

Captain Blood, N.C. Wyeth

A Pirate's Guide to the First Grade

I'll make no bones about it. Cap'n Silver worked us like black dogs on a hot day. We counted and spelled 'til we nearly dropped, brain-addled and weary.

Pirate's Guide to the First Grade, James Preller

I've requested it from the library! This little bit I came across sounds magical!

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

I especially love that this solemnity is so important that it one of only five occasions in the year on which a diocesan bishop is not to be away from his diocese unless for a grave and urgent reason. It's that important.

Pope Leo, Corpus Christi procession 2025
(CNS Photo/Vatican Media, OSV)

This Solemnity goes back to the thirteenth century. It was first established in the diocese of Liége, and Pope Urban IV instituted it in 1264 for the whole Church. The meaning of this feast is the consideration of and devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The center of the feast was to be, as Pope Urban IV described it, a popular devotion reflected in hymns and joy. In the same year Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the Pope's request, composed for this day two Offices which have nourished the piety of many Christians throughout the centuries. In many different places the procession with the Monstrance through specially bedecked streets gives testimony of the Christian people's faith and love for Christ, who once again passes through our cities and towns. The procession began in the same way as the feast itself.

For many years God fed manna to the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. This was an image and symbol of the pilgrim church and of each individual who journeys towards his or her definitive homeland -- Heaven. That food given in the desert of Sinai is a figure of the true food, the Holy Eucharist. This is the sacrament of the human pilgrimage ... Precisely because of this, the annual feast of the Eucharist that the Church celebrates today contains within its liturgy so many references to the pilgrimage of the people of the Covenant in their wanderings through the wilderness (John Paul II)....

Today is a day of thanksgiving and of joy because God has wanted to remain with us in order to feed us and to strengthen us, so that we many never feel alone. The Holy Eucharist is the viaticum, the food for the long journey of our days on Earth towards the goal of true Life. Jesus accompanies us and strengthens us here in this world, where our life is like a shadow compared to the reality that awaits us. Earthly food is a pale image of the food we receive in Holy Communion. The Holy Eucharist opens up our hearts to a completely new reality.

In Conversation With God Vol 6
Daily Meditations, Special Feasts: January - June

The Feast of Corpus Christi is a moveable feast, which means that it depends on the date of Easter Sunday. Corpus Christi is celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which falls one week after Pentecost Sunday. As is often the case, many U.S. bishops have moved it to Sunday in their dioceses.

Some excellent historical information can be found in an old post at The Fathers of the Church where Mike Aquilina fills us in this feast and about the reality for the Church from the beginning.

One of the most telling pieces of evidence, to me, that this reality was the view of the early Christians on the Eucharist comes from St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Smyrnaeans (ca. AD 106) which was written about ten years after the death of the Apostle John. That means there wasn't time enough for him to have gotten "confused on this issue" (via John Bergsma, Word of the Lord, Year A).

But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. ...

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His greatness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. (emphasis added)

Statue of Jean Althen

Statue of Jean Althen, Papal Palace Gardens, Avignon, Belinda Del Pesco

Each Challenge is Supposed to Bring Out the Best in Us

Challenges will be with us until the day we die. But in God's mind, each challenge is supposed to bring out the best in us. ... Every outcome of every challenge should reveal how God supplies the grace to make it through the seemingly impossible.

Father Leo Patalinghug, Grace before Meals

Amen, amen. This makes all the difference when facing the hard things of life.

The Gardeners

Gustave Caillebotte, Les jardiniers, 1875

Go in Beauty

"When the dung beetle moves,” Hosteen Nashibitti had told him, “know that something has moved it. And know that its movement affects the flight of the sparrow, and that the raven deflects the eagle from the sky, and that the eagle’s stiff wing bends the will of the Wind People, and know that all of this affects you and me, and the flea on the prairie dog and the leaf on the cottonwood.” That had always been the point of the lesson. Interdependency of nature. Every cause has its effect. Every action its reaction. A reason for everything. In all things a pattern, and in this pattern, the beauty of harmony. Thus one learned to live with evil, by understanding it, by reading its cause. And thus one learned, gradually and methodically, if one was lucky, to always “go in beauty,” to always look for the pattern, and to find it.”

Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead

This is a favorite part of the Tony Hillerman mysteries. He always includes something fascinating and insightful about the Navajo religion or culture.