December 24, 2024
December 23, 2024
Venerating the Relics of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich
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| Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich |
That day, the Chapel being open, we decided to enter and say our obligatory prayers. A serene, peaceful setting, the Holy Family Chapel was the perfect place to pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
After our prayers and contemplation, we were greeted by Sister Regina Bernard, who graciously asked if we’d like to see the relics of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich. We happily and excitedly agreed.
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| Holy Family Chapel, Convent Station, New Jersey |
***
Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich was born on March 26, 1901, in Bayonne, New Jersey to Ruthenian immigrant parents, the youngest of seven children. She was raised in the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Rite. After losing her mother to the Spanish Influenza pandemic in 1918, she studied at the then-named College of St Elizabeth. It was at the College of St Elizabeth’s St Rita Hall where as a student, Miriam Teresa had a vision of our Blessed Mother from her dormitory room. Miriam Teresa went on to graduate from the College of St. Elizabeth in 1923 with the highest honors. Shortly after, Miriam Teresa accepted her first teaching position.Miriam Teresa had been discerning entering a religious order, and she finally joined the Sisters of Charity of St Elizabeth, receiving the habit in 1925. As a postulant and then a novice, she taught at the Academy of St Elizabeth, still located on the Convent Station campus. Sister Miriam Teresa was known for her piety and devotion to the Holy Rosary. Much of her time when she wasn’t working would be dedicated to prayer. Sister Miriam Teresa also wrote twenty-six conferences for the novitiate at the request of her spiritual advisor which are now compiled in the book titled Greater Perfection.
Unfortunately, in 1926 Sister Miriam Teresa’s health began to decline precipitously. Suffering from tonsillitis, appendicitis, myocarditis, and nervous exhaustion, Sister Miriam Teresa took her permanent vows in periculo mortis in April 1927. She died on May 8, 1927. Her funeral was held in the Holy Family Chapel and she was buried in the Holy Family Cemetery on the grounds of the Sisters of Charity of St Elizabeth motherhouse.
After a number of cures were reported due to her intercession, an official investigation by the Church was begun in 1946. In 2012, Sister Miriam Teresa Demjanovich was declared venerable by Pope Benedict XVI and was beatified in 2014 at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, the first time a beatification was ever held in the United States.
In 2016, the remains of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich were transferred from the crypt to a new shrine in Holy Family Chapel. In a room adjacent to the Chapel, we find some of the personal items owned by Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich: her crucifix, her statuette of the Infant Jesus, her watercolors, brushes, and a picture of violets she painted symbolizing the Trinity as she was also an amateur artist.
We still await and pray fervently for her canonization.
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| Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich's Crucifix |
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| Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich's Statuette of the Infant Jesus |
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| Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich's Watercolors |
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| A watercolor of violets representing the Trinity by Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich |
***
Sister Regina Bernard led us to the shrine on the left of the high altar, recounting the story of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demianovich and her relics. The beautiful shrine is contained within an alcove, framed by gothic-style arches. This shrine serves as a perfect permanent resting place for the relics of this Blessed Miriam Teresa. The relics themselves are preserved within an octagonal reliquary cask, fitted with a Waterford crystal for the purpose of viewing said holy relics. Beneath are rectangular boxes containing soil taken from her gravesite which form the base of the shrine.Joining Sister Regina Bernard, we prayed before the relics of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, begging for her intercession. Kneeling before the holy relics, we peered inside the crystal oculus. Strands of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich’s hair lay across the crystal, and deep within the reliquary, we beheld her bones, the holy relics of this blessed woman.
Kneeling before her relics in veneration and prayer, the devotion of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich touches our hearts. Her brief time with us, nearly one hundred years past was a gift from our Lord Jesus Christ. In her humility and service, she bestowed upon us a model of sanctity, humility, and dedication to God.
~ Pasquale De Davide
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| The Reliquary |
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| The reliquary's Waterford crystal oculus, with strands of hair |
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| Inside the reliquary: the holy relics of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich |
***
Prayer for Canonization of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich
Most Holy and Blessed Trinity, Whom Blessed Miriam Teresa loved so ardently, grant that we, like her, may become ever more conscious of Your Divine Presence within our souls. We implore You to continue to show signs that Your humble servant enjoys glory with You in Heaven, and to hasten the day when we may render her a lasting tribute of our veneration and love.
Most Holy and Blessed Trinity, Whom Blessed Miriam Teresa loved so ardently, grant that we, like her, may become ever more conscious of Your Divine Presence within our souls. We implore You to continue to show signs that Your humble servant enjoys glory with You in Heaven, and to hasten the day when we may render her a lasting tribute of our veneration and love.
Photo of the Week: "Sappho" Fresco from Pompeii, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
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| Commonly called Sappho, the fresco depicts a woman holding writing implements. Pompeii, ca. 50 AD, Naples National Archaeological Museum. Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
December 22, 2024
Brief Excerpt from “Mysticism, Magic, & Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality” by Sebastian Morello
The Magic of Christmas is Real* Reprinted from Mysticism, Magic, & Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality by Sebastian Morello, Os Justi Press, 2024, pp.82-83
DURING Advent, when the Church prepares herself for Christmas, her members enter a time of mortification and penance as they await the coming of the child Jesus. Frequent invitations to drink mulled wine and eat mince pies with brandy butter in the weeks preceding Christmas Day can make this difficult. One way to observe Advent, however, is to eat less meat. Fortunately, during that very time of the year, easily hunted mushrooms—beings that belong to a kingdom between the animal and plant kingdoms—appear across much of the countryside. One Advent season, I strolled into a well-manured grassland to discover hundreds of field blewits. There they were before me, great jellyish saucers standing on purple stems in terrific fairy rings across the green pasture.
Fairies had obviously been gathering at night for their hibernal celebrations. They likely danced and laughed, played tricks on one another, and fell about amid the ribaldry that is the inevitable effect of those pixie draughts from fermented hawthorn berries. The evidence of this was all around me. Those mushrooms marked the sacred circles of the sprites with whom we share our landscape, whose rights and entitlements we disregard.
Due to the mental fog of late modernity that incrementally distorted our vision, we grew blind to the iconographic character of the world around us, and so the fairies disappeared. Slowly, we ceased to see that things are not only substances but symbols. Modern people would never call a fungal formation of spore-scattering fruits from a complex underground mycelial web a "fairy ring,” just as modern people, when carving a pathway for horseless carriages through the rustic countryside that our ancestors gifted us, do not call it "Hollybush Road" or "Brown Cow Lane" or "The Great Eastern Way" or some other such name, but the "M650" or the "Ai4.” Everything in late modernity is instrumental rather than meaningful, formulaic rather than poetic, and consequently grey rather than colourful. We reduced all insight, inspiration, understanding, comprehension, contemplation, appreciation, observation, discernment, and awareness to the one quantitative category of "information, and thereby emptied our minds of all that really matters—and the world we have made around us reflects this cognitive corruption.
December 20, 2024
A Prayer for Magdeburg, Germany
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| St. Norbert, ora pro nobis |
Prayer for Victims of Terrorism* Photo courtesy of Fr. Eugene Carrella
Loving God, welcome into your arms the victims of violence and terrorism. Comfort their families and all who grieve for them. Help us in our fear and uncertainty, and bless us with the knowledge that we are secure in your love. Strengthen all those who work for peace, and may the peace the world cannot give reign in our hearts. Amen.
A Cool Find
Ponderable Quote from “A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail” by Charles A. Coulombe
Obviously, whether we are ruled by noble heroes or worthless villains is not something most of us have any control over. But there is one element of life in Camelot—and, indeed, all the courts, high or low, which ever existed in Christendom—that we can take away and make our own. Life therein was governed by the liturgical year. Christmas was the day Arthur first drew the sword from the stone; as we know from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the feast was well kept at his court:* Reprinted from A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail by Charles A. Coulombe, TAN Books, 2017, p. 163This king lay at Camelot nigh on Christmas
with many lovely lords, of leaders the best,
reckoning of the Round Table all the rich brethren,
with right ripe revel and reckless mirth.
There tourneyed tykes by times full many,
jousted full jollily these gentle knights,
then carried to court, their carols to make.
For there the feast was alike full fifteen days.
December 19, 2024
New Book — The Art of Immigration, Donatus Buongiorno: Italian and American, Artist and Entrepreneur
• The Art of Immigration, Donatus Buongiorno: Italian and American, Artist and Entrepreneur by Janice Carapellucci
Publisher: Mary Brown
Publication Date: November 20, 2024
Paperback: $37.03
Language: English
Pages: 306
Read description
Click here to see more books
Listing does not imply any endorsement
December 17, 2024
In the Ruins of Christendom, We Shall Live
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| Detail from the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck |
Submitted by John Ogilvie
The Kings of Christendom are nearly all gone. In the world of Christendom, Christian kings bent their knee to God’s law, and held that law as a sacred trust to be revered and enshrined in every subject’s heart. That was a great world, where earthly kings reigned who acknowledged Jesus Christ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The once-great world belongs to the distant past. Now, we live after Christendom; all her kings are gone, and her thrones lie in the dust, torn down by the gods of the revolutions of modern man—the modern man who tramples everywhere on the laws of nature and the laws of God. Such is our world, our brave new world, for the modern man. Be not fooled though: It is a world that runs thick with blood: the blood of revolutions, the blood of the unborn innocent; the blood of those who would not bend their knee to the gods of revolution. I will not dwell in a bloody brave new world.
But amidst the chaos and wreckage of the revolutions of modern man, you and I have glimpsed the ruins and the remnants of Christendom. We have seen the glory of Christ the King in his great churches, in the silent majesty of his basilicas, in his ancient rites of grace. In Christendom’s Gothic churches, we have often found true palaces of the Virgin, built by the faithful peasants of a bygone age to their beloved Lady. We have heard the sound of our King’s ancient rites. Indeed, we have heard the chants and songs of Christendom. We know a beauty ever ancient, ever new. We know that the ruins of Christendom are better than the gleaming towers of the brave new world—of the hollow men. One day in the ruins of Christendom is better than a thousand elsewhere.
Christ is my King; Him alone will I serve; in his kingdom’s ruins will I live. Time hath worn us with rainy marching in the fields of this world’s battles. But we are warriors for the working day. Under the standard of the Cross, we shall labor. In the ruins of Christendom, we shall live. Christus vincit. Christus regnat. Christus imperat.
December 15, 2024
New Book — Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality
• Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality by Sebastian Morello
Publisher: OS Justi Press
Publication Date: November 22, 2024
Hardcover: $29.95
Softcover: $18.95
Language: English
Pages: 206
Read description
Click here to see more books
Listing does not imply any endorsement
Photo of the Week: Detail of the Scale Model of Pompeii, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
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| Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
December 12, 2024
Meridiunalata: L’Ammore Nuosto by Cav. Charles Sant’Elia
L’Ammore Nuosto
L’ammore nuosto è na cammenata ncopp’’a via,
Nu vasillo mmocca a ll’ombra,
Na carezza a na spalla ‘o’ sole.
L’ammore nuosto è nu gelato offerto
E maje magnato,
Na guardata suspecosa, nu poco ‘e gelusia.
L’ammore nuosto è n’abbracciamiento abbascio ‘o puorto,
‘A paura ‘e nu dimane senza ‘e te, senza ‘e me.
L’ammore nuosto è na canzona ancora senza parole,
Ca pure stammo cantanno,
Ca forze leggimmo int’a ll’uocchie d’’e figlie nuoste.
Our Love
Our love is a walk on the avenue,
A little kiss on the mouth in the shade,
A caress on the shoulder in the sun.
Our love is an icecream offered
And never eaten,
A suspicious glance, a bit of jealousy.
Our love is an embrace down by the harbour,
The fear of a tomorrow without you, without me.
Our love is a song still without words,
That yet we are singing,
That perhaps we read in the eyes of our children.
* Self-published in 2010, Meridiunalata / Southernade is a treasury of poems gleaned from Cav. Sant'Elia's previous collections (Nchiuso dint''o presente, 'A cuntrora, and 'O pino e l'éllera), which were circulated among friends in New York City and Naples. Special thanks to Cav. Sant'Elia for allowing us to reprint his poetry and translations.
A little kiss on the mouth in the shade,
A caress on the shoulder in the sun.
Our love is an icecream offered
And never eaten,
A suspicious glance, a bit of jealousy.
Our love is an embrace down by the harbour,
The fear of a tomorrow without you, without me.
Our love is a song still without words,
That yet we are singing,
That perhaps we read in the eyes of our children.
* Self-published in 2010, Meridiunalata / Southernade is a treasury of poems gleaned from Cav. Sant'Elia's previous collections (Nchiuso dint''o presente, 'A cuntrora, and 'O pino e l'éllera), which were circulated among friends in New York City and Naples. Special thanks to Cav. Sant'Elia for allowing us to reprint his poetry and translations.
December 11, 2024
December 10, 2024
Celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the 5th Annual Feast of San Nicola di Bari in Brooklyn, New York
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| San Nicola di Bari, ora pro nobis |
As always, it was a great joy to celebrate our faith and culture together. Evviva Maria e San Nicola di Bari!
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| Dave and John |
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| (L) Andrew and Enza. (R) Carmine and Angie |
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| (L) Jim and Cindy. (R) Anthony and Maria |
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| Caponata |
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| Arancini |
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| Carduna |
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| Carciofi fritti |
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| Manicotti |
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| Cavatelli |
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| Ragù |
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| Bignè |
December 9, 2024
A Look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Annual Angel Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche
Photo of the Week: Scale Model of Pompeii, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
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| Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
December 8, 2024
Celebrating the Feast of San Nicola at the Met
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| Saint Nicholas with the Three Boys in the Pickling Tub, oak, South Netherlandish, ca. 1500 |
Friday after Mass, we celebrated the feast of San Nicola di Bari with a delightful trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. With no real agenda planned, we sauntered through the Medieval Treasury, the American Wing, and the 19th-century British Art galleries. Too much to show here, we offer a tiny glimpse of the many treasures we viewed during our visit. San Nicola, ora pro nobis.
Upcoming exhibits of note at the Met Fifth Avenue:
• Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature (February 8—May 11, 2025)
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| The entombment, limestone, French, Bourbonnais, ca. 1515, from the Château de Biron, Périgord |
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| (L) Saint George and the Dragon, ca. 1475, wood, gilded, and painted, attributed to Hans Klocker (Austrian, active, 1474-1502). (R) Saint Elzéar, alabaster, carved about 1370-73, French, from the Franciscan church at Apt. The work is one of eight sculptural reliefs depicting the saintly life of the knight from the reliquary tomb (erected in 1373) destroyed during the French Revolution. |
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| King, Queen, and Prince, marble with traces of paint and gilding, carved and painted about 1350, French. The figures are believed to portray King Philip VI Valois (d. 1350); his second wife, Blanche of Navarre (d. 1398); and one of their sons, John the Good or Philip of France. |
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| (L) Saint Anne Holding the Virgin and Child, Walnut with paint and gilding, carved and painted about 1500-1525, from the Benedictine convent of Nonnberg, Salzburg, Austria. (R) Saint Catherine of Alexandria, gold, enamel en ronde bosse, sapphires, corundum, and pearls, made in Paris about 1400-1410 |
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| Saddle with Courtly Scenes, bone, linden wood, rawhide, and birch bark, made in central Europe (probably Tyrol) about 1430-60 |
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| (L-R) Rosary Terminal Bead with Lovers and Death's Head, elephant ivory with emerald pendant, gilded metal mount, North French or South Netherlandish, made about 1500-1525 |
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| Drinking Horn, cow or European bison horn, silver and gilded silver mounts, and champlevé enamel, German, Nuremberg, made 1436 |
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| (L) Drinking Horn (see above). (R) The Spanish Girl in Reverie, oil on canvas, 1831, Washington Allston (1779-1843) |
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| Ariadne, oil on canvas, ca. 1831-35, Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886) |
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| (L) Madame X (Virginie Avegno Gautreau), oil on canvas, 1883-84, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). (R) Carmencita (Carmen Dauset Moreno), oil on canvas, 1890, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) |
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| View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, oil on canvas, 1836, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) |
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| (L-R) Fragilina, marble, 1923, Attilio Piccirilli (1866-1945) |
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| (L) Evening, marble, this carving 1891, Frederick Wellington Ruckstull (1853-1942). (R) Genius of Mirth, marble, carved 1843, Thomas Crawford (1813[?]-1857) |
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| (L) Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), marble, 1823, Sir Francis Chantrey (British, 1781-1841). (R) King George IV, when Prince of Wales (1762-1830), oil on canvas, after 1798, Sir William Beechey (British, 1753-1839) |
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| (L-R) Alexander the Great, black basalt (unglazed stoneware), ca. 1779-80, Wedgwood and Bently (British, 1769-80); and Laurence Sterne (1713-1823), marble, modeled 1766, Joseph Nolleken (British, 1737-1823) |
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