De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I read this in Magnificat this weekend and thought it was so beautiful & inspiring I had to share it. The countess lies in her bed, weeping freely. In her arms she cradles a newborn lump of humanity covered with blood, a boy child. His face seems jolted out of shape, and his body — it is a body, somehow. "You are so pitiful," she cries, "my poor little boy."The count looks on. "Fetch the priest," he says to one of his servants. And the thought passes through his mind that it might be a mercy if the child died after he had been baptized. He fights the thought with prayer. "My dear," he says, "we will give this child to God. He will do what is best." The priest comes, and they christen the boy Hermann, "fighting man" in the old German tongue. He will be one of fifteen children, and Werner, one of his brothers, will indeed be a fighter at the side of Hildebrand, the great reforming Pope Gregory VII. Carried to school...

Today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph. I thought this was a beautiful reflection from Magnificat : Joseph de Ribera accompanies us here in the contemplation of that great mystery of human fatherhood which, through Joseph, its patron saint, reveals the divine Fatherhood. A young man, noble and handsome, Joseph firmly grasps a staff of almond wood which, according to the apocryphal gospels, flowered on the day he was chosen by the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As with the staffs of Moses and Aaron, this staff also recalls the divine authority conferred on Joseph and his ministry. It stands as well for the shepherd’s staff, marking Joseph as a descendant of the shepherd David and indicating that this holy man is charged with protecting and guiding the Lamb of God to human maturity. Jesus carries a basket of carpenter’s tools. From childhood, he diligently worked by his father’s side, most often at the huge construction site of the new town of Sepphoris, some four miles from Nazareth. ...