Friday Links, June 11, 2021
+ Summer lecture series
+ Ignatius Press summer book sale
+ A poem about birds preaching
+ The patron saint of large families
Summer of 2021 Lecture Series
The Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture at Thomas More College is offering a lecture each night from June 28 to July 2, 2021, under the “New Lectures from Provocative Thinkers.”
James Matthew Wilson, poet and philosopher, who poetry has been frequently published in DT Magazine and Deep Down Thing blog, will be presenting on July 1 at 7:30 PM ET, 4:30 PM PT, on the topic, “The World is Not Flat, The Task of Poetry in a Secular Age.” Register at the above link.
Ignatius Press Month of Novels
The month of June has almost half flown by, and I’m finally getting to this. Katy Carl, Dappled Things Editor in Chief, recommends this June sale of print and E-book novels, which is also Liked by Karen Barbre Ullo, former DT Managing Editor, and Rhonda Ortiz, DT Webmaster (writers Ullo and Ortiz, as we’ve mentioned here before, are co-founders of Chrism Press).
The authors range from contemporary writers to such venerable authors as Austen, Dickens, and Twain. As a personal aside, I am pleased to see that Twain’s biography of St. Joan of Arc is on the list. It comforts me to know from having read it that outspokenly anti-religious Twain paradoxically had a great love for the God-inspired Maid of Orleans.
“ I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.”
— Mark Twain
Preaching of the Birds
Katy Carl posted the above link to a poem by Laura Reece Hogan at Integrated Catholic Life.
FYI: This fascinating article,"Saint Francis of Assisi and His Sermon to Birds,” has the actual sermon that was written down by monks who witnessed the event.
Francis preaching to the birds. From the frescoes in the lower Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi (around 1253 ). By the Master of San Francesco. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3973175
St. Margaret of Scotland, patron of large families
Catholic parents raising large families may be encouraged to know that they have their own patron saint to pray to for intercession when times get tough.
Yesterday June 10, was the Feast of St. Margaret, Queen of Scots, in the traditional calendar. (Her feast was moved to November 16, the day of her death, in the new calendar.) St. Margaret of Scotland built churches, erected religious foundations, defended the Church, lived a life of prayer and worship, and sacrificially spent much of her wealth and time personally aiding the poor, feeding them in her own home and washing their feet—besides being a devoted consort of a king and mother of many children.
After Hungarian-born noble Margaret married the Scottish King Malcolm III, she gave birth to eight children, two of whom (according to Dom Prosper Gueranger’s account of her life in The Liturgical Year) grew up to be saints: King David I of Scotland and Matilda, Queen Consort of Henry I of England. So, St. Margaret is also logically a good saint to pray to for help in raising saints!
She shares with St. Andrew the patronage of her adopted country, Scotland.
St. Margaret of Scotland, stained glass window, provenance unknown
