A friend of mine whom I have never met just had a newborn baby son! He is beautiful, but is sick. Please take a moment and say the prayer to Saint Philomena for this fragile child.

Verifiable history of Saint Philomena is hard to come by, but tradition holds that was a young girl of Grecian royalty. She was courted by the Roman emporer Diocletian who offered to settle a war between Rome and Greece if he could marry Philomena. She refused the pleas of the emporer and her parents, saying she had promised her virginity and fideility to Christ. She was imprisoned, beaten and martyred by drowning. Her remains were discovered in 1802 and she was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI sometime around 1834.

O faithful virgin and glorious martyr, Saint Philomena, who works so many miracles on behalf of the poor and sorrowing, have pity on me. Thou knowest the multitude and diversity of my needs. Behold me at thy feet, full of misery, but full of hope. I entreat thy charity, O great saint! Graciously hear me and obtain from God a safe and healthy start for this baby boy. I am thoroughly convinced that through thy merits, through the scorn, the sufferings, the death thou didst endure, united to the merits of the passion and death of Jesus thy spouse, I shall obtain what I ask of thee and in the joy of my heart I will bless God, who is admirable in his saints. Amen.

Saint Philomena, patron of newborns and the sick, pray for us.

Benedictine monks (the Catholic monks in the black robes) have always stuck to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which is often tidily summed up as ora et labora, or pray and work. This summation is a simple lesson for people like me who are easily distracted by all the other diversions of life.

Benedictines pretty much single-handedly saved civilization from the total collapse of Europe in the middle ages. They carved out small enclaves in the wilderness where they preserved literature, agriculture, art-- and nearly every one of the trappings of civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire until the birth of the Renaissance. We owe a great debt to Benedictines, to which we can raise a glass of champagne-- created, in fact, by the famous Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon.

As a gardener, I sometimes take the time I spend in my garden to ora et labora at the same time. It is the simplest example of the Lord's creation to put a seed into the ground and have it bear fruit for our nourishment-- wherein it makes its own seeds again so that they cycle repeats itself in perpetuity. The worms of the earth till and churn the soil for roots to grow, even the squirrels (the enemy of a tomato gardener) do their part by scattering the shards of a tomato fruit along the ground, putting the seeds of the plant into contact with the soil to start next year's long trek for survival. As kids, we all fear bees, for gardeners, they are welcome sights indeed.

These first days of summer-like weather are days of impatience for vegetable gardeners. Our seeds have been in the ground for a few weeks, the young plants are breaking through the soil to touch the sky. But nothing is bearing fruit yet, there are no vegetables on the vines.

Pray and work.

Except for some minor weeding and making sure the garden gets enough water, most of the heavy work is finished for a couple weeks. The only thing left is to pray that this year will be another good crop. Hopefully the harvest will be plenty.

My peas are starting to bud out, hopefully they'll form pods sooner than later. Likewise, the onion plants are looking strong and hearty. Though the tomatoes won't be bearing fruit until July, they're looking strong and hearty. I haven't seen anything from the green beans, but I was pushing my luck with the soil when I planted them, it was just barely too wet to work. I might have hurt the soil structure when I planted the seeds, so they might not be able to germinate in the stiff soil. Likewise for the okra and cucumbers, but I've also planted sprouts for those vegetables-- all may not be lost. The bell peppers look awesome. The brussel sprouts have doubled in size in about a week and a half.

We've had a lot of rain for several days now, the garden needs a good weeding. It's too wet to weed the garden. It's also time to put down a load of mulch-- but I want to get most of the weeds out before I put in the oak wood chips. And again, it's been too wet to get the mulch down. I'll need to work carefully around the young and tender plants.

There's lots of work to do this time of the year. And this turning of the season is also a time where I get very prayerful. The Lord and I seem to have so much to talk about these days. Over the last few months, I've felt like I've really had to rely on the Holy Spirit for some religious direction. Indeed, a priest even told me that I should find a spiritual director (another post unto itself altogether). There's been a lot to pray about-- both for myself and in my prayers for others. Ora

Life can get overwhelming pretty quickly. My job has been pretty intense for the last several weeks. Finals just wrapped up, but my summer classes will start here in a few weeks. My lovely wife and I are going on vacation in a couple weeks. No time too soon! But truely, life has been hectic lately. It's easy to get caught up in all the distractions of life, with softball games, parties, working around the house and yard, the full time job, our t-shirt side business, on and on and on. A guy like me sometimes needs a little help cutting out the distractions from life and drawing back to our simple roles in life and family. Labora.

Pray and work.

Welcome to summer.

I'm working on it. It has something to do with the style sheets, about which I know very little.

Am I the only one having trouble with the comments? Somebody try to comment on this post. If you are rejected, drop me a line: joe at whollyroamincatholic dot com.

UPDATE: My host upgraded their server and now I have to upgrade MovableType, my blog software. *sigh* MT is kind of hard to upgrade & configure, we may be sparse on comments for a while. I'll try to get to it over the next couple days, I don't know how long it'll take me to get it fixed.

Saint Isidore of Seville, Patron of Computers and Patron of the Internet, pray for us!

UPDATE 2: I was able to upgrade MT and everything works. Thank you Saint Isidore!

Wolftracker's Kansas City Catholic has hung up his keyboard.

That really stinks.

So I know this is another lame post, but I'm still in the middle of a big project and haven't had the time to get in the writing frame-of-mind. In the meantime, I'd like some suggestions for what other blogs that people are reading while they're waiting for me to put together a post of value. They don't have to be expressly Catholic blogs, though those are of particular interest.

Extra credit goes to people who suggest good personal writing, blogs that are frequently updated, and ones that are not hosted by blogspot or typepad, both of which give my server trouble (it's a long story).

So what are your internet diversions?

A couple of years ago, I started a now-defunct political blog with a friend of mine. Quite often, he'd start a post and never finish and publish it. Either he ran out of time to develop it all the way or it wasn't going the way he wanted it to go or he put it aside to chase some other thought instead-- he'd gotten too far in to give up on it, I'm sure he planned return to it later to re-edit them or finish where they were going.

But he never did. It was funny, really. For every 2 or 3 posts he put on the blog, there was at least one half-finished one saved on the account but never put up for viewing. That was never my style. I was better at producing content then, I could crank out post after post without stopping for more than a day or so.

Heh. Those where the days. That's when I used to laugh at someone else's half-finished posts, hidden from the public behind the closed doors of the blog factory. Gentle reader, in the young history of this website, there are about a half-dozen posts that I started and never finished. Truthfully, I doubt I'll ever finish them. But I don't delete them, because I've done 2/3rds of the reading and writing to produce the post. So they sit. Alone and ignored.

Mom always said I had a hard time finishing what

I'd like to kindly welcome whomever found this page searching for the phrase "passover lamb priest butcher afternoon".

Whatever you were looking for, I'm sure I didn't help. Sorry.

I'm sure you've heard about the disastrous earthquake and aftershocks that has been inflicting China. This morning, the official death estimate was around 15,000 people, other estimates point north of 20,000 people were killed. That's a lot of people. We're talking REAL TRAGEDY here.

Rod Dreher in his CrunchyCon blog writes:

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a Chinese immigrant friend here in Dallas about China's rise. She told me not to be so sure of that. She said there are lots of bad things going on in China that never make the news -- natural disasters, man-made disasters and so on -- but news of which trickles out through word of mouth and the Internet. She said that the Chinese authorities are terrified of losing stability, and that to believe China is a rising monolith is really a mistake.

To hear that China is just a "paper tiger" means that they are totally unprepared to handle this mass tragedy, even if the country projects that they are strong and capable. They're going to be in a bad way, and may be that way for a very long time. Please take a minute and say a prayer for them-- they're in a Hell on Earth right now.

I took a second to look up who the patron saint is for China. There are 3 generally accepted patrons: Mary, St Joseph, and St. Francis Xavier. Mary and Joseph are patrons of everything, so I took a moment to look up St. Francis Xavier.

St. Francis Xavier is called the "Apostle to the Far East", and dedicated most of his life to preaching the Gospel to the farthest corners of the known world. Born to Basque nobility in 1506 (it seems like a lot of major saints were born rich!), the family castle and wealth was captured in one of the wars that would eventually unify Spain. Francis was ordained to the priesthood in Italy and studied and taught Philosophy at the great University of Paris (again with the U of Paris!). There he met Ignatius of Loyola (and a few others) and founded the once-illustrious Society of Jesus, which we commonly call the Jesuit order.

Xavier would travel the world, teaching around the horn of Africa, on the coasts of India and throughout Southeast Asia. Most Christians in the East have been touched by the history of Francis Xavier. He was asked by King John of Portugal to Evangelize to the people of the East Indies, then largely Portuguese territory from where they would capture slaves; Francis agreed to go, but famously admonished the King, saying "You have no right to spread the Catholic faith while you take away all the country's riches. It upsets me to know that at the hour of your death you may be ordered out of paradise."

His mission trip was a 10-year whirlwind, surviving shipwrecks, disease and infidels, he baptized thousands, ministered to the sick and taught the poor. Tradition holds that he could calm storms, speak in tongues and raise the dead! His reputation as a miracle worker brought thousands to the Faith, to which mankind could turn when the rest of life overwhelmed them.

Gentle reader, life still overwhelms mankind.

These are sad days for the Chinese. Thousands and thousands of homes are destroyed, thousands and thousands of people are dead or missing. People turn to their government to help, but in no one's estimation can the Chinese government help. I doubt that many governments could help if such tragedy was dumped into their lap. Central China is a mix of foreboding deserts and impenetrable mountains, the central Chinese are poor peasants without half the blessings of modernity. These are sad days, indeed.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Over the years, I've owned a number of websites and blogs. I've never reached 1000 visitors so quickly-- so thank you for being a part of it!

This number would be quickly dwarfed by the big blogs, but that part doesn't matter to me. I'm happy you spend a little part of your day with me.

Of course, I'm not posting enough. It begs the question: why are you visiting this site?

On the second thought: don't answer that.

-NUNC EST BIBENDUM-

I've never been an exceptionally good student. I'll save you the details, but suffice to say that school and I have never been totally compatible.

But I've been slowly beginning some post-Baccalaureate work at night after I get off work and I have a big final tonight that I do not feel well prepared to tackle. If you get a chance today or this afternoon, drop a quick prayer in for me tonight, I'd appreciate it.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the great "Doctors of the Church". His unfinished opus, Summa Theologica is considered one of the finest theological works in religious and philosophical history.

Thomas was born in Italy in 1225, the wealthy son of Italian nobility. As a Dominican friar, he was a master theologian and lecturer in Rome, theology professor and regent of studies at the University of Paris, he was an advisor to both popes and kings. Though Thomas was respected as an academic, he wasn't really well liked by his fellow friars. Aquinas did not actively partake the Domenican practice of mortification, and wasn't reputed as much of a conversationalist. Some of the other friars gave him the nickname The Dumb Ox; Saint Thomas Aquinas was fat and had slow speech-- an uncharacteristic trait for Domenicans, the Order of Preachers, known for their skill in oratory and rhetoric.

Summa Theologica is his penultimate work, covering Epistomology and Ethics. The "Summary of Theology" was designed as an introductory text to the study of God, and it still read and taught in philosophy and theology classes. It is considered one of the finest works in the Western Canon. The Summa is set up in a "Question and Answer" format, where he posits a question, then answers it. If you've read a lot of Philosophy, Aquinas is nice because his format is clear, but so dense that my eyes gloss over if I read some of the long sections. The work was considered so important that at the great Council of Trent, Summa Theologica was placed on the altar with the Holy Bible and the Decretals of the Church.

But before the Summa was finished, Thomas Aquinas experienced a divine revelation that changed his life. He didn't say much about what he saw, but indicated that his vision was so fantastic that everything he had ever written-- including the great Summa-- was like "straw in the wind"; he abandoned his famous life's work. Overweight, overworked and in failing health, he was sent to the Second Council of Lyons to work for unity between the Latin and Greek churches. Within a few months, Thomas was dead.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is the patron of academics, scholars, students and learning, schools, colleges and universities, against storms and lightning. He is the patron saint of publishers, book sellers and pencil makers. He is the namesake of countless cities, schools and colleges.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Click for full size.

Truer words have rarer been spoken.

From Wondermark, "In which Elmer is always Irate".

I was commenting on a Catholic messageboard that I was going to make dinner for some priests in the archdiocese, but that one of the priests has Celiac and must eat gluten-free food-- I was asking for any recipe suggestions, especially for a gluten-free barbeque sauce.

Someone responded, "Celiac? Is that like being a Marionite?"

I keep my traffic stats public, because I don't have anything to hide. Scroll to the end of the content in the right column and see the "Over ### people served". If you click the number, you see my traffic stats. Most of it is kind of dull to most people, but fairly interesting to me.

The item that is the least important to me (other than its novelty factor) is the Recent Keyword Activity, which lists the words people search for to find this site-- current to the last 10 searches.

Looks like I'm holding at #6 for "altar server snot".

Hopefully I'll crack that top 5 soon.

Goodness, has life just been super-busy for everyone else? I've been a bit over my head lately. My day job is unbelievably busy and some days we have appointments scheduled until 6:30 at night or later. I'm taking some night classes while getting ready for some graduate school work, and it's finals time. My wife and I have a side business, Kansas Tees, and this is the busiest time of the year for us (business is down a little this spring, which is kind of a good thing. If we were as busy this year as we were last year, we would have to refuse some work). We're doing a fundraiser for Rebuilding Together soon, we helped with the parish golf tournament last weekend. The yard needs mowing, the dog needs a bath, the whole house is overdue for a top-to-bottom spring cleaning-- and I haven't even gotten to some of the kitchen remodel that's been three-quarters finished since August.

Phew.

That's the problem with the rat race.

In the end, we're all still rats.