Uh oh, I’ve started a pattern, and you know what that means. I’m sure to break it soon. Lol! Oh well, on with my linky list!
♥ Last night the SSJ choir was blessed to enjoy a brief hour with a prospective music director, who had just flown down from Salt Lake City, UT, where he had been attending the Sacred Music Colloquium XXII. Jeff, who as you know is also a church musician (or, as we used to call him in the old days, a “liturgy freak” :-D) had sent me the link to this video a while back, but I had not gathered what I thought would be the fortitude required to watch the whole thing. However, after our time with Dr. Weber, which included just a precious few minutes of chant instruction that for me (as one who has had only a smattering of exposure to reading and singing Gregorian chant) were very helpful, I was eager to get a glimpse into this fantastic week of musical and liturgical enrichment. So here’s the video, which I warn you is a) about an hour long, and b) only interesting to you if you are as much of a liturgy freak as I confess I am probably becoming. But even if you just click the play button and go about other business, you will enjoy some beautiful strains of sacred music.
Sacred, Beautiful, & Universal
♥ Paul Williams, Catholic Herald (UK) writes:
“Chiara Petrillo was a 28-year-old Italian mother who apparently refused life-saving cancer treatment that would have damaged or destroyed her baby. Her baby, Francesco, was born perfectly well. Chiara died.
Chiara’s funeral took place a few days ago in Rome. But Francesco was not her first baby. …read more...“
♥ Jen Fulwiler says, “If you have ears, you’re well aware of the song Somebody That I Used to Know by the artist Gotye. (On the off chance you haven’t yet heard it, just turn on the nearest radio; it’s probably playing.” I of course had to google it up as I apparently am earless. I listened long enough to get the gist of it, and to understand exactly what Jen is talking about.
♥ In Out of the Ruins, (a First Things article from 2005 I discovered via another article entirely), R.R. Reno discusses his conversion, and includes thoughtful commentary on Augustine and Newman as he defends leaving the Episcopal Church for Rome after having published a book entitled In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity. I’m still digesting it (as would be the case any time either Augustine or Newman is quoted, let alone both in one piece) so I merely pass it on without further ado, other than to note that it is a very different story from the one Paul tells, which reminds me of this paragraph from Submerged in the Ocean, which I could almost have written:
By the time I was received into the Catholic Church 15 years ago I had already read a number of stories of conversions to the faith—Newman’s Apologia, Avery Dulles’ A Testimonial to Grace, Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home, and many others in essay or book form. I still love reading conversion stories, not just from people whose background is like mine (Evangelical and Calvinist), but from a wide variety of religious, philosophical, and cultural backgrounds. Each one reminds me yet again that, in Chesterton’s words, “The Church is a house with a hundred gates; and no two men enter at exactly the same angle.” Yet entering from a hundred gates they all find a welcome since, as Hilaire Belloc put it, the Church is “the natural home of the Human Spirit.”
♥ Would you believe, I can’t remember where I saw this book recommendation, but I’m glad I saved the link to Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education. It’s now on my list.
♥ In Memento Mori Simcha Fisher offers up a dose of perspective.
♥ SDG Reviews ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’, plus his not-to-be-missed take on Snow White in the two part The Fairest One of All (1) and (2)
♥ And finally, since I opened today’s links with something musical, I’ll leave you with this absolutely heart-breakingly exquisite rendition of
“Depuis le jour” from Louise,
by the equally exquisite
Renee Fleming.
