Oops

This message appeared tonight when I opened my browser:

Read that top line again. 

I know Google is notorious for pranks, but I'm not sure I believe this is one...

Thirty Days Prayer to St Joseph

Ever blessed and glorious St. Joseph, kind and loving father, and helpful friend of all in sorrow! Thou art the good father and protector of orphans, the defender of the defenseless, the patron of those in need and sorrow. Look kindly on my request. My sins have drawn down on me the just displeasure of my God, and so I am surrounded with unhappiness. To thee, O loving guardian of the Family of Nazareth, do I go for help and protection. 

Listen, then, I beg of thee, with fatherly concern, to my earnest prayers, and obtain for me the favor I ask. (Here make your request.)

I ask it by the infinite mercy of the Eternal Son of God, which moved Him to take our nature and to be born into this world of sorrow. 

I ask it by the weariness and suffering thou didst endure when thou didst find no shelter at the inn of Bethlehem for the Holy Virgin, nor a place where the Son of God could be born. Then, being everywhere refused, thou hadst to allow the Queen of Heaven to give birth to the world’s Redeemer in a cave. 

I ask it by the loveliness and power of that sacred Name, Jesus, which thou didst confer on the adorable Infant. I ask it by that painful torture thou didst feel at the prophecy of holy Simeon, which declared the Child Jesus and His holy Mother future victims of our sins and of their great love for us. 

I ask it through thy sorrow and pain of soul when the Angel declared to thee that the life of the Child Jesus was sought by His enemies. From their evil plan thou hadst to flee with Him and His Blessed Mother into Egypt. I ask it by all the suffering, weariness and labors of that long and dangerous journey. 

I ask it by all thy care to protect the Sacred Child and His Immaculate Mother during thy second journey, when thou wert ordered to return to thine own country. 

I ask it by thy peaceful life in Nazareth, where thou didst meet with so many joys and sorrows. I ask it by thy great distress when the adorable Child was lost to thee and His Mother for three days. 

I ask it by thy joy at finding Him in the Temple, and by the comfort thou didst find at Nazareth, while living in the company of the Child Jesus. I ask it by the wonderful submission He showed in His obedience to thee. 

I ask it by the perfect love and conformity thou didst show in accepting the Divine order to depart from this life and from the company of Jesus and Mary. 

I ask it by the joy which filled thy soul when the Redeemer of the world, triumphant over death and Hell, entered into the possession of His kingdom and led thee into it with special honors. 

I ask it through Mary’s glorious Assumption and through that endless happiness thou hast with her in the presence of God. 

O good Father! I beg of thee, by all thy sufferings, sorrows and joys, to hear me and obtain for me what I ask. (Here mention your petitions or think of them.) 

Obtain for all those who have asked my prayers everything that is useful to them in the plan of God. Finally, my dear Patron and Father, be with me and all who are dear to me in our last moments, that we may eternally sing the praises of Jesus, Mary and Joseph! 

A blameless life, O St. Joseph, may we lead, by thy kind patronage from danger freed. Amen.

Thirty Days Prayer to St. Joseph

Source: Favorite Prayers to St Joseph

Hymn for the Pope: Long Live the Pope!

Can be sung to the tune of I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say

Long live the Pope! His praises sound
Again and yet again:
His rule is over space and time;
His throne the hearts of men:
All hail! the Shepherd King of Rome,
The theme of loving song:
Let all the earth his glory sing,
And heav'n the strain prolong,

Beleaguered by the foes of earth,
Beset by hosts of hell,
He guards the loyal flock of Christ,
A watchful sentinel:
And yet, amid the din and strife,
The clash of mace and sword,
He bears alone the shepherd staff,
This champion of the Lord.

His signet is the Fisherman's;
No sceptre does he bear;
In meek and lowly majesty
He rules from Peter's Chair:
And yet from every tribe and tongue,
From every clime and zone,
Three hundred million voices sing,
The glory of his throne.

Then raise the chant, with heart and voice,
In church and school and home:
"Long live the Shepherd of the Flock!
Long live the Pope of Rome!"
Almighty Father, bless his work,
Protect him in his ways,
Receive his prayers,
fulfill his hopes,
And grant him "length of days."

Hymn from the St Gregory Hymnal, Complete Edition, 1947

Words by Hugh T. Henry, (C) 1908 J. Fischer & Bro., slightly alt.

7 Quick Takes: I will probably never post one of these on a Friday again Edition

I know, I know! It's not Friday. Fridays are increasingly inconvenient. However, Liz and Sana both posted this week, and I have been feeling generally uncommunicative of late, so...

1. I live in Queens now! It's amazing how very different it is to live 30m from Midtown Manhattan by subway, as opposed to 45m by bus...

2. By "the city," everyone in this area means not just NYC, but Manhattan. Lifelong Queens residents I've met here refer to "going into the city" for a night out or some such thing, even though they already live in NYC.

3. I work north of the city and live east, so I have to pass through the city to get home. This makes it wildly convenient for me to attend a lecture / special Mass / meetup at a bar / dinner with friends on my way home from work. I've been here two weeks and already done all those things. I've missed life moving at this pace. :)

4. I spend 2-2.5h (round trip) commuting every day, depending on the train schedules. That sounds crazy, I know, but between doing my makeup on the train, iBreviary, my rosary, audible.com, and my smartphone, I'm pretty much fine. (I've considered mobile blogging, actually, but my phone's software just upgraded itself, and the new autocorrect feature is really dumb.) I get in the occasional phone call, but there half an hour smack in the middle of my commute when I'm underground, which is slightly inconvenient to say the least.

5. I popped a fuse today in my apartment! My problem was that I was trying to boil water in the hot pot AND toast an English muffin in my toaster oven AT THE SAME TIME! Shocking, I know. The joys living in an old building, eh?

6. But habemus internet! After only two weeks of calling Verizon at least every other day... Turns out, all I had to do was disregard what all the people on the phone said and let the technician come here and connect things outside my place for nearly an hour.

7. And, because I haven't used an image yet for this post, I give you a tie for the week's best memes from facebook. The first would actually have been better as an old-fashioned chain email or something, where you see all the text first and the image last, but ah well!

Seriously, what did we do before the internet? I love people. :D

Fun Fact

I've been a New Yorker for less than a week, and already I've joined two choirs.

Ridiculous much? :)

On the Papal Resignation: Words of Comfort

...because what the world needs is another blogger posting her two cents. Still, here I am.

After the initial shock of this news resided, I looked back over papal/curial decisions in recent months and could see that some of these may well have been Papa Benny preparing for his own departure (for I am certain this decision was long-discerned).

And then I felt ashamed of my lack of virtue. My fear betrayed that my great love for and trust in the holy father laid not in the Vicar of Christ nor in the Holy Spirit but in Joseph Ratzinger. Surely this great man has been an inspiration to me personally, and has had great impact on my life, but ought I not to have more faith in the Holy Spirit Himself!? At the very least, should my unshakable faith in our dear Papa not extend to trusting his decisions?

I readily admit that the sorrow at the loss of such a wonderful pope has not sunk in yet at all. But it is natural to look to the future, and in this vein, I offer a few thoughts of comfort.

-The Church has had a possibly unprecedented string of holy (arguably saintly) popes in the past hundred years or so. This seems to be something that most Catholics value (save those who take it for granted).

-That doctrine your friends/family/co-workers are hoping will be changed with the next pope? No danger of that happening.

-You know that cardinal whose name people keep mentioning, but you think he'd be a terrible pope because of XYZ? You can be sure that other cardinals, who are paying much more attention to each other than you are, have noticed said character flaw (or whatever) in his person, even if your Catholic friends or well-known journalists don't. I wouldn't be too concerned.

And even if the next pope is a man whose election concerns you, perhaps you can take some comfort in this legend I heard in a lecture in grad school:

Back in the heyday of the Arian controversy, there was an influential queen who reeeeeally wanted Church teaching changed to the Arian position (because obviously her opinion was the correct one). So she schemed and whatnot, and sure enough, when the pope died, and her right-hand man, a prominent Arian bishop, was elected to be his successor.

...at which time this devoted Arian pulled a complete 180 and supported the true doctrine of Jesus' divinity.

Pope St Celestine V, pray for us, for Pope Benedict, and for the man who will be our next pope.

Holy Spirit, increase my trust in you.

On Super Bowl Commercials and Sexism

This is not meant to be a full-blown post. Just my two cents on a discussion that, this time, confuses me as much as it frustrates me.

This Audi commercial is one that I enjoyed, though not enough to rank it in my top ten yesterday:

The internets* are all incensed because of this commercial, which is apparently about a high schooler going up to a girl he doesn't know at all and forcing a kiss on her without her consent.

I don't know about you, but that's not the story I saw.

I saw a self-conscious kid who finally got up the guts to announce his feelings to the friend he's had a crush on for months (or years)... a kid to whom his new black eye doesn't matter at all, in the exhilaration of a long-awaited risk finally taken, and in the excited hope that it might have paid off.

And you know what? I'm okay with that message. Sure, I think a kiss is not the ideal way to open such a conversation, but he manned up and made his intentions known, leaving the decision in her hands. Some days, that sounds like a dream come true!

This video leaves a lot to be inferred, much of which reflects more on the viewer than the directors. For those particularly sensitive to misogyny, I can see how this could be upsetting. But I simply cannot believe that their read of the situation is the more plausible one.

*Or at least the corner of the internets that I've been inhabiting lately...

Top 10 Super Bowl Commercials

So... I've been failing miserably at my plan to blog... but as I usually enjoy the Super Bowl commercials as much as the game itself, I present to you a Special Edition! My favorites from last night's game. The best ones are, of course, at the bottom, so if you have a limited attention span, skip down to the really good ones rather than wasting your time on pretty good. :)

Most Honorable Mention: Gangnam style pistachios: Well executed, and smart, even if it wasn't one of my favorites. You know someone had to do it.

10. GoDaddy.com - I'll be honest, half of why I'm listing this is because it was a clever commercial in and of itself, but half (or more) is because GoDaddy actually managed to produce a non-smutty commercial. I think that actually deserves some appreciation in light of their history.

9. BlackBerry could use the product makeover, and the good press. As a former BlackBerry user, I appreciate this commercial, and wish them the best of luck with their new product.

8. Mercedes's Deal with the Devil idea well cleverly executed, down to the actual Latin on the contract!

7. This pair of Century 21 ads had great potential to be stupid and annoying; I was rather surprised to find them entertaining!

6. The ending just makes this Tide commercial. All's fair in love and sports, eh?

5. Continuing on the theme of sports fan commercials, these Bud Light ones tied in the New Orleans voodoo tradition. While I don't recommend the practice of voodoo, I know just enough crazy sports fans to see that these are pretty spot on!

4. I can't even remember the last time I saw a Milk Moustache commercial! This was fun.

3. An M&M singing Meatloaf, with pictures to match. Keepin' it classy, M&M.

2. Oreo Whisper Fight! Remember how everyone listened to the librarian when she shushed us as kids? Well played, Oreo.

1. But the favorite? Taco Bell! A great idea, well executed, and memorable (even if perhaps more memorable for elements other than product placement).

Bonus! This one technically didn't count as a commercial, since it was just a CBS spot, but my family enjoyed it. Sadly, the image preview spoils the surprise, but it was still well done.

In case you have desire to see more, I also give honorable mentions to Audi, Sketchers, Best Buy, Axe, Pepsi Next, Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai.

Hope y'all had a fun Super Bowl Sunday (even if you spent it avoiding the game itself)! Back soon, I promise...

Year in Review: 2012

So apparently this is a thing, and it seemed like a good idea today. Except that I'm watching Arrested Development with my sister, and am consequently going to be lazy and make it a year in pictures/videos. :D

January

The Mundelein crowd at the Society for Catholic Liturgy Conference

February

5th annual 80s prom + best friend's visit!

March

My sister's visit led to two hours watching pandas. No regrets.

April

Easter with the Gilligans! 'Nuff said.

May

I became a godmother to a beautiful Byzantine baby boy!

Priesthood ordinations are always such a gift!

June

Surprise 60th birthday party for my mom!

Another ordination: this one became a college reunion!

August

Published: My first academic paper!

A typical Atlanta experience: the long weekend in Florida!

September

It was a good birthday. :D

October

Published! Just a small essay, but still. :)

First pumpkin I ever carved!

November

Not the same kind of published, but still fun.

My Atlanta friends threw me a great farewell party. Miss them already!

December

Perk of being home: More family!

Here's to 2013! May the craziness continue...

7 Quick Takes, Christmas Music Edition

This is not a proper 7 quick takes, but I haven't exactly been adhering to the schedule either. :)

1. First, my old favorite: Cantique de Noël. O Holy Night is okay, but it's so much richer in French! Also way more Catholic. Here is my old blog post explaining and translating.

2. Next, a Polish Lullaby to baby Jesus, Lulajże Jezuniu. Translation here.

3. What's that? You want a carol in English? How silly! A silly brief English madrigal, then, if you insist: Masters in This Hall.

4. Can't forget that beloved German lullaby Still, Still, Still. Translation here.

5. A two-for-one: Carol of the Bells and Gesù Bambino.

6. You'd all be concerned about me (and rightly so) without at least one Latin carol, so I present to you Tomás Luis de Victoria's setting of O Magnum Mysterium. Translation here.

7. And, mostly because I missed it so much at Midnight Mass, a second setting of the same text, this time by Morten Lauridsen, whom I only just now discovered is both American and still living! Holy crap. This man's music is classic. Freaking awesome WSJ article about him.

Merry Christmas to you all, now and throughout the season! I have so many favorites, I just might pull this trick again next Friday. :)

Movie-Book Reviews - Spoilers Abound

Nota bene: Many spoilers below. Consider yourselves warned.

A fascinating opportunity is afforded us in this day and age: to watch a film adaptation of a book you've just read. Tonight was the third time in a month I've done this, and it's got my wheels turning...

First was Anna Karenina. Liz convinced me to read the book last winter, and while I didn't like it terribly much then, the more it's sunk into my brain, the more I've grown to like it. Brief summary: Contrasts four couples and shows the way infidelity destroys relationships from the inside out. First couple is unswervingly faithful. Husband of the second couple is a serial adulterer whose wife reluctantly forgives him the first time and turns a blind eye subsequent times. Third couple didn't marry for love (at least she didn't), and she becomes unfaithful, eventually leaving him. Fourth couple began in adultery and were never able to marry, and the fundamental insecurity this of this eats away at both of them from the inside, causing them to mistrust and hurt each other even while at the same moment they wish to be loving. All of this is most dramatically encapsulated in Anna herself, who, bearing the stresses caused by husband and lover, takes her own life, leaving each of the men who loved her alone to grieve. Anyway, excellent book. Great insights into human nature, and enjoyable to boot. (Well, except for the mini-essays on Tolstoy's political topic du livre, but that's just nineteenth-century Russian literature.)

The new film version with Kiera Knightly is almost certainly the most faithful film adaptation of a book that I have ever seen. I don't think a single line was added; certainly many things were omitted, but nothing that impacted the plot or characters in ways that the filmmakers were not able to convey visually. They did a fantastic job of portraying a whole character in a few shots of the camera (especially with Stiva!), and the stage conventions were used to great effect, I thought. I hear that it was difficult to follow if one didn't know the story coming into it, which I had suspected, but that's not necessarily a defect in the production so much as a different sort of art form, one that requires a different sort of preparation, much like Shakespeare's less obvious plays (i.e., basically everything that wasn't a comedy).

Next was The Hobbit! I didn't grow up on Tolkien like many of my friends from college and beyond, so I had a much milder review than some. Still, I read the book in high school, and reread the first third in the days before the show so as to be appropriately prepared. Since they had about as much time as the full Lord of the Rings Trilogy but only 300 pages to cover, as well as an incredibly dependable and clearly established fan base, I thought this might be an opportunity for the filmmakers to be meticulously faithful to the book. And indeed, the world of Middle Earth was fantastic as ever, and its characters wonderfully introduced.

However, important conversations were kept intact... except for an obviously missing line or two. Events were pulled out of sequence, dilemmas solved in ways that were close but markedly different (which often took no less time to tell), heroic moments created where dumb luck had originally sufficed, back story elaborated from other Tolkien source material. That last one I actually thought was a brilliant idea. Long review short: This film made me consider whether a film adaptation of a book really needed to be strictly faithful to its book.

But a conversation with a friend who grew up on Tolkien and has read The Hobbit dozens of times throughout his life reminded me: the tiny changes in the plot served to change the characters, to make them more glamorous, in a sense, more palatable to modern audiences. A treasure hunt wasn't good enough; instead an old villain was resurrected to persecute the travelers. Dumb luck wasn't sufficient to get them out of a jam; somebody needed to have the perfect solution in his pocket. I'm still feeling the tension of appealing to audiences and whatnot, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened had the filmmakers trusted the author a bit more... Still, I'll be glad to see the next two; I'll just come in with somewhat lowered expectations.

Finally, Les Misérables. Again, didn't grow up on this. Read an abridged version of the book in high school, but all I remember from that was the episode with the bishop and the candlesticks, and how impressed my classmates were by my French accent when we read aloud. And something vague about Javert chasing Valjean through Paris. Saw the musical a few years later, mere weeks before it closed on Broadway; likewise, I remember little except that the actor playing Jean Valjean has an impressively wide/high vocal range and incredible tone. I only learned this past October that a new film version was coming to theaters this month, so I bought an audiobook version from audible.com - whom I highly recommend, by the way, for their products, pricing, and customer service. Outstanding!

Am I glad I read the book! At times, the film lingered over a moment; other times, I saw chapters and chapters running through my memory during a single pan of the camera, understandably glossed over but enriching my outlook nonetheless. Some things were changed, it's true: Cosette was smarter and less oblivious; Marius was more decisive and also less oblivious; Eponine was much prettier; Javert more human; Thenardier somewhat less despicable. The ending was padded a bit, but it made for a nice closing number for the musical, and was a pleasant extension of the book's themes.

I don't know how they could have improved Gavroche; I wanted him to have more screen time, but that might just be because I enjoyed him so much. I did miss old man Gillenormand, though. He was present, but only in passing; though I knew there wouldn't be much of him, I did miss his spunk.

As I was reflecting on all this, though, I was struck by how noble every major character was (with exception of the Thenardiers), and how driven by passion of some sort or other: Marius may have rather floated along through life in some respects, but he lived driven first by reverence for his father's memory, then by his love for Cosette. Cosette was driven first by simple love for her father, then for Marius. Fantine was noble inside, despite what she had been reduced to; she did all for her little girl, she lived and died for Cosette. Jean Valjean began the story aimless, but soon lived for God, through the figure of the bishop; later, he lived for Cosette and her well-being. Javert lived for the law, and it wasn't until he saw that the law might not be the perfect arbiter of morality that he had always trusted -- until he was forced to doubt the perfection of the object of his passion -- that he wavered. Even the Thénardiers had a passion: money.

All of these reviews combined, I am left with a question: Why do I read these things, watch them? Why do I immerse myself in these stories? The point is not to judge how a movie lives up to the book that inspired it, tempting though that may at times be; the point is to lose myself for but a moment in a work of art, in a thing of beauty which reveals the transcendent, the truth of the human condition, God Himself.

Sure, there are external factors at work in every story: How might Anna and Vronsky's relationship have turned out if she could have filed for divorce without Karenin's permission? Certainly Levin and Kitty's love seemed strong, but how would it weather the years and their hardships? Perhaps Fontine could have made a wonderful little life for herself and Cosette in Montrueil sur Mer had society been set up such that having a child out of wedlock would not cost Fontine all potential friends and employers. If the government didn't imprison a man nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread, then put him on eternal parole and deny him any chance at reform -- if petty theft did not transform a man, in society's eyes, into Cain: marked indelibly for his crime and identified primarily by it forever -- then what might Jean Valjean have become, without the incredible suffering that pushed him to such greatness?

But asking these questions is like second-guessing the events of our own lives. What if I'd applied for that promotion earlier? What if I'd gone to school elsewhere? What if I'd begun to work in a different field, lived in a different city? The what if's never stop, if we indulge them; but they are at least safer to make about the lives of fictional characters than about our own lives and those of our loved ones.

In the end, why do I read? To be transported to another life, to learn from another's experiences, to be enriched by another's loves. For hope, for the reminder that adversity can be overcome, even if it leaves a mark. Because there is truth in every story, and exposure to truth -- even if the same can't always be said about facts -- is always good. And just a little bit of because I can. :)

Cor Iesu, in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae, miserere nobis.

PS - I am particularly interested in movie reviews from those of you who grew up on the musical.

7 quick takes, Thanksgiving edition

All photos to be filled in later, when I'm not posting from my phone.

7 things I am thankful for this week:

1) My family and their love for each other. How blest we are to have no one estranged on either side!

2) Modern technology that permits the amount of travel we all do to spend holidays together.

3) Road trip sing-alongs with my sister. No one else is quite as good at blasting the volume and belting out so loud that we can still hear ourselves over the music.

4) My mother's cooking. Other relatives' cooking, too, though to a lesser degree.

5) The fact that, when asked what we want to drink at my grandmother's house, the most common response is "water-flavored water." Yes, this apparent redundancy is actually necessary.

6) Played cards with my grandma and cousins today. Usually cards for us means some variant of Rummy: this time, Liverpool and 65. I actually won Liverpool (as opposed to my usual vyIng for last)! This despite committing three boneheads over the course of the game...

7) Now that my parents have Netflix on their tv, I'd been holding off on a couple brief shows I want to rewatch, in hopes of hooking them in the process. Get home and find they've been planning to get into Firefly once I get home. Watched the pilot tonight, over ice cream and moscato. It's nice to be home. :)