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A timely reflection on St Catherine of Siena

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The full version of Butler's The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints is available at the Internet Archive and in a conveniently arranged online edition at Bartleby's Great Books Online . The 1894 Benzinger Brothers edition is very much abridged but is useful for short daily reflections on the lives of the saints. It can be found at the Sacred Texts website and put onto your mobile device as part of the excellent iPieta app . I often use iPieta for various things and yesterday evening, in preparation for the various relevant spiritual and liturgical occurrences of today, I read the abridged entry for St Catherine of Siena. The abridged version adds short reflections for each day, probably written by the editor John Gilmary Shea. For St Catherine of Siena, it reads: The seraphic St. Catherine willingly sacrificed the delights of contemplation to labor for the Church and the Apostolic See. How deeply do the troubles of the Church and the consequent

Accipe signaculum: Receive the seal

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Fr Zuhlsdorf has written today in response to a query about a Bishop slightly changing the form of Confirmation (See: ASK FATHER: Non-standard form for Confirmation – valid? ) In the newest English version of the Rite of Confirmation, the form is: "N., be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit." In our new England and Wales and Scotland 2015 version, beautifully printed by the CTS on quality off-white paper with fine binding, the form is set in large type in bold and in small caps, making it clear that this is the really important bit . So I entirely agree with Fr Z that priests and bishops should just use the proper form for the sacraments and not leave the faithful in any doubt about the validity of the sacraments. He makes the point forcefully and has done so often in the past, particularly with regard to the sacrament of penance. Without wishing in any way to detract from this important point, I have another quibble with the form of Confirmation in our current Eng

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