Sunday book notices: Fr Lanzetta on Fatima, and the "Sword and Serpent" trilogy

The Caxton Celebration - William Caxton showing specimens of his printing to King Edward IV and his Queen

Fatima at the Heart of the Church: God's vision of history and oblative spirituality by Fr Serafino M. Lanzetta
Fr Lanzetta explains that Fatima offers us a theology of history and that "history is not already written to the detriment of the freedom of God and of humanity." On the contrary, he argues,
Fatima tells us that history can change, must change, that history is the result of the freedom of people over which rules God’s Providence, with a look of love imbued with justice and mercy.
His book goes on to examine the message of Fatima with particular focus on the offering up of penance in atonement for our sins and for those of the world in accordance with Our Lady's wishes. A sometimes challenging book that rewards perseverance.

Sword and Serpent by Taylor Marshall
The Tenth Region of the Night: Sword and Serpent Book II by Taylor Marshall
Storm of Fire and Blood: Sword and Serpent Book III by Taylor Marshall
I wasn't expecting Sword and Serpent to be as good as I found it to be, so in case you are skeptical of Catholic historical novels, I recommend that you give this one a try. Having finished it, I immediately bought books II and III and was not disappointed. The series is set in the time of  Diocletian and builds up tension as the persecution gains pace.

Taylor Marshall manages to weave in various saints of the period in original yet convincing ways, keeping up the momentum throughout in what proves to be an uplifting series of thoroughly enjoyable thrillers.

(Links go to the Amazon UK page for each book. I link to the Kindle edition because that is how I read most new books these days, but you can easily click around if you want the paper and glue version. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Święcone - blessing of Easter food

Image
The blessing of meat, eggs and bread at the end of Lent is a Catholic tradition that has been preserved by the Polish people. A Polish family in my parish asked to bless their baskets of food (containing these items) on Holy Saturday so I arranged to do so at 11am, letting others know also. Above you can see a basket ( Święcone ) that was prepared as a gift for me. When I was asked to do this blessing by another Polish family a couple of years ago, I was intrigued to find that in my 1860 copy of the Roman Ritual ( above ), there is, precisely, a blessing of lamb, eggs and bread for Holy Saturday. This convinced me that the devotion kept by the Poles must have been something more widely practised in past centuries. The immediate explanation might be that this is the blessing of food at the end of the Lenten fast. It must be more than that. People would have abstained from meat, and from lacticinia (including eggs) but not from bread. Perhaps there is a more specifically eucharis
Read more

Beachy Head and Lewes

Image
We did manage to visit Beachy Head yesterday on the way over to Shoreham-on-Sea. It was a good blustery English summer's day which added to the experience of walking near the edge of the highest coastal chalk cliff in Britain. Above is one of the photos I took. I might get a chance to stitch together a YouTube video about the site. Fr Sean Finnegan (of the Valle Adurni blog) was, as ever, a magnificent host, not only setting us up for our Masses but also giving us an excellent lunch. He has posted an amusing lament on the subject of his Church: Oh Lord! A prayer . Today, we took the train to Lewes to visit Fr Richard Biggerstaff at the parish of St Pancras. Fr Jonathan Martin is staying with him during the summer. Below, you can see the fine Church; thankfully, the Ditchling altar has survived various phases of "re-ordering". I realised today that I love serving Mass in the usus antiquior as well as saying it. I served Fr Briggs' Mass after saying my own and tried t
Read more

SPUC Clergy information day

Image
SPUC today held a Clergy Information Day. Unfortunately, because of an urgent meeting I had to be late for this so I missed the first half of the morning lecture by Fr John Fleming. I could catch up with most of it from his notes and look forward to the published version when it is available from SPUC. Fr Fleming was speaking about the rights of the unborn under international law, the pro-life battle at the UN and the nature of the early human embryo. As a lecture, it was certainly not "dumbed down". He presented some of the latest research on the biochemistry of the human embryo in relationship with the mother and then tied this in to the philosophical question of the status of the embryo, dealing with such hoary chestnuts as twinning and the differentiation of cells in the embryo. It was a most helpful and informative presentation: intellectually challenging but well put together. I think that the sheer quality of these presentations has been the important factor in the gr
Read more

When people walk away with Holy Communion

Image
It happens from time to time that someone will come up for Holy Communion which they receive into their hands, and then walk away with the sacred host. A priest friend asked me to write something about what we can do. Let’s think first of all of the actual situation and then about some possible preventative measures. In terms of canon law, the desecration of the sacred species is a crime, punishable by automatic excommunication. In most cases, the person does not know what they are doing or how wrong it is, so I’ll assume that is the case (rather than deliberate desecration, perhaps for satanic purposes or as an atheistic stunt.) But even if the person does not know the seriousness of what they are doing, it is still objectively a very grave matter. So we can’t just let it happen. A pastoral complication is that people don’t like to be “shown up” or embarrassed in front of the congregation so they can easily become annoyed or aggressive in their confusion. Therefore we need to ke
Read more