Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival (25 January 2015)

     Happy Sunday! Welcome to Sunday Snippets, A Catholic Carnival.  Sunday Snippets® is a weekly convocation of Catholic bloggers sharing links to their posts from the past week.  The main gathering is here at This That and the Other Thing, home of out gracious hostess RAnn.

The Communion of Saints

Yesterday was the feast day of St. Francis De Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.  St. Francis, who died almost four centuries ago, was ahead of his time in his concern for the devotional life of laypeople. I'll have more to say about this wonderful Saint in the future.
      Yesterday was also the feast day of number of less well-known saints , including Saints Thyrsus and Projectus.  Their biography at Catholic Online [here] is rather brief; it reads, in full:

Martyrs of an unknown year and location. Their Acts [i.e., histories] are no longer extant.

That’s it.  We don’t know when they lived, where they lived, or what they did. All we know is that they are Saints . . . which is really all that matters in the end.  St. Paul says:

. . . Run so as to win.  Every athlete exercises discipline in every way.  They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. (1 Corinthians 9:24-25)

     That crown is the crown of sanctity, if we persevere to the end. We are all called to be Saints with God in Heaven, but we can’t all be a St. Francis De Sales.  Most of us, just like the vast majority of saintly Christians through the centuries, will be forgotten a few generations after our passing from this world.  All the things that seem so important to us today will likewise have disappeared.  And that’s fine, because there’s only one thing that ultimately matters, that eternally matters: that, by the Grace of God, we be Saints.

    

This week also saw the annual March for Life in Washington on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s baleful Roe vs. Wade decision, so naturally there was emphasis on the law and human life in most of the week’s posts; below are the snippets from Principium et Finis:

Monday – A little-known composer, but a beautiful setting for a beloved traditional prayer: “Schola Regina Pacis – Stabat Mater (J. Rheinberger) [here]  

Tuesday – A few facts to consider the next time someone tells you that it’s a waste of time to vote pro-life: “Abortion Myth #17” [here] 

Thursday – A Throwback from last May in which I argue, contra some libertarians, that redefining marriage is an assault on liberty:  “If You Want To Defend Freedom, Protect Traditional Marriage” [here]

Friday – I know that the argumentum ad Satanam isn’t very fashionable these days, but Planned Parenthood’s new pro-abortion “prayers” are truly Diabolical: “‘Choice’And The Father Of Lies” [here]