Closing the chasm between heaven and hell

Readings: Amos 6:1a.4-7; Psalm 146:7-10; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31

Jesus Christ, as our reading from 1 Timothy so directly states, is "the King of kings and Lord of lords" (1 Tim 6:15). Hence, it is Christ who bridges the infinite chasm between heaven and earth, as Saint Catherine of Siena mystically explained (Dialogues IV. III. VIII). It is also Christ who can bridge the chasm between heaven and hell. It should make a big difference in each Christian's life that someone has, indeed, risen from the dead, namely Christ the Lord.

You can wait for a sign, hope for the visit of a ghost, like the rich man's request for his brothers, or like the ghosts mercifully sent to Ebeneezer Scrooge, but the Sign of Jonah should be sufficient for us (Luke 11:29-32). The end of this pericope points towards Christ's resurrection. In a way similar to that of the rich man's five brothers, not only can you listen to and heed the words of Christ, you can believe He is risen of the dead. Proof of that belief is repentance.

Unlike the parable of the Good Samaritan, by all indications, in today's parable, Lazarus and rich man are both Jews. Hence, the bosom of Abraham and Abraham's appeal to Moses and the prophets. By contrast, in the story of the Good Samaritan, the man who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead, seems to be Jewish, a man making his way to the holy city of Jerusalem for religious observance (See Luke 10:29-37). Like the rich man in today's Gospel, it was the beaten man's fellow Israelites who didn't simply fail to help him but actively avoided and evaded him.

It is the Good Samaritan who makes himself a neighbor. And so, it is with reference to the Good Samaritan that the Lord instructs His followers to "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37). The rich man was indifferent to Lazarus. Just as doubt is not the opposite of faith, hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is the opposite of love. Like love, hate requires some passion. Indifference requires nothing. It is nothing. Indifference to the suffering of another is a form of nihilism. Like many Gospel readings taken from Luke in this part of the Sunday lectionary for Year C, this one easily sends the preacher off in search of a loophole or an escape hatch.

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, by Heinrich Aldegrever, 1554

A major theme of Pope Francis' pontificate was our need to counter indifference by not being indifferent. In an excerpt from Pope Francis' homily given at a Mass in Saint Peter's Square in the summer of 2014, the Gospel for which was Matthew 11:25-30, is more cogruent with today's Gospel reading:

This invitation of Jesus reaches to our day, and extends to the many brothers and sisters oppressed by life’s precarious conditions, by existential and difficult situations and at times lacking valid points of reference. In the poorest countries, but also on the outskirts of the richest countries, there are so many weary people, worn out under the unbearable weight of neglect and indifference. Indifference: human indifference causes the needy so much pain! And worse, the indifference of Christians!

With everything going on right now, it is urgent that we overcome our indifference. Empathy is not toxic! But lack of empathy, which is indifference, is deadly. If we take our bearings from Christ, it is deadly in more ways than one. By this I don't mean engaging in more social media hacktivism.

It seems that we put far more emphasis on sins of commission than on sins of omission. Even when it comes to sins of commission, it is important to distinguish between sins of strength and those of weakness. God is very merciful when it comes to sins of weakness but, as scripture teaches, quite harsh when it comes to sins of strength, be they sins of omission or commission.

Both hate and indifference are potentially damnable. As a Roman Catholic, I believe in hell. I don't believe that hell is empty. As far as who might be damned, God decides. Between the horns of the false dilemma- between a slack universalism and the straw of man of "infernalism"- there is a lot of space. As Jesus often intimated, it probably won't be those who you think that will be damned, that is, the prostitutes, tax collectors, etc., but perhaps more "respectable" people.

In any case, the rich man had many opportunities, even daily opportunities it seems, to close the chasm between himself and Lazarus. He not only chose not to but may have only been vaguely aware of Lazarus' existence. The weak, sore ridden, hungry man, whose sores the dogs licked, who sat outside his gate day after day was of no interest to him. He seemingly wore fine clothes and dined sumptuously each day with a trouble-free conscience. One prophet to whom he could've listened was Amos, who declared "Woe to the complacent in Zion!" (Amos 6:1).

"That we may delight in Your will"

Friday means time for a traditio. As we approach the end of the ninth month of 2025, it seems to me like this year started just a short while ago. Tumultuous, I think, is the best word to describe this year, which marks the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. But, then, I think the past twenty-five years have been pretty tumultuous.

With a deep awareness that I am writing this on a "social media platform," albeit a somewhat outdated and outmoded one, I can't help but ponder how much of the tumult is a result of the the digital devolution. It's beyond my competency to quantify it with any precision. So, I will just assert that it's played a very large role.

The so-called "information super highway," far from being an equalizer has been a road to nowhere, tipping the balance of power in ways that were unimaginable to most of us twenty-five years ago. We are truly fascinated by nothingness virtually all day and every day. It isn't just information overload. It's overload of meaningless, pointless "content" designed to distract and divide us.

Much of this, of course, has to do with the algorithmic way most social media works. The result of this is living each day somewhere between outrage and despair as we make desperate appeals to other people who largely think like us. There is no substitute for person-to-person engagement and involvement in activities that enable us to engage with others.

Diversity is not a threat. It's lack of diversity we should be worried about. By "diversity," I don't mean some kind of forced social experiment. Yet, most people seem to want less diversity, especially diversity of opinion, and prefer their interactions to be mediated, filtered through the rage machine. This arises from and reinforces our passive-aggressive nature.

I think there needs to be a collective realization of all of the above and more. Then there needs to be a collective determination, a peaceful and determined social revolution, to take our personal and collective humanity back. In addition to grasping the deadly game of the algorithim, we need to understand the biology behind it, which is weaponized. Clifford Stoll's 1995 book Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway was quite prescient.

In light of recent events, I'm struck, once again, by how everyone feels compelled to put out a statement on everything and anything. We need to reclaim our right to remain silent!

These days, I limit myself to a two days a week of social media exposure. I take it as a healthy sign that when I dip my digital toe back into the stream I don't find the temperature of the water conducive to jumping in. The question is, to what end? Back to the biology, it isn't for any good end and seems to me more and more to be self-indulgent.

The closest experience I've had to jumping back onto a streaming social media platform is that of when I quit drinking a number of years ago. Now, when I am somewhere people are drinking, after a while you really start to notice a shift in behavior, one that seems invisible to those imbibing.

I am happy for this blog to be my primary medium. One of the main reasons is that, while I will certainly post a link on the other platforms for which I have accounts, only people who want to will read what I've written.

I am tempted to go into a lot more detail, giving examples of the assertions I am making. However, I'm not going to do that. My spiritual reading right now is a book that takes aim at the results of what I am trying to describe: "You are a disciple of the system that tutors you, where you turn on a daily basis for guidance on living." Hence, the author concludes, most of us are Disciples of the Internet.

One result of internet disciplehsip is the demand for quick, easy answers. It programs you for instant replies. As a result, any "notion of lingering before God doesn’t fit with the pace we’ve come to expect" (Experience Jesus, by John Eldredge pgs 1-2).

Our traditio for this Friday of the twenty-fifth week in Ordinary Time is "Most Merciful God" by Greg La Follette off his Songs of Common Prayer album. Being an Anglo-Catholic at heart, I love this album. Since Fridays are days of penance, this strikes me as quite appropriate. Penance is meant to bring back around, as it were. As Saint Augustine noted, returning to God is also a return to yourself.

What to make of the dishonest steward?

Readings: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113:1-2.4-8; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

The parable of the unjust steward is one of Saint Luke's trickier passages. In the end, did the steward who was fired for squandering his master's wealth do right by his master or not? More precisely, did he do right at all? Drilling down, does he in anyway give us an example to emulate? After all, a 50% or even a 20% discount is pretty steep to settle duly incurred debts, even in a barter economy.

The reading I proposing below cuts against the grain more than a bit. It's interesting to engage in this kind of re-reading when it comes to ambiguous passages of Sacred Scripture. Admittedly, what follows is more of a theological reading than a strictly exegetical one.

It seems to me that the ambiguity of this passage arises from the figure of the master who had fired his steward for not acting shrewdly but expresses his pleasure after the same steward settles accounts with two of the master's debtors. How much does the master know about the details of these deals? There is nothing cut-and-dry about this pericope.

Nonetheless, the steward was commended by the same master who fired him for acting prudently in the settling the master's debts prior to his dismissal. This despite the fact that the steward was clearly acting in his own best interests, not necessarily those of his master. By giving big discounts to his soon-to-be former master's debtors, he hoped to procure employment or at least garner favor with these debtors.

This leaves open the question as to whether the master on whose behalf he was acting truly understood what this shady guy was really up to. It also leaves open the question about whether this dishonest man secured subsequent employment. I mean, who would hire a guy like that? Perhaps he wound up begging or digging ditches after all!

It doesn't seem to me that Jesus is encouraging his followers to act like this steward, even in worldly matters. Christians don't tout being wily, conniving, dishonest, and self-serving. Rather, the Lord encourages trustworthiness even in worldly affairs: "If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?" (Luke 16:11). It seems pretty clear that the steward served mammon while trying to make it look like he was serving his master. In this parable, the master is not directly analagous to God but I'll get to that in a moment.

Dishonest wealth, that is, worldly wealth, will fail you. If not before, it will fail you at death. Why? Because, as the tired cliche puts it, "You can't take it with you." But you can take with you honesty and trustworthiness. Living sub specie aeternitatis should enable the Christian to see that while being dishonest might pay now, it doesn't in the end. As the witness of many righteous people demonstrates, it is possible to serve God even when handling mammon, which we all must do to some extent.

Jesus' observation that worldly people are more adept at worldly affairs than His followers are is not an obvious exhortation to act like them either in worldy matters or matters pertaining to eternal life. Therefore, it is not an argument that undercuts what I am asserting, even if it is the tired way people have heard it preached about. It could just as easily mean the opposite.

Besides, wouldn't an exhortation to act like the shady steward be out of joint with the other teachings on money and wealth that we find in the Gospel According to Saint Luke, not mention the overall tone and tenor of Jesus' teaching on these matters? Do ends justify means? There is a lot at stake in this morally.

A two-verse extension of our reading from Luke, I think, helps us see things more clearly. As a result of the teaching set forth in our Gospel, money-loving Pharisees, Luke writes, "sneered" at Jesus. He responds to their sneering by saying, "You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15). I think it a legitimate exegetical move to read back and assert something like, "While the master may not have been aware of the details of the deals his dishonest steward was cutting, you can't fool God."

That is my take and I am sticking to it. I think my take is also reinforced by the Old Testament reading from the Book of the Prophet Amos. Bear in mind that for the Sunday readings during Ordinary Time, the Church makes a great effort to harmonize the Gospel and Old Testament reading. The dishonest steward bears a remarkable resemblance to those the prophet lambasts. The main difference being, those Amos righteously castigates defraud the poor, while the steward defrauds his seemingly wealthy master.

Maybe we can harmonize this difference by saying that by being dishonest, defrauding, and finanically abusing others, especially the poor, we betray our master; God, to whom belongs everything that is. Yet, in His unfathomable goodness, the only begotton Son of the Father, as our reading from 1 Timothy reminds us, "gave himself as ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6). Because of this, even dishonest stewards can have hope.

Worldly confusion

"The world, the flesh, and the devil." Let's stick this morning with the world.

Anyone who claims to be humble is proud. The more someone insists he is transparent, the more opaque he turns out to be. Anyone who makes a big deal about being for free speech is eager to shut down any expressed view she doesn't like. It really is that simple.

We're so inured to these incongruities that we don't recognize the irony in which we daily swim. If anything characterizes the past 15 years or so, it is utter incoherence. This incoherence is across the board. It is not the exclusive domain of any one side. Ideology is blinding and makes you stupid. Ideologies abound and propagate.

In the words of the Eurythymics song "Sweet Dreams," "everybody is looking for something." Exactly what, many can't say. An endeavor with no objective amounts to wandering in the optimism that you'll stumble onto something. While maybe not all who wander are lost (I can only imagine Tolkien's response to the abuse of this assertion), some certainly are lost. It strikes me as good advice not follow anyone with that bumper sticker.

Saint Benedict responded well to the chaos of his time. At the end of his still magnificent work After Virtue, written more than forty years ago, the late philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre contrasted our age with that of Saint Benedict's. Benedict's milieu was what are often called "the Dark Ages." In 1981, MacIntyre wrote that we were entering "a new dark ages."

Contrasting our time with that of 1500 years prior, MacIntyre observed: "This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament." Hence, what we need, he insisted, is "another—doubtless very different—St Benedict." What MacIntyre sought to prescribe is "the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained."

This is what hope, as contrasted with optimism, looks like. It is our lack of consciousness about our predicament that is most worrisome. Beyond that, many remain content to let politics and political ideologies take the lead, which is to get things the wrong way around. Another philosopher worth reading in this regard is Giorgio Agamben, particularly his Homo sacer series of books. There is a convergence between MacIntyre's conclusion and what Agamben asset forth in his book The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life. Come to think of it, maybe the Saint Benedict we need is not one who is so very so very different.

As you might've guessed, given my usual lack of subtlety, our traditio for this Friday is the Eurthymics "Sweet Dreams." Why? In the immortal words of future senator Bluto Blutarsky, "Why not?"

As Philip Roth observed through the main character of his own favorite novel, Sabbath's Theater, Mickey Sabbath: "whoever thinks himself pure is wicked."

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

Readings: Hebrews 5:7-9; Psalm 31:2-6.15-16.20; Luke 2:33-35

Today, the day after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, we observe the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. This serves as just one more example of how beautiful a gift is the liturgical calendar. It is a reminder about how important it is for us to let the liturgical seasons, solemnities, feasts, and memorials give shape and form to our spiritual lives.

While it is no longer obligatory to observe them, the week after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Church still has Ember Days. Ember weeks occur four times a year in conjunction with Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, and, in the wintertime, the Memorial of Saint Lucy. Following the pattern of Holy Week, Ember Days are Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Because they are penitential days, we observe these days by fasting and abstaining as well as praying more intensely and engaging in charitable activities.

A Marian devotion that is not much practiced by English-speaking Catholics in the United States is the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. This devotion has been around since the fifteenth century. This Chaplet has its own set beads similar to a Rosary.

The Chaplet has seven sets of seven beads. After invoking a Sorrow, like one invokes a Mystery of the Rosary, you recite a prayer and then say one Our Father followed by seven Hail Marys. You repeat this seven times. Let’s not forget that, in biblical terms, seven is the number of fulfillment or completion. Like the Most Holy Rosary, there is a way to begin and end the Chaplet.

Seven Swords Piercing the Sorrowful Heart of Mary in the Church of the Holy Cross, Salamanca, Spain

What are the Blessed Mother’s Seven Sorrows?

1. St. Simeon’s Prophecy
2. The Flight into Egypt
3. The Loss of Jesus in the Temple
4. The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on the Way to Calvary
5. The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus
6. The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Descent from the Cross
7. The Burial of Jesus

Praying the Seven Sorrows Chaplet allows us to meditate on these sorrows and grow in our feelings of empathy for our Blessed Mother's sufferings. This devotion also open us to becoming more empathetic towards the suffering of others and learn to better understand our own sufferings and is a way of offering them up for the Kingdom of God.

To Saint Bridget of Sweden, to whom our Blessed Mother mystically entrusted the Seven Sorrows Chaplet, were also revealed four principal graces and seven promises. Like the instructions on how to properly pray the Seven Sorrows Chaplet, I will leave it to anyone interested to explore these further. One of the principal graces is to have impressed on your mind remembrance of Christ’s passion.

“The martyrs endured their torments in their bodies; Mary suffered Hers in Her soul,” wrote Saint Alphonse Liguori, a Doctor of the Church. Continuing, he noted that “as the soul is more noble than the body, so much greater were Mary’s sufferings than those of all the martyrs.” Then, quoting another Church Doctor, “St. Catherine of Siena: ‘Between the sufferings of the soul and those of the body there is no comparison,’”¹ meaning the suffering of the soul is greater. Thus, is expounded the first sorrow, which is also set forth in today’s Gospel.

The other Gospel that may be read for today’s Memorial is from Saint John.² It is the passage in which the Lord, dying on the Cross, gives the beloved disciple to her as a son and her to him as a mother. In this, the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes our Blessed Mother. Sisters and brothers, let us be good children of so kind, so merciful, so tender and caring a mother.

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1 The Devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pg 4. The Fatima Center. ^↩
2 See John 19:25-27.^↩

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Readings: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1-2.34-38; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17

“Rather, he emptied himself… he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”¹ In doing so, God’s true nature was revealed by Jesus Christ. What the Lord emptied Himself of were all the false human ideas about the divine, under which many people still labor.

Known as the Kenotic Hymn, our reading from Philippines sets forth the theology of the Holy Cross succinctly. It was because Christ Jesus humbled Himself even to the point of accepting death on a cross (an unjust death), that “God exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”² My friends, we've all been bitten by the poisonous snake, the devil. As Saint Paul wrote: "all have sinned are deprived of the glory of God."³ Our remedy is the Cross of Christ.

Jesus Christ is the fulness of divine revelation. Everything God could reveal He revealed in and through Christ. It’s important to note that God’s Son did not come into the world as the next Caesar or even as a member of the ruling class of His own people.

Instead, He came as a marginal person, a man from Nazareth, which prompted Nathaniel to ask, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”⁴ The Jews themselves were a marginal yet troublesome people who, by conquest, belonged to the Roman Empire.

The Lord’s ministry was never political activism targeting the Roman empire or Jewish authorities’ policies. Instead, He came to bring about a true revolution: to disrupt the workings of a lost and fallen humanity. Christianity is not an ideology, though some may try to make it one. It is something far more radical—a revolution that, at some level, subverts every political system, all of which will ultimately perish.

Standing in Saint Peter’s Square looking at the Vatican Obelisk, which was brought to Rome from Egypt, Msgr Lorenzo Albacete said, “It is the Church flipping the bird to all the ideologies of the world.” Being eternal, the Church has survived all political systems for over 2,000 years. In Saint John’s Passion narrative, Jesus tells a suspicious and agitated Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”⁵

Christ shed all misconceived notions of divinity to bring about this revolution of love. But that is to state it too ambiguously. Our passage from Paul’s letter to the Church in Philippi puts flesh on the bones of what we find revealed elsewhere in scripture: “God is love.”⁶ Originally written in Greek, the word for “love” in this sentence is agape.

Being one of four Greek words that refer to different types of love, agape refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This is the highest form of love. Christ on the Cross is agape par excellence. One reason Catholics have crucifixes everywhere is to remind us how much God loves us. Our Gospel reading for today bears this out, does it not?

God loved us so much that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him “may have eternal life.”⁷ Elsewhere in Saint John’s Gospel, praying to His Father, Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”⁸

The crowning moment of Jesus’ earthly life was being lifted up on the Cross. This is why our Gospel for this year’s observance of the Feast of Christ the King is Saint Luke’s account of the Lord being mocked on the Cross.⁹ "He mounted the Cross," insisted Luigi Giussani, "to free us from the fascination with nothingness, to free us from the fascination with appearances, with the ephemeral."

During the Stations of the Cross, as we reach each station, genuflecting, the leader says, “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.” To which, while genuflecting, all respond: “Because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world.” By this and other devotions, we heed the exhortation of our Responsorial: “Do not forget the works of the Lord!”¹⁰ This is especially important when you experience difficulties in your own life. Christ is by your side even as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

How do we face our present circumstances? It isn’t by being sucked into the vortex of daily events through media and social media. Nor is it by sowing further division when there is already too much. It is by shedding His blood, according to scripture, that Christ “is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh.”¹¹

And so, as Pope Leo wrote on Friday, far from banging the drums of an unwinnable culture war fueled by political ideologies and propaganda, the Holy Father:

would like that today we may together begin to build a culture of reconciliation. We must meet one another, heal our wounds, and forgive the wrongs we did and did not do, but whose effects we still carry. There are no enemies — only brothers and sisters. What we need are gestures and policies of reconciliation¹²

As Christians, we face the harshness of reality by accepting the challenge of living the Gospel in its fullness. This not only goes against the grain of human society but often runs contrary to our own fallen nature. This includes obeying the Lord’s hard sayings: to love, earnestly pray for, and do good to those who hate you. To return good when what you receive is evil. To turn the other cheek. To walk the extra mile. To be a peacemaker. To make yourself a neighbor to those in need. Let’s not forget an important part of our Catholic tradition and heritage: to make penitential acts a part of our lives. Living in this self-sacrificial, other-centered, as opposed self-centered, way is revolutionary.

In last week’s Gospel, teaching what it means to be His disciple, the Lord said, “Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”¹³ The cross is “the narrow door” referred to by the Lord in our Gospel from three weeks ago.¹⁴ In our Collect for this Mass, referring to the mystery of the Cross, we prayed “that we, who have known this mystery on earth, may merit the grace of redemption in heaven.”¹⁶ Finally, as the familiar hymn puts it, “only they who bear the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”¹⁶

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1 Philippians 2:7-8.^↩
2 Philippians 2:8-9.^↩
3 Romans 3:23.^↩
4 John 1:46.^↩
5 John 18:36.^↩
6 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
7 John 3:16.^↩
8 John 17:3.^↩
9 See Luke 23:35-43.^↩
10 Psalm 78:7.^↩
11 Ephesians 2:14.^↩
12 X. Pontifex- Sep 12, 2025.^↩
13 Luke 14:27.^↩
14 Luke 13:24.^↩
15 Roman Missal. Proper of Saints. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross.^↩
16 Charles W. Everest, “Take Up Thy Cross.” 1833.^↩

"Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother"

As someone devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, I would be remiss not to observe today's optional Memorial of the Holy Name of Mary in a public way, especially since I am unable to attend Mass. Besides, according to the Church, part of any authentic spirituality for a Catholic deacon is devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

As the Servant of God, Lucia dos Santos, one of the visionaries of Fatima insisted: "There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot solve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary." During her several apparitions, our Blessed Mother has begged those to whom she was made manifest to pray her Most Holy Rosary and exhort others to do so.

We live in uncertain time. It is tempting to fall into despair. In the face of the onslaught, we realize how little we control, how little power we have to influence thing. The greatest deception of social media is giving users a false sense of power and influence. The Blessed Virgin Mary can be our refuge, our advocate, our most effacacious intercessor. Let us render our Blessed Mother hyperdulia.

Saint Louis de Montfort insisted that one who prays the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary will never be led astray.

In the Divine Praises we say:

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.

We end this section by praying Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother

Turn to Mary. Pray her Most Holy Rosary. Pray her Memorare often.

Our second traditio for today is a choral rendition of The Divine Praises: