Feast of the Holy Rosary

Or Battle of Lepanto Day!! We'll be celebrating with an afternoon tea party and of course a reading of Chesteron's Lepanto.

The Rosary

I've been meaning to post about this little book since last summer when a very dear friend recommended it to me.Now that it is the month for the Rosary I can no longer justify further procrastination! The Rosary subtitled Keeping company with Jesus and Mary by Karen Edmisten is a wonderful book! How I wish I had it when I was learning to pray the Rosary. I wanted to follow Pope John Paul II's Rosarium Virginis Mariae and pray the rosary daily but oh how my mind wandered in those days (well, in these days, too) and Saint Louis De Montfort's True Devotion to Mary made me feel unworthy to even be in the same room as a rosary let alone pick one up. But I persevered and kept praying, telling myself that someday I would have more time and at least I would be in the habit...
This book addresses just that and much more in such a friendly way that the Rosary becomes a joy. Thank you, Karen, for such a beautiful little book!

Poetry Monday

I love October and not just because it is the most beautiful month. It's because it is the month of the Rosayr and that means it must be Lepanto season!

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!