Hooray for Doubting Thomas

Happy feast of St Thomas to all who follow the older Calendar! (Why is it, by the way, that Anglicans of a certain spikiness spell it "Kalendar"?)

His doubts, by the providence of God, were permitted that he, coming to touch the Risen Christ's Sacred and Glorious Wounds, would thereby strengthen our faith, by confessing the invisible Godhead having touched the Word Who is Life, saying: "My Lord and My God" - which should be every man's prayer at the Elevation at Mass, when the Divine Victim is lifted up that He draw all men unto Him.

DOMINUS MEUS ET DEUS MEUS!

[Image of the Elevation of the Chalice of Christ's Precious Blood at a priest's first Mass - hence the assistant priest in cope - courtesy of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, available from http://fssp.org.]

St Irenæus - II

"Another year completed, / The day comes round once more..."  

Please consult my post from last year in honour of the great St Irenæus, Bishop, Martyr and surely a great Doctor (unofficially) of the Church.  May he pray for us, to ever have true peace in the tranquil possession of the True Faith, "and have no truck with the alien herbs of heresy" (as St Ignatius, friend of his master, St Polycarp, said in his Epistle to the Trallians, chapter vi).

(Oh, and according to the Novus Ordo, to-day marks the feast of St Thomas the Apostle - Bugnini moved it from its age-old date of the 21st of December for the specious reason that it was too near Christmas: which, if true, should have argued cogently for St Stephen, St John and the Holy Innocents to have been shoved aside also.)