Happy St. Albert's Day!

My parish being dedicated to the Universal Doctor, we celebrate his feast two days ahead of time this year (to get it onto a Sunday). Our new organ will be officially blessed for use in giving God worship at the 9:30. Our choir is going to sing something special at that Mass. And I'm cantoring this morning at the 8:00! Yay!

UPDATE: Since I was half asleep this morning when I posted, I totally forgot to mention the nifty post on St. Albert by Fr. Gearhart on his blog. Also, don't miss this post on tribalism, globalism, and trying to get the truths of the Church into people's skulls (my wording!). In fact, there's tons of excellently cool stuff here!

If you happen to be close enough to Ohio Dominican University's main campus over in Columbus, they're going to have a lecture in honor of St. Albert on November 16 (a day late) at 10:30 AM.

A good article from earlier this month about St. Albert and the "conflict" between faith and science. Which he exposed as bogus. A loooooong time ago.

St. Albert's Canadian connection. New to me!

Here's an incunabulus (early printed book, often colored by hand) of his "De Mysterio Missae" (Of the Mystery of the Mass). The third and fourth images begin the text of the book, which the Latin scholars among you can read if you call up the (much!) larger image. There's some nice imagery right at the beginning.

Finally, I think I should note the interesting fact that he was very dedicated in his private devotions to praying the Hail Mary. (Or to be technical, just the Angelic Salutation part. That was all there was to an Ave in his time.) "A hundred times a day he bent his knees, and fifty times he prostrated himself raising his body again by his fingers and toes, while he repeated at every genuflexion: 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb'." (150 times for the 150 psalms, just like the pre-Luminous Mysteries rosary.) Talk about spiritual exercise!

I also picked up a cool new (to me) St. Albert quote about Mary's pregnancy:

"Magis Deo conjungi, nisi fieret Deus, non potuit."

(She could not have been more united to God except by becoming God herself.)