Very Cool!

So I was browsing around on Etsy and much to my surprise, saw an article about Trappist monks who make funeral caskets!

"The Trappists‘ mandate is to live by the labor of their hands,” says Mulgrew. “They don’t fundraise or run schools or hospitals. They live a self-contained life of prayer. Making caskets is a good psychological and spiritual fit. Death is about moving on, going to a different place, and the monks spend a lot of time thinking about these things. These caskets reflect the quiet, simple life led by the monks and allows them to offer a part of their lives symbolically.

I especially loved this aspect of what they do:

The monks pray over each casket and urn before they are shipped, and for each one sold a tree is planted in the carefully managed monastery forest. The monks conduct a mass in remembrance of the deceased and each name is entered in a memorial prayer book.

Isn't that just beautiful? Read the whole article here.

New Blogging Convert

A little bird told me about a convert friend who recently started a blog of his own, so I'm sharing in hopes of supporting a fellow convert. :-) It's called Pure Catholic.

As I browsed his shiny new blog, this part jumped out at me:

The fact is, I was pretty much horrified at the prospect of becoming Catholic despite everything pointing toward that being the right thing to do. Since the decision, my life is improved in every respect.

Ha, sound familiar? ;-)

As the name of his blog suggests, he is primarily interested in promoting chastity, a noble endeavor indeed. Go check it out when you can!

New Series from Fr. Barron - Catholicism

I just wanted to share this because it looks so cool! I think this would be a great series to watch with various groups at the parish level, I could definitely see having a series of movie nights to watch this at our little home theater. :-)



From the website:

"Catholicism" comes to U.S. public television stations this fall, with the first broadcast set for Thursday, September 22, 2011 from 8-10 p.m. EST in Washington, D.C. and Maryland.

WTTW-11 (PBS) in Chicago is the presenting station for the "Catholicism" series and will air four episodes on consecutive Thursdays from 8-9 p.m. CST beginning October 13th. PBS affiliates in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and over 75 other public television stations plan to broadcast "Catholicism."

I'll be keeping an eye out for sure!

This one is a longer version, almost 10 minutes. Looks fascinating!