Found While Looking for Something Else

It breaks my heart to see so many souls being lost. If only things were not so bad! If only there were not more and more being lost every day! Help me, sisters in Christ, help me in imploring our Lord to grant this!

This is why He has gathered you here; this is your calling; this is what your task has got to be; this is all you have got to long for, cry for, pray for!

The world is on fire; and it looks as though they would like to condemn Christ anew, so to speak, for they keep bringing up endless accusations; they are trying to wreck His Church. For the love of God beg His Majesty to hear our prayers in this regard; and I--wretch that I am--will also beg Him for the same thing, since His glory and the good of His Church are at stake.

-The Way of Perfection, St Teresa of Avila

Some Piping for the Weekend

Yes, posting has been scarce lately. The Inn hasn't even had a mention of Holy Week or Easter. There have been a couple of health incidents along with some much happier events, which we will talk about later. But in the meantime, it is the weekend and there ought to be some piping. Here is a bit of the Edinburgh Tattoo with the massed pipe bands doing their thing for the opening ceremonies. You'll notice a couple of Irish pipe bands: the South African Irish and the Queen's Royal Hussars (Queen's Own and Royal Irish).

2 April -- St Bronach

April 2d is the ancient feast of the 6th century Irish virgin, Bronach. Almost nothing is still known about her. What remains is the history of St Bronach's bell. Mrs D'Arcy relates the story:

For 50 years, fireside reminiscing kept alive the memory of the mysterious former ringing of an invisible bell in Kilbroney churchyard. Scoffers called it a ghost story. Then in 1885, a storm felled a great oak there and workmen chopping up the old tree found in the fork of two branches a very ancient bronze bell which is ascribed to 6th century craftsmanship. The ring holding the tongue of the bell had worn away and so the mystery of the ringing and of the silence was cleared up. It was Bronach's lost bell, one more holy relic that was hidden away in the Reformation and finally recovered.

About a mile from Rostrevor in Country Down in the ancient church of Kilbroney, so named for the saintly Bronach registered in the martyrologies of Tallaght and Donegal as the virgin of Glenshesk and of Kilbroney of which she is the patroness. In the Rostrevor church yard may be seen Bronach's Cross and in use in the parish church there is Bronach's own bronze bell.