Found in My E-mail Inbox This Morning

. . . along with lebenty-leben appeals for me to save The Republic by sending my correspondent money.  Even if I were going to send off a boatload of money, how do I know he's who he says he is and not a confidence trickster, a miscreant, a ne'er-do-well, a scofflaw?  There's that to consider.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.   A little factoid of no discernible significance but which I nevertheless found interesting:

16th century Spanish explorers referred to the large reptiles they found in the Americas as “el lagarto de Indias,” or “the lizard of the Indies.” Thanks to their phrase and a few phonetic shifts as it made the jump to English, we now refer to those same large reptiles as alligators.

This Morning's Lection from Mattins

In the Ordinariate Divine Office Maccabees is appointed to be read this time of the year.  This morning's reading seemed .  .  .  appropriate.  This portion is from the first book, the second chapter in Msgr  Knox's translation:

Meanwhile, the life of Mattathias was drawing to an end. And this charge he gave to his sons: Here be days when tyrant and blasphemer have their will, when all is calamity and bitter retribution. The more reason, my sons, why you should be jealous lovers of the law, ready to give your lives for that covenant your fathers knew. Your fathers, what deeds they did in their time! Great glory would you win, and a deathless name, let these be your models. 

Here be days, indeed.

 

S Thomas More Proposes A Plea from the Holy Souls

 To  all good Christian people:  In most piteous wise continually calleth and crieth upon your devout charity and most tender pity for help and comfort, and relief your late acquaintance, kindred, spouses, companions, play-fellows and friends and now your humble and unacquainted and half-forgotten suppliants, poor prisoners of God, silly souls in Purgatory here abiding and enduring the grievous pains and hot cleansing fire that corrodes and burneth off the rusty and filthy spots of sins, till the mercy of Almighty God, the rather by your good and charitable means, vouchsafe to deliver us hence.

-Supplication of Souls, S Thomas More (via "The Heart of Thomas More", selections compiled by E.E. Reynolds)