Hope among ashes

BBC photo: borrowed from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47945465

High altar of the Catédral de Notre-Dame de Paris, unscathed amid charred and fallen roof timbers.  With Christ, there is always hope.  Our Lady of Paris, pray for us.

More arcaeological coolness - Bronze Age Cambridgeshire

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35280290

From the BBC article:

Archaeologists have uncovered Britain's "Pompeii" after discovering the "best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found" in the country.

The circular wooden houses, built on stilts, form part of a settlement at Must Farm quarry, in Cambridgeshire, and date to about 1000-800 BC.
A fire destroyed the posts, causing the houses to fall into a river where silt helped preserve the contents.
Pots with meals still inside have been found at the site.

More at the link, including some video.

Archaeology coolness - Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe is the oldest known temple in the world.  Built with stone tools in the Neolithic, about 9000 BC (thus antedating the earliest known permanent sites of human habitation, and even the domestication of cereal grains and agriculture), the over 22 acre site comprises more than 20 rings and rectangles of standing stones, some enclosing paved floors.  There is no evidence so far of permanent human occupation of the site, but plenty of evidence of the workers' lunches (gazelle, deer, pig, goose, etc). After 1000 years of use, the site was deliberately buried and abandoned.

(These pictures borrowed from the Smithsonian.com article linked above.)

Travel the World

From Archaeology: It seems some second-century Roman glassware has been found in a fifth-century Japanese tomb.  This is way cool.  Ancient globalization?  Plus ca change...

Photo from Asahi Shimbun (second link, above) - Roman glass bowl now in Tokyo National Museum

Lent 2014

"Remember, O Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19)

Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, I believe.  Borrowed from Fr. Mark White's blog

New Year's Blessings 2014

Through the intercession of Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, and Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen!

...and all your own favorite and dedicated intercessors.  God bless you, dear reader!

Like Father, Like Son

Found this at the Deacon's Bench, too good not to share:

Headline: "New 'Predictive Liturgy Techniques' Help Vocations Directors!"