Today, on the last day of her year, the Church commemorates St Andrew the Apostle, first, with Peter, to be called. From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv v and vi for this saint, and images of main points of his life.

On this day in 1757, William Blake was born in London, the third of five children. He died in poverty in 1827, his attempts at a printshop a failure, eking out a living as an engraver an illustrator. There is a general review of his life, techniques, poetry and illustrations at Art 4 2 day (you'll need to page down), and the William Blake Archive is worth a visit. Images below the break.

The Daily Telegraph has a brief article today on the attraction of the cloistered life for educated women of Rome. Two years ago, 350 women of Rome withdrew to closed convents. In 2005, 550 have done so. Roman women are converts to convents.

Today the Church commemorates St Martin of Tours. From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv v and vi for this saint, and images of frescoes from the chapel at Assisi dedicated to him, illustrating the main points of his life.

Today the Church commemorates the church of Saint John Lateran.

From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv v and vi for the Dedication of the Archbasilica
of the Most Holy Savior. The adjacent palace was the papal residence for a thousand years, from Pope St Miltiades to Pope Clement V.

Today is a ferial day, but the Church does commemorate the Four Crowned Martyrs. From breviary.net, here is the alternate Lesson ix for these saints, some images of the martyrs and the church in Rome dedicated to them, and of the chapel there dedicated to the pope during the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine, built during the time when the Church was asserting her authority over temporal rulers..

David J. Hughes has a post, Una Voce in Hungary?, at the Church Music Association of America's blog has a tantalizing reference to the Esztergom use. (Esztergom is a city in Hungary, and is the primatial see of the country. 'Use' here means a local variant on the manner of saying Mass. 'Una voce' is a common name for groups promoting the Missals of 1962 and before, coming from the Preface for Trinity Sunday.) I've only found one reference on the 'net to the Esztergom use, and it's behind a subscription-only wall.

Mr Hughes didn't post some parts of the item from Hungary, theses 17 through 27 'since they are chiefly concerned with the concrete pastoral-liturgical situation in Hungary, which differs in important ways from the American conditions.'

Juventutem pilgrim Julie Michelle Robinson made this remark (at Introibo ad altare...):

'Anglophones accounted for, the remainder of the 10% not-French people was largely Hungarian.'

I take that to mean that 90% of the Juventutem pilgrims were French,
and excluding Anglophones from the remaining 10%, the majority were Hungarian. She doesn't provide any more information.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observes the universe in the infrared spectrum.. Because of the expansion of the universe since it began, light gets red-shifted, so light which might have begun in the ultraviolet reaches us in the infrared. (Insert fire engine siren, or locomotive whistle, example.)

The BBC and NASA carry stories about scientists' claims to have detected the 'first light' from the earliest stars. ('First light' usually refers to the first images received from using a telescope, but it's an appropriate secondary meaning here.)

Glow from first stars revealed for the BBC's story, and Scientists See Light that May Be from First Objects in Universe for the NASA press release.

I noticed in the server logs that someone had saved this site to his del.icio.us page. It looks as if his is the only account with this blog, and I saw that he shares a number of lstings with another user at del.icio.us. This second user includes in his links a site by Prof Felix Just, S.J.: Illustrations of Gospel Stories, a book by one of the first ten Jesuits, Jerome Nadal. There is a table on that page associating the 153 woodcuts in the book with the liturgical order of the Roman Missal used in 1962.

The woodcuts are also available at Fr Joseph F. MacDonnell's page Gospel Illustrations. There they are displayed in numerical order.

Fr Just has a nice page with links to Biblical and Religious Art and Music, which is worth a visit and exploration.

Below the break is one of the woodcuts, Christ descends to the netherworld, and another image of William Blake's The Last Judgment, not from Fr Nadal's book.