#catholic gifts

[giftideasfromaycaramba]

[cellabella-illuminates]

New icon now listed in my online shop!

Click on the image to see the listing :)

Some details below:

$52.00 (shipping included!)

DIMENSIONS – Approximately 5” x 7.5” x 0.25”

DAMAGE-FREE HANGING – While not included, this wooden icon is flat on the backside which is perfect for hanging with Command Strips. No nails or hooks required!

ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION – This is one of my illustrations of the St. Pio, more well known as “Padre Pio”. The original was a commissioned piece painted with black gouache. At the top of the icon are hand-painted gold letters that spell out “St. Pio” and surrounding his portrait are white daisies.

BEAUTIFULLY HANDMADE ICON – Each icon is crafted with wood, acrylic paint, and printed paper before being carefully sealed with a UV-protective glossy finish. Each icon is meant to have imperfections due to their unique, unfinished nature so brush strokes will be visible. On the back includes a sticker with my logo, “Cella Bella Illuminations” and my website.

[monasteryicons]

Only 5 Left of This Exquisite Hand-Painted Ukrainian Egg

Although Easter has passed, our selection of traditional Orthodox-style eggs are perennial favorites with our customers. This hand-painted ostrich egg was the new star of our Easter offerings this Easter season. And our master artist in Ukraine, Paraska Plytorak, has shipped us her last five eggs for this year.

[canisalbus]

I love your ocs, Milk and Cookie

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[blessedarethequeer]

people always say "your body is a temple" as some kind of pearl-clutching gotcha finger wag to people with tattoos and piercings and body mods which has never made sense to me

cause like.

y'all know what we do with temples right? with holy spaces?

we adorn them in art and precious metals and things of beauty. we make them spectacles of gathering to signal that this is a space we know the Divine calls to us. our Creation does not end the moment we take our first breath, we continue to collaborate in our own Creation each and every day.

get the tattoo or that piercing, fill yourself with delicious things and celebrate in wonder at the mystery it is to live within your body!

[miserable-something]

the court physician and the second born

[incomingalbatross]

God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. For example: I have an online community of intelligent, thoughtful, deeply nerdy Catholics and Protestants who want their Christianity to inform their approach to art NOT because it ever occurred to me to go looking, but because at one point before I even made a Tumblr account I was scouring the internet for decent Psmith content.

[ratatatastic]

"And to think we went this whole time without knowing these things"

[giftideasfromaycaramba]

Silver Pearl Rosary

[cellabella-illuminates]

I have listed two new icons in my online shop!

[ave-immaculata]

fellas we're once again wrestling with imperfect vs. perfect contrition and why imperfect contrition with a firm resolution to not sin again and promptly receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation doesn't save

[cath-lic]

sentences of despair and anguish

[canisalbus]

I made some drawings of vasco and machete on ibis paint so I hope you don't mind, since I don't really see art of natural machete I decided to draw him.

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[momentsbeforemass]

“I could never…”

One semester I filled in as an academic advisor at a junior college. To help cover a friend’s maternity leave.

I really enjoyed helping students figure out where their strengths lay, what they wanted to do. Helping them sort out what programs and courses would best build on their talents and position them for the future they wanted.

One of the questions I had been told to ask students was about their heroes/role-models. To find out who inspired them. And how.

There was an odd dynamic that I saw in a lot of students when they answered that question.

They would tell me about someone famous they looked up to, who inspired them. With a genuine enthusiasm for doing something with their talents. Inspired by that person.

Then almost immediately follow it with “but I could never…”

Like they were embarrassed. Embarrassed to be excited. Embarrassed because they wanted to do something with their talents.

They were looking at the achievements that had inspired them. People at the peak of their performance. Then talking themselves out of doing anything at all. For fear that they might not measure up to that inspiring ideal.

There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by someone’s use of the talent that God has given them.

But there’s a lot wrong with comparing yourself and your use of the talent that God has given you to someone else’s use of the talent that God has given them. The consequences of that sort of unhealthy comparison is one of the main points of today’s Gospel.

God gave you your talents so that you could be you. Not so that you could be someone else.

If God had meant for you to be them, God would have given you their talents.

Instead, God has given you everything you need to be who He called you to be.

Which means if there’s a talent you don’t have, then you don’t need it to be who God has called you to be.

It also means that you have an obligation to use the talents that God has given to you (which is the other point of today’s Gospel).

In the words of John Paul II, “talent is a gift from God, whoever discovers it in himself has an obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.”

Today’s Readings

[creativethought]

Smart Cat Toy Ball

[fictionadventurer]

The independent religious bookstore is the only place you can go on an overpriced shopping spree and feel good about it.