LENTCAzT 2024 – 34: Monday in Passiontide – The penance of Lent draws graces down from God.

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, Fr. Troadec talks about the conversion of Nineveh and Jonah. The penance of Lent draws graces down from God.

Roman Station is San Crisogono.  Here’s a video visit by Crux Stationalis HERE

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DAILY ROME SHOT 967 – And a video with a heck of a lot of common sense

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And so it begins in Rome.  Passiontide.  Photo from The Great Roman™.

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Meanwhile, a priest friend texted this puzzle. Black to move and mate in three.  Tricky.   How long did it take you?  I puzzled over this one for about 5 minutes until I got my head around the position.

Click!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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I am now a chess.com affiliate.   So, click and join!   Maybe we can build a fun and active Catholic Chess Club within Chess.com.

Yesterday I had a note from a deacon in WI who plays.  And from RR.  Brick by brick.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

In St. Louis at the American Cup there was big drama yesterday. Fabiano Caruana and my guy Wesley So had advanced to the final of the Elimination Bracket (it’s a double elimination tournament whereby losers of matches in the upper bracket, drop down to another – but if they prevail in that bracket, they (there’s women’s and open) will play the winner of the upper in the Final). In the upper Levon Aronian won the upper. In the lower, world #7 Wesley So sent home #2 Fabiano Caruana in blitz tiebreakers. Exciting stuff. Wesley had lost the second game, and so he had to win on demand to stay in. He came back from rough positions in his next games to beat Fabi and advance to the Final of the Elimination bracket. The winner will face Levon for the brass ring. On the women’s side, Irina Krush defeated 14-yr old Alice Lee (from my native place) in two classical games. But Alice will now face Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova in the Elimination final for a shot at Krush in the championship. Hostilities resume today at 1420 EST/1920 CET.

Two notable things in the interviews of the winners yesterday. As usual Wesley thanked the Lord for the victory. HERE Irina was happy that she would have a day off before the championship match because, as she said, today is the beginning of Orthodox Lent and she planned to go to Church because “the Lord made it happen for me”. HERE Irina Borisivna Krush was born in the Ukraine to Jewish parents, who immigrated to these USA.  She says that she is a Christian Jew.

BTW… today, Clean Monday, is indeed the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Churches which follow the Julian calendar.   Easter for them will be 5 May this year.

Finally, this video has a lot packed into it.  Biretta tip to Fr. RJ.  o{]:¬)

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An eerie 1968 NBC documentary VIDEO: “The New American Catholic”. Fr. Z comments and reminisces about many things.

I spotted a video on Twitter/X.

But first…  let me help you get into the mood.

Now that that’s in your head….

The video I spotted is a 1968 documentary from NBC “The New American Catholic”. The Masses you see are being perpetrated with the transitional 1964 Missal, not the Novus Ordo 1969/70 Missal. You can see what the “spirit” of Vatican II has already done in a few short years. Also, you see that NBC is not just reporting… this is also propaganda. It was engineered by the infamous then-bishop, soon to be ex-bishop, the hyper-ambitious ultra-liberal James Patrick Shannon, who was a rising star in the US Church and who fought against Humanae vitae.

At 4:40, you see a shot of St. Helena Church in S. Minneapolis. I was stationed there for a while. When this documentary was made, Shannon, auxiliary of St. Paul and Minneapolis was pastor there. In the film you see a shot of one of the truly beautiful series of windows and then a shot of him saying Mass. The background artwork is still there in the sanctuary. Later he is in the office area of the rectory off of the living room. I had a bit of a shiver seeing it, because, despite the beauty of that church and the wonderful people, it was a year of sheer hell because of how the pastor treated me and the trap that was set by the then VG. But I digress. May God have mercy on his soul. I pray for him at every Mass at the Memento of the living.

I knew of this documentary, but I had never seen it. Msgr. Schuler, my old pastor at my home parish of St. Agnes in St. Paul spoke of it, and of Shannon, whom he knew well. Schuler was a year ahead of Roach and Shannon.

This documentary provoked the wrath of the powerful Card. McIntyre who effectively shut down Shannon’s meteoric climb. When he realized that his ride was over, and that he was doomed to be an auxiliary, he married in secret (his favorable biographers say he married after he quit not before, but older priests of the diocese who had known him from seminary told me otherwise), continued for a while to function as a bishop, and then causing a tsunami of scandal, very publicly renounced being a bishop. He was suspended a divinis. He wound up being a big shot of General Mills. Every year the local paper would interview him around Easter and there he was in his lay clothes still wearing his episcopal ring and talking heresy. Eventually when he was dying the Holy See reconciled with him (somehow) even though Shannon never had to renounce anything he had said or done, including abandon his episcopal vocation.

When I first was working in Curia in Rome I met the late great then-Msgr. and later – way too late! – Cardinal Luigi De Magistris. When he ask me where I was from and I said St. Paul and Minneapolis, he stopped in his tracks and looked at me saying, “Ahhhh… Shannon. And that Archbishop who was in jail.” He meant the late Archbishop Roach who in 1985 when he was president of the NCCB (now USCCB) was arrested for drunk driving after driving his car into the wall of a convenience store. The local sheriffs could no longer turn a blind eye. He wound up spending a short, very short if I remember, in jail. Roach was the one who, ultimately, handed me my hat put my feet on my road away from the St. Paul Seminary toward Rome, away from my home and family and friends, because I had a calling to answer. The reason I was given for being “deselected” – yes, that’s the exact word the spineless rector used – was “You have a driving need to know the truth.”  Verbatim.   No kidding.

I left the Twin Cities with a one-way ticket and $200. Within two weeks in Rome, I had a job in a Vatican Office, a new bishop and a new seminary.  After Roach was out, I would be back in Twin Cities as a priest for while, to which I refer above when I was at St. Helena.

Roach and Shannon were classmates, ordained the same year from the St. Paul Seminary.

Shannon’s blather about how Vatican II calls for a reexamination of the needs of mankind “in the real situation” is eerily familiar right now! There is, right now, a massive push at various paradigm shifts, through praxis as well as through certain ambiguous and downright strange doctrinal expressions.

At about 8:40 you see a Monsignor seated, Msgr. Rudolph Bandas who was, at that time, the pastor of St. Agnes, Msgr. Schuler’s predecessor. Bandas was a peritus at all of the sessions of Vatican II, as an expert on catechesis. When liturgical changes were issued from Rome, he implemented them at St. Agnes as they were written.  Therefore, since nothing in any of the documents said abandon Latin and chant, they were preserved, nothing said tear out altars and say Mass versus populum, they preserved the main altar and used it.  As a matter of fact, there was never a Cranmer table in the sanctuary except one, I think, when Roach came and insisted on a table.  But that was never repeated when either he or any other bishop of cardinal came.    In the documentary, Bandas is seated in the living room – then pastor’s office – of St. Agnes rectory.  That bookshelf was still there when I was staying at the parish over summers back from Rome.  Then Fr. Schuler – the weekend fireman, as it were, while he was teaching at St. Thomas College, was present at St. Agnes’ rectory when NBC showed up to film Bandas for this documentary.    Bandas died in 1969 and Msgr. Schuler because pastor on the cusp of the Novus Ordo.  He maintained strict adherence to the black and white and added the splendor of great sacred music, including 3o Sundays of the year orchestral Masses with a large chorale and members of the Minnesota Orchestra.  That remains today, the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale.  Amazing.   Schuler was friends with Pope Benedict’s brother, also a church musician in Regensburg, Georg Ratzinger and Benedict knew what Schuler was doing at St. Agnes (cause I told him).  He was always interested to see the schedule of the Masses and, when he saw the list he’d comment on them knowledgably.  When Schuler died, I sent a note to Benedict’s secretary Msgr. Gänswein and Benedict sent a beautiful letter to the parish for reading during Schuler’s funeral.

I digress.   This is getting to autobiographical.

Bandas was dead set against Shannon’s agenda.

There is a layman who says “we are adults in the Church”, which is the attitude that lead to standing for Communion and sticking out the hand.  That layman, at about 9:20, is Donald Horman, then publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, aka Fishwrap.  It was already nuts then. in 1968, the same year as the documentary, Bishop Charles H. Helmsing of Kansas City, Missouri, the Fishwrap was located, issued a condemnation of the paper and demanded that it remove the word Catholic from its name. Bishop Helmsing said that it had a “policy of crusading against the Church’s teachings,” a “poisonous character” and “disregard and denial of the most sacred values of our Catholic faith.” Because the publication “does not reflect the teaching of the Church, but on the contrary, has openly and deliberately opposed this teaching,” he asked the editors to “drop the term ‘Catholic’ from their masthead” because “they deceive their Catholic readers and do a great disservice to ecumenism by […] watering down Catholic teachings.” They refused and are so heterodox now that it should be called the National Schismatic Reporter – if one is forced to think of it at all. Best that it be relegated to the cat box. Please see my long-poster Prayer for the Fishwrap.

Around 14:00 they get to the “experimental Community of John XXIII” in Oklahoma City, where they “think for themselves”.   Eventually, I think about 1975, they split from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.  They were doing all sorts of things, including giving Communion to non-Catholics.  At about 21:00 enjoy them teaching children to sing Kumbaya with a guitar that I think had never been tuned.  In the Mass clip that follows there is still a three-fold, “Lord, I am not worthy” because it was still in the 1964 Missal.   At 23:00 is Bp. Reed of Oklahoma (in 1972 Tulsa was cut off and OK City became an Archdiocese).

At 25:30 John McKenzie, SJ of Notre Dame comes on and talks in typical Jesuit style about modification of structures.  Then Shannon is right back with “new church” with a pretty clear justification of disobedience for the sake of novelties.

At 29:00 we get to Chicago’s Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) which is still around. … I think.  It looks like their site hasn’t been updated for a while.  It was a kind of “labor union” of priests, which could apply pressure for liberal ends.  At 30:30 we get then-Fr. James Groppi of Milwaukee, focused on civil rights.  He left the priesthood, in 1976, married and incurred an excommunication.  He attempted to become an Episcopalian priest but stopped short.  He wound up as a bus driver in Milwaukee.  At 32:30 a priest “on leave” “Robert Duggan former priest” in lay clothes make an appeal for an end to priestly celibacy.  He makes an interesting observation that, for the first time, the Catholic Directory showed decrease in the number of priest because priests were quitting.  Duggan headed up the National Association for Pastoral Renewal.  In 1971  there was a meeting in NYC of 6 dissident groups which were trying to merge: The Society of Priests for a Free Ministry, the National Federation of Priests Councils, the National Association of the Laity, the National Association for Pastoral Renewal, the National Association of Women Religious and Seminarians for Ministerial Renewal.  What a hellish soup.

At 36:30 Shannon introduces feminist Sr Anita Caspary Mother General of the IHMs, in Los Angeles, which I’m sure got McIntyre’s attention.  No habit.  She wound up on the cover on Time in 1970.  She calls the habit a “costume”.  She sounds like the LCWR types do now.  This was the beginning of that madness.  In 1969 Caspary’s crazy moves caused a split in the IHM’s.  50 sisters refused to start a new community with her.  By 1976 that group split into 3 groups.  By their fruits….

Bp. Reed of Oklahoma is back at 46:00 with an appeal for some experimentation.

At this point in the documentary the move has been from the changes among women religious, to their use of small groups, to other small groups with lay people.

Back comes Shannon, who then brings in one of the Protestant observers at the Second Vatican Council.  48:50.  Dr. Albert C. Outler of Southern Methodist University and expert on Wesleyan theology.  He bats clean up.  OF course it would be a PROTESTANT, right?  In 1971 he was made the president of the American Catholic Historical Society and in 1987 got ultra-liberal Collegeville Abbey’s Pax Christi Award.   In WaPo‘s obit for him we read: “In 1986, Outler told a gathering of Catholic priests that official ecumenism was dead. “As a grizzled ecumaniac with a wealth of golden memories, I have to say that, for the time being, official ecumenism seems to be dead in the water,” he said. He blamed the decline on the churches’ “preoccupations with the bewildering range of social, economic, political causes confronting us all,” as well as internal conflicts and membership losses suffered by denominations.” In this documentary, he is still optimistic. He says its all about “freedom” and the Church has finally opened its heart to the world. “The Church is going to make it or fail in the spirit of freedom, persuasion, love, brotherhood.”

At the end, we have various recaps of visuals, including art work that looks very much like the slop produced for the Walking Together on Walking Togetherity. Very much like, come to think of it. And we have plentiful guitars and sprightly singing full of hope at the new springtime of freedom and renewal sweeping through the church like a fresh breeze through the opening windows.   I chased down the final song, 50:00, wasting several precious minutes of my life, which I suspected was by Ray Repp.  Yep, Repp.  “Come, my brothers, and don’t be afraid” from the Hymnal for Young Christians 1966.  I couldn’t find the full lyrics online.  Maybe one of you has that book on a dusty shelf?

This time machine video holds up a mirror to our own time.

The same agendas are now being pushed by people with power who grew up in this stuff and were infected by it to the point that they never grew out of it.

It seems to me that the younger people in other countries and in these USA who are pushing the agenda in this 1968 documentary today are in effect Communists and homosexualists.  In these USA, at least, the older ones pushing this stuff grew up in the halcyon days of protests and Vatican II. Their own identity is fused with the mythic, iconic “spirit” of those times.  When they see something like a biretta or hear the suggest that Latin be used, or Gregorian chant, a switch flicks in their heads and they go into an anti-authority, anti-traditional mode.  Also, clergy and lay alike, if they know something about the older form of Mass, they realize that in the Vetus Ordo they can’t be the center of attention, as they can be in the Novus Ordo.  By now so many priests are conditioned to have to be the focus of attention, the driving energy of the “liturgy”, the main event, the ring master, the host of the party.  This may not even be conscious, at this point.  More could be written.  This is sufficient.

At last, here it is.  Buckle up.  1968.

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Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) 2024 and a POLL about veiled images

Let’s start with a poll, posted yesterday.

What did you see in your parish?   Let’s have a poll.  Anyone can vote, but only registered users can comment.  Please use the combox.  You may also send or post photos of what you saw.

For this 1st Sunday of the Passion (5th Sunday of Lent) - 2024 - I saw in church that:

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Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

It was the 5th Sunday of Lent in the Novus Ordo and 1st Passion Sunday in the Vetus Ordo.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

I have some thoughts about the Sunday HERE.   A taste…

Let’s be clear about this.  Christ took common things of life and used their materiality to give us the seven Sacraments. One of the most common and natural things in the human condition is the need to unburden, to tell our troubles.   Christ instituted the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation.  The form of the sacrament is the pronouncement of the words of absolution by a validly ordained priest – alter Christus … another Christ – who has the “faculty” or authorization to use His powers of forgiveness.  The matter of the sacrament is the telling of the sins.   Therefore, in order to know what must be forgiven the sins must be told to the priest.  A priest confessor cannot know the hidden most secrets unless the sinner reveals them.  Hence, the verbal confession of all mortal sins to the priest, in kind (what the sin entailed) and how many times.

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DAILY ROME SHOT 966 – With comments on the readings for these few days

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful. 

Photo from The Great Roman™. Pasta e fagioli alla velletrana.

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Meanwhile, black to play and mate in 3.

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NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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I am now a chess.com affiliate.   So, click and join!   Maybe we can build a fun and active Catholic Chess Club within Chess.com.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.


In St. Louis, drama on day 5 at the American Cup.  Over the last couple of days, in the upper bracket Roy Robson – who had knocked my guy Wesley So down to the lower, elimination bracket, was himself defeated by Levon Aronian 2-0.   In the women’s side of things, Irina Krush is up 1.5-0.5 over Alice Lee.  In the lower bracket, Fabiano Caruana and Wesley both defeated their opponents, respectively Dominguez and Sevian, who are both now out of the running.  Today, Fabi and Wesley will duke it out in a rapid match and the winner will then face the loser of the Aronian v. Robson on Monday.

If you are moving, try Realestate for Life. They find you a realtor who will give a portion of the fee to a pro-life cause.

BTW… in the Vetus Ordo for the last few days we have been in chapters 7 and 8 of John. The context is the Jewish feast of Sukkoth or Tabernacles, when all men were obliged to go to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. A couple moments stand out for me.

Firstly on Saturday, yesterday, the day when in the ancient Roman Church they were preparing ordinations at the Sunday Station of St. Peter’s, we have the reading from John at the end of Sukkoth. During Sukkoth, there were set aflame two huge candelabra – 75 feet high – in the Temple precincts for the ceremony of “Illumination”. This recalled the pillar of fire in the wilderness, the light was like the shekinah glory cloud of God’s presence that used to fill the Temple. The light of these huge torches reflected off of gold of the Temple and illuminated the city. The day after the great fires were extinguished, the 8th day of assembly after the 7 day feast, Jesus proclaimed in the Temple, “I am the light of the world.”.

Next, tomorrow, Monday of Passion Week, in the Gospel reading the Lord is in the Temple and it is the last day of the festivities of Tabernacles. This is the day when there is a ceremonial pouring of wine and of water. It is during this ceremony that Christ stands up and proclaims, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink.”

Context matters.

Light and water, both are associated with baptism. This is the time of Lent, on and after the ancient mid-point before Lent was lengthened when the catechumens were being scrutinized and exorcized and given the rites that are still in the traditional form of baptism today, such as the ephphatha. The readings all through this period link us back to our ancient Catholic forebears in Rome. It is good to pay attention to the Station Churches and the readings. They enrich your Lenten journey.

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 33: 1st Passion Sunday – Pruning

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, we review the process of pruning we have undergone since Pre-Lent and how the pruning is now going to be seriously stepped up in the Traditional Roman Rite. Also, we hear about Veronica’s veil, which is exposed for veneration today in St Peter’s Basilica.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, St. Peter’s on the Vatican Hill HERE.

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1st Passion Sunday – some notes

In the ancient Roman Church, before the establishment of what we now call Lent, we would have begun today, now called 1st Passion Sunday, a more intense fortnight fast leading to Easter morning.  It is important for us to keep in mind that another important source for teasing forth the themes of the seasons and feasts and each Holy Mass is the Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours.  Religious and clerics have a greater connection to this liturgical font than most laypeople, since they are obliged to it.  Today in the days first hour, Matins, which has various readings and responses (changed into the post-Conciliar Office of Readings) we have that fourteen night theme.

These are the days to be observed of you in their seasons. * In the fourteenth day at even is the Lord’s Passover, and on the fifteenth day ye shall keep a Feast unto the Lord, the Most High. … Isti sunt dies, quos observáre debétis tempóribus suis: * Quartadécima die ad vésperum Pascha Dómini est: et in quintadécima solemnitátem celebrábitis altíssimo Dómino.

Let’s continue with some liturgical-historical context, which can serve to reinforce our Catholic identity in our own times.

The Roman Station is at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, reaching back to the time when there were on the night before the followed by the diaconal and presbyteral ordinations.  On this Sunday when we are at the place – at least in our imaginations in union with our forebears – where the first Vicar of Christ was crucified, the theme of the Mass is overshadowed by the Christ’s own Passion and crucifixion.   The final battle with death is soon to begin liturgically, and to usher it in we sing at the beginning of the first of the liturgical hours the tetrameter trochaic catalectic hymn,

Pange, lingua, gloriósi proelium certáminis,
Et super Crucis troph?o Dic triúmphum nóbilem,
Quáliter Redémptor orbis Immolátus vícerit.

Sing, my tongue, of the victory in glorious battle
and tell a noble triumphal (song) about the trophy of the Cross,
how the once Immolated Redeemer of the world prevailed.

This was written in the meter of the marching songs of the Roman legions of G. Iulius Caesar in Gaul as reported by the Roman historian Suetonius (cf 49).

From this Sunday, we are marching into battle.  We even unfurl our battle banners in the form of veiling the images in churches, usually in purple.

Coincidently, today in St. Peter’s the Veil of Veronica is displayed.

I say “unfurl our banners”.  However, another way of see these veils is as part of the liturgical Passion of the Church together with her Lord.

All during pre-Lent and Lent we are losing liturgical life, in a sense.  The Alleluia goes on Septuagesima.  Music and flowers go on Ash Wednesday.   Now, statues and images are draped in purple.  That is why today is sometimes called Repus Sunday, from repositus analogous to absconditus or “hidden”, because this is the day when Crosses and other images in churches are veiled. Traditionally Crosses are covered until the end of the Passion on Good Friday. Also as of today in the Vetus Ordo, the “Iudica” psalm in prayers at the foot of the altar and the Gloria Patri at the end of certain prayers is no longer said. After the Mass on Holy Thursday the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the main altar, which itself is stripped. Bells are replaced with wooden noise makers. On Good Friday there isn’t even a Mass and for long there was no Communion on Friday but also Thursday because there wasn’t even a “Mass” of the Pre-Sanctified. At the beginning of the Easter Vigil we are deprived of light itself! It is as if the Church herself were completely dead with the Lord in His tomb.

This liturgical death of the Church reveals how Christ emptied Himself of His glory in order to save us from our sins and to teach us who we are.

The Church then gloriously springs to life again at the Vigil of Easter.  In ancient times, the Vigil was celebrated in the depth of night.  In the darkness a single spark would be struck from flint and spread into the flames.  The flames spread through the whole Church.

Try to imagine how dark the world was before electricity and today’s ubiquitous light pollution.  We modern people only rarely experience true darkness.

In the well-known Epistle reading from Hebrews 9, Paul stresses the High Priesthood of Christ, and our redemption in the shedding of His Blood.   Since this letter was written to the Hebrews, Paul used references that every Hebrew of his day would have understood right away, like shorthand.

Brethren: when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. (RSV)

Every Jew would have known that the brother of Moses, Aaron, was set apart to be the High Priest over the People and that all subsequent priests were to offer sacrifices according to God’s prescriptions in the portable sanctuary or tabernacle and later in the Temple.   They knew that on one special day of the year, the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur ­- the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to offer a blood sacrifice to reconcile the entire people with God and atone for all their sins.   Paul underscored how that repeated annual action of the High Priest of the old covenant was a foreshadowing of Christ’s far superior, once-for-all Sacrifice.

Remembering that the Hebrews knew about the old covenant priesthood, Paul’s explanation of a New Covenant also takes care of the problem that Jesus of Nazareth was not of the tribe of Levi, like Aaron.  He was, however, the heir of David who was King and Priest in the line of Melchizedek the King of Salem (Jeru-salem), which pre-dated the Aaronic, Levitical priesthood.  And Jesus is the “priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4).  Paul refers to Melchizedek in Hebrews 5:6-10 and 6:20 and 7:1-21 and 8:1.  Hebrews 7 is especially important. You might read it through before Sunday Mass.

Another point that Paul makes is that Christ is High Priest in a “greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)”.   This is a reference to the tent of presence, the tri-partite portable sanctuary.  This subdivided tent contained, as the Temple would later, the area of sacrifices in an outer “court”. Sectioned off within that was the holy place for the Presence Bread, Menorah, and Altar of Incense.  Within that was the inmost place, the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, where only the High Priest could enter and only once a year (cf. Leviticus 16).   So, if Christ is to enter a tent not made by human hands, Paul could only mean the sanctuary of Heaven.   Into this Holy of Holies, the High Priest took His own Blood as the expiatory, reconciling once-for-all time Sacrifice to atone for every sin ever committed.

Moreover, this is a new covenant with God.  All previous covenants were marked by several features: they were instituted in a high place, and they involved both a sacrifice and a meal to seal the deal.   Hence, all previous covenants pointed to the height of Calvary, the sacrificial altar of the Cross, and the meal of the Last Supper. Calvary and Cenacle were bound together as one event because Christ only consumed the Passover meal’s fourth and final drink of wine just before He consummated the Sacrifice and breathed His last.  Supper was Sacrifice to be and Sacrifice was Supper that was and continues to the end of days.  Because our High Priest ascended out of time and space to the heavenly temple where He perpetually offers His Sacrifice to the Father, we can renew that same Last Supper Calvary Sacrifice on our altars across the globe, even simultaneously (cf. Hebrews 8:1ff).

I’ll wrap this with a quote from Pius Parsch’s The Church’s Year of Grace about the beginning of Passiontide.

During the coming two weeks let us draw close to Christ in His bitter suffering, to Jesus the Man of Sorrows. Let us weep and sympathize with Him; but let us likewise regard Him as the conqueror upon the battlefield of Golgotha, with whom we too will be victorious. Let us see in Him the King who rules while suffering upon the throne of the Cross, with whom we too may rule by rising above the troubles and misfortunes of life. In spirit let us follow our High-priest as He passes into the Holy of Holies to sacrifice Himself for us; He is inviting us to share in His priesthood by offering ourselves as victims.

 

 

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 32: Saturday of the 4th Week of Lent – Don’t be deceived by outward piety

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, Card. Richelieu gives excellent advice about either not being taken in by outward piety but lack of action or also preferment for the favored of the powerful.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, San Nichola in Carcere HERE.

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DAILY ROME SHOT 965 – Catholic Chess Club on Chess.com?

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful. 

Still there… still making good coffee. Still building their amazing monastery in Wyoming. Right now they have their “Pascha Java”.

The American Cup is underway.  $400,000 prize fund. Just players playing under the US flag.  Format: matches – four games between each pairing over two days. We are in the semis, now.  These are matches, four games over two days. After a classical game comes rapid with blitz for tie breaks.  Fabi and Levon are tied, and my guy Wesley (yay!) is now behind a game with Roy Robson.  There is an elimination bracket too, but leave that for now.

In the women’s section, Krush crushed Nazi Paikidze and 14 year old Alice Lee beat “Begim”.  I think Alice is, so far, perfect.  Hostilities resume today at 14OO EST (1900 CET).

Yesterday something different happened.  Things were halted for a tornado warning in St. Louis.  The players went to shelters and the commentators just kept going with anecdotes.

White to move and mate in


34.Bh7+ Kf7 35.Qg6+ Nxg6 36.hxg6#

Click!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

CLICK!

I am now a chess.com affiliate.   So, click and join!   Maybe we can build a fun and active Catholic Chess Club within Chess.com.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

The wonderful nuns of Gower Abbey, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, recorded:

Tenebrae at Ephesus

US HERE – UK HERE

These are the RESPONSORIES of Tenebrae for all three days of the Triduum.  They are, arguably, the most beautiful chants of the entire liturgical year.

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15 March – Annual ramble about the #IdesOfMarch

ides of march groupsWe call today the Ides of March, made especially famous in the English speaking world by Shakespeare in his play Julius Caesar.

Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak, Caesar is turn’d to hear.

Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.

Caesar:
What man is that?

Brutus:
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

QUAERITUR: If someone were to ask you today “What are Ides?”, could you give an explanation?

Romans had three special days each month which were supposed to relate to the cycles of the moon. The first days of the month were the Kalends. Kalends gives us our word “calendar”, of course. The origin of this strange Latin word, with a K, is fuzzy. K in Latin immediately makes us suspect that there is something very ancient going on or perhaps something Greek. In this case, some think that Kalends comes from an announcement about the New Moon made to Juno on the Capitoline Hill, “kalo Iuno Novella… I call you, New Juno”. Who knows. Going on, the Nones fell either on the 5th in short months or 7th in longer months. The Ides fell either on the 13th or the 15th, depending on the month. Romans thought even numbered days were unlucky, so they jumped over them and didn’t hold religious events on them. Romans counted dates of the month backwards from these three days. Today, 15 March, is the Ides of March, tomorrow will be “ante diem xvii Kalendas Apriles… 17 days before the Kalends of April”.

Don’t worry that that doesn’t seem to add up. Romans counted days a little differently than we do.

Here is a mnemonic poem to help remember when the Ides and other days fall in a month. It varies. This is from Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar reworked by Lodge or what we call “Gildersleeve & Lodge” (my preferred grammar – UK HERE):

“In March, July, October, May,
The Ides are on the fifteenth day,
The Nones the seventh; but all besides
Have two days less for Nones and Ides.”

English “Ides” is from Latin Idus (always plural feminine) comes probably from Etruscan iduo, “to divide”, and thus it indicates that we are roughly at mid-month.  However, there is a Sanskrit root indu which is “moon”, hence, the Idus are when the Roman thought the full moon ought to be (whether it was full or not, apparently).

You students of Latin need to know that in Latin the names of months are actually adjectives.  In Latin we say that today is “the March-ian (month’s) Ides” or Idus Martiae (mensis).  But in Latin we also conceive that the whole date is a single word or term.  Thus, if we were going to put off something until, exempli gratia, 18 March we would say “differimus aliquid in ante diem xv Kal. April.

Interesting, no?  Nisi fallor, Romans paid interest on loans on the Ides.

Caesar sure paid.

Anyway, we Catholics still pay our interest to the ancient Roman way of calculating time.  In the Latin edition of the Liturgy of the Hours (not the pre-Conciliar Roman Breviary) in the calendar section we still see indications of the ancient Roman dates.

So, today is famously the day upon which Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Caesar had, apparently, been warned by various people, including his wife Calpurnia who had had a portentous dream, not to go to the Senate meeting that day.  He went.  He was killed with 23 stab wounds in the portico of the Theatre of Pompey.

Caesar was killed during or after a meeting of the Senate, but not in the Senate building.

Pompey the Great, when he returned to Rome from Spain, still held power of imperium (to lead troops, etc.) and he could not legally cross the City limits (pomerium) without losing that power.  So, in order to attend Senate meetings, he built a meeting hall for the Senate outside the pomerium.  It was part of the complex of the palace and stone theatre he built, Rome’s first permanent stone theatre.

BTW… on a personal note… this is “my neighborhood” in Rome.

At this point there was no Senate building in the Roman Forum.  The Senate had burned down after the murder of one of Caesar’s thugs, Publius Clodius Pulcher, by a guy named Milo. Milo was a creature aligned with Cicero and the optimates.  Publius’s supporters brought his body to the Senate House (the Curia Cornelia which Lucius Cornelius Sulla had built to replace to old Curia Hostilia), and burned it there.  They went into the Senate and hauled out the wooden furniture to burn the body.  The Senate caught fire too and burned down. Caesar started the construction of a new Senate House, the Curia Iulia which stands still in the Forum because in the 7th century it was turned into a church, Sant’Adriano al Foro.

In the meantime, with the destruction of the curia (still today the technical name for a diocesan chancery) the Senate moved around, meeting in temples or often at the aforementioned hall built by Pompey.

PERSONAL ANECDOTE:

The main door of my seminary in Rome opened onto the street which corresponds, according to clever German archeologists, to the place Caesar was slain by Brutus and the other conspirators, the end of the square shaped portico of Pompey’s Theatre complex.

In my first year in my Roman seminary, I could look out my window and see the curving facade of a large building constructed on the curved remains of Pompey’s theatre. Thus the Via del Monte della Farina, along the side of the Church Sant’Andrea della Valle, where the 1st Act of Pucinin’s Tosca takes place and where the fascinating humanist Pope Pius II is interred, runs just where Pompey’s senate meeting hall was. That’s where Caesar was killed. 

[As it turns out, better scholarship revealed that Caesar was killed where the edge of the “dig” of the Largo Argentina is.]

Also, one of my favorite restaurants in Rome has visible traces of Pompey’s complex… no, not the “famous” restaurant (to be AVOIDED at least for food and service – Ristorante Pancrazio).   The one I mean is far better (Hostaria Costanza – Roberto is great, and definitely get some mozzarella there, always outstanding.).

So, the notion that Caesar was killed under a statue of Pompey, whom Caesar had double-crossed and effectively bumped off (he was killed in Egypt and his body sent back to Rome pickled in a butt of wine), isn’t far off the mark.  There is an inscription on a building on the Via del Monte della Farina to mark the spot of Caesar’s demise. [The Germans were close, but they missed the mark.  See red comments, above.]

“Publius”, by the way, was the nom de plume used by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in The Federalist Papers.  In the rebuttals written to the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers on the of the writers is… yes… you guessed it… “Brutus”.

For those of you who are interested in coins, there is a super rare ancient Roman coin that is marked with “the Ides of March”. There are only 75 of them known in the world right now.

On the reverse of the coin (the right in the picture) you see EID MAR, “the Ides of March”.  This coin was struck by Brutus and company when they fled with an army to Greece in 42 BC a couple months before they were defeated  at the Philippi.  The obverse of the coin (left) declares that Brutus, whose profile you see, was “IMP(ERATOR)” of his little freedom-fighter army.  The reverse has daggers. You know what those are all about.  The upside-down cup-like thing is a pileus, an Eastern-style “Phrygian cap”, which was worn by freed slaves.

One of the things that a master did when he freed or  “manumitted” a slave (“manus mittere” a symbolic placing of one’s hand on a slave as a sign of freeing him) is place this sort of cap on the slave’s shaved head. Therefore, this lumpy cap became a symbol of freedom.

Coins are designed to communicate messages. The ancient Roman coin above says that Brutus, et alii, freed the Roman people from slavery by killing Caesar and that Brutus is a legitimate guy because his army acclaimed him to be their imperator, yadda yadda.

That pileus, the Phrygian cap, has through the centuries become a symbol of freedom from tyranny and for revolution.

In the Terror commonly called the French Revolution (“revolution” in Latin in res novae, “new things”, which were always bad in the eyes of Romans… and Leo XIII’s famous encyclical begins, “Rerum novarum semel excitata cupidine…”… Latin novus carries, always, a bad connotation), the Phygian cap was popular.

This cap appears on coats-of arms and flags of nations.    Once you know what it is, you start seeing it – if not everywhere – all over the place.

The Phrygian cap is on the seal of the US Senate.

And let us not forget, or let us learn for the first, time, that a zucchetto, white for popes, porpora sacra for cardinals, paonazza for bishops and black for priests, is, in Latin, pileus.  It’s the same Latin word but different idea… in most cases.  There are some bishops who are terrorist revolutionaries… but I digress.  The zucchetto is great for keeping one’s shaved tonsure or bald spot, take your pick, warm.

As a matter of fact, I associate the bishop’s zucchetto with the Pauline eudoxia, or “authority”… the veil that women are to wear, a sign of submission, yes, but ultimately of true freedom.

WARNING! THEOLOGICAL DIGRESSION ON CHAPEL VEILS:  Consider that Paul tells the Corinthians that men are to pray with head uncovered (because they are images of the Father revealing action and gift) while women are pray with heads covered (because they image the glory of man revealing receptivity and submission).  The two, equal in dignity, reveal a complementarity.  This equal complementarity is manifested in clothing.  However, you might object, Jewish men in Paul’s time did pray with their head’s covered.   But, I respond, not when sacrificing.  The soul is described in feminine terms by virtually all writers, and, true enough, the soul must be receptive and submissive to the gifts of God.  Hence, males cover their heads at times.  But in key moments of the liturgical action, they uncover their heads to show how they are “imaging” the action and transcendence of the Father.  The bishop’s zucchetto is removed as the Canon begins, the most clearly sacrificial part of the Mass.   But I digress.

Back to the coin.

There so few of these Brutus EID MAR coins around because Marcus Antonius and Gaius Octavius (later called Augustus – born, by the way, in Velletri, a town I have a connection to and lived in for some time) had them all, with their bad message, melted down.  This was a kind of damnatio memoriae, an attempt to obliterate the even the memory of a person or thing.

Sometimes there was an official damnatio memoriae issued by the Senate.  In Rome today you can see on ancient monuments where one guy’s name was carved out of the marble and another guy’s name was carved in its place.  A great example of this is on the Arch of Septimius Severus near the Curia Iulia in the Roman Forum. When Caracalla had Geta bumped of in 212 he had all references to Geta extirpated from the Arch.

In more modern times, still in Rome, the name of Mussolini was obliterated from nearly every building of his period.  Near the Mausoleum of Augustus, for example, there was a raised inscription of Latin dactylic hexameters about the shades of the emperors flying about the place and the name of Mussolini (who had cleared the area and set up the Ara Pacis nearby) was covered over in concrete.  Over the years the concrete has eroded away and you can see il Duce’s name once again.   We need these reminders!

But one way to deal with a person or a thing you don’t care for is never to mention it by name. I, as a matter of fact, avoid mention of some things – or websites – all the time.

In ancient times, and even in more modern times, mentioning a thing or person’s name was thought to be an almost magical act, onomancy, which could summon.   Names were sometimes considered influential in determining one’s destiny, a kind of nominative determinism: Nomen omen… 

Speaking of the “reverse” of the rarely-preserved Brutus coin, in the Patrick O’Brien book Reverse of the Medal there is this exchange:

‘You may say what you like, Barret Bonden,’ said Plaice, ‘but I’m older than you, and I say this here barky’s got what we call a…’
‘Easy, Joe,’ said Killick. ‘Naming calls, you know.”
‘What?’ asked Joe Plaice, who was rather deaf.
‘Naming calls, Joe,’ said Killick, laying his finger to his lips.

Bonden was Capt. Aubrey’s coxswain (pronounced “coxson”) and Preserved Killick his steward.  Joe Plaice once obtained a depressed fracture of the skull during combat and Dr. Stephen Maturin, having trapanned him, covered the round hole with a hammered out coin.  The scene is depicted in the movie.  US HERE UK HERE

Not a Brutus EID MAR coin, however.

So, if questioned, can you now explain something about the Ides of March?

Meanwhile…

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 31: Friday of the 4th Week of Lent – Jesus’ words and deeds are not just history, they are real today

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, we continue with the connection of yesterday’s and today’s Masses in the Vetus Ordo with a insight of Pius Parsch which we should take with us to every single Mass, to every reading of Scripture. Then outstanding spiritual advice from Card. Richelieu, to whom we return.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, Sant’Eusebio HERE.

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DAILY ROME SHOT 964 – Have some pie

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful. 

Still there… still making good coffee. Still building their amazing monastery in Wyoming. Right now they have their “Pascha Java”.

The American Cup is underway.  $400,000 prize fund. Just players playing under the US flag.  Format: matches – four games between each pairing over two days. After a classical game comes rapid with blitz for tie breaks.  Fabi and my guy Wesley (yay!) both prevailed to move on in the bracket.  Levon Aronian had a couple of terrifying blitz tie breaks after 6 hours of play to move ahead over Sam Sevian, who drops into the lower bracket (double elimination).

In the women’s section, Krush crushed Zoey Tang and 14 year old Alice Lee moves forward with a draw against Tatev Abrahamyan so she’s tied with “Begim”.  Hostilities resume today at 14OO EST (1900 CET).

Meanwhile, on Day 1 Sam Sevian lost to Levon Aronian after missing a forced checkmate.  Can you find it? (Easier if you know it’s there, harder if you are on the clock.)  How long did it take you?  Look at their time!

White to move.

The wonderful monks of Le Barroux make good wine from the ancient vineyards of the Avignon Popes.  You should try some and lend the monks a hand by doing so.

The other day I had supper with priest friend who celebrates the Vetus Ordo. He told me that he would be teaching a class in the parish on the Johannine books.    As soon as I got home, I got on Amazon (using MY LINK!) and ordered up this book for him.

What a book.

This book just keep rewarding and rewarding.

In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John by Anthony Esolen

US HERE – UK

Every priest who celebrates the TLM should have this book.  It is good for lay people who attend the TLM too, though it will make you punch above your weight.

Do your priest a favor and get this book for him for Easter.

Final question: Since it is “Pi” day, to how many digits do you know this mysterious number?

Ceterum censeo Alirezam delendum esse.

UPDATE

As I was getting ready for Mass I reviewed the texts for some notes in case I wanted to say a few things on the private stream. You might be interested in seeing some of my notes.

Today’s Mass and tomorrow’s are a pair of cufflinks, both deal with the Lord’s miracles of raising people from the dead. In today’s Mass we hear about the raising of the son of the widow by Elisha the Prophet and then in the Gospel the Lord raising the son of the widow of Naim. Tomorrow, we have the account in John 11 of the raising of Lazarus after three days. These two Masses come on the heals of the Wednesday which, before Lent was lengthened, had been the mid point. It was the Wednesday when, at St Paul’s outside the wall the catechumens were subjected to the rites of opening of the mouth and ears, with the placing of salt in the mouth and touching the ears, the ephphatha, and then 5 exorcisms. These rites remain in the traditional form of baptism.

Today and tomorrow, the Mass readings address two categories of people for whom Lent is especially important: the catechumens, who seek to enter the Church and penitent who seek reconciliation. Both categories are spiritually dead in mortal sin, Original Sin and then actual, committed sin. Both seek resurrection through what are often called the Sacraments of the Dead, Baptism and Penance because they are given to the spiritually dead.

Today, the readings seem to be aimed more at penitents. Why? The figures of the mothers weeping over their children are symbolic of the Church weeping over her fallen children. In the case of the non-baptized, they are not yet her children, there is no mother figure, though there are sisters of Lazarus. In the case of tomorrow’s Mass, Lazarus has been dead three days, really dead, in other words, deader even than the other two from yesterday. In this case the Mass texts are aimed primarily at catechumens, who are still in the state of Original Sin, not yet baptized, not connected to Christ.

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 30: Thursday of the 4th Week of Lent – The dead are raised. Baptism, Confession and You

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, Pius Parsch helps us with the two resurrection stories in the readings for Holy Mass in the Vetus Ordo, explaining that today’s Mass seems to be aimed at penitents while tomorrow’s, an older formula, is aimed at catechumens. Of course, he relates these to us, our lives, our deaths and resurrections.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, Ss. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti HERE.

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DAILY ROME SHOT 963

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful. 

Photo from The Great Roman™.   He sacrificed himself by going to the Gregorian University to attend a conference held by the Acton Institute in Rome.

Welcome new registrants:

Colleen65
GazBamber

Still there… still making good coffee. Still building their amazing monastery in Wyoming. Right now they have their “Pascha Java”.

The American Cup is underway.  $400,000 prize fund. Just players playing under the US flag.  In the 1st round there were 13 decisive games, including all 8 games in the women’s section.   I like the format.  These are matches, so there will be four games between each pairing over two days. After a classical game without additional time after the 40th move, there’s right away a gear-shifting rapid with point weight equal to the classical!  For the first match my guy Wesley So is up against the dangerous Sam Shankland and came away from the first round on top with a classical draw and a rapid win.  1.5-0.5  Fabiano Caruana beat one of his coaches, Grigory Oparin (yes, this the American Cup) 1-0 1-0 to lead the gang.  In the women’s section, two-time Cup winner Irina Krush lost to the lowest rated player 16-year old Zoey Tang in the classical but won in the rapid.  14 year old Alice Lee from my native place of Minneapolis (Wesley also), beat Tatev Abrahamyan in both formats so she’s tied with Gulrukhbegim “Begim” Tokhirjonova (yes, this is the American Cup).  Hostilities resume today at 14OO EST (1900 CET).

Meanwhile, white to move and mate in FIVE.


1. Qc7+ Kd4 2. Rb4+ Ke3 3. Qc3+ Ke2 4. Qd3+ Ke1 5. Rb1#
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

The Summit Dominicans would enjoy a visit from you. Take a look at their shop and give them a hand. And if you want to learn or improve your chess…

Yesterday I went to OTB, not feeling particularly well.  With white I had a long bout with the club’s strongest player, over about on and a half hours we settled on a draw at move 36. [FEN – 6k1/p1rb1rp1/1q2p1Np/3p4/2pP1P1P/Q3P3/PPR4R/2K5 b – – 22 35 (flip the board for my view)] I put the game into the machine when I got home.  At my move 36 black was slightly favored.  I had the engine continue playing best moves and we wound up at move 89 with all the pawns gone and white with a knight and rook against black with a rook.  Hence, we made the right decision, though that was with best moves from the engine.

In general my opponents can depend on me snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

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From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 24-03-10 – Bp. Fatty convalescing

March 10th, 2024

Dear Diary,

Worst Lent ever. Even though I got vaxed a lot I still got the Covid again. Feel better, definitely on the mend, but it was pretty bad. I’d say sick as a dog, but not sick like Chester’s sick.  He’s his own category of sick.

To recoup I went to the lake place and left you, Dear Diary, behind.  Sorry about that.  Not that I had the energy to write anything.  Or that I did anything for that matter.  I signed stuff Fr. Tommy brought and did phone and vid calls when I had the energy and wasn’t too fuzzed out.

My doc was extra nice to me, but he let me know that too many more of these things and it could be curtains for me. He’s got me on a couple of drugs, which make me hungry and sleepy (hungryer and sleepyer).

Also still have the weird infection and the doc gave me doxycycling. Tommy looked it up on his computer. Cures everything from zits to the clap. Too bad it wasn’t around in great-uncle Pete’s day.

Daily Mass has been hard even when I could.  For a while, I just couldn’t and Fr. Tommy did it IN LATIN.  Better that than nothing.  Gotta say that after a few times it kinda started to seem okay.  I teased Tommy a little about the pink today for Laytare, but he took it cheerfully enough.  Must’ve been the Latin.  Kind like his vax.

Dozer visited. Chester made sure his visit was short. Jude came a few times.  More than any of the other bishops or priests of the area.  Strange guy.  He’s a conservative, but he seems like he really cared.

The FCMH* were horrible, worse over video, but done now. It’s been a hell of a Lent over all. Can’t hardly wait for Easter. Ham! Though the thought of ham doesn’t exactly sit right at the moment. Laying low for now. Lots of tv – great reruns on the streaming channel. Worth every penny. I just put my feet up and drink Ensure. Feeling better.

Jenny threatened to move here. Not crazy about that. Big sis always checking up on me.

I heard a rumor about Jack**.  Could be “retiring early”.  Oh boy.

There are tons of events after Easter, so I better rest up.


Editor’s notes.

*FCMH = Finance Meetings From Hell
** The Archbishop of Red Bird, John “Jack” Daniels.

 

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 29: Wednesday of the 4th Week of Lent – Openings and Exorcisms

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, we go back in time to the special rites performed for the ancient catechumens on this day, once the mid-point of Lent. These rites eventually came to be part of a continuous rite of baptism. They included the placing of salt in the mouth, the opening of the ears, and several exorcisms. Today we hear the second of the exorcisms. Last year we heard the first (which I’m sure you remember).

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, St. Paul’s outside-the-walls where we were for Sexagesima Sunday in Pre-Lent HERE.

Don’t forget the 9 Month Novena prayer! HERE

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The Prayer for the Nine-Month Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe: 12 March – 12 December 2024

Text:

Prayer
of the Nine-Month Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe
12 March to 12 December
2024

O Virgin Mother of God, we fly to your protection and beg your intercession against the darkness and sin which ever more envelope the world and menace the Church. Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, gave you to us as our mother as He died on the Cross for our salvation. So, too, in 1531, when darkness and sin beset us, He sent you, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, on Tepeyac to lead us to Him Who alone is our light and our salvation. Through your apparitions on Tepeyac and your abiding presence with us on the miraculous mantle of your messenger, Saint Juan Diego, millions of souls converted to faith in your Divine Son. Through this novena and our consecration to you, we humbly implore your intercession for our daily conversion of life to Him and the conversion of millions more who do not yet believe in Him. In our homes and in our nation, lead us to Him Who alone wins the victory over sin and darkness in us and in the world. Unite our hearts to your Immaculate Heart so that they may find their true and lasting home in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ever guide us along the pilgrimage of life to our eternal home with Him. So may our hearts, one with yours, always trust in God’s promise of salvation, in His never-failing mercy toward all who turn to Him with a humble and contrite heart. Through this novena and our consecration to you, 0 Virgin of Guadalupe, lead all souls in America and throughout the world to your Divine Son in Whose name we pray. Amen.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
To be prayed daily throughout the nine-month novena
from March 12 to December 12, 2024.

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DAILY ROME SHOT 962 – Bonus pics and video

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful. 

Right click for larger.

Who wants to tell us what this says?  What is its significance?

And, for fun…

On another note….

Hey! l*****.s****@gmail.com! I tried to send a thank you note for your donation today but it was kicked back. New email? Let me know so I can update.

On another note…

Welcome new registrants:

Nefftin
FideiMater

Meanwhile, BLACK to move and mate in 2.

Click!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

In St. Louis, the American Cup 2024 begins today.  It is a double elimination format.  Should be good.  Today in the open section:

Fabiano Caruana vs. Grigoriy Oparin
Levon Aronian vs. Sam Sevian
Leinier Dominguez vs. Ray Robson
Wesley So vs. Sam Shankland

I’m may go to OTB today, but I haven’t been entirely well.  We shall see.  Prayers please.

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 28: Tuesday of the 4th Week of Lent – Christ the new Moses

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, we hear from Pius Parsch about how Moses is a “type”, a foreshadowing, of Christ.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, San Lorenzo in Damaso HERE.

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LENTCAzT 2024 – 27: Monday of the 4th Week of Lent – My little sacrifices

A 5 minute daily podcast to help you in your Lenten discipline.

Today, we hear about Lord foretelling His greatest miracle.

You can continue your video spiritual pilgrimage to today’s Roman Station, Santi Quatro Coronati HERE.

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