What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

Some of you were asking about the photos of the Tridentine Mass I posted on Sunday. I also got e-mail about them. Many were curious about the light source. Here is a shot of the church, and you can see the light source: a shaft of sun light.

Just so that you can have a couple other things to talk about….

And ….

And…

I got something by e-mail which I found amusing.  I have no idea if this epistolary duel really occured or not, but it is still pretty good.

Everyone who has ever bought a house will enjoy this. A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client who lost his  house in Hurricane Katrina and wanted to rebuild.. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to the  parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the Lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply:

(Actual letter):

"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval

can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin." Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:

(Actual Letter):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased, by the U.S., from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Isabella. The good queen, Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus ’ expedition. Now the Pope, as I’m sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world.Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it AND the FHA. I hope you find God’s original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?"

The loan was approved!

The Archbishop of Vienna, His Eminence Christoph Card. Schoenborn, O.P., celebrated Holy Mass in the Vatican Basilica with a musical setting of the Ordinary provided by W.A. Mozart and the Vienna Philharmonic. The Mass was K. 317 in C Major, "Coronation".

It was a great event to be sure. I compare it favorably to the other time I heard the "Coronation" in St. Peter’s, on a Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul many years ago when the Berlin Philharmonic did the honors.

This time we were honoring the 5th centenary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Basilica itself, the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the service of the Swiss Guards, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart, and close of the 5th International Festival Pro Musica e Arte Sacra.

Quoting our Lord, Card. Schoenborn cited Mark 13:1ff: "And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!"

And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down."

I found the use of this quote supremely ironic, and I am not sure that His Eminence did not intend it to be.

Think about it. Holy Church had (has) a magnificent treasury of sacred music, a vast imposing edifice of gorgeous components which have lasted through the centuries until our time. Now, considering the state of sacred music in so many places, can we say that one stone has been left upon another?

In truth, Card. Schoenborn was making the point in his sermon that all the glorious things of this earth, man’s great achievements, as as nothing compared to the glory of God. As a good Dominican he quoted the well-known phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas upon his vision toward the end of his life. Aquinas saw something that made all his accomplishments seem as so much straw.

Nevertheless, sacred music is capable of expressing things in a way that no other human means of communication can approach.

On 22 November, the feast of St. Cecilia, His Holiness slated to visit the Accademia Santa Cecilia. Some think he will say something very interesting about music and liturgy. I have little doubt that he will use the occasion to deepen his already amazing body of thought on the subject.

Near the Mausoleum of Augustus Caesar is long wall forming part of the building that houses the Ara Pacis. The entire Res Gestae Divi Augusti is on that wall in bronze letters. Here is the first panel, followed by an English translation of the part you see.

My emphasis…

In my nineteenth year, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army with which I set free the state, which was oppressed by the domination of a faction. For that reason, the senate enrolled me in its order by laudatory resolutions, when Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius were consuls (43 BC), assigning me the place of a consul in the giving of opinions, and gave me the imperium. With me as propraetor, it ordered me, together with the consuls, to take care lest any detriment befall the state. But the people made me consul in the same year, when the consuls each perished in battle, and they made me a triumvir for the settling of the state. I drove the men who slaughtered my father into exile with a legal order, punishing their crime, and afterwards, when they waged war on the state, I conquered them in two battles. I often waged war, civil and foreign, on the earth and sea, in the whole wide world, and as victor I spared all the citizens who sought pardon. As for foreign nations, those which I was able to safely forgive, I preferred to preserve than to destroy. About five hundred thousand Roman citizens were sworn to me. I led something more than three hundred thousand of them into colonies and I returned them to their cities, after their stipend had been earned, and I assigned all of them fields or gave them money for their military service. I captured six hundred ships in addition to those smaller than triremes. Twice I triumphed with an ovation, and three times I enjoyed a curule triumph and twenty one times I was named emperor. When the senate decreed more triumphs for me, I sat out from all of them. I placed the laurel from the fasces in the Capitol, when the vows which I pronounced in each war had been fulfilled. On account of the things successfully done by me and through my officers, under my auspices, on earth and sea, the senate decreed fifty-five times that there be sacrifices to the immortal gods. Moreover there were 890 days on which the senate decreed there would be sacrifices. In my triumphs kings and nine children of kings were led before my chariot. I had been consul thirteen times, when I wrote this, and I was in the thirty-seventh year of tribunician power (AD 14). When the dictatorship was offered to me, both in my presence and my absence, by the people and senate, when Marcus Marcellus and Lucius Arruntius were consuls (22 BC), I did not accept it. I did not evade the curatorship of grain in the height of the food shortage, which I so arranged that within a few days I freed the entire city from the present fear and danger by my own expense and administration. When the annual and perpetual consulate was then again offered to me, I did not accept it. When Marcus Vinicius and Quintus Lucretius were consuls (19 BC), then again when Publius Lentulus and Gnaeus Lentulus were (18 BC), and third when Paullus Fabius Maximus and Quintus Tubero were (11 BC), although the senate and Roman people consented that I alone be made curator of the laws and customs with the highest power, I received no magistracy offered contrary to the customs of the ancestors. What the senate then wanted to accomplish through me, I did through tribunician power, ... [and five times on my own accord I both requested and received from the senate a colleague in such power.]

There are several more panels of this. Amazing. Just read the Latin of the first sentence aloud. It gives you shivers.

Annós undéviginti natus exercitum priváto consilio et privatá impensá comparávi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertátem vindicávi.

Sort of makes you feel like a bit of an under achiever, no?