WDTPRS: Corpus Christi – COLLECT (2002MR)

In 1246, Robert of Thourotte, Bishop of Liège, Belgium, had instituted in his diocese the feast now known as Corpus Christi at the request of an Augustinian nun Juliana of Cornillon, who composed an office for it.  In 1264, Pope Urban IV ordered the feast of the Body of Christ to be celebrated as a holy day of obligation for the universal Church on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and accepted the texts by the Angelic Doctor for the Mass and office.

Today’s Collect, composed by the St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) and used at Benediction, was assumed into the post-Tridentine 1570 Missale Romanum where it has remained unchanged in all subsequent editions.

COLLECT – (2002MR):
Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili
passionis tuae memoriam reliquisti,
tribue, quaesumus,
ita nos Corporis et Sanguinis tui sacra mysteria venerari,
ut redemptionis tuae fructum in nobis iugiter sentiamus
.

I love that snappy clausula at the end… iúgiter séntiámus!  This is a marvelous prayer to sing.  Fortunately I get to do so often since in those places where I lurk we have frequent Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament with all the prayers in Latin.

Shall we have some vocabulary?  In case you were trying to look for reliquisti in your own copy of the Lewis & Short Dictionary, that esteemed tome of Latin wisdom, it is the perfect of relinquo.  It means a range of things like, “leave, leave behind” not only in the sense of in the sense of abandoning but more importantly for us also in the sense of bequeathing.  A memoria is not just “memory, the faculty of remembering,”,  it is also, “the time of remembrance” and “an historical account, narration.”  In early Christian Latin works memoria also means “a monument” in the sense of a “memorial”.

Iugiter is a great word.  It comes ultimately from the noun iugum, “a yoke or collar for horses”, “beam, lath, or rail fastened in a horizontal direction to perpendicular poles or posts, a cross-beam”.  The yoke was a symbol for defeat and slavery.  A victorious Roman general would compel the vanquished to pass under a yoke (sub iugum whence the English word “subjugate”) made of spears as a token of defeat. Vae victis! was their wail, “Woe to the vanquished!”  The prisoners were yoked together and paraded in the returning general’s triumph procession through the Forum’s via sacra to the temple of Capitoline Jupiter.  Iugiter (an adverb from the adjective iugis “yoked together”, cf. iungo) signifies “continuously”, as if one moment in time is being yoked together with the next, and the next, and so on.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who bequeathed to us under a wondrous sacrament
the memorial of Your Passion,
grant us,
we implore,
to venerate the sacred mysteries of Your Body and Blood
in such a way that we constantly sense within us the fruit of Your redemption
.

I have heard from many places that the customs of Corpus Christi processions, Forty Hours Devotion, and Eucharistic Adoration are returning in force.  People want and need these things.  They help us to be better Catholic Christians through contact with Christ.  The bad old days of post-Conciliar denigration of these necessary practices lingers a bit but the aging-hippie priests and liturgists are losing ground under the two-fold pincer of common sense and a genuine Catholic love of Jesus.

In the seminary I attended in the 1980’s we were informed with a superior sneer towards those quaint old processions and devotions that, “Jesus said ‘Take and eat, not sit and look!’”

Somehow, “looking” was opposed to “receiving”.

This is the same error, I think, inherent in the puzzling idea that if people aren’t constantly singing or carrying stuff during Mass they are not “actively” participating as if listening and watching must be only “passive”.

Younger people no longer have that baggage, happily.  They desire the good things of our Catholic inheritance.  They resist passé attempts to make Jesus “smaller”.  They want much more, as much as the Church can give.

Remember: this is not the fault of the Council itself.  If blame must be assigned it rests on the shoulders of those who misappropriated the Council’s authority to sustain their own ideas.

Those oh so enlightened experts of the Council’s “spirit” will benignly indulge the view that old rites and customs once served a purpose long ago, perhaps for the ignorant old-world peasant and unschooled new-world immigrant, but our shiny new up-to-date man – er um – person doesn’t need those things anymore.  In this modern age man has changed.  Eucharistic devotions would be harmful rather than helpful.  They must never be permitted!  We won’t crawl in submission before God anymore. We stand!  We do not go in archaic triumphal processions or kneel to Him as judgmental King.  We take (h)im/she/it/ourselves by the hand as helping Buddy!  We are grown up now, not child-like peasant slaves before a master who is lord and father of our household.  We have changed and so old things are no longer suitable.

Wrong.

Perhaps passing details of society have changed, its fashions and ideas shifting like sandbars, but man has not changed however well dressed or sophisticated.  Admittedly there is wider education now and greater affluence in first world countries.  Many advances have been attained.  But we, as human beings, have not changed.  We poor fallen souls, citizens of modern society and newly arrived immigrants equally, all need concrete things through which by our senses we can perceive invisible realities.  Urbane schooling and wealth might well be greater obstacles to the spiritual life than poverty and ignorance, urban or rustic.  Man remains human always, good but wounded.

In 1986 the English edition of Joseph Ratzinger’s Feast of Faith was published by Ignatius Press.  In that volume Benedict XVI reflected on the feast of Corpus Christi.  His Holiness juxtaposed the sad decline of Eucharistic devotions after the Second Vatican Council with what the Council of Trent taught.  Although the anti-triumphalism of some post-Conciliar liturgists had repressed Eucharistic exposition, adoration and processions,

the Council of Trent had been far less inhibited.  It said that the purpose of Corpus Christi was to arouse gratitude in the hearts of men and to remind them of their common Lord. (cf. Decr. desc. Euch., c. 5; DS 1644).  Here in a nutshell, we have in fact three purposes: Corpus Christi is to counter man’s forgetfulness, to elicit his thankfulness, and it has something to do with fellowship, with that unifying power which is at work where people are looking for the one Lord.  A great deal could be said about this; for with our computers, meetings and appointments we have become appallingly thoughtless and forgetful (pp. 128-9).

Let us consider Trent again for a moment.  There we find the unqualified statement that Corpus Christi celebrates Christ’s triumph, his victory over death. Just as, according to our Bavarian custom, Christ was honored in the terms of a great state visit, Trent harks back to the practice of the ancient Romans who honored their victorious generals by holding triumphal processions on their return.  The purpose of Christ’s campaign was to eliminate death, that death which devours time and makes us cultivate the lie in order to forget or “kill” time.  … Far from detracting from the primacy of reception which is expressed in the gifts of bread and wine, it actually reveals fully and for the first time what “receiving” really means, namely, giving the Lord the reception due to the Victor.  To receive him means to worship him; to receive him means precisely, Quantum potes tantum aude – dare to do as much as you can.  (p. 130).

Christ invites us to learn His ways through the image of His yoke taken upon our shoulders (Matthew 11:29-30).  In terms of the world crosses and yokes are heavy instruments of bitter humiliation.  Jesus says His yoke of subjugation is “sweet” and “light”.  True freedom lies precisely in subjugation to Him.  Yokes are sweet when they are His.

To win for us this sweet yoke, He did not defeat us, He defeated the death in us.

We need no longer fear the death we all face.

In the Blessed Sacrament we now proclaim with Christ the Triumphant Victor, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (cf. 1 Cor 15:54b – 57).

We cannot honor enough the Body and Precious Blood of Christ by which we were redeemed.

I affirm my subjugation to Christ Victor, God and King, triumphant over death, vanquisher of hell and my sins.

Before His transforming glory in the Eucharist I am content to kneel until with His own hand He raises me.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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16 Comments

  1. Priam1184 says:

    Thank you Father.

  2. jameeka says:

    Thank you very much, Father Z. That last paragraph from Pope Benedict XVI is powerful, and helps me understand the meaning of the processions much better.

  3. benedetta says:

    Where I grew up it was indeed the very strictly adhered to policy that there be no open processions of the Blessed Sacrament, nor regular Adoration, for anyone, ever. It seems redundant to then also add that kneelers were removed from a great many places, just in case anyone had some inclination or idea or hope of that. And confessionals ripped out too…And officially anyway the policy was to stick tabernacle in a holding cell as far away from the official worship space as conceivably possible…and all the remnants, reminders, leftovers and simple remainings of what worked through my region as a whirlwind are everywhere evident. They came, they removed, and, everyone left…And now, the few vocations we have are ragged and exhausted and cannot keep up with the minimum required let alone feed the spiritually malnourished and out of control (who predictably enough often show up at the church looking for…some things…or Someone…) and just as M. Kelly says when people are ready to be rid of their burdens and then get very enthused about the Faith the reality is that they are frequently, due to upbringing nearly devoid of Catholic sacraments or culture, through no fault of their own, are completely incapable of self control, practicing virtue, overcoming habits of sin, and it goes without saying refraining from harming others or leading others with fortitude in the true Faith…Yet they hang on for dear life to what they have an inkling is what they indeed desperately need. Such is life in North America as a Catholic in this moment.

    Having grown up steeped in it to some degree having experienced it every single Sunday at Mass and then on my own trying to sort out this from that as an adult reading my way and reasoning and even praying my way through all of the various teachings which had been forcefully imparted to me growing up by my superiors in the faith locally, and adding, just for grins, and by complete coincidence judicious helpings of Chesterton, Aquinas, Dorothy Day, and St JPII…and other Catholic authors whose credentials were ambiguous enough to pass censor from the secular authorities my education was beholden to…Without anger I can see what they were getting at: that because God is love, we need not feel inwardly responsible for the evils of the world. We only need to take and eat and go one our merry way. The church worship space is never the time or place to reflect upon our actions, or even worse, our intentions, for what occurs there is about being Church at the banquet of love. There, we nourish ourselves, literally with communion in the hand, and figuratively by gathering around and ministering and celebrating Eucharist and then giving it to one another as well. So long as things look kind of like this, the underpinning realities of doing or not actually doing those things matter nothing…It’s kind of like going to a show on Broadway. The curtain goes up, the magic starts…we are triumphant and we praise…and then…we go out again to our humdrum workaday world…We serve God and one another and Jesus stays in the box in the little room apart where He is safe and we do the heavy lifting, the political things, especially the things that look good in pr photos, with the good press, we feed the hungry and shine a little light on our good deeds, we vote in the desired manner and let others know, and we prevent other “causes” which don’t fit our litmus test from getting a hearing in our midst…And that’s all that is needed to be a good person, and live a good life…

    It is true that God is not a sadist, and what a revelation, I guess, for some…To comprehend this shocking idea which is not really consistent with a lot of stuff we have been led to believe.

    True as that undoubtedly is, at the same time, we cannot presume in the here and now, even if we ourselves never give any stray thought to looking back on what we have sown, that at the very same time that we can pronounce God to be “not a sadist”, today on Corpus Christi Sunday for the Novus Ordo in the world where Eucharistic processions are still verboten, we might not so positively be able to say that God approves of all we are doing right this minute. Do we not need time for some of these realities to sink in? Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament gives us those precious moments wherein we may exercise all of our faculties of reason, all of our programs of progress, our various agenda to do good, and look things over in an authentic and non hypocritical way to say, if I were to meet God on the street coming out of here in a few moments, would I be able to say to God, “I think I did the right thing back there”? Yes, no? Not sure? As our clappy style Masses no longer foster or permit that sort of introspection, I wonder whether a little bit of Exposition might still do us some good, even now, if we ask for it and hope in Him.

    The other part is that processions kind of break through the really heavy propaganda that is telling our young people that Jesus is no longer walking with them in their sufferings…Or that the Way of the Cross was one historical moment for all time which happened to a wise political teacher leader coach guru community organizer…I can understand that people of a certain age felt that they have no need of such a friend on our earthly pilgrimage…After all, the word of their time was “plastics”. The world was going to become an explosion of love…And it seems it is still quite hard for them to understand what evils have been wrought on our youth if not by their hands directly certainly in their name and often with their explicit and often implicit or covert support. If they do not need it, there will be no shortage in future of happy clappy feelgoodforall Mass, so what…but why would they also deny it to young people who have not the big explosion of love they had in their youth, the promise nor the reality, but such horrible despair and cruelty which doesn’t remotely substitute? This I will never understand.

    I know many titter and will continue…though it’s not all just fun and games for this commenter or another in her charge…and so many architects of the close off Jesus program so do not want to see this, but, so what…life happens…might as well accept it…I still would rather light that one tiny candle than curse. I will choose to bless, so, a happy Feast of the Real Presence to all everywhere:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcJw0dHaMh4

  4. jacobi says:

    “aging-hippie priests and liturgists are losing ground”

    Certainly in my diocese, Father. We are down to fewer but rather younger priests, and this morning we had a somewhat unusual sermon on the meaning of Corpus Christi, straight forward, clear explanation and definition. Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Host under the outward appearance of bread and wine. Also, the reason why the Church requires us to attend Mass at least once a week. (mark you, he didn’t mention Holy Days of Obligation, one step at a time after all ).
    I hadn’t heard a sermon like that in forty years. A young visitor who was with me, (late forties) said she had never, ever, heard such a sermon.

    What on earth, or rather Heavens, is happening?

  5. gloriainexcelsis says:

    Here’s something else about Holy Mass for Corpus Christi. The Sequence, “Lauda Sion,” was also composed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Our pastor had a little story for us about that. Pope Urban IV had a contest going between St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure, no slouch himself in the poetry department, to see whose composition would be included in the Mass. When St. Bonaventure saw the one by St. Thomas he threw in the towel. There was nothing more perfect or more beautiful to describe and explain what we believe than the words of St. Thomas Aquinas. In Latin or in English, said or sung, it is a beautiful thing. Our small choir sang “Adoro Te Devote” as Father prepared for Benediction after Holy Mass this morning, another gift from St. Thomas Aquinas.

  6. pelerin says:

    Eucharistic devotions do seem to be returning slowly but surely, certainly in my part of Britain anyway. I have just returned from London where I took part in a Corpus Christi procession led by our Cardinal from Farm Street Church to St James Spanish Place. We were blessed with a superb warm summer’s day and it was extremely well attended with standing room only when we finally arrived in St James for Benediction. It was interesting to see a complete cross section of worshippers of all ages – I even spotted a young man with a tattooed head!

    ‘Lauda Sion’, ‘Adoro te Devote’ and the ‘Pange Lingua’ were among the several Latin and English hymns sung along the way while tourists and Londoners looked on with curiosity. Processions such as these give witness to the Faith in these atheistic days.

  7. Gratias says:

    Thank you Fr. Z, and Benedetta, for teaching us. From iugiter (yoked together continuously) to plastics (a reference to the 1960s movie The Graduate), amazing.

  8. Gratias says:

    The procession of Corpus Christi is a great tradition. Today we went for the first time to an EF Corpus. Have been to many EF masses but never on this feast, as we are biritual. The procession was great and I must add that even my very liberal OF parish started a short procession some three years ago, although this is done before mass. Yet there is progress even in our liberal world of California. For example last Friday we had Eucharistic Adoration for the first time ever. Archbishop Jose Gomez is certainly a great improvement over his predesessor.

    The singing at EF was divine. One thing I have never heard sung in my life is a Te Deum, which was omitted today. But I think it will come.

    We are fed up with the rampant secularization of Western Civilization and are not going to take it anymore, so to speak.

  9. benedetta says:

    I think that one can see a certain value, now in regrettable hindsight of the last decades in the Church in the U.S. leading up to where we are now, to this moment or moments experienced, wherein a calculation was made to twist doctrine or omit altogether in countless areas to serve a very limited and select few prioritized interests. With those interests I suppose more or less, accomplished, I guess a number of us sometimes still wonder when the architects and designers of all of that, in a great degree still kind of sticking to that same old story, will kind of reflect or take stock. I mean, we know, for instance, that the Roe court, and even the advocates of the holding in Roe never conceived of a time in which in some demographics nearly half of all children conceived would arbitrarily and for no reason not be permitted to live. Even as the numbers pushed outrageous and staggering proportions, many continued to hold to the myth publicly of “safe, legal and rare” simultaneously, until now without warning that mantra has been dropped to just expand according I guess to economic or market parameters, whatever they may be, perhaps rigging the price to maximize profits at this point, it’s all irrational and without limit on consumption so, who can tell really. But it’s so obvious that even from a point of view of a healthy plurality, just basic good old liberal human decency, dialogue, respect, the whole experiment has failed so miserably, and I think that it is precisely that doctrine was twisted and omitted that we can thank for it. The faith is trustworthy, it is inherently trustworthy and ineffably reasonable. The teachings are not irrational and their foundations only respect human freedom and the exercise of reason, intelligence, intellectual rigor, open debate. It’s not that doctrine was taught in an atmosphere of respect with time for debate and free and open inquiry. It’s the opposite of that — it’s that there was no inquiry, no permission of debate, nothing free, nothing open. The twisted sister doctrine and the “that’s old peasant stuff and gibberish” myth was shoved down our throats without any opportunity to inquire. And lo once people have the opportunity to openly and freely, without pressure, inquire, invariably they realize the goodness and joyfully and with full use of their best faculties can embrace the truths and deep reasonableness of orthodox faith. I’m fine if people didn’t really pedagogically want to go with, say, the Baltimore Catechism, or, even, any catechism, but, the fact that they never let people have a fair hearing as to the whys of the faith, of the Church did not in the long run hurt the Church or believers, even if we must suffer, a little, for a time…no, ultimately what it hurts is themselves, and the glorious great society and utopia of love and ideals they so desired to accomplish by jettisoning, just about, everything else.

    We all must now live with these results, “results”, whether we would have opted for, both, the catechism, with the whys and the free inquiry with discussion, or the kremlinesque stalin approach that dictated what we must all do from now on and forget all that other stuff. And the results are that there are now a great number of people walking around who believe various very weird things about Catholics, not just “the Church”, or “Catholicism” or even “Religion” in general, but, hostile and xenophobic and bigoted and even criminally motivated attacking things about real flesh and blood Catholics, and these folks who have believed everything they have heard about the Church and believers through their sources, and of course just like the rest of us never given the benefit to read Aquinas in college, to ask the deeper questions, an opportunity to meet someone who actually believes that and see that they are ok people who do not actually mean harm to others…and this movement cares for naught whether you are this or that sort of Catholic. It’s all fairly predictable. At a certain point, a lot of people started believing all the hype and complaint about how horrible was “the Vatican” and “the Church” and they mean to “do something” about it. It’s one thing for the average whomever attending Mass, however they got there, they can handle themselves, morally, spiritually…As to those who incited all this in the first place, quite a great number of them are still ensconced…for years they holed out with their factions and their media and could tell the political powers that be that they were not “that sort of Catholic” and sit back and animate hate against their fellows and watch the fireworks. But now, I just don’t think the hordes are going to be selective, I don’t even think they can register much differences between this or that sort of Catholic given that the whole foundations for liberal thought, for reason and inquiry, have been by mutual consent, apparently, been omitted from the places responsible for imparting this process. One would have thought that, back in the day, one would have at least done some charitable groundwork for engaging in dialogue and coexisting, ahead of time, if not for the sake of the despised “bad Catholics” whose doctrine was in the process of active deconstruction, but, for, their own sakes, their positions, status and benefits.

  10. jflare says:

    “In the seminary I attended in the 1980’s we were informed with a superior sneer towards those quaint old processions and devotions that, “Jesus said ‘Take and eat, not sit and look!’”

    Somehow, “looking” was opposed to “receiving”.”

    I’m guessing they never thought of “kneel and look” either. Odd.
    In the last several years, as I finally began to comprehend what I’m able of the Church’s teaching on trans-substantiation, I’ve found I have all the more reason to attend Mass.
    Even if I can’t receive the Eucharist, I’m still able to “receive” the Word both in the spoken word and in contemplating being in the presence of the Lord.

  11. avatquevale says:

    In Sweden, of all places, where the Church has always kept a low profile because of past discrimination against Catholics, this year our fairly new, young pastor led an open procession of devotion for Corpus Christi through the center of Stockholm.

    Catholics are emerged from hiding in the back yard, so to speak, and moving into the light here in the nation deemed to be the most secularist in Europe.

    This Church also holds First Friday and 40 hours devotions as well Adoration every Friday.

  12. benedetta says:

    The principle still holds, is still good, that education and dialogue in mutual respect tends to support tolerance and the living out in peace in a pluralistic diversity in which no one can be compelled by government or any other force to believe one thing or another or to worship one thing or another…The “liberal” program of the past fifty years which as of now with the results in are far from liberal but in fact totalitarian shows that with the elimination of the explanation of “Why Catholics believe that” not only from the public square, which was entirely predictable, but within schools, and,most regrettably, in the places entrusted and needed to teach these, parishes and Catholic institutions, it is not only non Catholics who are ignorant as to the good and society supporting reasons which flow from Catholic doctrine and inform Catholic doctrine, but “Catholics” themselves who have only had the censored version of things, the “ideas are dangerous” point of view, the premise that Catholic doctrine is something to be feared and denigrated without understanding it using xenophobic propaganda. One can see countless examples of this playing out every single day. Undoubtedly, if more numbers of Catholics who received sacraments but for whatever reasons do not any longer feel interested in the practice of the religion were informed as to the reasons or the fulness of the faith, and not taught nothing or various editorials during crucial times in their formation, then, I think, there would be much less hostility towards the faith generally in this moment. Similarly, if the general populus had the benefit of the truth just as information during these decades, and, probably, if many Catholics themselves hadn’t cooperated complicit with the organized bigotry and hostility towards the Faith from their positions of power in Catholic institutions, parishes, chancery etc., then, the numbers who still through God’s mysterious and supernatural working of grace come into the Faith, somewhat broken and desperate in early and mid adulthood every year, would also I think be better prepared to put their back and will into their enthusiasm, to lay down their lives, be a man for others, do what is necessary in solidarity and not just take the money and run, to see themselves as part of the communion, significant and important parts, who may play a role in “saving” the Faith, for others, in other words, doing what Christ commanded us to do, aka evangelize, or works of mercy…

  13. benedetta says:

    In a kind of backfiring way which again is all too predictable when censorship, calumny, disparagement, methods not consistent with the gifts of the Holy Spirit are used to “teach” others — people tend to comprehend that there is something, some sources that have been “banned”, restricted, forbidden, and, as human beings will do with their intelligence, begin to be curious about what that might be, as well, the Holy Spirit Himself inspires people perennial to “take, and read”, and so it happens where it will and despite all the efforts to dump the old books into the ravine and bury them, someone somewhere gets ahold of Aristotle or Boethius and says, “You know I don’t think this is dangerous at all for people” and even “This seems quite good, not only for myself, but for many”…One gathers that it was decided from the get go back in the post VII Western hijack at the higher levels of various Catholic institutions that the word went down that a free and open debate of the matter could NEVER be permitted particularly in parish ccd or Catholic high school etc., taking the texts and working with it, on its own terms, or on the terms of human reason, for the feeling went that to do so would permit that eventuality to happen on their watch that is that when ideas are permitted a free airing with open debate the truth always wins out…So something such as kremlin was the model which dictated the terms upon which Catholic and by extension all youth were then “educated” as to the goals and principles of the party, according to those dicta only, and without ability to read broadly and widely and exercise even if just for argument’s sake or for devil’s advocate the faculty of human intelligence to the matter, much less bring prayer, virtue, goodness into play. The sources were always self serving, or spun in such a way by the teachers in order to generate a result, a foregone conclusion in the heart and will of the hearer, which again does violence to the longstanding principle of Catholic belief that human reason and ability to consent with one’s free will and conscience is foundational. In one way or another most people, intelligent people not averse to reading a few things, become a mite suspicious at that approach, an all too tidy and sanitized way of looking at the world and ourselves, and either deliberately or with one’s guard down might pick up something not on the approved list, or, read something somewhat approved but more expansively, not only containing the short term goals of the party in the political strata but some goals not chosen, or even, some ideas which seemed to transcend, in a fashion still deeply evocative of human rights in the 20th century, politics altogether, things universal, things even touching on a communion far beyond the in the round weekly presentation…This is what has come to pass, and I don’t mind saying that I think the unfolding of this saga in our times is itself universally applicable, relevant and instructive.

    Whenever the means selected to accomplish a goal is based upon deception, we already know how that story turns out. It may get certain desired things in the world in short term, it is accomplished, but, not being established in truth and justice, and it doesn’t inspire or motivate or bring to existence ultimate good, not only for some people who were dismissed as collateral from the beginning, but for the actors themselves, who find themselves faced in their aging years with a rather Pyrrhic victory.

  14. Gratias says:

    It is the simple people who are participating in these quaint old Triumphalist traditions. They are back by popular demand despite all the prohibitions and destruction imposed on the Faithful from above by the Consilium.

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  16. Moral_Hazard says:

    I turned 39 last week and despite both Catholic grammar and high school, I was very poorly catechized, receiving fuzzy instruction like Jesus didn’t really multiply loaves and fishes, he just convinced everyone to share what they had type stuff. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and the like was unheard of. Fast forward many years after a period in the desert as a fallen away Catholic, I returned to the Church because of holy priests in my current parish who catechize us and urge us to be Holy and love God and each other.

    My parents’ church has, for a long time, retained that very weak faith; watered down and saccharined up. But change is in the air. I was visiting them this past Sunday and the Pastor preached the Divine Presence and, after mass, had adoration, a procession, and benediction. O Salutaris Hostia and Tantum Ergo were both sung, in Latin, and almost everyone stayed. It made me so happy.

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