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

There is a fun post over at St. Louis Catholic:

If today’s faithful Catholic is represented by Elizabeth Bennet, bright, hopeful and coming of age, then the liturgical forms would have to be represented by Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham.

Mr. Wickham is immediately accessible, loves to talk—especially about how bad ol’ Darcy is—has some initial minor flash but soon proves to be tedious and unreliable.

Mr. Darcy at first glance looks stuffy and condescending, but proves over time to be noble, true, of high quality and charitable.

The ordinary and the extraordinary.

_____________

Yes, I actually thought this, and then typed it, and therefore I am a loser.  [No… people who can’t refer to Austen are the losers.]

P.S. Mrs. Bennet would represent Marek Bozek. Just sayin’.  [LOL]

It’s hockey …day… in Canada!

GO USA!







UPDATE!!  24 SECONDS LEFT!  3rd PERIOD!! EMPTY NET 






SHUCKS.  But!... WHAT.A.GAME!

From my friend John Sonnen in Roma:

Rome has many famous faces and when this poor fellow passed away in October of 2009 it was in the newspapers.

Angelo was the famous homeless man who walked the streets of the neighborhood of Monti for years.

Always polite he would greet you: "Come va lei?"

Pray for the repose of the soul of Angelo Pagotto. 

Some people think that so long as Mass is valid, that the minimal elements of valid matter and valid form are used, we ought to be able to change all the other elements to conform to the needs or goals or even sentimentality of this community in this moment.

"Changes in the liturgy take on a momentous significance for the believer, for they are changes in his experience of God – changes, if you wish to be Feurbachian, in God himself.  The question whether to make the sign of the cross with two fingers or with three split a Church.  So can the question whether of not to use the Book of Common Prayer or the Tridentine Mass." 

From the Laudator:

Frederic De Forest Allen, quoted by J.B. Greenough in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 9 (1898) 31:

We call the Romans ancient, but when they were alive they thought themselves as modern as anybody.

COLLECT - ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
God our Father,
help us to hear your Son.
Enlighten us with your word,
that we may find the way to your glory.

LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Deus, qui nobis dilectum Filium tuum audire praecepisti,
verbo tuo interius nos pascere digneris,
ut, spiritali purificato intuitu,
gloriae tuae laetemur aspectu.

In other offerings of WDTPRS we have see that gloria, in early Latin writers such as Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose and in liturgical texts, points to more than fame or splendor of appearance.  Our Latin liturgical gloria is the equivalent of biblical Greek doxa and Hebrew kabod.   Latins translated these concepts also with words like maiestas and claritas.  Gloria has to do with man’s recognition of God as God.  At the same time gloria is a characteristic of God which will transform us throughout eternity.

The form pascere could come from two verbs, the active pasco and the deponent pascor which the unrivaled Lewis & Short Dictionary says mean the similar, related things: “drive to pasture, feed, attend to the feeding of, nourish, maintain, support.” Here pascere is simply a present active infinitive with digneris.  Digneris is in turn from dignor, a deponent for, “to deem worthy or deserving.”  With an infinitive as its object (pascere) it means “to regard as fit, becoming, worthy of one’s self; to deign.” 

Rather than go through the wordy, “regard it as a thing worthy of you to nourish us” we can stick with “deign” or sometimes “vouchsafe”.  Under the old translation norms, made obsolete by the issuing of Liturgiam authenticam in 2001, ICEL systematically avoided words indicating distinctions between the statuses of persons. 

Concepts like “majesty” (maiestas), “servant” or “handmaid” (servus, famulus, famula), begging (quaesumus), etc. were expunged by ICEL even though in the Latin prayers they were unavoidably integral to their content.  The new draft translation in preparation does not avoid these concepts, so inherently important for a healthy Catholic’s spiritual life.  The vocabulary of the prayers reinforces that this covenant we are in with God is not a contract between equals: He is Almighty and eternal, we are lowly and mortal.  We do well to beg, to plead a supplicants before His majesty, not as cowed slaves terrified of a harsh master, but with the reverential awe of children looking at authority with the eyes of truth.  Our prayers should help us to see who we are and who we are not.

In today’s prayer we have a strong reference to our senses of hearing (audire) and of seeing (intuitus, aspectus) both physically and also inwardly, spiritually.  The voice of God the Father spoke at the Transfiguration commanding us to listen to His beloved Son.  We listen to Jesus and look at what He does, both in the pages of Scripture and through His continuing presence in the Church.  Christ’s words which we hear and His deeds which we see, both save us and teach us who we are. 

This brings us to the “seeing” words intuitus and aspectus.  Aspectus has both active and passive connotations, that is, the sense of sight, the act of seeing a thing, or the appearance of the thing itself.  Aspectus can mean, “mien, countenance”, how something “looks”.  Think of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play inciting his soldiers before battle to “lend the eye a terrible aspect” (III, i).  Intuitus derives from intueor and means “a look, a view; respect, consideration.”  You know intueor from a verse of the great hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas Adoro Te Devote: “I am not looking (intueor) at the wounds, like Thomas; I am nevertheless professing faith that you are my God; make me always more to believe in you, have hope in you, love you.”  That hymn, to the hidden divinity of the Eucharist, also sings, “ex auditu solo tuto creditur’ only “by hearing” is the doctrine of the Real Presence believed “safely”, since sight, touch and taste can deceive us.

In the prayer spiritali purificato intuitu is an ablative absolute construction with a perfect participle.  Our intuitus spiritalis could be our own ability to see clearly into the state of our soul as if our intuitus (“insight”, “view”) were a spiritual lens that needed to be cleaned so we might have a more perfect “view”.  Otherwise intuitus could be the spiritual landscape within us, the “view” God sees, how we “look” to Him and by our own inspection or introspection how we look to ourselves.   The word “view” gets at both angles of intuitus (the power to see and that which is seen).  “Insight” would tend to favor just one possibility in intuitus.  The English cognate “intuition” suggests the wrong connotation from common usage, that is, “sudden insight” or “good guess”. 

Both how we see and what is seen in us, our “spiritual view”, must be purified (purificato) so that God is not offended (cf. Habakkuk 1:3)   God and neighbor must see His image in us.  We must see His image in ourselves and others if we are going to treat them with the charity He commands.  We must look past the imperfections of the flesh, the wounds caused by sin and see the intended reality.  St. Bonaventure (+1274) wrote about how Thomas the Apostle looked through the Lord’s visible wounds and saw His invisible wound of love.  Lent is a time for gaining spiritual “insight”, getting a proper “view” of the Love who died and rose for us, thus transforming us into more perfect images of who He is: risen, living, glorious.  This necessarily requires a close examination of our lives to see and also to hear what or whom we have placed at the center of our lives, in His rightful place. 

The Word of God, from all eternity, is the perfect image of the invisible Father.  We are made according to that image.  In the Incarnation the Word became the perfect visible image of the invisible God.  This perfect image, Jesus, came into the world to save us from our sins and to reveal us more fully to ourselves.  He gives us the ultimate “view” or “insight” of who we are and what we are to do.  In the Transfiguration the three apostles see something more of Jesus’ perfect image and it is a sight that transforms them.  Remembers how Moses was transformed by and how his face shown with light after his encounters with God in the cloud of His glory (Heb. shekina) when it descended on Mt. Sinai or the tent/tabernacle (cf. Exodus 33:7ff; 34:29ff). A symbolic shekina remains in our churches even now: more than a red presence lamp a baldachin or a veil covering the tabernacle is the true sign of the Real Presence! 

By tradition, the Church reads the Gospel passage about the Transfiguration on this Sunday.  In His Transfiguration the Lord reveals through our humanity some little glimpse of His divine nature so that His chief apostle Peter, with John and James, will be able to bear the horror of His Passion.  The voice of the Father is heard to command: “This is my Son, my beloved.  Listen to Him” (Mark 9:7).  Our Collect today recalls the Transfiguration and then asks God to nourish us interiorly with the Word, the Son (who comes to us at Mass in Scripture and the Eucharist).  The interior presence of the Word purifies our interior spiritual landscape and readies us for the Beatific Vision which will transform us forever.  The way we “look” here on earth (“look” at our neighbors and “look” to our neighbors) prepares us for what we will behold in heaven.

This season of penance is for our interior purification. By giving up good things, we take control of our appetites and passions.  We experience deprivation before fulfillment.  There is a liturgical diminishing in Lent so that the Easter liturgy can be even more joyful.  Only the pure may enter into the Beatific Vision (cf. Ps 24:23-24; Rev 21:27).  In our earthly lives we must be purified of attachments to sin and perfected in love.  This purification begins during life and, provided we die in the state of grace, may continue purgatory.  In our Collect we acknowledge this necessity of purity in order to see the face of God.  Our Collect today points to the reason we are taking on the yoke of penance.  At the same time, our seeing the Lord and the Lord’s own image (intuitus/aspectus) transform us and make us better able to bear the burden of penance. 

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who commanded us to listen to Your beloved Son,
deign to nourish us interiorly with Your word,
so that, once (our) spiritual view has been purified,
we may rejoice in the sight of Your glory.

Perhaps one thing we can all do during Lent is practice using what I call “resurrection glasses”, that is, trying to see people as God intends them transformed in the resurrection.  Even the most annoying people might look different to us through “resurrection glasses”.  Also, this is a year especially dedicated to the Most Holy Eucharist.  Perhaps a good supplement to our Lenten discipline would be frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament exposed for perpetual adoration.  (There is an special indulgence for doing so this year.) Richard of St. Victor (+1173) wrote, “Love is the eye and to love is to see.”  Look upon Him who was pierced for our sake.  He will transform your spiritual landscape.  He is waiting to be seen both within and without.

In the 2002 edition of the Missale Romanum the traditional Lenten "Prayer over the people" has been revived.  It can be used now in Latin.

ORATIO SUPER POPULUM:
Benedic, Domine fideles tuos benedictione perpetua,
et fac eos Unigeniti tui Evangelio sic adhaerere,
ut ad illam gloriam, cuius in se speciem Apostolis ostendit,
et suspirare iugiter et feliciter valeant pervenire.

The verb suspiro means “to draw a deep breath, heave a sigh, to sigh” and thus “sighing after, longing for”.

This is pretty clearly a new composition, though I found the phrase suspirare iugiter in a sermon of Caesarius of Arles (s. 43.5). 

SLAVISHLY LITERAL VERSION:
Bless Your faithful, O Lord, with an everlasting benediction
and make them so to cling to the Gospel of Your Only-Begotten
that they may be able to long for always and happily to attain
unto that glory whose beauty He showed to the Apostles in Himself.

This wonderful plea for your sake on the part of the priest, which I hope you might hear someday with your heads bowed unto God, connects us back to the moment of the Transfiguration about which we were instructed in the Gospel for today’s Holy Mass. 

That glimpse of something of His divine glory helped the Apostles endure the horror of His suffering. 

If we have the opportunity for worthy worship, we have this glimpse as well.

It can help us now in our Lenten discipline, as we say “No!” even to some things which are good and say “Yes!” to performing works of mercy.

The entry here reminded me of an old chestnut about a chain letter:

The Perfect Priest

The results of a computerized survey indicate the perfect priest preaches exactly fifteen minutes. He condemns sins but never upsets anyone. He works from 8:00 AM until midnight and is also a janitor. He makes $50 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a good car, and gives about $50 weekly to the poor. He is 28 years old and has preached 30 years. He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spends all of his time with senior citizens.

The perfect priest smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work. He makes 15 calls daily on parish families, shut-ins and the hospitalized, and is always in his office when needed.

If your priest does not measure up, simply send this letter to six other churches that are tired of their priest, too. Then bundle up your priest and send him to the church on the top of the list. In one week, you will receive 1,643 priests and one of them will be perfect. Have faith in this procedure.

One parish broke the chain and got its old priest back in less than three weeks.

With a biretta tip    o{]:¬)    to Team Rubicon, here is NOAA:

Together with the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, a group in Spain called Home of the Mother (something to do with the EUK Mamie Foundation) has put out a 30 minute video DVD on the vocation to the priesthood.

The DVD is called Alter Christus, which gives you right away that this is not about the priest as "Just call me Bob" or presider of a fuzzy self-affirming faith community.

The DVD is available in many language.  The price is $17 or E.12.

Video includes interviews with: Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Julian Herranz, President of the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia, Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy,  Abbot Michael John Zielinski, Vice-President of the Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, Monsignor Guido Marini, Pontifical Master of Ceremonies, and many others.

Much of it is filmed in Rome.

A good deal of the film shows virile and traditional images of ministry.  There is a strong focus on St. John Vianney, Eucharistic adoration and devotions such as Benediction, clerical garb, Mary as Mother of priests, prayer for priests.

There is a good section on the importance of liturgy, perfectly in keeping with Pope Benedict’s Sacramentum caritatis.  There clips with Msgr. Guido Marini, the Holy Father’s MC.

I think all of the liturgy clips are of the Novus Ordo, which is a serious flaw.  Anything on priesthood which speaks about liturgy today for the Latin, Roman Church must must must also include the other lung of the Roman Rite.  If it doesn’t, it is flawed.  But I caught a clear glimpse of the unmistakable painting by Guido Reni of the Trinity over the altar of the Extraordinary Form parish in Rome, Ss. Trinita dei Pelegrini.  That said, the video is not into guitars and clapping and big puppets and sanctuaries crammed with lay "ministers".

This could be a great video to show to a group of young men.

The video is broken into three parts and is on YouTube and on their HM site.  You can watch it.

Here is part one, which is 10 minutes long:



The DVD itself has special bonus features:
Complete interviews with Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, Cardinal Antonio
Cañizares, Cardinal Julián Herranz, Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, Msgr. Guido Marini, Abbot Michael John Zielinski and Msgr. Thierry Blot.
Approx. Dur.: 180 mins

Our friend at Recovering Dissident Catholic, "Cathy of Alexandria" has a particularly good rant, which I feature here (with edits) as a "guest rant".  My emphases and comments.

A good priest is hard to find. Heck, a PRIEST can be hard to find.

I "do process" for a living but there are times you just need flexibility around the process so you can just jump to the terminator.

Death and serious illness are one of those times.

[...]

There is too much of an effort these days to give lay people more control over the administration of the sacraments then they should. There is a huge difference between a parish administrator role and the priest. The parish administrator or business adminstrator or office secretary should not be controlling access to Father to the point that they are, in essence, stonewalling people under the guide of "not wanting to bother Father with more stuff"

For instance, and this has loooong been a source of anger for me, you want FATHER to visit a loved one in the home or in the hospital or in the nursing home and the immediate response of the ‘gatekeeper’ in the parish is: "I’ll send one of our LAY ministers" There are times where, I’m sorry, I just don’t WANT a lay minister. I want a PRIEST. I get even more furious if they continue on and get down to it: "Father doesn’t DO those types of calls" WTH?

[...]

We’ve probably all know (well, I do) of priests who are surprised to hear that people can’t access him when he’s needed because Father had no idea the office was pushing folks away from him. Father ends up giving his cell phone number and PERSONAL email address out so people can bypass the "office". Is that acceptable? It’s ridiculous. [Especially with our new tools of communication.]

In my opinion, the authority in the parish, the last word, the COO, is the pastor. God is the CEO and ultimate word. The pretenders can all go home. I know it’s harsh. There it is.  [And when they do, Father will be even less available because he will also have their work to do.]

More and more people are bypassing the church weddings and funerals in favor of doing them at commercial wedding chapels and funeral home entirely. The commercial business world has figured out something we forgot: Give the people what they want AND what they need.

We need more vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

Since one good rant deserves another, here is a little rant of my own.

Let’s be careful about prayers for vocations.

At times we should pray strictly for vocations to the priesthood. PRIESTHOOD!   Deacons are great, but they are not priests.   Religious women are great, but they are not priests.  Religious men are find, but that is its own vocation.  Married people are wonderful, but with a super small number of exceptions it is morally tedious to recount, they are not priests.

Often prayers for "vocations" are all lumped together, probably so as to avoid one of the great modern mortal sins: not being inclusive. 

Fine.  Do that.  Pray for "vocations".

But let us pray for PRIESTS…. priestly vocations… vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

And another thing… this is the Year for Priests.  Yet I see this project and that effort for prayer for bishops, seemingly all the time.   Great!  Pray for bishops.  Bishops are priests too.    Bishops need constant prayers.  I too am constantly telling people, imploring people to pray for our bishops, upon whom so much depends.  I pray for a list of bishops after every Mass.   But can priests have their year?  Please?  We pray for bishops all the time.  It seems like every year is the year for bishops, right?  At every Mass we pray for bishops by name, for heaven’s sake!   

Okay… I must get back to work.

Thus endeth the rant.

Paolo Rodari of Palazzo Apostolico has an interesting piece today about a possible consistory in which Benedict XVI would name new cardinals, thus giving a indication about a future successor.  Rodari’s focus is on Europe, but it is interesting for everyone.

Rodari is guessing that a consistory would be on the vigil of the Solemnity of Christ the King next November.

Right now there are 111 eligible as electors in a conclave should it be necessary … quod Deus avertat.  The number set by Paul VI is 120, but a Pope can make as many cardinals as he sees fit.

Quite a few cardinals are coming up to their 80th birthday, when they will no longer be permitted to enter a conclave.

Rodari speaks of those who are not yet cardinals but whose office makes it a lock that they will be elevated to the sacred purple.

Then there are the wild card[inal]s, as it were.  In Rodari’s list there are a couple conspicuous absences.

Your the Brick by Brick file from the Journal Star with my emphases and comments.

Consecration at Denton seminary to celebrate ‘crown jewel’

By ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star

Sitting atop a hill in Denton, Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary is visible for miles around.

Passers-by sometimes confuse it with a hotel.

But in this sprawling complex of multicolored brick and glass live 72 men studying to become priests of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite—priests who perform the traditional Latin Mass. [I admire the chutzpah in this phrase, but no Roman priest is ordained for a book.  Latin, Roman priests are not ordained for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.  We are ordained for the Roman Rite, which – juridically at least – has two forms.  If a man is in a group which uses only one form, that is another matter.  And we can debate whether or not there is really only one Roman Rite from a theological point of view.  But we are all priests of the Roman Rite.  So… that corrective in mind, let’s move along in reading the article, which from the first paragraph shows that the writer did some homework…]

Wednesday, the Catholic Church marks the completion of the $14 million seminary with the consecration of its newly finished Chapel of Saints Peter & Paul. It is the first U.S. chapel built for seminarians in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in 40 years, said Father Joseph Lee, former seminarian and now ordained priest serving in Kansas City. [Kanasas, I think.]

Lee and others refer to the chapel as "the crown jewel" of the seminary.

Designed by Thomas Gordon Smith Architects, the 10,000-square-foot chapel reflects a contemporary rebirth of classical Catholic architecture.

That includes wooden choir stalls facing the center of the chapel, rather than church pews facing the altar. The stalls seat 92 priests and seminarians. Chairs will be set in the back of the chapel for laity and visitors.

The seating, and the four-story-high ceiling, provide ideal acoustics for the awe-inspiring Gregorian chants through which seminarians present the liturgy. [Hmmm… okay.  Perhaps "pray the liturgy" might have been a little clearer, but that’s fine.  The good point here is "awe".]

An elevated white marble altar, featuring a 31-foot marble canopy or baldachin, stands at the end of the chapel. The ornately carved structure once sat in a Quebec, Canada, church that was decommissioned in 2000. Seven smaller altars named for saints are throughout the chapel. A choir loft sits in the back. [Do choir lofts sit?  Yah… picky, I know.]

The Denton seminary is operated by the Lincoln Roman Catholic Diocese. It is one of two southeastern Nebraska seminaries overseen by the Lincoln Diocese. St. Gregory the Great Seminary opened in Seward in 1998 – the first free-standing diocesan seminary to open in the U.S. in decades. It teaches priests mainly for the Lincoln Diocese.  [Do you get the sense that in Lincoln someone has his head screwed on in the right direction?]

Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, which opened in 2000, teaches priests from all over the world to celebrate Mass in Latin. It is the only seminary in the United States devoted exclusively to teaching the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, Lee said.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the English-speaking seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an international community of priests dedicated to the traditional Latin Mass. The fraternity was established in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. The fraternity has two seminaries, one in Denton and the other in Bavaria, Germany.

Before 1962, Catholic Mass was always in Latin. But reforms by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) allowed priests to celebrate Mass in the language of that country.  ["Allowed" that parts of Mass sometimes be in the vernacular.  The Council did not oblige this or that all the Mass be in the vernacular.  Indeed, the Council required that Latin remain the language of worship and that pastors should make sure their flocks knew to sing and speak the parts pertaining to them in Latin and their mother tongue.]

In the early 1980s, Pope John Paul II asked bishops from around the world how this new form of liturgy was being accepted. People stood on both sides – some liked hearing Mass in their language, and others said the traditional Latin Mass was more meaningful, explained Father Calvin Goodwin, Latin instructor at Our Lady of Guadalupe.  [This focuses on the language, but leaves apart the other issues of changes to the theology of the prayers.]

In 1984 the pope made some initial and cautious steps toward the re-emergence of the traditional Latin Mass, he said. Four years later, he expanded permission for Catholic churches to return to the Latin Mass.  [Remember!  The newer form of Mass in Latin is also "the Latin Mass".]

"In 1988 there were about six regular celebrants authorized for Latin Masses," Goodwin said. "By 2005, there were around 250 Latin Mass celebrants."

Since then, Pope Benedict XVI has made it possible for all priests to celebrate Latin Mass if they choose, [They always could, in the Novus Ordo, use Latin… clean up these terms when using them yourselves.] and has made it obligatory for churches to provide a Latin Mass if Catholics request it.  [Well… that has a long way to go yet.]

"Weekly up to around 400 churches celebrate Latin Mass," Goodwin said. "It has grown steadily over the past 20 years, as has our community (the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter). We started with 10 to 12 priests; now we have well over 200 priests."

Many of those priests are younger; the average age is 36. Among other priestly fraternities, the average age is 65 to 75, Goodwin said.  [As I have been saying, younger men want this.  Even those not in the ranks of a specialty group want our Church’s patrimony.  In another few years, maybe five years or so… we are going to see something remarkable happening.]

Much of the demand for Latin Mass comes from younger Catholics seeking a return to the old ways of worship.  [Not just "old" ways, but "Catholic" ways… "traditional" ways… "continuous" ways.]

Experts may see Latin as a "dead" language, but it is ideal for the church because the meaning of the words stand the test of time, Lee said.

"Thus Latin is excellent for theology and the transmission through succeeding ages of the unchanging – and unchangeable – doctrines in which the continuity of precise meanings is necessary among different cultures and times," he said.  [Well said.]

"Also, one finds the sound of Latin to be sublime and lofty, devoted as it is uniquely to the worship of God."

Catholics do not need to understand Latin to appreciate the Latin Mass, Goodwin said.

In fact, it was only when Mass was said in the language of the community that "people drifted to the idea that the primary point of Mass was to understand everything that was said and going on," he said.

"Mass is not a lesson or a class, or a primary form for the exchange of information.

"The primary point (of Mass) is not to understand it for the information conveyed. The primary point is to be present with your heart and soul as our lady St. Mary and St. John were present at the foot of the cross," Goodwin said.  [We can add a lot to this, but I think that Fr Goodwin hit it on the head by steering the point of Mass away from the didactic.]

Mass is the re-presentation, in an unbloody manner, of the sacrifice of Calvary in which Jesus offered his life to atone for the sins of all humanity, Lee said.

Catholics attend Mass to "understand the experience and the reverence and the devotion and the solemnity that are proper to the worship of God," Goodwin said.

Well done.  And WDTPRS kudos to the Fraternity for their new jewel!

Brick by brick.

There are several Collects in today’s extended edition of Holy Mass for Ember Saturday.  There are five lessons before we even get to the Epistle and each lesson is followed by a Gradual and Collect.

After the the fifth lesson, the same as that for Ember Saturday of Advent (in case anyone doubted that Advent is a penitential season) about the three young men in the fiery furnace, and then the hymn of thanksgiving from Daniel, we have this:

COLLECT:
Deus, qui tribus pueris mitigasti flammas ignium:
concede propitius; ut nos famulos tuos
non exurat flamma vitiorum.

SLAVISHLY LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who tamed the flames of the fires for the three young men,
mercifully grant that the flame of vices
not consume us your servants.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that one of the reasons the Lord went into the desert and permitted Himself to be tempted was to teach us that none of us are free from temptation.

Even those who are spiritually advanced experience the testing of temptations.  Even seemingly small sins can be serious indeed when a person is well-along the spiritual road.

The enemy of the soul has bested better than you.

The world, the flesh and the devil exert their incessant pressures.

Let no one think he is immune to temptation.

If you give in to a particular temptation repeatedly, sin repeatedly in a certain way, you develop a habit of that sin.  That habit, the opposite of a virtue, is a vice.

With clear and even brutal honesty examine yourselves for vicious habits.  "Vicious" is the adjective related to "vice".

If you can’t picture your vices as if they were a burning fire about to sear the flesh from your bones and fry your guts, then perhaps the image of a pack of "vicious" animals might do.

We must be vigilant and disciplined and ask the help of Almighty God, especially during our annual Lenten discipline.

This is war.

A vice can destroy you, consume your soul like fire.  Many vices, greater danger.

To rid yourself of one habit (a vice) you must drive it out with another habit (a virtue) or at least some beneficial activity.

Identify your habitual fault.  Watch yourself for the recognizable patterns leading to the sins.  Form a plan of what you are going to do ahead of time.

Repeat the process until you have a new habit that won’t destroy your soul and which will be pleasing to God and edifying to your neighbor.

Stay close to the sacraments.

Do not forget that you have an angel guardian.  Thank him and ask him for help throughout the day.

The woman of curling have resolved all the questions.

It came down to a nail-biter, last rock of the 11th end.

The moment of truth for Canada.



Disaster.





Congratulations to Sweden.



UPDATE 27 Feb 0448 GMT:

And as curling is winding down, we have some time for HOCKEY.

CANADA hangs by their collective teeth to beat SLOVAKIA.



I’ll bet you Canucks are breathing a bit more easily tonight!

Enjoy it while you can.