St. Peter Chrysologus, and oldie PODCAzT

Today, in the post-Conciliar calendar, is the feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, “of the golden speech”.  I made a PODCAzT about something Peter wrote some years ago for a 1 May Feast of Joseph observance and beginning of the month dedicated to Mary.

Here is his entry in the 2005 Roman Martyrology:

Sancti Petri, cognomento Chrysologi, episcopi Ravennatensis et Ecclesie doctoris, qui beati Apostoli nactus cognomen, eiusdem munus ita perfecit, ut caelestis doctrinae reti in fidem turbas concluderet et divini sermonis dulcedine satiaret.  Ipsius vero transitus Fori Cornelii in Flaminia crastina die advenit.

Who will work on this for us?  Let’s hear your own flawless English rendering, as my old mentor Fr. Foster would write on our Ludi Domestici in his small caps.

UPDATE: I listened to that old PODCAzT.  Pretty good, even though I say so myself!  The reading from Peter Chrysologus, all about God’s love and about sacrifice is remarkable.  In this PODCAzT I talk about the very first time I met Fr. Tim Finigan.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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

  1. Rellis says:

    This is a good example of the newer sanctoral calendar improving the old. His old day was on December 4th, which was believed at one time to be the date of his death. Modern scholars now agree that he died on July 31st, which is of course already occupied by St. Ignatius Loyola. The nearest free day is today, July 30th.

    Can anyone spell “mutual enrichment?”

  2. Rellis: Perhaps. But allow me to make a couple observations. This change to the feast for St. Peter C was wrought before there was a motive of “mutual enrichment” in the sense we know it today. The shift of the dates at the time of the reform created a discontinuity and rupture. The mutual enrichment we generally understand today is meant to create continuity.

    It is good to have the fruits of modern tools of scholarship, no doubt. In establishing the new feasts modern scholarship is useful. However, I am not sure of what real benefit it was to move St. Peter C’s day from December to July. Sure, it is closer to the date of his death. But it isn’t the date of his death any more than 4 December was. Also, it may be that local customs of parishes or people’s name days were upset by this change. Did the people of Holy Church really benefit from, for example, the shift of St. Benedict of Nursia’s feast? The Benedictine’s keep the traditional day and the universal calender has something else. Odd.

    Finally, just as there are benefits to using modern scholarship in the sphere of religion, there are pit falls. The Holy Father in his first volume of Jesus of Nazareth has a great discourse on the benefits and pitfalls of the use of modern scholarship in reading Scripture. It is possible that too heavy a scientific hand can wreck the whole thing.

    All of this must be considered in any effort of harmonizing the new calendar with the traditional calendar, which is something that perhaps will have to be tackled one day.

    It is a field packed with landmines, to be sure.

  3. asperges says:

    With the odd liberty:
    “Of St. Peter, known as Chrysologus (“the Golden-worded”), bishop of Ravenna and Doctor of the Church, whose gift, having acquired the sobriquet “of the blessed Apostle,” was to gather up people by faith in the net of heavenly doctrine, sating them with the sweetness of his divine words . His death in the Forum of Cornelius (Imola) in Flaminia is marked tomorrow.”

  4. COLLECT – (2002MR):
    Deus, qui beatum Petrum Chrysologum episcopum
    Verbi tui incarnati praconem egregium effecisti,
    eius nobis intercessione concede,
    ut tua salutis mysteria
    et iugiter scrutemur in corde,
    et fideliter significemus in opere.

    LAME-DUCK ICEL (1973):
    Father, you made Peter Chrysologus
    an outstanding preacher of your incarnate Word.
    May the prayers of Saint Peter help us to cherish
    the mystery of our salvation
    and make its meaning clear in our love for others.

    NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
    O God, who made the Bishop Saint Peter Chrysologus
    an outstanding preacher of your Incarnate Word,
    grant, through his intercession,
    that we may constantly ponder in our hearts
    the mysteries of your salvation
    and faithfully express them in what we do.

  5. Fr Martin Fox says:

    I prayed the Office of Readings for St. Peter last night, and as I read the paragraph in the breviary recounting his birth, death and location, I realized: he was bishop in Ravenna when it was the western capital of the Empire, in the years of convulsion. That got me thinking about what that may have been like. What did St. Peter try to say to those in authority? I admit I’m rusty on that period, but as I recall, they knew things were in bad shape; yet I suspect many assumed the powers that be would always pull things together despite the impending crisis. Sound familiar?

  6. Joseph-Mary says:

    Today is also the feast of an incredible Francisan saint of the confessional, St. Leopoldo Mandic

    http://airmaria.com/2011/07/29/a-franciscan-saint-of-the-confessional-3/

  7. Rellis says:

    @FrZ, a couple of answers there:

    1. If the general principle is “dies natale” (which it has been from day one in the Church), and the whole reason that a feast is on a certain day is based off the wrong application of that principle, it bears out that a correction should applied, and as close as possible if the actual correction is impeded (as it is here). It would be as if some mission parish were always accidentally wearing white on Palm Sunday, and then 100 years later they finally find out they should have been wearing purple and red all this time. It would certainly jar with people’s experience and memories to switch, but isn’t that worth the benefit of doing it right? [You like to argue. I know. However, there are other reasons for the fixing of a feast, such as the discovery of relics or their translation.]

    2. Who says that “mutual enrichment” can’t be retroactively applied? [Since, you like to argue, I said so. Seriously, I think we have a different view of mutual enrichment now.] By that logic, only things that have happened after 2005 are eligible for the Novus Ordo influencing the Traditional Latin Mass. [Piffle. No, it doesn’t.] Even Summorum Pontificum speaks of ante-motu proprio things like the Novus Ordo prefaces. Certainly a saint’s day being CORRECTED would apply.

    3. The Benedict of Nurisa example is not parallel. There, a foreign principle was applied to the sanctoral. Instead of “dies natale,” the new sanctoral in this case used “clean up Lent.” A similar thing happened with Thomas Aquinas. [Big deal. The days changed and it is hard to see why anyone really benefited from it.] These would be examples where the traditional calendar would serve to better instruct. The principle in both, as far as possible, should be “dies natale.” That is the immemorial way the Church has reckoned the feast days of saints.

    4. Finally, I think there’s all the difference in the world between having Scriptural studies turn on the hermaneutic of the historical-critical method, and the sanctoral calendar being ordered under the hermaneutic of “dies natale.” The former is purely the result of modern skeptical scholarship, whereas the latter is the way the Church has always reckoned feast days–going back to the first martyrs. [I know you like to argue, but this sort of thing is not terribly productive. It is hard to see why moving a saint’s day from some day when it was celebrated for a really long time was of major benefit to the people of God. However, this is not among those thing I like to worry about for any length of time.]

  8. theophilus says:

    Does anybody know where I can find the writings of this saint? My searches online have come up empty.

  9. DT says:

    @ theophilus-

    The Catholic University of America Press ran a series on the writings of the Church Fathers. There is a volume on some of the sermons of St. Peter. I have pasted the link below for you.

    http://cuapress.cua.edu/books/catalog/eBooks.cfm (general link to the index of titles for the “Fathers of the Church Series”)

    http://cuapress.cua.edu/books/viewbook.cfm?Book=F017 (link to the volume on St Peter Chrysologus)

    I hope this helps you!

  10. UncleBlobb says:

    Father Dear,

    In re-listening to your fine Podcast, I very much appreciated your exposition of the thought process necessary to reconstruct the Latin text structures mentally. As an amateur-Latinist-wannabe, I have for many years wondered at how I can think through in the language because of the ending structure, and its general foreign-ness (well, I’ve wondered this for any foreign language for that matter). And I appreciate your metaphor of being like a juggler: in keeping all of the words in a sentence in your mind until the end, so that the key word or phrase can be readily discerned and appreciated at the appropriate time. Vale!

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