Category Archives: 05 (2004/05): COLLECT (2)

EXCERPT:
The first objective of our participation in the Church’s sacred rites is to praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and give God glory. Liturgical and Biblical Latin is rich with words and phrases which exalt and express praise of God. In fact, the concepts of “glory” and “majesty” are nearly interchangeable in this light. We, on the one hand, render up honor and glory to God in a way external to God. On the other hand, glory and majesty are also divine attributes which we in no way give Him, which He has – or rather is – in Himself by His nature. When we come into His presence, even in the contact we have with Him through the Church’s sacred mysteries, His divine attribute of splendor or glory or majesty, whatever you will, has the power to transform us. His majestic glory changes us. So, it is right to translate these lofty sounding attributions for God when we raise our voices in the Church’s official cult. Continue reading →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer … Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
Some years ago I had an experience which confirmed for me the value of the old-fashioned methods of catechism: long and hard practice, memorization, and repetition. I was called to a hospital to assist in a patient’s difficult death. I gave the man Last Rites and talked with the family as they struggled with the reality of the end of the earthly life of a loved one. A daughter of the dying man had been estranged from her faith and her family for a long time. She was beyond her life’s middle years, which clearly had been pretty rough. She was bitter and cursed life, fate and God for the cruelty of such an end as her father was experiencing. She shouted at me, “Why did God make us if this is all there is?” I responded asking, “Why did God make you?” She became very still and stared at me. Then she said, “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” I continued, “What must we do to save our souls?” On cue she responded with something that she hadn’t perhaps thought of for decades, “To save our souls, we must worship God by faith, hope, and charity. We must believe in Him, hope in Him, and love Him with all our heart.” “Did your father do that?”, I asked. “Oh, yes…. oh yes.” She had obviously been taught very well as a child. One can imagine that she was at times forced to study and to learn, to repeat over and over what at the time seemed boring and pointless. She had been drilled at school by the Sisters, whom these days we see mocked and abused in the media by ungrateful cads who benefited from their dedication. More importantly, she had parents who fulfilled their obligations to see that she learned her faith. I imagine they had to work hard to make her work hard. Her father had done his duty to give her what she needed when the battle was joined. Whatever they all did worked. In the moment of truth, by the grace of God and the help of her guardian angel, the gift her dying father had given her years before was rediscovered and put to its proper use. Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
This Collect gives me the image of a person hurrying to fulfill a duty or command given by his master or superior. He is rushing, running. He might even be carrying a heavy burden. While dashing forward, I see him trying to be careful under his burden lest he stumble, fall, or spill what he is carrying and thus lose or ruin it. This could be a description of how we live our Christian vocations sometimes. Each one of us was made in God’s image. We were given something to do here. When we discern God’s will and do our best to live well according to our state in life, we experience heavy burdens. We have the opportunity to participate in carrying the Cross of Jesus. Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
This is hard, I know, but let’s stay with supplex for a moment. It is important. In many places celebrations of Holy Mass have been stripped of humility. Instead of abasing ourselves humbly before the Real Presence of Almighty God, we celebrate ourselves in remembrance our non-judgmental buddy Jesus. The concept behind supplex was systematically expunged from translations of prayers, contemporary music in parishes, and (in churches now lacking kneelers) architecture. One of the most “Catholic” of prayers, nearly eliminated after Vatican II, underscores an important dimension of healthy spirituality. In the once familiar Dies Irae, the haunting sequence of the Requiem Mass by the Franciscan friar Thomas of Celano (+ c.1270), sung amidst the inky vestments symbolizing our death to sin and the things of this world, we contemplate our inevitable judgment by the Rex tremendae maiestatis… the King of fearful majesty, iustus Iudex… our just Judge. In two of the verses we prayed: “Once the accursed have been confounded / delivered up to the stinging flames, / call me with the blessed. // Knees bent and leaning over (supplex et acclinis), / My heart worn down like ash, I pray: / Have a care for my end.”

The use of supplex in our Catholic prayers conveys an attitude of contrition for our sins which then shapes other more joyful and confident prayers. This lowly attitude keeps in close view the reality of our sins, God’s promises of forgiveness, the ordinary means of their cleansing and thus the joyful comfort we have when we surrender to this merciful plan. God takes our sins away, but only when we beg Him to. We retain the memory of actual sins, but not their stain. When we reduce ourselves to the ashes of humility and confess our sins we know those sins are not merely covered over; they are washed away clean. Before modern times soaps were made partly from ashes. Today, the use of the Dies Irae is not forbidden in Masses. The Church’s documentation on the use of sacred music establishes that suitable (i.e., truly sacred and truly artistic) pieces can be substituted into the Mass for the proper purpose and occasion. Nothing is more suitable for Catholic piety than the use of the Dies Irae. Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
Where are the merchants and the money-lenders
Whose love sang in the wires between the seaports and the inland granaries?
…

Where are the generals who sacked sunny cities
And burned the cattle and the grain?
Or is the politician any safer in his offices
Than a soldier shot in the eye?

Take time to tremble lest you come without reflection
To feel the furious mercies of my friendship,
(Says death) because I come as quick as intuition.

…
Flesh cannot wrestle with the waters that are in the earth,
Nor spirit rest in icy clay!

More than the momentary night of faith, to the lost dead,
Shall be their never-ending midnight:

Yet all my power is conquered by a child’s “Hail Mary”
And all my night forever lightened by own waxen candle!

(Excerpted from Death by Thomas Merton (1944))
Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
Throughout the ages people have raised the question of whether or not it makes any sense to pray to God at all, given the fact that – if God is truly God – then he is omniscient and utterly eternal, not limited by past, present or future. There is no thing that has happened, is happening or could happen that God does not know. God is entirely simple in His perfection and wholly unchangeable. He orders all things to their proper end, which is what we call divine providence. Since God’s will and His knowledge and being are the same, what God knows will come to pass must of necessity come to pass. Does it make any sense or any difference to offer prayers to such a God? Continue reading →

EXCERPT: [Someone asked about "astare" in the 2nd Eucharistic Prayer and wanted a clarification for those who want to say that this means that people must stand during the Eucharistic Prayer.]

To your question about astare: I wrote about this in the series on the Eucharistic Prayers in June 2004. The Preface of the 4th Eucharistic Prayer uses similar vocabulary. I wrote in these WDTPRS pages last year but, Fr. RF, you made me dig a little more. Some might not immediately recognize asto as adsto, which the precious Lewis & Short Dictionary says means, “to stand at or near a person or thing, to stand by”. The L&S will also make clear that asto has the synonym adsisto. If you have ever heard the phrase “to assist (adsisto) at Holy Mass” this is the concept: you are present and actively participating. Also, during the Roman Canon the priest describes the people as circumstantes, literally “standing around”. This doesn’t mean ought to be physically standing around the altar with their hands in their pockets (though I must confess I have seen precisely that). Rather, they are morally and spiritually “around” the altar, participating each according to their vocation and capacity. In his supplement to L&S, A. Souter says that adsto is the equivalent of sum. A. Blaise, on the other hand, says liturgical adsto is “to be nearby; to serve”. The same goes for adsisto. I think anyone who would try to use this as a defense of standing during the consecration would be using a terribly superficial argument. Moreover, whatever the translation says, the Church’s clear liturgical law says that at that moment, unless they are impeded, everyone must be kneeling at the time of the consecration in most of the world’s dioceses. In the USA people must kneel from the end of the Sanctus, through the whole of the Eucharistic Prayer, to the end of the great “Amen” (GIRM 23). This adaptation was purposely sought by the bishops of the USA and it was approved by Rome. Are people kneeling? Continue reading →