The Catholic Thing is a daily stop for me. They usually post two items a day, both of quality and brevity.
Today they have something by Anthony Esolen, worth reading no matter where he is found on the interwebs.
His piece today struck through to my pericardium. It begins:
“And I shall go in unto the altar of God.”
“To God, who gives joy to my youth.”
You know these words, of course, as the beginning of Holy Mass in the Vetus Ordo, from Ps 43.
Esolen continued…
As I grow older, I cherish that verse from the psalm more and more. I imagine what it might feel like to a priest whose knees can hardly bend without trembling, to hear the response, “to God, who gives joy to my youth,” from the voice of a lad such as he himself once was, and perhaps such as he yet aspires to be.
“For unless ye become as little children,” we might say, “ye shall not go in unto the altar of God.” What does the verse mean?
*sigh*
Moreover….
I am growing old, and I feel I need to learn how to pray again, and I will learn it only if I retire into my cell, that is, into the world God has made, or into the silence of a church, or into my memories of people who have gone before me, for whom I thank God.
When Augustine of Hippo was dying and the Vandals were at the gates, he asked that Psalms be written out and tacked up on the wall by his sick bed. He was turn his face to the wall and contemplate the Word. For Augustine, every word of the Psalms was Christ speaking, sometimes Christ the Head speaking, sometimes Christ the Body, sometimes Christus Totus. He finally was setting down the heavy sarcina – military gear – of his ministry, accepted as an adult somewhat unwillingly and under moral compulsion. Full circle.
As I read the first part of Esolen’s piece, I wondered if he isn’t slowly but surely assembling a kind of commentary on the ordinary of the Mass. After all, he has a book which EVERY priest should read about the Prologue of the Gospel of John, which is at the end of each Mass. It is enormously enriching.
In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John
In the Divine Praises we pray:
You might remember that when the Archbishop of DC refused to allow Card. Castrillon to say a Pontifical Mass at the Shrine in DC, 
Stop for a moment. Consider what our eternal prospects were before the birth not only of Our Lord, but also before the birth of His Mother, from whom He took our human nature, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
There are major differences in the rite of the Sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation) between the Vetus Ordo and the post-Conciliar Novus Ordo except in the essential form of the sacrament, the necessary words to impart the form of absolution. Those remain the same.
Today is the feast of St. Moses, lawgiver and prophet in the Old Testament.
Benedict Joseph on 12 September – Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, anniversary of the Battle of Vienna (1683): “Some years back I was told that the date for tragedy of 9/11 was chosen by the terrorists to commemorate…”
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