EXCERPT:
Today’s prayer was the Secret of the Mass for Ash Wednesday according to the older, “Tridentine” Missale Romanum. It is also an ancient prayer from the Gelasian Sacramentary. Interestingly, in the Gelasian this prayer comes after a whole series of prayers over penitents in the rites for doing public penance. Here we read how the penitent on Ash Wednesday would dress in cilicium (an amazingly scratchy and uncomfortable garment of goat’s hair). He would go to church, prostrate himself on the ground before the bishop who would pray over him, and he would do penance until Holy Thursday when he would be reconciled. Read More →
EXCERPT:
Even though this is a prayer during Mass sacramentum here refers not just to the sacrament of the Eucharist, but also its ancient meaning: the forty-day long discipline of Lent which mysteriously bonds Christians and Christ more closely together. The whole season of Lent is a transforming mystery, a “sacrament”, during which our practices have consequential effects: they bring us into the mystery of the dying and rising Jesus. This transforming bond with Christ is brought about through denial of self and good works for others, penitential mortification and works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal. In Lent the words of the Baptist must ring in our ears daily, even hourly: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30). When He increases in us, we are more who we are supposed to be. Thus, we have to make “room” for Him by our self-denial. Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA, WDTPRS| Comments Off on 1st Sunday of Lent – COLLECT (2)
EXCERPT:
The origin of the Oratio super populum is quite complex and hard to pin down. Turning to Fr. Joseph A. Jungmann’s monumental two volume The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development we find a history of this prayer at the beginning of the section concerning the close of the Mass (II, pp. 427ff). Something Jungmann emphasizes that caught my attention is the fact that we are at a “frontier” moment, the threshold of the sacred precinct of the church and the world. When properly formed we want the influence of our intimate contact with the divine to carry over into the outside world. Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA, WDTPRS| Comments Off on 1st Sunday of Lent – POST COMMUNION
EXCERPT:
We are asked to participate actively and fully in the whole liturgical year. Our lives must take on the qualities of the entire presentation of the mysteries of our salvation, from Creation to Second Coming. In other words, we are not to be active participants at Sunday Mass only. At the end of Mass the priest or deacon commands, Ite, Missa est… “GO! You are dismissed!” This is stern sounding compared to the warm and fuzzy end of Mass we sometimes experience. But the starkness and force of the Latin indicates we are being sent out with urgency into the world, back to our Christian work. Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA, WDTPRS| Comments Off on 1st Sunday of Lent – COLLECT (1)
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
maternalView on ROME 24/4– Day 30: Let there be LIGHT!: “Why, if life was the result of random events, is there such order in everything that exists? And why, if…”
Gregg the Obscure on ROME 24/4– Day 30: Let there be LIGHT!: “Linguine Marinara con Gambieri tonight. In your charity please pray for me. it appears that i will likely be fired…”
SMJ on ROME 24/4– Day 30: Let there be LIGHT!: “Father, may I ask in which church is venerated the beautiful image of St. Joseph in the holy card that…”
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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