Here is something for all of you anywhere near that toddlin’ town Chicago:
Join Most Rev. Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison, and the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius for the 12:30 pm Tridentine Pontifical High Mass on the External Solemnity of the Ascension. [Not the same as Ascension Thursday Sunday.]
Resurrection Choir and Orchestra will provide the music:
Prelude: Let the Bright Seraphim, George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)
Entrance of the Bishop: Ecce Sacerdos, Rev. Scott A. Haynes (b. 1971) [NB: Not dead yet. o{];¬) ]
Ordinary: Mass in G, 167, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Motets: Tantum Ergo, Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924) and Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, K 273, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Recessional: Prelude on the Te Deum, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1645-1704)
My kind of town.
Unfortunately Chicago does indeed celebrate Ascension Thursday Sunday. I was surprised by the small number of ecclesiastical provinces in the United States (six) that celebrate the Ascension on its proper day.
Why don’t the bishops make use of the provision for external solemnities instead of moving the feasts altogether? Their “pastoral reason” is ostensibly to expose more Catholics to these great feasts; that would do the trick.
I wonder if calling this the “external solemnity” of the Ascension amounts to a legal fiction. The Ascension was never celebrated with “external solemnity” on the following Sunday (in contrast to those feasts whose external solemnities are specified in the 1960 Codex Rubricarum). Unfortunately, celebrating the Ascension liturgy on the Sunday means losing one of the most beautiful Masses in the missal, that of the Sunday after the Ascension.
ALL: There is room in life to grumble about the shift of Ascension THURSDAY to Sunday, but did anyone actually READ in the top entry what they are going to do at St. John Cantius?
Rather nice, no?
I did! makes me wish we hadn’t moved from the Diocese of Rockford (next to Chicago) …I’m guessing they won’t be doing anything like that in Charlotte any time soon :o/
I am in the area and am going to attempt to attend this, pending some arrangements I have to make. It sounds like it will be wonderful. I’ve heard Bishop Morlino preach before (at a good friend’s first Mass) he was stellar!
I saw that on their website about two days after I bought my plane tickets to fly home to Atlanta on June 2. I’d have been there in a heartbeat (especially since St. John Cantius is only about a mile away from me).