Do you have some good news for the readership? How are things going with churches where you are? (Good news, please.)
For my part, some of you great people who follow my live-streamed Mass each day sent donations for flowers. I have had terrific luck with these alstromeria. I think today is their final hurrah, for Mass.
Speaking of donors. Some of you have contributed chess boards, pieces and clocks. I would like to get something going with chess here. My interest revived a while back – it seems like forever ago – when I was last in D.C. and at the Army and Navy Club on a Saturday morning. They had a meeting of their chess club and they invited me to play. It had been a really long time but I acquitted myself well. I getting back into it.
Anyway, I have four vinyl boards and wonderful heavily weighted pieces which is quite simply a pleasure to pick up, along with four old fashioned wind up clocks (which they are for when the EMP hits).
Another simple pleasure provides good news, and again, due to the kindness of a reader who sent colatura di alici from my wishlist.
Chop up a clove (or more) of garlic. Put it in a bowl. Chop some parsley. Put it in the bowl. Put a three or four spoons of the colatura in the bowl. You can also add some peperoncino (really hot peppers) or use flakes. Put it in the bowl. Let it all macerate while you cook the pasta. Vermicelli works best for this: you want lot’s of surface for the mixture to cling to. When the pasta is done, drain it very well and toss everything together in the bowl.
This stuff is super fast, simple, and out of this world.
Last night we had another Supper For The Promotion Of Clericalism. There were seven of us clerics and we supped.
Here, by the way, are two of the boards set and ready for play last evening.
There was Campari and soda or Aperol Spritz with salty nibbles beforehand. I made strozzapreti alla puttana siciliana, my variant of puttanesca using homemade caponata. Leafy greens and a garlic vinaigrette with macerated cherry tomatoes. Two 2″ thick rib eye on the big Weber in the courtyard. Cheeses and Honey Crisp apples after and a choice of “Magnum” bars and “bomb pops”. Amaro.
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Our Parish held a Eucharist Procession led by our local Bishop yesterday afternoon at 3 pm. Hundreds attended and the server list was at least 29 young men and boys. It was a glorious sight, in perfect weather. The local police held up traffic at every intersection. We marched through the town common and straight down Main Street. We made sure to thank each police officer. Can’t say enough how it lifted our spirits
My wife and I attended Mass on Sunday afternoon – in the Tridentine Rite. It was the second Mass of the day celebrated by a newly ordained (June 6) priest. While Mass was for the second Sunday after Pentecost, he spoke about the Feast of Corpus Christi. Following Mass, this new priest blessed each of us, in turn, at the altar rail and we were permitted to kiss his hands. Hazmat suits were not required.
Since the Archdiocese finally (kinda sorta) reopened our Churches for Mass and the sacraments, this morning was the 9th consecutive day I was able to participate in the Mass and receive Our Lord in the Eucharist!!! And have twice received the Sacrament of Confession!!!
I missed Him so much during our 2+ months wandering in the desert.
I really enjoy these kinds of posts, Father. Thanks!
Question: why do you have what appears to be extra Queen and King on the side of the chess boards?
[Good question. Those are extra Jesuits… er um… Queens in case a player manages to promote a pawn.]
The pneumonia I picked up in early February (I probably had the coronavirus then) is almost entirely gone now, so my doc cleared me for going back to to the office when we open up again.
Oops: forgot to add, my parish is open for Sunday Mass again (at 50% capacity), so I got to Mass and received Jesus for the first time in 13 weeks yesterday! Hope appropriate that yesterday in the N.O. was Corpus Christi. :-)
A son of our parish was ordained on Saturday for our Diocese. This video is his first Mass of Thanksgiving, held Sunday afternoon at our parish. The Mass was beautiful, N.O. and chanted in Latin by a seminarian from the Pontifical College Josephinum and with a Eucharistic procession at the end. It was a very sacred celebration of the Liturgy, and shows the continuing lean to the traditional among young priests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvheTKsBBJ0
My family and I won our church’s Mass lottery (our parish is only allowed to have 10 people at a Mass). We went to an Extraordinary Form Mass together for the first time since March 8th. After Communion my 2.5 year old son said “me want it!” ?
Thanks for the photo of the alstroemeria, whose name (without your prompting) I couldn’t think of to save me. Some of them will be going into the lily garden at our chapel in a few months.
Via distance learning, I completed a masters program in social work in May and in a tough job market was able to secure a position with our regional Catholic Charities to start in a couple weeks. I appreciate the prayers of the readership and Fr. Z towards this effort.
Ribeye, it’s what’s for dinner, excellent.
Stepheno: That is great.
Chess puzzles:
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rated
N-KB3 Father, does your chess go back that far? I have a good number of chess books in descriptive notation, which I greatly prefer to algebraic. The traditional method, or “Chessius Antiquior”, naturally has a level of grace and beauty that has been lost in the Novus Algebraicus.
Can I get an “Amen!?”
At our outdoor Mass on Sunday, 4 children received their first communion. A beautiful feast day for that! And the homily was preached by a seminarian who was raised to the Diaconate the day before! He is a young man who grew up in our parish and is attending Mundelein Seminary. It is so good to see vocations as well as the sacraments of initiation for our young!
Tantum Ergo says: N-KB3
My chess indeed goes back that far. Now, I look at this new way of recording moves and it seems foreign to me.
3 daily Masses at our parish in Littleton, CO, staffed by the wonderful and little known Disciples of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a Spanish order. After 2 of my sisters and I took our combined 13 children to a noon daily Mass (which went exactly how one might imagine that going) the priest who said Mass emailed all three of us and thanked us for bringing our children to church and for being “the antidote to the somber sterility” of the months Masses without congregants he had celebrated. Years from now in whatever shape the Church in the US finds herself, I’ll remember the kindness of a faithful priest who loves welcomes families.
congratulations that’s fantastic!
My daughter received her first communion on Sunday from a faithful priest. Because of continuing coronavirus regulations, there were no Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion- good news, indeed. And I emailed pictures of the angelic child on her special day to our large extended family, many of whom are fallen-away Catholics. Maybe it will spark them to reconsider the beauty of life in the Church.
A few weeks ago we decided the heck with the rulings of the various commissars and headed down to Massachusetts to see our son and daughter in law who fortunately live in part of the state less affected by the COVID-1984. We had a good time, highlighted by a trip to the FSSP church in Providence RI to attend Sunday Mass for the first time since the first week of Lent. It also happened to be Pentecost Sunday which seemed appropriate as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit after being bottled up by the lack of the sacraments. Another piece of good news was that he had just been called back to work after being furloughed for several weeks.
Tantum Ergo wrote regarding chess notation, ” The traditional method, or “Chessius Antiquior”, naturally has a level of grace and beauty that has been lost in the Novus Algebraicus.
Can I get an “Amen!?”
Me: Amen!
In my TLM parish, 19 children received their 1st Communion at a Solemn High Mass with a procession after for the External Solemnity of Corpus Christi. I had to livestream the Mass due social distancing as our little church was filled with the families of the Communicants. It was great to see all those children receiving Christ in Holy Communion for the first time!
[noble simplicity v. lavish complexity … You might enjoy a post I had some time ago about chess… in Latin. HERE]
My family had the great privilege of attending a solemn high Mass and Eucharistic procession at our FSSP parish!!!! This was only the second Sunday Mass we’ve attended post-lockdown. We are so grateful. My boys just light-up when there is high Mass.
We have finally been able to reopen the church – for private prayer only at the moment – but still great.
Fr Z, I missed that chess post from early May. It must have been a COVID19 related oversight. Mea culpa
If there is a bright spot in this whole virus scare is that, with limited Masses, more parishioners are being exposed to the TLM. Hopefully some will return.
My grand daughter has been baptized, and all 4 grand parents were in attendance. (She is not quite a month old).
I was able to attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form, and to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, kneeling.
We safely travelled home (we had to fly, so imagine navigating an airport.)
I got to see my 4-yr old godson, who also attended the baptism.
A soon-to-be-unemployed teacher friend is going to be gainfully employed (elsewhere, still teaching) in the fall and is expecting (with his wife) the birth of their first child.
Great news. A new documentary in the making and they’re asking for funding.
”Mass of the Ages – How Tradition will restore the Church”