At Rumble – HERE – there is a longish and passionate video from 2 Jan ’22 in English with transcript by Archbp Carlo Maria Viganò, once Nuncio in these USA, then targeted for cancelation by the powers-that-be for knowing too much and being willing to tell what he knows.
I found his description of his rediscovery of the Traditional Latin Mass to be quite moving. It is fully consistent with what many young priests relate about learning the TLM and saying it for the first time. Moreover, it is harmonious with the thoughts of priests who have to also celebrate the Novus Ordo after having gotten comfortable with the Vetus Ordo.
Here are a few excerpts.
[…]
It was then that that blessed segregation, which today I consider as a sort of monastic choice, led me to rediscover the Holy Tridentine Mass. I recall very well the day when, instead of the chasuble, I put on the traditional vestments with the Ambrosian cappino and the maniple. I recall the fear that I felt in pronouncing, after almost fifty years, those prayers of the Missal that re-emerged from my mouth as if I had just recited them shortly before. Confitemini Domino, quoniam bonus, in the place of the Psalm Judica me, Deus of the Roman Rite. Munda cor meum ac labia mea. These words were no longer the words of the altar boy or the young seminarian, but the words of the celebrant, of I who once again, I would dare say for the first time, celebrated before the Most Holy Trinity. Because while it is true that the Priest is a person who lives essentially for others – for God and for his neighbor – it is equally true that if he does not have the awareness of his own identity and has not cultivated his own holiness, his apostolate is sterile like the clanging cymbal.
I know well that these reflections can leave those who have never had the grace of celebrating the Mass of all time unmoved, or even arouse condescension. But the same thing happens, I imagine, for those who have never fallen in love and who do not understand the enthusiasm and the chaste transport of the beloved towards his beloved, or for those who do not know the joy of getting lost in her eyes. The dull Roman liturgist, the Prelate with his tailored clerical suit and his pectoral cross in his pocket, the consultor of the Roman Congregation with the latest copy of Concilium or Civiltà Cattolica in plain sight, looks at the Mass of Saint Pius V with the eyes of an entomologist (the science that studies insects), scrutinizing that pericope just as a naturalist observes the veins of a leaf or the wings of a butterfly. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if they don’t do it with the asepticity of the pathologist who cuts open a living body with a scalpel. But if a priest with a minimum of interior life approaches the ancient Mass, regardless of whether he has ever known it before or is discovering it for the first time, he is deeply moved by the composed majesty of the rite, as if he has stepped out of time and entered the eternity of God.
What I would like to make my brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood understand is that that Mass is intrinsically divine, because one perceives the sacred in a visceral way: one is literally taken up into heaven, into the presence of the Most Holy Trinity and the celestial Court, far from the clamor of the world. It is a love song, in which the repetition of the signs, the reverences, and the sacred words is not in any way useless, just as a mother never tires of kissing her son, or a bride never tires of saying, “I love you” to her husband. Everything is forgotten there, because all that is said and sung in it is eternal, all the gestures that are performed there are perennial, outside of history, yet immersed in a continuum that unites the Cenacle, Calvary, and the altar on which the Mass is celebrated.
[…]
I would like my confreres to dare to do the unthinkable: I would like them to approach the Holy Tridentine Mass not so as to be pleased with the lace of an alb or with the embroidery of a chasuble, or because of a mere rational conviction about its canonical legitimacy or about the fact that it has never been abolished; but rather with the reverential fear with which Moses approached the burning bush: knowing that each one of us, upon coming down from the altar after the Last Gospel, is in some way interiorly transfigured because there he has encountered the Holy of Holies. It is only there, on that mystical Sinai, that we can understand the very essence of our Priesthood, which is the giving of Oneself to God, above all; an oblation of all of himself together with Christ the Victim, for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls; a spiritual sacrifice which draws strength and vigor from the Mass; self-renunciation in order to make way for the High Priest; a sign of true humility, in the annihilation of one’s own will and abandonment to the will of the Father, following the Lord’s example; a gesture of authentic “communion” with the Saints, in the sharing of the same profession of faith and the same rite. And I would like not only those who have celebrated the Novus Ordo for decades to have this “experience,” but above all the young priests and those who carry out their ministry in the front line: the Mass of Saint Pius V is for indomitable spirits, for generous and heroic souls, for hearts burning with Charity for God and one’s neighbor.
[…]
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Through the mouth of Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” Arthur Conan Doyle made an observation that seems pertinent here:
Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Has anyone ever heard or read any such tributes made to the NO?
Profound! If only that had been said, and inwardly digested, circa 1965, before the deluge of the spirit of the world was fully unleashed and, as Yeats said:
“Caught in that sensual music all neglect
monuments of unaging intellect”.
Still, the sages are yet standing in God’s holy fire.
Profound. Abp. Vigano is a gift from God for us all at this time. God bless him and keep him always. We have a shepherd.
Ms. M.S., all such tributes to the NO were removed as “misinformation”.
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Wow! Can’t wait to watch it but meanwhile just the excerpts are outstanding! Others have expressed many of the same sentiments but Archbishop Vigano’s sincerity and eloquence are very moving… and the last sentence of the excerpt above will go right up Franciscus Caesar’s nose! (One presumes that Archbishop Roche will blink uncomprehendingly if he is exposed to it…)
The Remnant had a few months back something similar that Archbishop Vigano’ wrote. It is in any event very moving and resonates deeply with me even though I am not a priest. The laity experiences in the traditional Latin Mass something quite similar, I might even say the same: contact with the Holiness of God. It is such a profound experience that it leaves one feeling that there is no need to argue about the liturgy or whether Pope Francis can or will succeed in extinguishing the traditional Mass or whether to attend the new Mass: We have in the traditional Latin Mass the Holiness of God and nothing can separate us from it.