My Sunday Mass intention today is for my benefactors, those of you who donate regularly, ad hoc, or send things.
Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Mass of obligation for this 19th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo (27th Ordinary Sunday in the Novus Ordo)?
In Italy today, we celebrate Italy’s Patron, St. Francis of Assisi.
Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. Where I was, at The Parish™, it was completely jammed. There were 1st Communions and also the Supplica to Our Lady of Pompeii. Lots of church today.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
A taste of what I offered at 1 Peter 5 this week.
[…]
One might at this point spill several thousand words about the magnificent prayers to be recited by bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons while putting on their liturgical vestments, and, even before that, washing one’s hands and, even before that, donning the cassock. They are a fathomless resource for priestly identity. I am often driven to ponder, with sorrow and anger and yearning what the knock on effect would have been in the Church over these last decades were all or at least most priests and bishops saying their vesting prayers. Would there be so much disfunction in the Church were a bishop reminded every time he put on his ring praying: “Adorn with virtue, Lord, the fingers of my body and of my heart, and place upon them the sanctification of the sevenfold Spirit.” Praying every time he put on a miter, “Place upon my head, Lord, the mitre and helmet of salvation; that I may go forth unhindered against the snares of the ancient foe, and of all my enemies.”
[…]
Fr. Z said, “I am often driven to ponder, with sorrow and anger and yearning what the knock on effect would have been in the Church over these last decades were all or at least most priests and bishops saying their vesting prayers.”
Interesting, is it not, that we have experienced a virtual damnatio memorie for the last 60 years with regards to the prayers and practices of the Church, which is ongoing. Why, one might begin to think some enemy is at work (and not just the spiritual one) determined to wipe all memory of the Apostolic Church from the minds of men, implementing a plan conceived by some very powerful human agents outside the Church who have been and are orchestrating this, who will not stop until the task is done.
They will not, in the end, accomplish their mission, I am certain, because the Church is divine, but woe to us living through the attempt.
We had an external solemnity: Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary.
Blunt descriptions of the time period: “Protestant Revolt”; the “threat of Islam”.
We also did the external solemnity of Our Lady of the Rosary. The sermon was on the history of the Rosary and how it developed from the 150 prayers that religious would say in place of the psalter. He emphasized that what makes it a rosary as opposed to just a psalter of prayers is the meditations that go with it. If we pray it without the meditations and let our minds wander (guilty!) then we are not getting the benefits that Our Lady promised. He also spoke of the battle of Lepanto and how the victory over the Turks was attributed to the many rosaries said by the combatants as well as the people.