Category Archives: WDTPRS

EXCERPT:
Concerning the title of lay people who help the priest and deacons distribute, I could write reams of material. Suffice to say that the proper term is “Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion”. The bishop, priest and deacon are the only “Ministers of the Eucharist”. Lay people are never “Ministers of the Eucharist”, but they can be, in case of genuine necessity, a great help in distribution of Communion, either in church or to the homebound, and so forth. It is helpful to review what the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments wrote in its document Redemptionis Sacramentum about the participation of lay people involving the Eucharist (my emphasis):…
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EXCERPT:
In our prayer today we recognize the “renewal” that we as a Church have experienced. Like grains of wheat we fell and died during Lent. We rise now to life and bear fruit. Just as we prune flowering bushes and certain trees and they then burst into even more abundant blossoms and fruit, we too are pruned back in Lent. And not only in Lent, but constantly during the year. Each Friday is a little Lent when we are all required by law to do penance. Each Sunday is a little Easter when we rise to new life. Each week is a chance for us to bear great fruit because of the ongoing cycle of dying and rising.
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EXCERPT:
The Church is being forced into a new kind of fast through the scandals caused by wicked clergy. It is bad enough that the people of God have been cheated of their heritage for decades through a poor or even maliciously false implementation of the liturgical reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council. It is bad enough that catechetics have been neglected or subverted. It is bad enough that seminaries were hijacked by ideologically driven dissenters. Now we are being brought as a Church to pay for the sins of bishops and priests who commit the abomination of sexual abuse of children and minors. While I loathe the way the media exaggerates the charges and inflates the numbers of men involved, I cannot help but be grateful in a reserved way. Jackals clean the land of rotting flesh, after all. They cull the sick of the herd. I think that we have at last now the chance to clean our house with a real spring cleaning. Just as Lent (which means “spring”) is our spiritual preparation through penance and mortifications and Easter is our Resurrection, so too as a Church we must now go into the desert and fast and suffer and pray. The enemy of the soul will tear at us, tempting us to vainglory, pride, desire for material comfort. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Here is my rendering of the 1970 Missale Romanum version of the Exultet. Alas, there is no space to give you the Latin also. The Exultet is also called the Praeconium Paschale. Paschale is an adjective of a Latinized Hebrew word pascha, for the Passover meal of the lamb. The sure and certain Lewis & Short Dictionary says the adjective praeconius, -a, -um is “of or belonging to a praeco or public crier” while the substantive praeconium is “a crying out in public; a proclaiming, spreading abroad, publishing.” In a Christian context this of course also infers the Good News! A praeconium is simultaneously a profession of faith and a call to faith extended to all who hear. Read More →

ORATIOReminiscere miserationum tuarum, Domine,et famulos tuos aeterna protectione sanctifica,pro quibus Christus, Filius tuus,per suum cruorem instituit paschale mysterium. The rich and enlightening Lewis & Short Dictionary shows that cruor has a precise meaning: "Blood (which flows from a wound), a … Read More →

The term “Maunday” or “Maundy” Thursday refers to Christ’s mandate (mandatum) in John 13:34 to His apostles in the service of the Church.  It is also called sometimes “Shere” Thursday, perhaps from “shere” indicating “tolerance” and “remedy”, in the sense … Read More →

EXCERPT:
The words peragere and percipere underscore the intensity with which we ought to participate in the sacred mysteries especially during this Holy Week. The per prefix suggests to us a thoroughness of our participation, the one per leading to the other per through the connect of the ita… ut. The peragere is an invitation to us to participate in the mysteries of Holy Week in a way that is “full, conscious and active”, especially in the interior sense. In this way we can more completely grasp in all senses of that word what the Lord has to offer to us. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Readers of WDTPRS well remember my explanation of how the document of the Bishop’s Committee on Liturgy called Built of Living Stones intentionally distorted the meaning of the GIRM 299. In spite of the fact that the Congregation for Divine Worship has previously explained to the world how to translate the Latin and clarified that that paragraph did not mean that it was preferable in any way for Mass to be celebrated “facing the people”, but rather concerned only the position of the altar in the sanctuary. I just looked at 299 in the newly released translation. They did not correct their flawed approach. They wrote: “The altar should be built apart from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible.” This sounds as if the GIRM is saying that it is preferable that Mass is celebrated “facing the people”. The Latin: Altare maius exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum peragi possit, quod expedit ubicumque possibile sit. What the Latin really says is something like: “The main altar should be built separated from the wall, which is useful/desirable wherever it is possible, so that it can be easily walked around and a celebration toward the people can be carried out.” The quod expedit refers to the main clause describing the position of the altar, and not Mass must be said. Now thousands of people will have to listen to liturgists and bishops use that paragraph to argue against celebrations ad orientem when the text says nothing of the kind. I suspect that more problems of this kind will emerge. Read More →

EXCERPT:
The really hard phrase in this is pietas actionum. We have on many occasions in the daily Lent series talked about pietas, and how hard it is to get into English, since “piety” just doesn’t sound right to our modern ears. If you are steeped in medieval things, or at least archaic usage of English, and know something of heraldry, you might remember the symbol of the pelican “in her piety”. There is a symbol of Christ and His Church as a pelican who, in time of famine and drought, pierces her own breast with her bill to feed her chicks from her own blood. This sort of piety harks to the sense of pietas as “duty”. This is what she must do for her young. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Returning to the image of the loom, which is woven into today’s vocabulary, I have in mind the incredible phrase from the Book of Job: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope. Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.”

Our days are indeed like a shuttle. Some years ago I met a women who woven cloth with a large loom. She showed me how it worked. In her practiced hands, the shuttle lashed swiftly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while the loom packed the threads together. The cloth “grew” as it was woven, slowly, but surely. But the shuttle snapped back and forth with increasing speed as she found her rhythm and settled into it. Read More →