Category Archives: WDTPRS

EXCERPT:
We need clear doctrine, clear prayers, and clear willingness to adhere to them on the part of her duly appointed pastors. Hopefully the ongoing project of preparing a new translation of the Missale Romanum will be a contribution, not an obstacle. Read More →

I am posting this at about "oh dark hundred" and, as it is posted, will be just about ready to catch a couple hours sleep before walking out the door to meet my ride for the airport. I am heading … Read More →

EXCERPT:
My instant reaction to this prayer is rather bittersweet. The Church’s shifting demographics in wealthy countries reveals that, while more people may be identifying themselves as Catholic, the percentage of Catholics going to Mass remains steady or is falling. This means that we are going backward. Also, in European countries which were once Catholic countries, such as Italy, the birth rate is far below replacement rate. Yet “Eur-Arabia” is swiftly muliplying. Contraception and abortion is killing off one dimension of the life of the Church. The forces of the “Prince of this world” prevail in some places. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Taking a page from St. Augustine of Hippo (+430), we the baptized who are the Body of the Mystical Person of Christ, the Church, are on a journey with the Lord, the Head of the Church, toward Jerusalem: the Jerusalem of our own passion and the new Jerusalem of our Resurrection. Christ made this journey so that we could make it and be saved in it. In our liturgy the one, whole Mystical Christ is on a Lenten journey. Each year in Lent Christ, in us, travels that road of the Passion, and we, in Him, travel the road marked out by Holy Mother Church and her duly ordained shepherds. We must unite ourselves in heart, mind and will with the mysteries expressed in the liturgy. Our passion, our road to Jerusalem, is in our examination of conscience and good confessions, our self-denial and works of mercy. Read More →

EXCERPT:
A MOCKING LAME DUCK ICELESE VERSION
God,
you are nice.
Be nice and help us love.

I think this get’s to the essence of what the old ICEL “translators” gleaned from the Latin originals, don’t you? After all, it expresses our need for the sacrament of niceness, which is the heart and soul of the old ICEL versions and the now cliché theology behind them. And don’t forget to look into everyone’s eyes at Mass, er… liturgy. As we were taught in seminary (and I am not making this up) when “community” goes forward for “bread” the sacrament takes place when you look into each other’s eyes. Read More →

EXCERPT:
This prayer today was not in the pre-Concilar Missale Romanum. It also has me scratching my head. Once I looked up all the references, I knew why. In effect, this is clearly a cut and paste joband it just doesn’t hang together well. A predecessor (Concede, quaesumus, domine, fragilitate nostrae sufficientiam conpetentem, ut suae reparationis effectum et pia conuersatione recenseat et cum exultatione suscipiat: per.) is in the Gelasianum Vetus in two places, Friday of the 3rd Week of Lent and for Septuagesima. The “et fragilitati nostrae congrua praeparasti subsidia” is in the Veronese in April and references to fragilitas and pia conversatio in a prayer in July. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Christ is the perfect model of all that is mentioned in the prayer. He is the perfect exemplar. St. Augustine, in his monumental City of God is a little cautious about presenting the Lord as being our model and exemplar. He knows that Christ, the perfect model, presents for us an unattainable challenge. For Augustine, the lives of the martyrs and other holy men and women are more helpful and realistic models. In their fully be merely human lives they show us that we fully human but merely human people can live the life to which Christ’s commands and perfect model calls us. Read More →

EXCERPT:
We need to be clear about something. What we do on our own cannot obtain anything from God on its own merits. To paraphrase St. Augustine when God crowns our merits, He crowns His own merits in us.

I wrote this next excerpt from a WDTPRS article for Super Oblata of the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time. I think it applies. Also, I am really sick right now and just don’t have it in me to do much more, so here goes. Some of the rest of you can dig into the vocabulary and syntax. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Since we are past the half way point in Lent, there has been a shift in the prayers, I think. There is a focus on the coming Triduum now. The vocabulary today with paschale mysterium and praeconium point to the Triduum and Vigil. Praeconium makes you think right away of the great chant of the deacon called the Exsultet, or Praeconium Paschale. The Redactors chose to strip the prayer of it older content, in the replacement of “fasts” (ieiunia) with devotio. Read More →

COLLECTDeus, qui ineffabilibus mundum renovas sacramentis,praesta, quaesumus,ut Ecclesia tua et aeternis proficiat institutis,et temporalibus non destituatur auxiliis.A form of this prayer was in the ancient Gregorian in the Hadrianum manuscript "FERIA VI AD SANCTUM EUSEBIUM" which means that it was … Read More →