I am on the ground at FCO. On the way down we had some splendid mountains and at the end a nice view of the ruins of ancient Ostia. Alas I didn’t have my camera ready early enough for a fuller view.
Lunch… the usual first day fare…
And on the feast of St Telesphorus, near where I am staying…
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Someone posted a printable image of the Noveritis (“Let y’all know”) in Gregorian chant notation for the singing of the liturgical dates for 2014 which takes place at Epiphany after the Gospel. Find it over there.
The singing of the key liturgical dates in a solemn way, underscores how these dates and seasons are all interconnected, how the liturgical year is a reflection of and on the mystery of our salvation. Some liturgical dates are movable. For example Septuagesima (this year 1 February) doesn’t fall on the same date every year because the date of Easter changes each year.
“But Father! But Father!”, you are surely sputtering. “What does this chant sound like?”
Here is what it sounds like, in case some deacon or priest out there, less familiar with chant, wants to give it a shot. It sounds rather like the Exultet, sung at the Easter Vigil. The Noveritis is a little awkward, however.
Since I am in an airport right now, I’ll allow you to post your own, flawless, accurate and yet smooth English translations.
I am waiting for my first flight of the new year. Oh joy.
Weather is not good here, but I built in extra time for delays.
Meanwhile, I have pulled up the funeral of the murdered NYPD officer on my phone via SlingBox.
Wow. Rest in peace.
UPDATE
Next leg.
UPDATE
Next leg.
Today the names of the new Cardinals were announced. They will be given their red hats in a consistory on 14 February.
The one that interests me is His Excellency Most Reverend Luigi De Magistris, Major Pro-Penitentiary Emeritus. Alas, he is over 80. He is exactly the sort of man I would want to vote in a conclave.
I have described him sometimes as “the last Roman priest”, even though he is Sardinian. Arcbp. De Magistris has had a remarkable career and it was my great privilege to get to know him and to work with him a bit when he was a member of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”. I would often run into him during his daily walks, and we would walk and talk and I could pick his brains. Also, he often walked by my ground level window facing into the courtyard of the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio. He would stop and, through the window (almost as if visiting a prisoner), share anecdotes, witticisms, proverbs, bits of advice. Meeting him in the highways and byways, he was the consummate gentleman priest, humble and at the same time perfectly aware of his office once he was consecrated.
I learned a great deal about the inner and even hidden workings of things from him.
He should have been made Cardinal many years ago.
Congratulations Luigi Cardinal De Magistris
The Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome received a new Prefect last November, His Eminence Robert Card. Sarah. He should be a good, solid Prefect. At the same time, however, there was a bit of a purge of, say, the old guard in the Congregation. Now Card. Sarah must carry out his mandate with fewer helpers who appreciate what Pope Benedict was trying to accomplish. I would say that the opposite is true: there are now more who are contrary.
At the same time, we watch a restructuring of the Roman Curia. The idea behind the restructuring, as far as I can tell, is to weaken the Curia globally and leave more tasks to regional conferences of bishops. The number of cardinals and archbishops in the Curia will drop as departments are consolidated, thus concentrating influence and activity.
I therefore read with interest an article at Pinoy Catholic in the Philippines, which informs us that in the Archdiocese of Cebu the following are no longer allowed:
– The Benedictine Altar Arrangement with the crucifix facing the people, not the priest, and with 6 candles for priests, and 7 candles for bishops.
– New Churches must not have their Tabernacles anywhere near the Sanctuary, but only at the side.
– Tabernacle veil
So much for “vertical” worship with emphasis on the transcendent or on the Lord. This is a clear repudiation, in harsh terms, of what Benedict XVI’s vision in favor of the ghost of Anscar Chupungco.
Will the Congregation get involved with this decision in Cebu? I suspect not. I hope I am wrong.
We need to rethink versus populum celebration of Holy Mass and adopt instead ad orientem worship. Joseph Ratzinger got it right in his The Spirit of the Liturgy. I’ll take Benedict XVI’s vision every day and as many times as it takes on Sunday.
As Klaus Gamber stated, and Ratzinger repeated, the shift from ad orientem worship to versus populum was the single most damaging change made in the name of the Second Vatican Council. Together with that came the jettisoning of Our Lord from sanctuaries, the de facto abolition of Latin along with worthy sacred music, irreverence due to Communion in the hand and the downplaying of kneeling and genuflection, etc. etc. etc.
All reasons for the promotion of Summorum Pontificum.
Just as a return to reading the Fathers can help us, collectively, correct the way we have been reading Scripture, so much under the domination of an over-played historical-critical method, so too, the Extraordinary Form can help us learn how the worship God as a Church which is not fragmented into tiny shards, and to reorient ourselves away from ourselves.
Start your local movement for the implementation of Summorum Pontificum NOW.
¡Hagan lío!
In the ancient Western Church and in the East, Epiphany was more important than the relative latecomer Christmas. Epiphany is from the Greek word for a divine “manifestation” or “revelation”. There are many “epiphanies” of God in the Scripture. Think, for example, of the burning bush encountered by Moses. The Latin Church’s antiphons for Vespers reflect the tradition that Epiphany was thought to be not only the day the Magi came to adore Christ, but also the same day years later when He changed water into wine at Cana, and also when He was baptized by St. John in the Jordan. In each mysterious event, Jesus was revealed to be more than a mere man: He is man and God.
The Epiphany Collect was in the 1962 Missale Romanum and in ancient sacramentaries.
Deus, qui hodierna die Unigenitum tuum stella duce revelasti, concede propitius, ut qui iam te ex fide cognovimus, usque ad contemplandam speciem tuae celsitudinis perducamur.
Stella duce is an ablative absolute. The adjective hodiernus means “of this day, today’s”. In older Latin, celsitudo is “lofty carriage of the body”. In later Latin it is used like the title “Highness”. In our liturgical context it is a divine attribute, God’s transcendent grandeur, glory.
SUPER LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who on this very day revealed your Only-begotten, a star as the guide, graciously grant, that we, who have already come to know You by faith, may be led all the way unto the beauty of Your glory to be contemplated.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, you revealed your Son to the nations by the guidance of a star. Lead us to your glory in heaven by the light of faith.
Really?
NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
O God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star, grant in your mercy, that we, who know you already by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory.
In Latin prayers species (three syllables) often means “beauty”. It is also a technical, philosophical term about the way the human intellect apprehends things. Species has to do with the relationship between the thing known and our knowing power. A species transforms the mind of the one perceiving a thing. The object we consider acts upon our power of knowing. Simultaneously, the knowing power acts upon the object known. Our knowing power’s active and passive aspects meet in the species and the object of our consideration is known directly, without intermediaries. Easy.
This is what we are praying for, hoping for, living our earthly lives for: to see God face to face, directly and immediately.
In this life we know God only indirectly, by faith, our reason aided by the authority of revelation and by grace. This is St. Paul’s “dark glass” (1 Cor 13:12) through which we peer toward Him in longing.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He is the Father’s Beauty. He is Truth and Beauty and Glory itself.
St. Hilary of Poitiers (d 367) conceived God’s divine attribute of glory as a transforming power which divinizes us by our contact with it. After Moses talked with God in the tent of the Ark, he wore a veil over his face, which became too bright to look at. We pray today, literally, to be brought “all the way to the beauty of glory (species celsitudinis)” of God “which is to be contemplated”. His beauty will act on us, increase our knowledge of Him and, therefore, our love for Him … for all eternity. We will be, all the more, the images He intended.
Christ could be understood to be the species celsitudinis of this prayer. Contemplate His truth and beauty. Christ is the true speaker and spoken truth of every prayer of every Mass.
If eternal Beauty transforms us, “divinizes” us, then beauty in this life changes us too.
Could a fostering of beauty in our churches help us reach people today in a way that arguments or other appeals may not?
Our liturgical worship of the Most High God must lead us to encounter beauty, truth, transcendent mystery. Holy Mass requires the finest architecture, vestments, music – everything – we can summon from human genius, love and labor. What we sing and say and do in church, and the church itself, ought to presage the liturgy of heaven, where the Church Triumphant enjoys already the Beatific Vision.
Liturgy should be “epiphany”, wherein we encounter transforming mystery.
Let us celebrate every Mass in such a way that we become shoe-less Moses before the burning bush which is never consumed. Let Mass make us Magi with sight and mind fixed in longing upon the beautiful, true and yet speechless Word, in whom transcendent glory was both hidden and revealed.
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We have become so used to email and texts. Do we write letters anymore?
Last year I resolved to write more by hand. I actually thought about making a bargain with someone to exchange well-crafted, well-pondered letters which, over the years, might serve as a collection of sorts. I discovered how hard it is, in this e-world, to write anything, much less letters. How my handwriting has degraded!
From the prized and erudite Laudator, poster of fascinating tidbits:
St. Jerome, letter 7.2 (to Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius; tr. F.A. Wright):
Now I talk to your letter, I embrace it, it carries on a conversation with me, it is the only thing here that knows Latin. In this place an old man has either to learn a barbarous jargon, or else to hold his tongue. The handwriting I know so well brings your dear faces before my eyes; and then either I am no longer here or else you are here with me. Believe love when it tells you the truth: as I write this letter I see you before me.
Nunc cum vestris litteris fabulor, illas amplexor, illae mecum loquuntur, illae hic tantum Latine sciunt. Hic enim aut barbarus seni sermo discendus est aut tacendum est. Quotiensque carissimos mihi vultus notae manus referunt inpressa vestigia, totiens aut ego hic non sum aut vos hic estis. Credite amori vera dicenti: et cum has scriberem, vos videbam.
J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975), p. 49, n. 15:
The older reading ‘barbarus semi-sermo’ ( = ‘the barbarous gibberish’), which has good MS support, seems preferable to ‘barbarus seni sermo’ (‘at my advanced years I must learn a barbarous speech’), which Hilberg adopted.
By the way, St. Jerome, patron of grouchy priests, detested St. Ambrose. Saints don’t always have to get along and they aren’t always “nice”. HERE Jerome’s tomb is somewhere in St. Mary Major in Rome. HERE
The brilliant Fr. Hunwicke has a keen eye.
To wit:
Learning from Luther
Cardinal Marx believes in learning from Luther. Today, Rorate publishes a nice early engraving of Lutherans receiving Holy Communion into their mouths, and kneeling.
Nuff’ said.
Here is the image.
My good friend Fr. Eduard Perrone of mighty Assumption Grotto, that liturgical oasis in troubled Detroit, is a fine musician. He is putting his extensive training and experience to work with social media.
Here is the first installment of a video series to help people learn…
GREGORIAN CHANT!
NB: This is done in coordination with Church Militant, which is Michael Voris’ intiative. Michael is in Detroit and goes to Assumption Grotto. It is premium content, btw. I don’t have access to Church Militant’s premium content… even though I’ve been on his radio show and… but… okay, now I get it. I did some hard-hitting investigative reporting about them. That must be the reason.
Never mind.
See my…
SECRET WDTPRSNEWS INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: Fr. Z with Michael Voris at the Church Militant studio!
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
Greg Hlatky on Some notes for your Sunday Mass in the Vetus and the Novus Ordo: ““By pursuing perfection we will achieve excellence.” – Vince Lombardi”
on Some notes for your Sunday Mass in the Vetus and the Novus Ordo: “Regarding memorization, I read a book about the man who became the leader of the Christian democrats in West Germany…”
on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 36: Ultimate: “Have a safe trip Father! After my recent trip I understand how hard it is to leave Rome.”
on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 36: Ultimate: “Right you are, revueltos67. Back to the board: 1. f2f3+ Kh5 2. g3g4+ Kxh4 3. Qe7+ Qg5 4. Qe1++”
on Germans… “for many” in the Consecration formula, rather than “for all”: “That part of OS has been poorly translated. It does not say the Church has no authority. It said the…”
on WDTPRS – 5 November: Feast of the Holy Relics. These bones shall live again. Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “That reminds me of a story I read. St. John XXIII visited the convent of the Holy Spirit in Rome;…”
on YOUR URGENT PRAYER REQUESTS: “The parents of Gemma Faustina are asking for prayers for their unborn daughter. We are asking for the intercession of…”
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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