If a person can strive this hard for a moment of worldly glory and interior satisfaction, how much more should we strive for the “unfading crown of glory”?
A friend a benefactor of this blog alerted me to a video on Youtube which reminds me of our Lenten discipline and, especially, about our Christian perseverance, our determination in life with the help of God’s graces unto our last breath and final heartbeat.
2 Timothy 4
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And a fellow Minnesotan to boot!
Yes, I think we do need a New Evangelization.
Don’t watch any of what follows on a full stomach. Especially the part with the priest.
I found this through the blog Fides et Forma.
Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Oleggio near Nola in Italy. Here is a video of some “instruction” for an apparently ongoing course for “Outpouring of the Holy Spirit”, Corso Effusione dello Spirito 2011.
Here is an introduction to the liturgical situation there. You can manage a few minutes of pain… it’s Lent.
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It’s like … how to describe this experience … like a power drill with a large bit straight to the side of your head.
Please note that often liberals accuse traditionalists of being interested in things they label as “effeminate”.
And for those who don’t understand Italian… what is said and sung here will make you wish you didn’t understand Italian.
And now… 103 minutes of pure agony.
You might have to skip around, but the priest is involved in the beginning. It’ll just seem longer than it really is to get to that point.
Nah… that’s not effeminate.
But remember! We should be really concerned about the traditional form of the Roman Rite and the dangers Summorum Pontificum presents to unity of the Church and the Spirit of the Council!
COLLECT
Praesta, quaesumus, Domine,
ut, per quadragesimalem observantiam eruditi
et tuo verbo nutriti,
sancta continentia tibi simus toto corde devoti,
et in oratione tua semper efficiamur concordes.
A bit strange in its style, no? Well, this is of new composition for the Novus Ordo. It takes some inspiration from Sermon 40, 4 of St. Pope Leo I “the Great” (+461).
Erudio is “to polish, educate, instruct, teach”. Rudis is an adjective for “unwrought, untilled, unformed, unused, rough, raw, wild”. Someone who is rudis is “rude, unpolished, uncultivated, unskilled, awkward, clumsy, ignorant; hence (like ignarus)”. People must be brought out of this state by being polished. St. Augustine (+430) wrote a work called De catechizandis rudibus. Eruditio refers to the whole culture and formation of a Catholic.
Observantia is certainly an “observance”, but also “an observance of religious duties, divine worship, religion”. For example, the Theodosian Code speaks of “fides Catholicae observantiae” (16, 5, 12, § 54).
LITERAL TRANSLATION
Grant, we beg You, O Lord,
that we, having been polished by means of the Lenten observance
and nourished by Your word,
may by holy continence be consecrated with our whole heart,
and we may be made always harmonious in Your prayer.
Day by day our Lenten observance ought to be a polishing not a torture. Sometimes people make the mistake in the spiritual life of putting themselves on the rack. The rock tumbler is a better model than the rack.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL VERSION:
Grant, we pray, O Lord,
that, schooled through Lenten observance
and nourished by your word,
through holy restraint
we may be devoted to you with all our heart
and be ever united in prayer.
UPDATE:
The Lame-Duck version is in a comment in the combox, below.
A reliable source in Rome tells me…
In a time when the Pope barely receives visiting Nuncii, the Pope is going to receive the head of the new Anglican Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Msgr. Keith Newton.
If true, and my source is reliable, this is a very good thing.
Benedict XVI is, of course, still the Pope of Christian Unity.
I was alerted to this event in New York City at one of my usual haunts. This comes from a friend:
For all of you planning to be in (or near) New York City this weekend, you won’t want to miss a new All-Night First Friday Vigil at the Church of the Holy Innocents! If you have never participated in an All-Night Vigil, what better time to start than the First Friday in Lent right before Laetare Sunday?!
The Agnus Dei Knights of Columbus Council (#12361) announced today that the All-Night First Friday Vigil it has sponsored for many years has moved to the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan.
According to Richard Janiello, spokesman for the Knights, the Vigil will now begin and conclude with Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. The Vigil begins at 6 PM with a Solemn Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart (Missale Romanum 1962) and concludes with a Sung Votive Mass of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Missale Romanum 1962) at 5 AM.
Before Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, there will be Stations of the Cross. Solemn Votive Vespers & Compline of the Sacred Heart (Brevarium Romanum 1962) are celebrated Coram Sanctissimo (in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament). In the course of the evening, the congregation prays the mysteries of the Rosary as well as all six of the Litanies approved by the Church for public use. There are also two hours set aside for silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Before concluding with the Mass for First Saturday, there is a Procession with the Blessed Sacrament in the Church followed by Benediction. Refreshments are served at the two breaks during the night.
There are two opportunities for confession: after the 9 PM Vespers/Compline and before the 5 AM Mass.
All are welcome.
As you carry on with your blog slog today, be sure not to miss these items.
First, New Liturgical Movement has a very good article about the architectural-liturgical symbolism of the fascinating Basilica of St. Clement in Rome. You will learn a lot from this piece. I did.
Next, the great Fr. Tim Finigan, His Hermeneuticalness, has a summary of a first meeting of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy which has been newly formed in England. Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, gave a talk. Fr. Finigan makes his own observations as well as gives good news about that meeting. Surely this is great news, not just for people in Englands, for this will help their priests, but English speakers everywhere, because we are so interconnected.
And you can enjoy these great blog posts while drinking some …
[CUE MUSIC]
Mystic Monk Coffee!
Yes, whether you use an RSS feed to watch your blogs, depend on blogs to tell you what is going on, or simply surf around to see what’s up on the sites of your usual suspects, Mystic Monk Coffee will keep you alert and cheerful. You don’t want to miss a word of some of these great blog posts and you won’t want to miss a drop of this great coffee roasted by traditional Carmelits who carry guns. They even have a Cowboy Blend!
Mystic Monk Coffee!
It’s restorative! It’s roborative!
It’s swell!
Z-Cam & Radio Sabina,
or “Fr Z TV” is on the air most of the time!
Because of a special prayer intention right now I have just entirely Latin chaplets of the Rosary followed by the Litany of Loreto and also prayers for the Pope in Latin and English cycling constantly. I will leave the chat box open so people can communicate, though beware of idiots. Also, I cannot control the ads without paying Ustream a stupidly high fee. One of the versions of the Prayer for the Pope, Oremus pro Pontifice is sung in the Greek liturgical style but in Latin! Very interesting.
Watch the bird feeders and occasionally also my office.
In these days, I may also occasionally co-host the live stream of the webcam on the building of the new Mars Rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or maybe live space walks during the Shuttle Mission.
Z-Cam and RADIO SABINA
There is Z-Chat in a chatroom from time to time. I send out Tweets about when it is open via Twitter. (Latin pipata, or “tweets” from pipio “to twitter, chirp”)
These critters are hungry. Will you help feed them? It’s just “tuppence a bag…”
Well… far more than tuppence, actually…. HELP!
REGISTER to be able to post comments on this blog.
From a reader:
Sometimes you write that we should pray for strength for the Pope but confusion for his enemies. Shouldn’t you pray for the conversion the his enemies?
Okay. Pray for conversion. By all means.
Perhaps I have read 19th century English novels, Patrick O’Brien, and both the King James and Douay versions of the Bible enough that some of turns of phrase stick in my head.
“Confusion to one’s enemies” is a constant prayer in the Scriptures and it is what God inflicts on those who are doing something in defiance of His will. It also came to be a standard expression in English, probably because of the KJV.
“Confusion” and the related “confound” are both from Latin, of course. Confundo means basically “to pour, mingle, or mix together”. By extension it means that, when things are poured together they become jumbled and confused, disordered. Thus there is a moral notion of dissaray, intellectual confusion, ineffectiveness. Someone who has been “confounded” has been thwarted in his scheme, has been demonstrated to be wrong.
This is what God did to the people who built the Tower of Babel: he confused them and their wicked goal by scrambling their speech. In English, “confound” concerns making someone confused or defeating them, or even refuting a bad argument.
In the Psalms we have myriad references to confusion and confounding.
Thus, in Psalms 70:13 in the older numbering we find: “Let them be confounded and come to nothing that detract my soul; let them be covered with confusion and blame that seek my hurt.”
In Jeremiah 8:12 we have this confounded confusion: “They are confounded, because they have committed abomination: yea rather they are not confounded with confusion, and they have not known how to blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall; in the time of their visitation they shall fall, saith the Lord.”
In Acts 9:22 St. Paul gets to confuse people: “But Saul increased much more in strength and confounded the Jews who dwelt at Damascus, affirming that this is the Christ.”
And to the Corinthians Paul wrote (1 Cor 1:27): “But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise: and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong.”
In the Douay Bible you can find all sorts of uses of confound.
So, in sum, sometimes I use archaic language.
But by all means, pray that the Pope’s enemies, after being confounded, be converted as well.
From a transitional deacon:
I am wondering if there is such a thing as an ideal measure for sacred vestments, both in Gothic and Roman cuts. I am planning to buy some chasubles, but I am not sure what I should be looking for, or how long they should be. Can you give me some advice? I don’t know if this will make any difference in your answer, but I am 6′ 1″ tall.
I need to get the readers involved.
The classic Roman vestment, planeta, is to have specific proportions. That I do know. I am guessing it is one-size-fits-all, as well.
As far as the fuller, “gothic” style is concerned… dunno.
Readers? Can you help this fellow?
I was about to shut down and go to bed and thus checked to make sure that the cams were working.
That’s when I saw it.
At first, I thought it might be an immature gray squirrel. Nope.
Meet Glaucomys sabrinus.
This critter is a Flying Squirrel.
I hate squirrels. I have hated them ever since the vermin tried to invade a house I lived in once upon a time. And there are other very good reasons to dislike squirrels.
But since this one flies, or at least glides, it was permitted to remain for a while.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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