WDTPRS – 4th Sunday after Easter (Vetus Ordo): “[T]he smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God”

Posted on 26 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This is the 4th Sunday after Easter according to the older, traditional Roman calendar.

Today’s Collect survived the slash and hack editors of the Novus Ordo.  You can find it in the Novus Ordo for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time as well as Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter.  That is… of Easter.  In the post-Conciliar calendar Sundays are reckoned “of Easter”. In the pre-Conciliar calendar they are “after Easter”.  In the newer calendar Easter Sunday itself is included in the reckoning of Sundays of the Easter season.  In the older calendar Sundays are counted from the first Sunday after Easter.  So, in the new calendar today is the Fifth Sunday of Easter and in the older it is the Fourth Sunday after Easter.

However, today’s Collect is in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary for the Third Sunday after the close of Easter!  Our more distant ancestors counted Easter Sunday, the days of the Octave, and “Low” Sunday in albis as being one single liturgical idea, one day, as if the clock stopped for that whole Octave.  Thus, what is the Fifth Sunday of  Easter (2002MR) and the Fourth Sunday after Easter (1962MR) is also the Third Sunday after the close of Easter (GelSacr).

Is it clear now?

COLLECT – (1962MR):
Deus, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis: da populis tuis id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis; ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia.

Beautiful.  Elegant.

The Novus Ordo version adds commas “ …ut, inter mundanas varietates,…”  All those long eeee sounds produced by the Latin letter “i” are marvelous to hear and to sing. Note the nice parallels in the construction: id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis as well as ibi…sint corda with ubi…sunt gaudia.  In the first line the genitives unius…voluntatis are elegantly split by the verb efficis.

A genius wrote this prayer.  Let’s find out what it really says.

Now in paperback!

The densely packed leaves of your own copy of the thick Lewis & Short Dictionary (HERE) show that varietas means “difference, diversity, variety.”  It is commonly used to indicate “changeableness, fickleness, inconstancy”; “vicissitude” hits it square and sounds wonderful to boot.  The adjective mundanus, a, um, “of or belonging to the world”, must be teased out in a paraphrase.  Efficio (formed from facio) means, “to make out, work out; hence, to bring to pass, to effect, execute, complete, accomplish, make, form”.   Voluntas means basically “will” but it can also mean things like “freewill, wish, choice, desire, inclination” and even “disposition towards a thing or person”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, You who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will,
grant unto Your people to love that thing which You command,
to desire that which You promise,
so that, amidst the vicissitudes of this world,
our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are.

Let us revisit that id…quod construction. We could simply say “love that which you command,” or “love what you command”, but to me that seems vague and generic.  Of course, we must love everything God commands, but the feeling I get from that id…quod is concrete.  We love and desire God’s will in the concrete situation, this concrete task.  A challenge of living as a good Christian in “the world” is to love God in the details of life, especially when those details are little to our liking.  We must love him in this beggar, this annoying creep, not in beggars or creeps in general.  We must love him in this act of fasting, not in fasting in general.  This basket of laundry, this paperwork, this Jesuit…. Didn’t I say it was a challenge?  God’s will must not be reduced to something abstract, as if it is merely a “heavenly” or “ideal” reality. “Thy will (voluntas) be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

What did the Anglican Church do with this back in the day?

1662 Book of Common Prayer (Fifth Sunday in Lent):
O almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men:
Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest,
and desire that which thou dost promise,
that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found.

You have to love that!  I often wonder why the original incarnation of ICEL didn’t use the Book of Common Prayer as a model.  But… right… first the redactors of the Novus Ordo cut certain unpleasantries, such as guilt and sin, out of the Latin original and then the people working for ICEL cut out all the rest of the meaningful concepts.

When you slaughter a critter, first you bang it on the head, then you tear its guts out, and afterwards hang upside down to drain out all its blood.

Sort of like Traditionis custodes, followed by the DDW “dubia” without origin, etc.

So what did the pre-reformed ICEL do to this prayer?

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father,
help us to seek the values
that will bring us lasting joy
in this changing world.
In our desire for what you promise
make us one in mind and heart.

This … makes me want to scream.

Note the theological catch-all word “help”, a technical term in obsolete ICELese and rather Pelagian.  Does “help us” underscore our total reliance on God?  He does a bit more than “help”.  What did ICEL did to God’s “commands”?

Presto-chango they are now “values”.

And did no one in ICEL or in Rome, where blame for this translation disaster must also be ascribed, see a theological problem with “lasting joy in this changing world”?

The Latin says the world is “fickle” (mundanas varietates).  We cannot have “lasting” joy in this world.  It can be attained only in the life to come.

More about the slippery word “values”.  We should make a distinction between values and virtues.  To my mind, values have an ever shifting subjective starting point while virtues are rooted in something objective.  In 1995 Gertude Himmelfarb wrote in The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values: “it was not until the present century that morality became so thoroughly relativized that virtues ceased to be ‘virtues’ and became ‘values.’”

Rem acu tetigit!   In this post-Christian, post-modern world the term “values” seems to indicate little more than our own self-projection.  I suspect this is at work in the obsolete ICEL prayer with its “help us” and the excision of God’s commands and promises.

We should be on guard about that word “values”, in this time of growing conflict between what the Church embraces and worldly relativism.  Can “values” be rescued, used properly? Perhaps. John Paul II used it in Evangelium vitae, but in a concrete way.

Benedict XVI constantly presented us with the threats we face from both religious and secular relativism, the reduction of the supernatural to the natural, caving in to “the world”, that which shifts constantly, is subjective.

Holy Scripture also warns us about “the world” which has its Prince.

The Enemy still dominates this world until Christ the King will come again.   St. Paul wrote to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2 – RSV).  Christ put His Apostles on guard about “the world”: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil” (John 7:7).

When what “the world” has to give is given preeminence over what God has to give through His Church, we wind up in the crisis Pope Paul VI described on the ninth anniversary of his coronation (29 June 1972):

“…da qualche fessura sia entrato il fumo di Satana nel tempio di Dio… through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God”.

Today’s Collect, in both the Novus Ordo and the Vetus form of the Roman Rite, is a spiritual safeguard in the vicissitudes of this world.

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ROME 24/4– Day 36 (-5): Sacristy secrets, music from nuns, and Fr. Z’s Kitchen (real “all’amatriciana”)

Posted on 25 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At 06:12 the sun rose over Rome.  It will set at 20:05.

The Ave Maria Bell will ring – or ought to ring – at 20:15.  This cycle lasts until 28th, a few more days.

It is the Feast of St. Mark, Evangelist.    It is the week in which we have rogation litanies.

It is 25 April, which is the celebration of the Liberation of Rome by the Americans.  Ehem… by the Americans.   I hope to enjoy seeing the Italian Airforce flying team, the “Arrows”, arrow over the City trailing the smoky colors of the national flag.  They are always good value.   The Frecce will be in North America at airshows for the first time in some 30 years.  [UPDATE: I didn’t see them.]

Also, today is the 150th birthday of Guglielmo Marconi, the pioneer of radio.   In 1901 he succeeded in sending a signal across the Atlantic from Cornwall to Newfoundland.  Later he would help to establish the BBC and Vatican Radio in 1931 for Pius XI.   So, all you fellow hams out there… raise a glass today to Marconi.

Last night I simply had to park myself in the window and gaze.  I even let my supper get cold (more on that, below).  At the end of the little video, we zoom in past the bell tower of the Brigidines to the dome of S. Carlo ai Catinari.

Yesterday, someone asked about a photo: What was in the frames on the vestment case in the sacristy of The Parish™? Here is a shot.   These are the prayers that the priest ought to say while putting on his vestments for Mass.

Across the way, on the other side of the sacristy, there is placed the name to be pronounced in the Canon.  Underneath is a sign with the prayers for the Subdeacon as he puts on his vestments.  There is another for the deacon off to the right.


Usually, a well-organized sacristy will always have posted in a visible place near to where the priests vest the names of the Pope and of the local bishop so that a visitor priest knows his name.  However, in Rome there is no other local bishop than the Pope.  Therefore, when saying the Canon he skips part of the phrase:

…una cum fámulo tuo Papa nostro N. et Antístite nostro N. et ómnibus orthodóxis, atque cathólicæ et apostólicæ fídei cultóribus.

Another thing you might see in older sacristies is a sign indicating an petition or oration assigned by the bishop or some competent authority.  Somewhere in my archive of photos, I have a shot of one of these signs saying “ad petendam pluviam… for praying for rain” and another “pro donum lacrimarum… for the gift of tears”.  That second one was replaced in new Missals by “ad petendam compunctionen cordis … for asking for compunction of heart”.  I wrote about that votive Mass HERE.  A funny thing about the prayers for rain.  Soon after that was put up, there was a terrific downpour that partly flooded the sacristy!

Last night I was determined to make some pasta all’amatriciana.  I had some guanciale in the fridge and some very good prepared tomato sauce from the local organic store.  Better would have been tomatoes, peeled and seeded and chopped up.  However, the particular jarred sauce I had on hand was excellent.  I’ve used it before.

The website of the City of Amatrice (with their official recipe) says to use a little olive oil.   But whadda they know? Some recipes shun the olive oil, relying solely on the liquefying fat from the guanciale.   I think it depends on how much you are making and maybe also on the pan.  I don’t have well-seasoned cast iron in my rented place.  I have to make due with a patchwork of items from IKEA.   Improvise – Adapt – Overcome!

NB: For real “all’amatriciana” … no onion! No garlic!  Guanciale… tomatoes… pecorino cheese.  Permitted are a few drops of wine to deglaze.  Because this is so simple, the ingredients must be top notch.

BTW… if you put onion in it, what results can be good, but let’s call it something else.

Working up the guanciale.  Since this (cheap) pan has become a bit convex, you can see the fat flowing to the side.  There was enough fat that I didn’t need any olive oil.

Adding the tomato.   I determined to let it simmer for while to reduce it and concentrate the flavors.

If I had started from whole tomatoes, I would have taken out the guanciale and worked up the tomatoes in the fat.

The official recipe doesn’t call for parsley, but – hey – they’re not here, and I like parsley as a finisher.

Finish cooking the pasta – bucatini, this time, though spaghetti is proper – in the sauce.    Start blending in the freshly grated pecorino. A touch of the pasta water is not forbidden for texture.

And a little sprinkle of black pepper.

I have often marveled at the truly weird descriptions on menus of some pasta “all’amatriciana”.  Frankly, in the USA I try to avoid going to any Italian restaurant.  However, when I can’t avoid it, I see horror stories on the menus.  What are they thinking?  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not averse to landing in a humble red sauce place that doesn’t pretend to be something that it isn’t.  I can throw that switch in my head and, settling into the “This isn’t really Italian food and they aren’t putting on airs”, I can always find something to enjoy.   It’s when they come at you with faux claims of authenticity that I rebel.  That goes for any restaurant by the way.  I’d rather have a burger at a diner with paper napkins than be subjected to pretentious, often misspelled, over-priced mediocrity.

In chessy news, I read that the BBC will start a new (old) show they once had between 1976 and 1981. The Master Game was a successful program.  Viewers could watch grandmasters play in a real tournament while them explain their thoughts and moves.

Meanwhile, give your thoughts on this.

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

As I write, I am listening to the recent music release from the wonderful Benedictine nuns of Gower Abbey in Missouri, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles.

Here are three tiny tastes.  I like that they put the famous Ut queant laxis into the collection.  I did a podcast about it back in… HEH!… 2007!  I still have traces of youth in my voice.

US HERE – UK HERE

Let’s see if we can sell out all the discs and break the downloads.

 

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So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!

Posted on 24 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

A while back in 2023, Voyager 1, which set out in 1977 to fly by the outer planets and then head off into the void, stopped sending usable data.   I did a News Of The Church podcast about that.  HERE  (Ever listen to one of those?)  It has flown for 40 years past its mission date and is now so far away that it takes 22 hours for a message to reach it and another 22 for it to respond.  Light from the sun reaches Earth in 8 minutes.  It’s power source, radioactive isotopes, are decaying into lead.  NASA was shutting down systems trying to conserve power.  It is unfathomably cold out there.

It runs on magnetic tape.  Some of you younger readers might not have every seen any of that.

Voyager went nuts, sending back gibberish.

Once large, Voyager Mission Control is now a single office room between a dog training school and a McDonalds.  A handful of people work there, some … not young.

How to fix Voyager?  It’s 15 billion kilometers away.  It’s not like you can upload a new OS.  It’s flying away at a million miles a day.

NASA came up with something.  HERE

Voyager has something called the flight data subsystem (FDS) which sorts data before it’s sent back to Earth.  They figured that a chip that stored part of the FDS memory isn’t working.  Since they couldn’t replace the chip, they put the chips code somewhere else.  However, no single location is large enough to hold it all.  Hence, they divided the code into sections and put them in different places in the FDS.   They will have to tell it where to find all the bits and pieces.  They sent code back to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18.  On April 20 they got usable data for the first time in five months.  They can now monitor the Voyager’s status.  With more shifting, they should get other science data, too.

So, Voyager is talking again and doesn’t sound like a curial document anymore.  Now if we could get the Voyager team to work on the curia….

Posted in Just Too Cool, Linking Back, Look! Up in the sky! | Tagged
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ROME 24/4– Day 35 (-6): adventures in symmetry

Posted on 24 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I take it in trust in the accuracy of the calendar that the sun rose today at 06:13 (it was cloudy) and that it will set at 20:04 (it may be raining).

The Ave Maria Bell? Still at 2015.

Today is the Feast Sts. Maria of Cleophas, who was at Calvary, and Salome, who went to the tomb.  With Mary Magdalen these are the “three Marys”.

It is the Feast of St Mary Elisabeth Hesselblad (+1957) who founded the Brigidines whose chapel and bell tower I can see from my window.

Today also St Fidelis of Sigmaringen, priest and martyr (+1622).  Here is a relic:

Today, for the martyr, vestments were laid out for priests.

A small group of you readers were donors for these beautiful red vestments from the RED VESTMENT PROJECT (HERE).

The BLACK VESTMENT PROJECT is now underway.  I look forward to seeing them, first in photos and then in person next October.

I plan to return in October and into November.  I hope I can count on help with another fundraiser in a few months.   People here are asking me to stay longer, and I wish I could.  It hurts to leave, but I also have filial duties.   I ask ongoing prayers for my mother.  Things are stable now, which is great.

This morning, breakfast with TWBS™, whose special super power is to make all things symetrical.

He might have slightly erred this time.  Perhaps for more perfect symmetry, one of those pastries should have been rotated 180º.

This was unusual for me: pastry with apple and pistachio.  It was good, however.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

There was a funny moment in our symmetry discussion. I brought up that there is an element in the altar painting of St. Philip Neri …. BAM!… he jumped in with exactly the point I was going to make, very subtle, a slight wrinkle/fold in the altar cloth depicted in the painting.  I had to laugh aloud.  He nailed it.

From that same painting, I shot a photo of the cincture worn by the saint.  One of readers here makes fine “bespoke” cinctures for Mass vestments.   I placed an ad for her business on the side bar: Via Providence.   I wonder if she would be able to make cinctures like the one in the painting of San Filipo.

Nothing starts your day like the sight of a few crates of “mamelle”.

Black to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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ROME 24/4– Day 34 (-7): The burial place of… PLATO?!?

Posted on 23 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The Roman sunrise was slated for 6:15 and the sunset for 20:03.   On a weather website, these are listed as 06:18 and 20:00.  I supposed that means for the price location of the site, considering elevation etc.   That said, in Roman Curia terms the Civil Twilight today would be 05:45 and 20:27, Nautical 05:09 and 21:03, Astronomical 4:31 and 21:41 PM

Tomorrow will be 2 minutes 34 seconds longer.  The Moon is at fullest full, tomorrow and tonight it is 99% illuminated.

We celebrate the feast of St. George on this 114th day of the year.   I send my best to my dear nonagenarian friend Fr. GW on his name day.

Thank you, Lord, for this day.

This cappuccino was fully illuminated through it resembles more a gibbous Moon than Full.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Barriers have been set up around the fountains in the Piazza Farnese.  Later I saw a truck from the office for restoration of ancient fountains.  Hmmm…. I wonder what they are going to do?

No chess news today.

I know, I know.

You are sad.

However, The Great Roman™, who misses nothing, passed on something from the newspaper of the CEI, Avvenire.  Get this!

The Herculaneum papyri reveal Plato’s burial site

In over a thousand words, corresponding to 30% of the text, read thanks to the cross between modern technologies and philological science, of the carbonized Herculaneum papyrus containing the History of the Academy of Philodemus of Gadara (110-after 40 BC), the Plato’s burial place.

New technologies are progressively making it possible to read the library found charred in the so-called Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. If the Vesuvius Challenge project is the one best known in the news, also because it is a sort of competition with prizes for those who decipher portions of text through artificial intelligence, it is not the only one working on the precious finds. Today in Naples, at the Vittorio Emanuele III National Library, the state of progress of the research of the “GreekSchools” project was presented.
[…]
Among the news that has emerged there is also the information that Plato was buried in the garden reserved for him (a private area intended for the Platonic school) of the Academia in Athens, near the so-called Museion or sacellum sacred to the Muses. Until now it was only known that he was buried generically in the Academia.
[…]

Very cool.

In honor of that coolness, coolly solve this.

Black to move. Hey!  Can you find mate in 4?

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

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Three items of interest: a conversion, a connection, and a con job

Posted on 23 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Three things in particular caught my eye this morning.  Two of them are connected with each other and they ring of good common sense and faith.   The other clanks of delusional blather.

First, at LifeSite we read finally the news made public that Candace Owens has formally become a Catholic.  It seems she did this at the Brompton Oratory in London, a good choice.  As a convert myself, I welcome this great news.  We knew about it here in Rome for a while, but she had the right to announce it in her way and in her timeline.

Connect to this good news is an interview at the UK’s Catholic Herald (for which I wrote for quite sometime before they… changed) with entrepreneur George Farmer, aka Candace Owen’s husband.  He is a revert.  I was struck by his description of reversion, which paralleled mine in a way.

There was a conversion of the head and the conversion of the heart.

Of course that never stops, does it?

Finally, at LifeSite, there’s a stomach-turning piece about a German auxiliary bishop deeply involved in the homosexualist agenda who just “commissioned” 13 German women as “deacons in the spirit” after completing a 3-year diaconal training program with the “Women’s Diaconate Network”.

It seems also that the head of the German bishops conference “issued a special message of congratulations to the women who completed the course.”

The fact is that, while priesthood is what bishops and priests have, and diaconate is not a priestly order, diaconate is, nevertheless, one of the Orders of Holy Orders, which is considered as one sacrament in three orders as the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen gentium affirms.  The unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders is explained in detail in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  HERE

The sacrament of Holy Orders is one sacrament, not three distinct sacraments.

St. Pope John Paul in Ordinatio sacerdotalis reaffirmed (he did not teach something new) that only men can be admitted to Holy Orders and that the Church does not have the authority to change that.  Following Ordinatio sacerdotalis the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified that what John Paul had reaffirmed was, in itself, the Church’s infallible teaching.

Since Holy Orders is one sacrament and not three, then none of the orders can be conferred upon women.

It is really sad that some people still push this rock up the hill.

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ROME 24/4– Day 33 (-8): It’s over, for now.

Posted on 22 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Today, 06:16 and 20:01 and 20:15.

It is the Feast of St. Agapitus, for the opportune knowledge of Fr. RP in NJ.

Welcome registrant:

grayanderson

And, obtaining my lunch meat (mortadella)…

 

This came via email.   Funny.  I think originally from a substack called “Pithless Thoughts”:

Actual Internet Catechumen Q: When we are in a fasting season, should our pets fast with us?

Me: If you were more like your dog, you wouldn’t NEED to fast.

On the other hand, if the catechumen were more like his cat, no amount of fasting would do any good.

Sounds about right.

Candidates: Final Round – 14.  TENSION.  Nakamura (8.0) v. (leader 17 year old) Gukesh (8.5).   If Gukesh wins, he wins.  If they draw, then the other game matters. But… if Naka wins….  Caruana (8.0) v. Nepomniachtchi (8.0).  If there’s a draw, then tie-breaks tomorrow in a shorter time format.  If Nepo beats Gukesh, they rematch.  Fabi could do the same.   Complicated.

However, Naka drew against Gukesh.  That means that Naka was washed out of the contention.  Therefore, the results of Caruana and Nepo would catch up to Gukesh.   If it is a draw, Gukesh wins.  Otherwise, the winner would play Gukesh in a Rapid.

After 109 moves, Nepo and Fabi drew.

17-year old Gukesh will play Ding Liren for the title.   Not my choice, but they didn’t ask me.   I hope the title match will be good even if there are conspicuous names absent.

White to move.  Obtain an advantageous position and material through a tactic, and name it.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

 

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

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ROME 24/4– Day 32 (-9): Happy Birthday Rome!

Posted on 21 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Sunrise today was at 06:18 and it set a few minutes ago at 20:00.

The Ave Maria Bells is slated to chime at 20:15.

Today, in the reckoning of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church (+1109).

Today is the 2777th Birthday of Rome!

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui
promis et celas aliusque et idem
nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma
visere maius.

Q. Horatius Flaccus
Carmen Saeculare

Jasmine Report (not the Jesuit).  I am hopeful that it will bloom before my departure.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

My view for awhile this morning.

My view for a short time at lunch.  I was out will some guys from a very famous and excellent conservative website who are in town.  It was a good conversation.

Just for lovely.

Meanwhile, try this. See if you can get to mate.  It is WHITE’s move.  Have fun!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Get chess stuff!

Final round of the Candidates is tonight (for me, tonight).  I hope it won’t go to long and cut into my precious sleep time.   Morning comes early.  17-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju has taken the sole lead with 8.5 by beating Alireza (YAY!!!). There are three tied for 2nd: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana (with a win over Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu). The top four players can still win. There are various permutations of tie breaks if there is no outright winner after today’s round. All the marbles are on sand.

 

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Your Sunday Sermon Notes: 3rd Sunday after Easter (N.O. 4th of Easter) 2024

Posted on 21 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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 the 3rd Sunday Sunday after Easter?  Novus Ordo – 4th Sunday of Easter.

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

A taste of my thoughts from the other place: HERE

[…]

Inherent in Christ’s teaching in His Farewell Discourse is that, if He must go to where He belongs, to the Father, they too (therefore, we too) do not fully belong here anymore.  The Son has His place with the Father.  They, too, have their “father place”, their patria as the early Latin Church Father’s described our heavenly destination, our “fatherland”.  This is also a theme in this Sunday’s Epistle taken from 1 Peter 2:11-19. The writer calls his listeners – letters were read aloud to ancient communities – “pároikoi kaì parepídemoi… ádvenae et peregríni… strangers and pilgrims (DRV) … aliens and exiles (RSV) ”.  The Catholic novelist and mystic Michael D. O’Brien rendered this phrase for the title of his book Strangers and Sojourners, part of a series (Children of the Last Days) which branches out from Father Elijah.

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ROME 24/4– Day 31 (-10): The Parish™…. what’s next?

Posted on 20 April 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This beautiful sunny yet cool Roman day started by the sun’s rising at 06:19 and it will end at 19:59.

The Ave Maria (which you know all about now) is at 20:15.

This is the 111st day of the year.  On this day in 1303 Boniface VIII founded the Sapienza University, which still exists today.

In the Novus Ordo calendar it is the feast of Pope St. Anicetus (+c. 166).   In the Vetus, he was commemorated on the 17th.  According to St. Irenaeus, St. Polycarp of Smyrna (a disciple of St John the Evangelist), came to Rome to discuss the date of Easter with Anicetus. They didn’t conclude anything at that time.  This eventually became a big controversy.   It was a massively complicated matter, still disputed today.   Anicetus opposed Gnostics and priests with long hair.  Really.  Tradition says that Anicetus was martyred during the reign of the Emperor Lucius Verus, who is the boy in the movie Gladiator.  I understand that Gladiator II is in the works.  There were originally some really stupid ideas for the film.  Now, however, it is a little better grounded.  It is slated for November.

Speaking of Popes, yesterday we celebrated another saintly pontiff, Leo IX (+19 April 1054).  He militated against simony and decreed clerical celibacy to the rank of subdeacon.   As Pope he travelled all over the place, attending “walking togethers” which dealt with concrete issues, rather than dreamy bloviating.   During his time as Pope, relations broke down with Constantinople.  He also had a hard time with the Normans in the south and led an army against them.  He lost and was held captive until he recognized the Normans in Calabria and Apulia.

Why do I bring him up?  Because yesterday was his feast day and because TAN recently published a work by him,

The Battle of the Virtues and Vices: Defending the Interior Castle of the Soul. 

US HERE – UK HERE

Just as Card. Richelieu’s book, which I used for this year’s LENTCAzTs, was quite practical, so is this.  Here’s the table of contents.  See if there isn’t a point in there for you.  Or … maybe more than one?  You can right click this for a bigger image in a new tab.

I said Holy Mass today for my monthly donors.  Also, thank you to RE for shifting from “Continue” to Zelle.

Tomorrow, if nothing urgent comes up, I will say Mass for my dear “200!”s and “100!”s.  These are people who signed up for a monthly donation when I was in a tough place.  My otherwise cold, black heart always warms a little when a notice from one of these arrives.

Breakfast at the little Sicilian place today.  The roll on the left is a maritozzo.   Whose was the OJ, from those wonderful red oranges?

The façade of The Parish™ has finally been restored and illuminated.   The next stage is a renewal of the interior of the church!   Here are two cleaning tests in the San Carlo chapel, first (closest to the main doors) on the Gospel side.

As I understand it, three chapels will be done at once, then the scaffolding will be moved to another area.  The sacristy will be included in the project.  Very exciting, of course, though it will make the daily, especially morning, operations a little complicated.

But complications can often be softened by the presence of beautiful flowers.  Here are more peonies.

A follow up to the “Ivy Report” (really Virginia Creeper, I was informed by a priestly writer in a comment).   It does like to climb!

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

White to move.  Mate in 3.  You had better do something and fast.  Look at black’s deadly rooks.


1. Nxh7+ Kf7 2. Rd7+ Ke8 3. Nf6# (2… Ke6 3. Nf8# or 2… Kg8 3. Nf6#)
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Hostilities resume today in Toronto at the Candidates Tournament.  As I write, Hikaru Nakamura and Gukesh are tied with Ian Nepomniachtchi in the lead. Fabiano Caruana is a half-point from the leaders.  Prag v. Fabi and Nepo v. Naka should both be dynamic.  I look forward to Gukesh beating Firouzja.

 

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