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Exposition at Septuagesima Sunday Vespers. The color is a Roman purple.
Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.
The final round of the Tata Steel Masters ended – after two weeks – a four-way blitz playoff. Wei Yi, Gukesh, Anish and Nodirbek played knockout tiebreakers. 24-year-old Wei Yi prevailed. Some think that Wei is Magnus’ biggest future threat. His performance at Tata put him into the top ten in live ratings. Wei, something of a poet, and Ding Liren are close friends.
White to mate in 2.
1. Bf6+ a. Kxf6 b. Kf8 c. Kd6 2a. Qd5# 2b. Qg7#2c. Qc5# NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
I have a new coffee affiliate. I still have Mystic Monk, but after the ferocious hit job Voris did on them (and almost everyone else that wasn’t CM), people seem to have cooled on their coffee. I’ll still link to them because they deserve a chance to keep building. I like monks who build stuff. However here is another option that I’ll try for a while. Also, if you are going to move and need a realtor, try Real Estate for Life. And forget about all the others who talk about Real Estate for Life and remember Fr. Z! HA!
In the traditional Roman calendar, today is the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor. He was a great warrior for the Church in the face of the Protestant Revolt.
According to the Louis de la Rivière in his Vie de saint François de Sales (1624 – p. 584), the doctor and bishop of Geneva, St. Francis de Sales (+1622) told friend and prodigy Jean Pierre Camus (+1652) Bishop of Belley:
“Soyez toujours le plus doux que vous pourrez, et souvenez-vous que l’on prends plus de mouches avec une cuillerée de miel qu’avec cent barils de vinaigre.
Always be as gentle as you can and remember that one catches more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hundred barrels of vinegar.”
Honey and vinegar. They seem to go together.
Just for fun, here is a sample about hearts and honey and vinegar from Augustine as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Spe Salvi:
“St Augustine…describes very beautifully the intimate relationship between prayer and hope. He defines prayer as an exercise of desire. Man was created for greatness – for God Himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched…He then uses a very beautiful image to describe this process of enlargement and preparation of the human heart. “Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey [a symbol of God’s tenderness and goodness]; but if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey?” The vessel, that is your heart, must first be enlarged and then cleansed, freed from the vinegar and its taste. This requires hard work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become suited to that for which we are destined. Even if Augustine speaks directly only of our capacity for God, it is nevertheless clear that through this effort by which we are freed from vinegar and the taste of vinegar, not only are we made free for God, but we also become open to others…When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. (Spe Salvi 33)”.
Honey and vinegar!
And speaking of enlarging hearts, St. Philip Neri pray for us.
On this coming Sunday, Holy Church begins to sing in a new key. We have come around, in the traditional calendar, to Pre-Lent.
The “Gesima Sundays” have Roman Stations. Today we are at St. Lawrence “outside the walls”. Being in the presence of the great martyr helps to set the tone.
No Catholic who follows the traditional calendar is ever surprised by the coming of Lent.
A serious tone begins to ring in our ears in the next three Sundays, to alert us to the season of discipline to come.
The antiphons for the first part of Mass carry a theme of affliction, war, oppression. We hear from 1 Corinthians on how Christians must strive on to the end of the race.
The Tract (which substitutes the Gradual and Alleluia) is Ps 130 (older 129) the De profundis. This has been set to music by many composers. But the chanted version is special.
Let’s see the…
COLLECT:
Preces populi tui, quaesumus, Domine, clementer exaudi: ut, qui iuste pro peccatis nostris affligimur, pro tui nominis gloria misericorditer liberemur.
This prayer, as well as the other two we will see, is in versions of ancient sacramentaries, such as the Gregorian.
Our wonderful Lewis & Short Dictionary says ex-audio means “listen to” in the sense of “harken, perceive clearly.” There is a greater urgency to exaudi (an imperative, or command form) than in the simple audi. In the litanies we sing, we move from “Christe audi nos to Christe exaudi nos… Christ hear us, Christ graciously/intently hear us.” Clementer is an adverb from clemens, meaning among other things “Mild in respect to the faults and failures of others, i.e. forbearing, indulgent, compassionate, merciful.”
We ask God, omnipotent Creator, to listen to us little finite sinful creatures in a manner that is not only attentive but also patient and indulgent.
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We beseech You, O Lord, graciously to hark to the prayers of Your people: so that we who are justly afflicted for our sins, may mercifully be freed for the glory of Your Name.
The first thing you who attend mainly the Novus Ordo will note, is the profoundly different tone of this prayer.
It is just as succinct as most ancient Roman prayers. It has the classic structure.
The focus on our responsibility and guilt for our sins is alien to the style of the Ordinary Form.
Such direct references to our sinful state were systematically excised from the ancient prayers which survived, in some form, in the post-Conciliar Missale Romanum.
We need them back.
SECRET:
Muneribus nostris, quaesumus, Domine, precibusque susceptis: et caelestibus nos munda mysteriis, et clementer exaudi.
This ancient prayer was also in the Mass “Puer natus” for 1 January for the Octave of Christmas. The first part of the prayer is an ablative absolute. In the second part there is a standard et…et construction. The prayer is terse, elegant.
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Our gifts and prayers having been received, we beseech You, O Lord: both cleanse us by these heavenly mysteries, and mercifully hark to us.
In the first prayer we acknowledge our sinfulness and beg God’s mercy. In this prayer we show humble confidence that God is attending to our actions and we focus on the means by which we will be cleansed from the filth of our sins, namely, the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, about to be renewed upon the altar.
As the Mass develops there is a shift in tone after the Gospel parable about the man hiring day-laborers. An attitude of praise is introduced into the cries to God for help.
POSTCOMMUNIO (1962MR):
Fideles tui, Deus, per tua dona firmentur: ut éadem et percipiendo requirant, et quaerendo sine fine percipiant.
Glorious.
In an ancient variation we find per[pe]tua, turning “by means of your…” into “perpetual”. That éadem (neuter plural to go with dona, “gifts”) is the object of both of the subjunctive verbs which live in another et…et construction. Requiro means “to seek or search for; to seek to know, … with the accessory idea of need, to ask for something needed; to need, want, lack, miss, be in want of, require (synonym: desidero)”. Think of how it is used in Ps. 26(27),4: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after (unum petivi a Domino hoc requiram); that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Quaero is another verb for “to seek”, as well as “to think over, meditate, aim at, plan a thing.” The first meaning of the verb percipio is “to take wholly, to seize entirely” and then by extension “to perceive, feel and “to learn, know, conceive, comprehend, understand.”
Notice that these verbs all have a dimension of the search of the soul for something that must be grasped in the sense of being comprehended.
Just to show you that we can steer this in another direction, let’s take those “seeking/graping/perceiving” verbs and emphasize the possible dimension of the eternal fascinating that the Beatific Vision will eventually produce.
A LITERAL ALTERNATIVE:
May Your faithful, O God, be strengthened by Your gifts: so that in grasping them they will need to seek after them and in the seeking they will know them without end.
In this life, the closest thing we have to the eternal contemplation of God is the moment of making a good Holy Communion.
At this moment of Mass, which so much concerned struggling in time of oppression, we strive to grasp our lot here in terms of our fallen nature, God’s plan, and our eternal reward.
I don’t think this prayer, like Septuagesima Sunday, made it into the Novus Ordo, to our great impoverishment.
Start thinking about Lent NOW, not on the morning of Ash Wednesday.
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White to play. Mate in 2.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
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In chessy news, crazy stuff on Saturday at Tata Steel’s penultimate day. There is now a five-way tie for first: Vidit, Anish, Gukesh, Nodirbek, Wei Yi all have 7.5/12. Yesterday Vidit beat the leader Nodirbek Abdusattorov and became the new Indian top rated player in live ratings.
Yesterday I had a call from a priest friend who is also into chess. We both expressed our desire to set a rating goal. That means ramping it up, playing in tournaments, etc.
I renew my shout over the valleys and mountains.
I stuff another message into a bottle and fling it to the sea.
I ask the holy guardian angels to nudge the right people.
I beg St. Teresa, patroness of chess players, to intercede for a favor.
We need a tradition-leaning Catholic Grand Master who can a) coach and b) perhaps be willing to have a podcast for a rating march.
There has to be one.
Speaking of a daily shot:
On this day 230 years ago, Jan. 28, 1794. Henri de La Rochejaquelein, the Commander-in-Chief of the Catholic and Royal Army was killed during the War in the Vendée when a Republican soldier pretended to surrender and then shot him.
Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
It is the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo and Septuagesima Sunday in the Vetus Ordo. We are back in purple for Sunday while the new-fangled gets green. We are now in pre-Lent. Those who attend the Vetus Ordo are never surprised by Lent.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
I have a few thoughts about the orations in the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday: HERE
A taste:
You know the response of the Lord to those who complained about getting the same as those hired last: “Is your eye evil because I am good?”. Yup. That’s how the Douay-Reims version has it. RSV says: “Do you begrudge my generosity?” That eye imagery is wonderful. We tend to see things the way we want to see them.
Let’s have a poll. Anyone can vote. To comment you have to be registered and approved.
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From The World’s Best Sacristan™
You will want to watch Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Card. Müller. Among other hot button issues they talk about the suppression of the Vetus Ordo.
I’m sure something is up at Tata Steel. I just don’t know what it is. @ 14:30 HERE
In Wijk aan Zee, Tata Steel continues win Round 12. After Round 11 Nodirbek is the sole leader followed by Gukesh. The Boy, Alireza, is somewhere down in the pack.
He has been wearing a jacket that looks like a high school varsity (maybe junior varsity) letter jacket that’s been treated with estrogen.
Maybe it’s a cry for help?
I played OTB like a complete blockhead today. Didn’t win a single game. Blunders. Couldn’t concentrate. However, more of the guys are asking me questions about “what’s up with the Catholic Church?”. I give it to them straight. Yes, “straight”.
Meanwhile, I finally had enough of my office chair slowly sinking.
“Enough of this sinking!”, quoth I. “Thou shalt sink NO MORE!”
I had something on the wish list that was going to deal with this, but I had already sank on that Rubicon… or something like that.
After taking off the wheel apparatus (that’s the bottom part for the people in Columbia Heights), I measured the gas column and estimated the height of the cylinder I would have to mount over it to block it from depressing and lowering the seat. The interior diameter of the PVC pipe was just a little too small. Hence, I sawed through it end to end. Thank you to the readers who sent the bench and and saw.
Then I used my cooking torch (sent by a reader, thanks!) to soften up one side. I jammed the split tube onto another piece of pipe to widen the gap.
There are three interlocking decorative cups which telescope on each other to hide the gas cylinder from view. I knew the PVC was going to fit through the opening on the top, smallest, one so I snipped it.
This pic isn’t oriented correctly, but you get the drift. At this stage I estimated how much shorter my PVC block had to be, cut it off, and reconnect the wheel base.
I sink no more. At least physically. My spirit sinks sometimes, but we are Christians. The Christian default position is joy.
Now the default position of this chair is fixed and it ain’t goin’ anywhere.
Meanwhile,…
White to play and mate in 2.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
I’m sure something is up at Tata Steel. I just don’t know what it is.
I have a new coffee affiliate. I still have Mystic Monk, but after the ferocious hit job Voris did on them (and almost everyone else that wasn’t CM), people seem to have cooled on their coffee. I’ll still link to them because they deserve a chance to keep building. I like monks who build stuff.
However here is another option that I’ll try for a while.
I see that a few people bought some the other day. I look forward to your reviews. I have not tried it. (If they were smart they’d send me some.)
It would please me enormously were they to add a dark roasted Sumatra and name it after Clement XIV. I hope that their Clement VIII is particularly dark and smokey, since he’s the one who dealt with Giordano Bruno.
Another option could be an Alexander VI line, “Our most decadent coffee”, with a strong nose of smoke in memory of Savonarola.
I could think of all sorts of coffees for them. Paul VI, “The Pius V coffee, under-roasted for extra blandness, decaf”. John XXIII: “It’s a secret and we’re not telling”.
Speaking of Savonarola, the Dominican Soap Sisters used to make a hilarious smoke-smelling soap for men called… Savonarola. Get it? Must I spell it out? Terrific sense of humor. Alas, I think they discontinued it. I’ll bet they could be induced to make a special “Fr Z run” of Savonarola.
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Hey! Donor sa***@***.ws! My note to you got kicked back. New email?
WELCOME REGISTRANTS Sophia1803 tahardy
NB: A note to readers. I have RULES about the combox, which could perhaps be easily forgotten or over looked. One of them is quite simple: 2-j) “NB IMPORTANT: commenting in any way about my choices about moderation of the combox, or deleting or keeping comments or posts; if I catch a hint of that, GONE.”
On the road again today, so this will be brief.
Black to play. Win material and a good position.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
I’m sure something is up at Tata Steel. I just don’t know what it is.
I’ll be back at OTB tomorrow, God willing.
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on ROME SHOT 922
Do you have to call the priest RIGHT NOW so you can have a plan in place for your Sunday TLM… or Novus Ordo for that matter. WHY NOT? It’s called “Solidarity with the oppressed”. It’s called “Unity with the peripheries”.
On Septuagesima Sunday we have a custom of burying the Alleluia right after the Asperges (of a Solemn Mass). Otherwise, just before Mass.
This Sunday is already Septuagesima.
In pre-Lent we get ourselves in order for a fruitful and serious Lenten fast, more works of mercy, greater introspection, and a stem to stern holy stoning.
As you know, we don’t sing “Alleluia” from Septuagesima onward. Of yore there were ceremonies to mark the exemption of the “A-Word” including an entombment a decorated, symbolic word.
Here is one pic from a while back of a parish digging the dirt and sending the A-Word six feet under.
In honor of the Apostle to the Gentiles let us make a rapid comparison of the Collects for today’s feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
We’ll look first at the 1962 Missale Romanum and then the 2002 edition.
The Collect is nearly the same in both.
COLLECT (1962MR):
Deus, qui universum mundum beati Pauli Apostoli praedicatione docuisti: da nobis, quaesumus; ut, qui eius hodie Conversionem colimus, per eius exempla gradiamur.
This prayer is ancient. It is found already in the 8th century Liber sacramentorum Engolismensis (Angoulême) and the 9th century Augustodunensis (Autun) as well as the Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ordine excarpsus, but with the variation in the Engolismensis “multitidinem gentium” in place of “universum mundum”.
Our precious Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary (UK HERE) informs us that the deponent verb gradior is “to take steps, to step, walk, go;” and in ecclesiastical Latin “of the conduct of life, to walk, live, conduct one’s self”. The French source for liturgical Latin I call Blaise/Dumas (UK HERE) indicates that gradior is “to behave oneself”.
An exemplum is, “a sample for imitation, instruction, proof, a pattern, model, original, example….”
For the Fathers, so steeped in Greek and Roman rhetoric and philosophy, exemplum could mean many things.
First, an exemplum brings auctoritas to your argument, “authority”, inter alia the moral, persuasive force of an argument. When we hear this prayer with ancient, Patristic ears, exemplum is not merely an “example” to imitate. It brings deeper moral force. Let’s spin that out.
The historic event of Paul’s conversion is a reason for hope. It is an incitement to lead the kind of life which will lead ultimately to being raised up after the Risen Christ, the perfect exemplum. The core of this exemplum is St. Paul’s response to the call of the Lord to turn his life around, his conversio or in Greek metánoia.
I especially like the word gradior in this prayer. It invokes the image of St. Paul trudging the byways (without a horse off of which to fall). And remember the subtle meaning of gradior includes behavior.
LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who instructed the whole world by the preaching of the Blessed Apostle Paul: grant us, we beseech You, that, we who are today honoring his Conversion, may walk according to his examples.
Many (many many) of the prayers of the pre-Conciliar form of the Missale Romanum, were cut up and changed for the Novus Ordo, if they made the cut at all. Today’s prayer is a case in point.
COLLECT (2002MR):
Deus, qui universum mundum
beati Pauli Apostoli praedicatione docuisti,
da nobis, quaesumus,
ut, cuius conversionem hodie celebramus,
per eius ad te exempla gradientes,
tuae simus mundo testes veritatis.
LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who instructed the whole world
by the preaching of the Blessed Apostle Paul:
grant us, we beseech You,
that we, walking in life toward You according to the examples of him
whose conversion we are celebrating today,
may be witnesses of Your truth in the world.
Some may argue that the newer Latin version makes the point of “witness” more clearly.
I am not convinced the ancient prayer needed these “improvements”. Are you? Were these improvements? Did the prayer really changing? Did the good of the Catholic faithful really call for that?
Today is also the anniversary of the moment that John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council when at Vespers at the Basilica of St. Paul outside-the-walls. So, in reference to that Council’s first major document…
Sacrosanctum Concilium 23 gives a sound principle for liturgical changes which was nearly completely ignored.
23. That sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress careful investigation is always to be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised. This investigation should be theological, historical, and pastoral. Also the general laws governing the structure and meaning of the liturgy must be studied in conjunction with the experience derived from recent liturgical reforms and from the indults conceded to various places. Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.
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Meanwhile, white to play and mate in 3.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
I’m putting together some things for News of the Church.
In chessy news Gukesh D. and Nodirbek Abdusattorov both won on Wednesday. They share the lead with 6½/10 points. In third (half-point distance) are Prag and Anish. Nepo shares forth thanks to a victory over his nemesis Ding Liren. Nodirbek needed 6 hours to beat Max Warmerdam. Today is a rest day. Three rounds to go.
I … am on the road. My tools are limited due to my not paying attention to my usual “Go List”. Grrr. I’ve met a group of friends in a new city, a very foodie place and foodie friends. In other news, I got my last estimate for my roof work and I’ve pinned down my dates for Rome for March and April. More to come about that.
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
In the traditional Roman calendar, today is the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor. He was a great warrior for the Church in the face of the Protestant Revolt.
On this coming Sunday, Holy Church begins to sing in a new key. We have come around, in the traditional calendar, to Pre-Lent.
Well? Are’ya gonna do it?
In honor of the Apostle to the Gentiles let us make a rapid comparison of the Collects for today’s feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
