When priests offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass unworthily, when they give the Eucharistic Jesus to sinners who have no intention of asking Him to forgive their sin’s or of living according to the gospel, they betray Jesus once again. When Mass, for the priest, has become a theater, a social gathering, an entertainment in which he behaves like the variety-show host who has to resort to his personal creativity in order to make the atmosphere interesting and attractive; when he indulges in cultural adaptations, personal explanations, and commentaries instead of making room for the ineffable groanings of the Holy Spirit present in every Eucharistic celebration, what becomes of the faith of the faithful? At the heart of the Eucharist, the priest must experience the unique power of silent adoration and have at heart a prayer that, in all its aspects, is conformed to the prayer that Jesus addresses to His Father. We have enough eminent specialists and doctors in the ecclesiastical sciences. What the Church tragically needs today is men of God, men of faith, and priests who adore in spirit and in truth.
A book with which to follow Jesus by means of the seven sacraments
The modest purpose of this volume is to accompany all those who have set their hearts on responding to God’s love with a full, happy, fruitful life that will culminate in the eternal happiness of contemplating Him. The book was born of the desire to help them make an interior journey of spiritual ascent, so as to open up for them the possibility of a life-changing encounter.
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Meanwhile,… a retro look, as if we were holding a folded newspaper before heading to Mass as mom makes sure that the girls have their chapel veils and gloves.
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This just came in the post. A book by Robert Card. Sarah is always going to be worthwhile. In this day of confusion from high atop the thing, we should stick to reliable sources and not let the irritations distract us overly.
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.
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.
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 very alien to the style of the Novus Ordo. For the most part, such direct references to our sinful state were systematically excised from the ancient prayers which survived in some form on the post-Conciliar Missale Romanum.
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 believe 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.
The monks of Norcia make great beer. You can have it. They have a third option now.
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Today is the Feast of St. Blaise, about whom we know very little. We have only this very brief entry in the Martyrologium Romanum:
Sancti Blasii, episcopi et martyris, qui pro christiano nomine Sabaste in Armenia passus est sub Licino imperatore. … [Feast of] St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, who suffered for the name of Christ in Sabaste in Armenia under the Emperor Licinus.
That “pro Christiano nomine” probably needs to be rendered as “for the name of Christ” along the lines of rendering dies dominica or oratio dominica as, respectively, “the Lord’s Day = Sunday” or “the Lord’s Prayer”. It is entirely possible, of course, just to keep it literal and say, “for the Christian name”, which would be pretty much the same thing in the balance.
Either way, he was killed because, as a Christian, Blaise professed belief in Christ.
COLLECT: Exaudi, Domine, populum tuum,
cvm beati Blasii martyris patrocinio supplicantem,
ut et temporalis vitae nos tribuas pace gaudere, et aeternae reperire subsidium.
LITERAL TRANSLATION: O Lord, graciously hear Your people
begging by means of the patronage of blessed martyr Blaise,
that you grant us to delight in the peace of temporal life
and obtain the protection of eternal life. I take away from this prayer the serious message that life is dangerous.
The word subsidium means “support, assistance, aid, help, protection” and often in liturgical Latin “help”. Either way, subsidium sets up a stark contrast between the life we have now and the life to come. Even the phrase about enjoying the peace of this life, indicates subtly how precarious everything is in this earthly existence which Catholics are accustomed to call a “vale of tears”.
This is firmed up by another wonderful prayer associated with St. Blaise.
You all know about the blessing of throats on the feast of St. Blaise. In the older form of the Rituale Romanum there is a marvelous blessing for the candles used to confer the blessing of throats. Here it is (NB: The Rituale Romanum says that it has to be prayed in Latin):
BLESSING OF CANDLES ON THE FEAST OF ST. BLAISE:
O God most powerful and most kind, Who didst create all the different things in the world by the Word alone, and Whose will it was that this Word by Which all things were made should become incarnate for the remaking of mankind; Thou Who art great and limitless, worthy of reverence and praise, the worker of wonders; for Whose sake the glorious Martyr and Bishop, St. Blaise, joyfully gained the palm of martyrdom, never shrinking from any kind of torture in confessing his faith in Thee; Thou Who didst give to him, amongst other gifts, the prerogative of curing by Thy power every ailment of men’s throats; humbly we beg Thee in Thy majesty not to look upon our guilt, but, pleased by his merits and prayers, in Thine awe-inspiring kindness, to bless+this wax created by Thee and to sanc+tify it, pouring into it Thy grace; so that all who in good faith shall have their throats touched by this wax may be freed from every ailment of their throats through the merit of his suffering, and, in good health and spirits, may give thanks to Thee in Thy holy Church and praise Thy glorious name, which is blessed for ever and ever. Through our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who with Thee lives and reigns, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Ah! What a pleasure that prayer is! Of course, the candles are to be sprinkled with holy water after the blessing. Maybe you should print this out and take it to your parish priest “with Fr. Z’s compliments”. It might be that he doesn’t have this text and perhaps would like to (or you would like to) have your throat blessed in Latin!
The business with throats today comes from the story about how St. Blaise, the day after Candlemas, saved the life of a boy who was choking on a fishbone by blessing him while holding blessed candles.
Here is the Blessing for throats:
Per intercessionem Sancti Blasii, episcopi et martyris, liberet te Deus a malo gutturis, et a quolibet alio malo. In nomine Patris, et Filii +, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr,
may God free you from illness of the throat and from any other sort of ill. In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I will never forget this formula.
Long ago in Rome, as a deacon, I lived at the Church of San Carlo ai Catinari, which is also dedicated to St. Blaise, San Biagio, as co-patron. The Barnabites there have in their possession relics of St. Blaise. There is one in a large reliquary and one in a crystal placed on a large ring held in the fist of one hand (click the photo to see a larger image and inside the crystal). This is what they used to bless throats on this feast.
I was asked by the clergy there to help with blessing the throats of the people who thronged to the church that day. As soon as I donned my surplice every other cleric actually attached to the place vanished. I was left there for several hours. I can’t say how many times I said that formula that day.
The configuration of the candles used for the blessing can vary. Here are a few examples.
This is probably the most common.
And there is the twisty version:
And then we have a high tech approach: [The nice people at F.C. Ziegler asked me to post a link to it. HERE]
Finally, there is this contraption, which looks like it is from Star Trek:
Finally, there is also today a special blessing for fruit, bread, wine and water. I wrote about that HERE
We haven’t had a ZedNet meetup for a couple of weeks because of technical problems. The different components of the Net were not talking to each other.
Today I spent a little time giving “signal reports” to WB0YLE who is trying to get it back together.
Right now Echolink and DMR seem to be working and talking to each other (I think). AllStar, not yet. Not sure about WiresX.
I’ll have my two handsets on for DMR and AllStar. If I am at home to hear them, I’ll answer unless I am prevented.
Hopefully we can get it back together. Keep in mind that when I am in Rome, someone will have to step up to be Net Control.
As of ASH WEDNESDAY – 22 February 2023 – the Novus Ordo form of absolution in English is to change slightly in these USA.
There has been an official tweak of the English translation of the Latin.
In 2021 the US Bishops voted for the new translation. Rome approved it in April 2022. It goes into effect in 2023.
I can foresee an ACTION ITEM by lay people.
Make sure that priests who are doing dodgy things with the form of absolution are informed about the correct form precisely because this change is going into effect.
It is an OPPORTUNITY to help some priests stop screwing about with the form of absolution. If the priests resist, get authorities involved if they keep up their shenanigans.
New translation of the prayer of absolution incoming next year.
God, the Father of mercies,
through the death and resurrection of his Son
has reconciled the world to himself
and poured out[Latin: effudit] the Holy Spirit [among us] for the forgiveness of sins;
through the ministry of the Church may God grant[Latin: tribuat] you pardon and peace,
and I absolve you from your sins
in the name of the Father, [sign of the cross] and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
And here’s what the prayer was before:
God, the Father of mercies,
through the death and resurrection of his Son
has reconciled the world to himself
and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins;
through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace,
and I absolve you from your sins
in the name of the Father, [sign of the cross] and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Use Latin and there is ZERO question of validity.
The Latin for the post-Conciliar form:
Deus, Pater misericordiarum, qui per mortem et resurrectionem Filii Sui mundum Sibi reconciliavit et Spiritum Sanctum effudit in remissionem peccatorum, per ministerium Ecclesiae indulgentiam tibi tribuat et pacem. Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Priests of the Latin Church should know this Latin form of absolution by heart… yes, in Latin.
Here is the new form without my red inserts. Note the cancellation:
New translation of the prayer of absolution incoming next year. Changes underscored.
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, [sign of the cross] and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, [sign of the cross] and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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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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A Daily Prayer for Priests
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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.
From the introduction of Cardinal Sarah’s new book.
On this coming Sunday, Holy Church begins to sing in a new key. We have come around, in the traditional calendar, to Pre-Lent.
I take away from this prayer the serious message that life is dangerous.
As of ASH WEDNESDAY – 22 February 2023 – the Novus Ordo form of absolution in English is to change slightly in these USA.
