Some Triduum images!
Holy Thursday, reposing the Blessed Sacrament.
UPDATE
Stripping the altar.
Good Friday.
I brought my relic of the Holy Cross.
And now the Vigil.
From the live stream, which goes BW in low light.
Exultet.
Lessons.
Litany.
Lots and lots of Baptismal water and I did not spare the oils.
From Easter morning… nice light, early in the morning.
Happy Easter!
Were there good points made in the course of the Vigil Mass and the Mass during the day for Easter? Let us know.
For the Easter Vigil I touched on God’s gift of light and life which we approach in awe in our liturgical rites and which approach us and transform those who actively receive them in full and conscious participation. Henceforth, we must live the mysteries in what we say and do and help others to discover them as well.
For Easter Sunday I spoke about the risen body we will enjoy in the resurrection with its characteristics of brightness, impassibility (looking forward to that one), agility, and subtlety.
Bumped up to the top for today… photos below
A “Blue Moon” is a second full moon during a calendar month. They are infrequent.
This year – 2018 – there are two occurrences.
The first was on 31 January, and it was a Super Moon, that is, the Moon was at perigee, its closest to your planet. It was also a Blood Moon, that is, in total eclipse, within your planet’s shadow. So, it was a Super Blue Blood Moon. The next Blue Blood Moon will be 31 Dec 2028. The next Super Blue Blood Moon will be 31 Jan 2037. Sometimes, however, a Blue Moon is defined as the 4th Full Moon in a season, which usually have only 3, in a cycle of roughly 2.5 years.
On 31 March 2018 – the Vigil of Easter, there will be a monthly defined Blue Moon.
The last seasonal Blue Moon was 21 May 2016 and the next will be 18 May 2019.
Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first “Paschal” Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox, which was 21 March.
The last time there was a Paschal Blue Moon was Wednesday, 31 March 1999.
The last time there was a Paschal Blue Moon on a Saturday, 31 March, as it will be this year was 1714 for the Eastern Hemisphere. In the Western Hemisphere it was still 30 March. However, the last time that we had a Paschal Blue Moon on a Saturday 31 March in both hemispheres, with the next day being Easter Sunday, was 1646.
The earliest that Easter can occur is 22 March, which will next happen in 2285. The latest Easter can occur is 25 April, which will next happen in 2038.
The last time Easter Sunday occurred on 1 April was 1956.
The phases of the Moon follow the 19 year Metonic Cycle. There is also an 8 year cycle or Octoaeteris which tracks a two day shift of the Moon’s phases. In the Gregorian calendar, a particular phase of the moon on a given date recurs every 372 years.
A Black Moon is the second New Moon in a calendar month. The last Black Moon was in 2016. The next Black Moon will be in 2019. New Moon’s occur every 29.5 days. However, sometimes a Black Moon is defined as the 3rd New Moon in a season of 4 New Moons, or a calendar month without a New Moon. I know, I know.
The March Full Moon is generally nicknamed the Worm Moon, since earthworms seem to be on the move again in northern climes. However, since 31 March is the second full Moon of March, we can maybe nickname it “Dave”.
UPDATE:
More on the Jesuit-engineered debacle at Holy Cross College. I posted about their prof who is trying to “queer” Jesus and about their cowardly, ankle-grabbing cringe to the world when they dropped their team’s name and mascot. HERE
I direct the readership’s attention to the first hour from Good Friday of one of the best radio talk show hosts in these USA, Vicki McKenna out of Milwaukee and the mad city of Madison. iHeart HERE and subscribed on iTunes HERE
In her first hour, she has a guest, a professor of classics at UW, with whom she discusses all sorts of issues afflicting the Catholic Church in these USA, touching on Holy Cross and about the issue of Hell or no-Hell and the way many in the Church are bending to the world.
I think those links, above, will work for you. Start listening at about 18:15 (good bumper music too). Try this link HERE (if it doesn’t work, its the longer of the segments on 30 March).
A couple years ago what was clearly a severe abuse was given official recognition so that women’s feet could be washed during the entirely optional “Mandatum” in the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Thursday.
NB: Before 2016, those who did this, violated the law.
What happened where you went to Holy Thursday’s Mass, assuming, of course, that you went?
Otherwise, if you did not go, perhaps you know what happened by word of mouth or by reading the bulletin, etc.
Chose your best answer – depending on the Form of Mass you attended – and add a comment in the combox, below.
[I suspect that the above has been messed with a bit, or that people aren’t paying attention to that EXTRAORDINARY which I tried to make unmissable.]
Were there any good points made during the sermon you heard if you attended the Holy Thursday Mass?
Let us know.
For my part, I spoke briefly, as I am under the weather, about the significance of the Lord going to the Garden of the Oil Press where His crushing under our sins began such that He sweated Blood. That’s just a taste.
Today is Holy Thursday, which I had hoped might be a little quiet, giving me some time in silence. It was not to be.
His Holiness Pope Francis inexplicably met once again with Eugenio Scalfari, the 90+ year old atheist Communist of the Italian daily La Repubblica. Unless Scalfari simply made it up (which I don’t rule out), Pope Francis said something confusing about the existence of Hell and that unrepentant souls go into nothingness, a kind of annihilation.
Citing Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?”, quoth I.
The papal spokesman put out a statement that doesn’t necessarily deny what Scarfari said the Pope said. However, the statement did say:
“Nessun virgolettato del succitato articolo deve essere considerato quindi come una fedele trascrizione delle parole del Santo Padre. … Not a single quoted word of the above-mentioned article should, therefore, be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.” HERE
We have that to go on. It ain’t much, but it’s not nothing.
Because I am getting lots of email, and because my phone sounds like a pinball machine with texts coming in from every corner of the globe and from people of all Christian vocations (including some media people), I’ll say this:
First, try to keep in perspective some of the confusing things the Holy Father says and go immediately to your catechisms and review. We have multiple catechisms at our disposal. Chief among them are these.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
US HERE – UK HERE (There are many editions. Look around.)
The Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests.
US HERE – UK HERE (There are many editions. Look around.)
Also, the Baltimore Catechism, which has different volumes for different ages (US HERE – UK HERE). It’s so useful, in its Q&A format. And the Catechism of Pius X is also great. (US HERE – UK HERE). There are many good resources available.
Second, the Pope and the Church do not and cannot change the Church’s doctrine through unrecorded chats with Communist newspapermen.
Third, I think there is no person on Earth more beset by the Enemy of the Soul and the Enemy’s many earthly agents than the Vicar of Christ. Think about the timing of this… HOLY THURSDAY? Old Scratch and his bootlicking Communist journalist pawn chose well. Look at the confusion they caused. Hence, as a Catholic, understand that the Devil and Hell really exist, and that people really can go to Hell – which is eternal and not nothingness – we must – again, as believing Catholics – get down on our knees and pray for the Pope, especially with the time honored Pro Pontifice prayer.
Fourth, if news from Rome upsets you all the time, stop reading news from Rome all the time. Cui bono? Not everyone has the stomach for this trench warfare that we are in with the forces of evil and their journalist collaborators. So, pay attention to your vocations and dedicate yourselves to what is good, true and beautiful in them.
Fifth, keep the Devil at bay with all available means. Avail yourselves of (truly) blessed objects and sacramentals. Ask your angel guardian to help you. Also, say short exclamatory prayers all during the day as you work or when you read the confusing stuff. Perhaps the prayer of Job could be useful. When he was beset he cried out what we must cry out:
Then Job rose up, and rent his garments, and having shaven his head fell down upon the ground and worshipped, and said: Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord. In all these things Job sinned not by his lips, nor spoke he any foolish thing against God.
You read the confusing headline. You peruse the article. You get mad. Shake it off and say “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” and then get back to the duties of your vocation.
Friends, here is the straight stuff.
Your soul, once created by God, as an image of God, is eternal. Once created, it cannot cease to be. Eh-vur. The Lord Himself opined about the Lord’s betrayer: “It would be better for him if he had not been born.” Why would He say that? His betrayer was indeed born and his soul is not ever going to be nothing. His fate will be eternal, and not just for a time.
At the end of your life (or if the Lord returns) you will face judgment.
Once your soul separates from your body, you will not be able to change your mind or repent in a salvific way. You will be “baked in” and “locked on” to your life choices without any appetites to pull you onto another choice vector. That’s it.
Then you will be assigned as you have chosen.
If you have died in God’s friendship, you will go to Heaven, either immediately or after a time of purification in Purgatory.
If you don’t die in God’s friendship, you will be immediately separated from God and all that is good, true and beautiful to spend the rest of eternity in Hell.
Hell will involve the horrific pain of loss of what you could have had. It will also, after the bodily resurrection, necessarily involve the pain of sense. Just as spiritual sins are worse than carnal sins, so too the pain of loss will be worse than the pain of sense. However, that doesn’t mean that the pain of sense will be painless. Carnal sins may be less serious than spiritual sins, but they are still enough to damn you. Sin is death and pain is bad.
Throughout the centuries the pains of Hell have been described as “fire”. The other day I took something out of a toaster oven and my finger tip contacted the metal rack. Not good. I’ve also experienced, as you have, loss and betrayal and abandonment in life. Those are worse than physical suffering and, in fact, they can cause physical suffering.
But these earthly pains and losses are nothing compared to the unending, hopeless agony of eternal Hell.
Heaven will be more amazing than Hell is hideous. We will see God. In seeing God we will eternally be drawn to the Trinity in a glorious spiral of joy that involves also learning more about ourselves as His images and seeking ever more His transforming glory, which He will share. It will never be anything less than ecstatic and filled with amazement and joy.
We can make choices in this life. We must practice dying, so that when we do die – and we will – we will be locked on to the right choice. Barring extraordinary graces and circumstances, people tend to die as they lived.
How are YOU living?
Hell is REAL.
Don’t give even 5 seconds of thought to the absurd notion that there is no Hell.
Instead, try to imagine the first 5 seconds of realization that strikes the soul just consigned to Hell.
It is not a bad thing to review this on such a day as Holy Thursday. After all, this day sacramentally makes the mystery of Christ’s Passion present to us and we to it. Christ underwent the Passion so that we could be saved from … WHAT? An eternity in HELL which our sins merit.
In instituting the priesthood and giving us the Eucharist in the context of His Passion, He saves us for Himself in Heaven.
In John 14 the Lord said:
Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be. And whither I go you know, and the way you know. Thomas saith to him: Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.
Friends, it’s Holy Thursday and I’ve come down with a nasty cold.
Prayers, please. This isn’t good timing for problems with speaking, singing and … breathing.
UPDATE 29 March:
A friend at Holy Cross wrote:
Thanks for posting on the Holy Cross blasphemy. A clarification: Elinor Reilly, the courageous student who exposed Liew’s publications in a “Fenwick Review” article (the paper was founded by Fr. Paul Scalia) is in no way a supporter of Liew’s work. On the contrary, she is the whistle blower. Her goal was to put the material into the open but without commentary, just let the insanity speak for itself.
___ Originally Published on: Mar 28, 2018
A while back the Jesuit-run (who else?) Holy Cross College, in an entirely-predictable and yet still astonishing act of ankle-grabbing before the world’s ways, dropped their team moniker: The Crusaders. More on that HERE.
Now we read HERE that at the same Jesuit-run (who else?) Holy Cross,…
Holy Cross Theology Professor Says Jesus Was a ‘Drag King’ with ‘Queer Desires’
The theology program at the Jesuit-run College of the Holy Cross has taken on a new tone ever since the school appointed a gender-obsessed Chair of New Testament Studies who claims Jesus was a “drag king,” a new article contends.
Writing for The Fenwick Review, Elinor Reilly of the Holy Cross class of 2018 argues in a March 26 article that Professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew’s “unconventional readings of Scripture” have brought “a new theological perspective to Holy Cross.”
Letting the facts speak for themselves, Ms. Reilly suggests that “the centrality of sex and gender to his way of thinking about the New Testament” significantly colors the way that Professor Liew presents Jesus Christ to students at the Catholic College. [He’s not just writing this crap in journals, he’s teaching it in classrooms. What do parents pay in tuition there?]
In a remarkable re-reading of the Bible, Professor Liew has argued that Jesus is not only “king of Israel” and “king of the Jews,” but “also a drag king,” as presented in the New Testament Gospel of John.
Saint John’s constant references to Jesus wanting water, giving water, and leaking water “speak to Jesus’ gender indeterminacy and hence his cross-dressing and other queer desires,” Liew contends. [Sick.]
Reading everything through the lens of gender, Professor Liew finds sex in the most unlikely places in the life of Jesus. The episode of Jesus washing the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper, for example, is “suggestive,” like “a literary striptease,” and “even seductive,” because it “shows and withholds at the same time,” he claims.
Liew’s sexualization of the sacred Christian texts goes beyond the reinterpretation of actions and extends to gender identity as well. For instance, Liew stated that in his Gospel, Saint John makes very clear that Jesus is a Jew but he is less clear about “whether Jesus is a biological male.”
[…]
I can’t include the next part.
I wonder what Jesuit homosexualist activist James Martin has to say about Jesuit-run Holy Cross and this blasphemy.
One of the figures who emerged from the shadows through the Lettergate scandal, is German liberal (wrong) theologian Peter Hünermann. Benedict XVI had a strong negative reaction to finding him among the writers of the series that was intended to bolster Pope Francis’ theological cred. Benedict declined having anything to do with the project. His letter was twisted and weaponized and the rest is ongoing history.
Of course it had to happen that libs would immediately defend Hünermann and his greatness against the cold intractability of Ratzinger. Some young and self-promoting theological enthusiasts happily sit at Hünermann’s feet. Hünermann writings on marriage seem to have influenced Pope Francis’ document Amoris laetitia. Therefore, he needs attention.
At Crisis, he got some attention. There find a piece which pulls Hünermann – on marriage – apart at the seams. The writer shows how Hünermann misread Papa Ratti‘s 1930 Casti connubii and, hence, goes down a wrong track and into a theological dead end. I can’t help but think that people as smart as Hünermann know they are going the wrong way, but they want the wrong way to be the right way so badly that they throw what they know to be true overboard for the sake of their own desires and, ultimately, self-promotion.
Hünermann’s “Way Forward” is a Dead End
E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER[…]
Since the theological ideas of Hünermann have exercised considerable influence over Pope Francis, it is worth looking at what the German theologian thinks about the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, on which he claims to have advised the pope.
In an interview in 2016 published in Commonweal, Hünermann replied to the following question related to the indissolubility of marriage: “Can you say something about how you understand the theology of marriage, as you conveyed it to the pope?”
By way of answer, Hünermann turns his sights on the great papal encyclical of Pope Pius IX, On Christian Marriage (Casti Connubii, 1930). He says the encyclical’s account of marriage was “not informed by systematic theology” and so “could not deal satisfactorily with the complexities of the situation we face today.” And then responding to those “complexities” he proposes as “a way forward” a rejection of the doctrine of the absolute indissolubility of a consummated Christian marriage.
Hünermann’s account, however, is problematic in three ways: (1) it misconstrues Catholic tradition on marriage and the sacrament; (2) it badly misreads and so misrepresents Casti Connubii; and (3) it proposes a false (indeed a heretical) “pastoral solution.”
A mature sacramental understanding of marriage, as Hünermann rightly notes, did not develop until the Middle Ages. But (pace Hünermann) this had little influence on the Church’s ancient understanding of marriage’s indissolubility. The Catholic Church taught from apostolic times that all marriages, natural and sacramental, are indissoluble. The Fathers of East and West affirmed this unanimously, as the great patristic historian Henri Crouzel showed. And Trent infallibly defined the absolute indissolubility of sacramental marriage as an irreformable dogma of faith, as I show in my book on the The Indissolubility of Marriage and the Council of Trent. The Eastern Church formally denied the doctrine of indissolubility in the ninth century; and Luther and Calvin denied it for Protestant Christianity in the sixteenth century. But the Catholic Church has maintained its teaching uninterrupted till today. [But we don’t change our teachings to match those of the Orthodox or of Protestants. Or we shouldn’t.]
Hünermann claims that the author of Casti Connubii did not know that the indissolubility of marriage comes from its nature, that marriage, as Jesus teaches, was indissoluble “from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8-9). Hünermann says Casti teaches that marriage is made indissoluble by the sacrament: “marriage is transformed in sacramental reality in that it becomes indissoluble.” This is a misrepresentation. Casti does no more than affirm the correlation between marriage’s sacramentality and its indissolubility. Casti nowhere denies that the natural covenant is indissoluble, and even suggests it in paragraph numbers 8-10. Indeed, how could it deny it? Jesus explicitly taught the indissolubility of natural marriage in the Gospels, and the Church authoritatively affirmed it for twenty centuries. [This is why I think that these lib theologians, especially the self-mesmerizing Germans, are so duplicitous.]
But it is true that Pius reaffirms only the absolute indissolubility of consummated sacramental marriages. (After all, his encyclical was on Christian marriage.) The pope was no doubt aware of the fact that at Trent, some fathers, although a minority, believed that natural, non-sacramental marriage was only indissoluble to the couple themselves, but that the Church could dissolve their marriages. In order not to definitively resolve this question, the Council chose only to resolve the question of whether consummated Christian marriages were absolutely indissoluble; and in Canons 5 and 7 of its teaching on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Trent did precisely this.
The text of Casti Connubii illustrates that Pius knew well the theology of the sacrament of marriage; and that he knew too that the early Church’s use of the term “sacrament” was as yet undeveloped. In Casti’s discussion of Augustine’s three “boni”—three goods—of marriage (CC, no. 31-36), Pius carefully avoids implying that Augustine’s use of the term “sacramentum” is coextensive with the Church’s later developed understanding of the same term. In fact, when Pius refers to Augustine’s use of the term “sacramentum” (e.g., CC, no. 31), Pius uses capitals (“SACRAMENTUM”) to indicate it is Augustine’s and not the Church’s developed sense by which the term should be construed at that point in his text. Unfortunately, the English translation confusingly drops the capitals. [For more, check out the voice “SACRAMENTUM” in Augustinus Lexicon.]
The upshot of Hünermann’s account is to say that because Pius misunderstood the history and nature of the sacrament of marriage, the Church can now finally acknowledge that marriage is dissoluble. Hünermann writes:
So there is a way forward… If indissolubility refers to the nature of marriage, it is quite clear that [due to a failure of human cooperation] it can break down. Situations can arise where it is impossible to continue in marriage. If there are children and so on, one has to deal with the individual situation and attempt to find a pastoral solution. [Of course, you are asking how those situations are any different from the situations people have experienced all through the history of the human race. Just because we have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries doesn’t mean that our conditions of life are so qualitatively different that we merit some special dispensation that results in a change in the Church’s – Christ’s – perennial teaching.]
But Hünermann’s “way forward” is a dead end. Because although it is true that the society of a marriage (i.e., the community of married life) can and often does break down, the Catholic Church at Trent infallibly rejected the claim that the bond (the “vinculum”) of a consummated sacramental marriage can break down. So what is “quite clear” is quite the opposite of what Hünermann claims. Nothing but the death of one of the spouses can dissolve (“break down”) a consummated sacramental marriage.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
cajunpower on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “Perhaps there is no one orthodox in Vienna to appoint, but it’s sure concerning that Leo keeps promoting heterodox prelates…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “Why is a bishop such as Bishop Grunwidl allowed to express such heretical opinions without any push back from the…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “The Church actually spent about 200 years seriously considering the proposal that women could be ordained, so that the question…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “How to get women priestesses without touching dogma. 1. Vatican II serves as a foundational instruction to “listen to the…”
on ROME 26/10 – Day 31: Blast from the … present!: “That is a book of papal “prophecies,” and the hands are rebuilding and defending the city of Rome. Prophecy books…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “Although it is true that the CDF responded to the dubium without saying that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (OS) was infallible, there…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “One can also note that, to those who keep pushing this and other progressive issues contra Church teaching, that teaching…”
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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