Misericordias Domini

On our way into town for Mass this afternoon (giving him a lift in my car again), I had Mike read None, which involved the really fatiguingly long Psalm 88, which all too-aptly begins Misericordias Domini in æternum cantabo...

After he finished, I teased him about what it says in the Imitatio about being "So drowsy at sacred vigils, so alert for idle gossip" or somesuch - but no sooner was I in church for the liturgy than I was just about prostrated with tiredness, and barely got through Low Mass, kneeling bowed forward, hanging over the pew in front!  Rather than fight to keep awake for the ensuing Holy Hour with Stations of the Infant Jesus (a Redemptorist devotion), I staggered back to the car, put the seat back and tried to rest - the hour went by very fast, and though I returned to the Pro. I was too late even for Benediction; at least I read Vespers.

We then all went for dinner at Fr's place, which was again a grand affair - Belgian beer (Orval), plus good fish and chips.  Before the food materialized, we had a chance to check out some curious books on the shelves or otherwise in the house, such as Ellard's The Mass of the Future (1948), and a Premonstratensian Breviary (with its  interesting peculiar texts at Prime and Compline)...

Mass, BTW, had been of Our Lady of Guadalupe - taken wholly from the Common of Marian Feasts, except for the Gospel of the Annunciation.  (Last year, I posted about Our Lady of Guadalupe, her Traditional Proper Mass, and her rather unfortunate modern Collect.)  Unusually, Fr Rowe preached a sermon - just a short one.  To commemorate this day (which in the Breviary is a feria) I have just put on a favourite CD: Chanticleer singing Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe, by Ignacio de Jerusalem (1764).  Apparently in New Spain, it was all the rage to attend, not opera, but Matins... how nice to imagine the Viceroy at the Cathedral in Mexico City tapping his foot to the tunes as the service progressed.  If you like Baroque sacred music, well, the CD is Teldec 0630-19340-2.

This CD includes the three following historical lessons narrating the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, apparently from her proper Office:

Mexici, in colle Tepeyancensi, anno millesimo quingentesimo trigesimo primo Dei para Virgo Maria Ioanni Didaco neophyto, uti pie traditur, sese videndam præbuit, eique ad antisititem Joannem de Zumárraga mandatum dedit, quod et instanter iteravit, de æde sibmet inibi construenda.

Episcopus vero signum expetiit.  Mox neophytum patruo morituro sacramenta longinquius ab apparitionis loco quærentem, tertio visu dignatur alma Mater, de patrui sanitate serenat, rosasque extra tempus obortas, in ejus pallio compositas, ad episcopum deferri jubet.

Cujus in conspectu rosis effusus, Mariæ imago, ipsi pallio impressa, uti traditur, mirum in modum præsentibus apparuit.  Quæ in sacello episcopali primum asservata, dein ad exstructam ædem in colle Tepeyacensi translata, denique in magnifico templo excepta est, quo turmatim plebes Mexicanæ magis magisque convenire cœperunt, venerationis gratia et frequentiæ miraculorum.