Hobart Latin Mass

Down to Hobart and back, for our State's monthly Missa cantata (there is, I am informed, an SSPX Low Mass at Sassafras on the way to Devonport, also held on the first Sunday of the month): a good trip, a very quick run through in fact, with scarcely any traffic on the road (but then again, to-day is both the day daylight saving has started, and also the day after the AFL Grand Final, so one suspects many had a sleep-in this morning), but I do feel tired from the driving, enjoyable though driving is.

I fear I am a very bad M.C.: I don't know all the rubrics well enough, and serving only once a month means that I don't get enough practice to learn from my mistakes.  Why, just to-day I had the priest read the Introit &c. before censing the altar, which was quite wrong!  Mea maxima culpa.

It would be good if more came to our little Mass: I think the congregation (exclusive of choir and servers) was only about thirty, with many familiar faces absent.  Of course, given the late hour of the service, and it being held but once a month, lower numbers than the ideal are no great surprise.  God will give the increase I suppose, and thirty at Mass is a great deal better than none.

"Fear not, little flock" - Nolite timere pusillus grex (St Luke xii, 32) – and the Lord continues, quia complacuit Patri vestro dare vobis regnum, "for it hath pleased your Father to give to you the kingdom".  Nolite timere pusillus grex: wouldn't that be a nice motto for our next bishop?!

To-day, if not the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, would have been the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels: may they guard us from harm, and guide us to the Kingdom.

16th Sunday after Pentecost

It was very pleasant to attend Mass at Holy Name this fine morning.  The Missa cantata took 80 minutes from the processional hymn "All people that on earth do dwell" before the Asperges until the recessional hymn "Faith of our fathers" after the Last Gospel.  I was surprised at the very large number of servers: eleven, including the M.C.!  My unasked question was answered when, at the Sanctus, six of them reappeared as torchbearers.  The choir (about a dozen), together with a very skilled organist, provided fitting music for the Sacred Liturgy: Mass XI (Orbis factor) and Credo I, all the Propers, plus Bruckner's thrilling Locus iste as an Offertory motet, and a setting of the first verse of Jesu dulcis memoria as a Communion motet (some Marian chant, possibly a responsory, was sung during the ablutions).

Fr Define preached a suitably conscience-pricking sermon about pride, that most fatal vice, and its contrary, the most necessary virtue of humility.  Being all too much enthralled by the former, and all but bereft of the latter, all I can say is mea maxima culpa...

(As an aside, it amused me somewhat to hear what I thought I'd heard at Low Mass on Friday: in the Lord's Prayer, the curious word zicut.)

After the service, it was great to see Steve, Helen and their family, friends of mine from way back, plus several other friends old and new, such as Marguerite, Patrick, and others.  (Thanks, Marguerite, for the very valuable advice about where best to go for lunch at Port Eliot: the Flying Fish Café was excellent!)  The Adelaide Latin Mass community is admirable, not least for members of the congregation prominent in many fields of public endeavour, including a State M.P. and a well-known newspaper columnist.  I was impressed by the goodly numbers at Mass, and was sorry not to return for Vespers in the evening – I was rather tired after driving down around the Fleurieu Peninsula and to the mouth of the Murray River.