Fr Blake on Our Lady as Model Communicant

Fr Ray Blake has a most devout and thought-provoking post about Our Lady, the perfect model of all communicants, truly a Spiritual Vessel uniquely fit for the Lord.  Indeed, were we not commanded to communicate, who could imagine himself worthy to receive Christ?  But Truth Himself saith, Take, eat.  With the Centurion, Holy Church bids us pray, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."  And thus we too are graced, healed, hallowed by His Presence.  "Come to my heart, Lord Jesus: there is room there enough for Thee."

Santa Loves Jesus This Much

A famous fresco depicting St Nicholas striking Arius for his blasphemy against Christ (sent me by a Dominican father).

Feast of St Lazarus

To-day, as well as being the day whereon the O Antiphons begin to be employed at Vespers, while, at Lauds, special antiphons for the psalms are supplied, is the feast of St Lazarus, whom Our Lord raised from the dead.  The Dormitionists keep this day with a special Mass...

The Advent Prose

At Benediction after Compline on Tuesday, we sang the Advent Prose, Rorate cæli desuper; I was minded to look up something about it, and found - an old post of mine on this very chant. What plaintive notes, what expectant thrill...

Mass of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!  I blogged about the Mass of her feast some years back, but the links to the EF texts thereof don't work any more, so (after some digging) here is the Proper, ne prorsus interiret.

INTROIT Sedulius; Ps. 44:2 

Salve, sancta Parens, enixa puerpera Regem: qui cælum, terramque regit in sæcula sæculorum. Ps. Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum: dico ego opera mea regi. Gloria Patri. Salve…

COLLECT

Deus, qui sub beatissimæ Virginis Mariæ singulari patrocinio constitutos, perpetuis beneficiis nos cumulari voluisti: præsta supplicibus tuis: ut cujus hodie commemoratione lætamur in terris, ejus conspectu perfruamur in cælis. Per.

EPISTLE Ecclus. 24. 23-31

Ego quasi vitis fructificavi suavitatem odoris, et flores mei, fructus honoris et honestatis. Ego mater pulchræ dilectionis, et timoris et agnitionis, et sanctæ spei. In me gratia omnis vitæ et veritatis: in me omnis spes vitæ et virtutis. Transite ad me omnes qui concupiscitis me, et a generationibus meis implemini. Spiritus enim meus super mel dulcis, et hereditas mea super mel et favum. Memoria mea in generationes sæculorum. Qui edunt me, adhuc esurient: et qui bibunt me, adhuc sitient. Qui audit me, non confundetur: et qui operantur in me, non peccabunt. Qui elucidant me vitam æternam habebunt.

GRADUAL Cant. 6:9; Ecclus. 50:8

Quæ est ista, quæ progreditur quasi aurora consurgens, pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol? V/. Quasi arcus refulgens inter nebulas gloriæ, et quasi flos rosarum in diebus vernis.

ALLELUIA Cant. 2:12

Alleluia, alleluia. V. Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra, tempus putationis advenit. Alleluia. 

GOSPEL Lk. 1:39-47

In illo tempore: Exsurgens Maria abiit in montana cum festinatione in civititem Juda: et intravit in domum Zachariæ, et salutavit Elisabeth. Et factum est, ut audivit salutationem Mariæ Elisabeth, exsultivit infans in utero ejus: et repleta est Spiritu Sancto Elisabeth: et exclamavit voce magna, et dixit: Benedicta tu inter mulieres, et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Et unde hoc mihi, ut veniat Mater Domini mei ad me? Ecce enim ut facta est vox salutationis tuæ in auribus meis, exsultavit in gaudio infans in utero meo. Et beata, quæ credidisti, quoniam perficientur ea, quæ dicta sunt tibi a Domino. Et ait Maria: Magnificat anima mea Dominum: et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo. 

OFFERTORY II Par. 7:16

Elegi, et sanctificavi locum istum, ut sit ibi nomen meum, et permaneant oculi mei, et cor meum ibi cunctis diebus. 

SECRET 

Tua, Domine, propitiatione, et beatæ Maria: semper Virginis intercessione, ad perpetuam atque præsentem hæc oblatio nobis proficiat prosperitatem et pacem. Per. 

COMMUNION Psalm 147:20

Non fecit toliter omni nationi: et judicia sua non manifestivit eis.

POSTCOMMUNION

Sumptis, Domine, salutis nostræ subsidiis: da, quæsumus, beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis patrociniis nos ubique protegi; in cujus veneratione hæc tuæ obtulimus majestati. Per. 

As for the proper Office, Matins and Lauds at least can be seen over at Nova et Vetera...

Faith and Faithfulness

We may be unfaithful, but he is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self.

— II Tim. ii, 13 (Jerusalem Bible)

I always give thanks for the unmerited gift of faith; I always wish I were a good deal more faithful!  I often reflect that "the devils believe, and tremble"(James ii, 19); for "faith without works is dead", as the next verse of that Epistle reminds me.  It always seems a mystery to me that "the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do." (Rom. vii, 19)  Indeed, with the Apostle, I say "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"(Rom. vii, 24) But with him I do go on at once proclaim that my deliverance is "The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. vii, 25)

Thanks be to God, God is so good as not only to give us the gift of divine faith by the Holy Ghost, but forgives us when we fail to be faithful – He always remains faithful, for He is God.

At this Advent season, I do turn in trust and faith to Christ, begging Him come into my life and rule: Veni, Domine Jesu.

Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross

It seems that we await word from the Vatican on the official starting date for the Australian Personal Ordinariate* for former Anglicans – early next year? – but at least we know it has been placed under the patronage of Our Lady of the Southern Cross: a busy Lady, seeing as she is patroness of the troubled diocese of Toowoomba, indeed chosen as such by none other than the notorious last Ordinary of that see (though officially approved by the Holy See, unlike the disapproval voiced by Rome of most of his other acts); then again, it certainly seems she gets things done when she is invoked!  As a devout elderly Chinese Catholic of my acquaintance would say in words that brook no dissent, "Our Lady of Southern Cross – very powerful."

Whatever of this title – curiously, the feast of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, fixed in Toowoomba on the 1st of September, is not included in the Calendar for Australia in the new Missal! – it appears very much as if the precedent of the English Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will be followed: at least the first wave of clerical converts will be ordained quickly, and the laity will soon thereafter follow, to keep together these various "groups of Anglicans".  It appears that this process, as employed in England, was quite successful.  I do know that each Anglican minister has been asked to choose a wise and experienced Catholic priest as a mentor, to help bridge the gap between the very different clerical cultures of each, which is a most practical and charitable measure.

Of course, the English Ordinariate, while under the title of Our Lady of Walsingham, has also Bl John Henry Newman as its patron; no doubt, officially or not, he will play a similar role in respect of the Australian (and indeed of the American) Ordinariate.  May Our Lady, spiritual Mother of all Christians, intercede powerfully with her Divine Son, ut unum sint – may Bl John Henry supplicate the Lord in union with her, and with him all the Saints.  Forward the Australian Ordinariate!

*There is no word yet on whether the Church of the Torres Strait, which has voted en bloc to come into union with Rome, will be part of this or not.  The Torres Strait Islands are not very populous...

St Hubert's Hospice

Suzie still recovering from her operation for a benign adenoma of the parathyroid, and now Gracie recuperating from the removal of two lipomas, I have decided that my home has become St Hubert's Hospice for Sick Hounds.  Of your charity, dear reader, pray for all sick animals, particularly my sorry pair!

SS Dominic and Francis, SS Roch and Hubert, pray for them.

Semi-Pelagian Sermon

An unusual sermon at Carmel this morning: referring to the parable of the lost sheep, the preacher most unfortunately said "Well, none of us have gone astray, so how does this apply to us?"  What pride, what hubris!  Surely every Christian feels himself a lost sheep.

He went on to surmise that perhaps this parable could mean for us "good sheep" that we might have hidden talents or gifts we need to discover for ourselves and celebrate - what dreadful self-satisfied feel-good humanism!  This struck me as Semi-Pelagian at best.

I bet a Lutheran would have been horrified at such smug self-righteousness, and rightly so.

Why are Catholics in particular so addicted to congratulating themselves on their own mediocrity?

Back from Hobart

All went well for our monthly Missa cantata: the liturgical proceedings took just over an hour, as usual, and I felt that I'm settling into the role of M.C. with somewhat more assurance (though I did have our poor priest read the Communion and Postcommunion of the 1st Sunday before I realized my error and redirected him!).

While our choir was depleted in numbers, as well as chanting the Ordinary and Proper, they also sang two most appropriate Advent pieces: the Rorate cæli at Offertory, and Veni, veni Emmanuel (all seven verses) at Communion.  As we processed out, I couldn't help but think it would have been nice to end with the Alma Redemptoris Mater, so I prayed it inwardly at least.

I still think numbers at our Mass are a bit low (roughly forty souls if not more), but given that the Mass occurs but once a month, and at a very late morning hour, that is only to be expected: if we had a weekly Mass at an earlier time (and a Low Mass before that, for such as prefer it), numbers would certainly increase markedly.  But that must wait for a new bishop more accepting of Summorum pontificum!  I hear that the new appointment should prove more Catholic and aware.

A later conversation about this turned to that vexed issue of why the Faith has been eroded.  A mystery indeed: why is it that people, even those allegedly Catholic, have next to no sense of sin or of their need for a Saviour?  Why has faith evaporated?  I wish I knew.

En route to the South

An experiment, this - while I wait for a second coffee, I'm blogging from my iPhone at Zeps in Campbell Town. Brunch done, I'll amble along to the bookshop in the convict-built cellar of the Fox and Hounds [sorry: the Foxhunters Return - an odd name either way, considering there were no foxes in Tasmania], and visit the local church and the three priests' graves behind it, before motoring on.

By sheer dumb luck, I decided to-day to take the scenic route alongside the Great Western Tiers, driving down to Hobart, not along the highway, but via Longford, Cressy and the country road through to Campbell Town - which proved most providential, for this Saturday the annual motorcyclists' Christmas toy run to Hobart is on, with thousands and thousands of leather-clad persons thronging the highway, and I would have had roadrage in a bad way if I'd taken the same route as these well-meaning riders!

My plan is to spend as long as feasible here (in the hopes most of the two wheelers will have preceded me) before driving on along the highway to Oatlands, and then again detouring through Parattah and on to Colebrook and Richmond, so as to approach Hobart from the east.

To-night, I will stay with friends in Hobart, before M.C.ing our Missa cantata to-morrow.

A Nice Little Poem

What thou doest at Christ’s table,

Presbyter, think well;

Life eternal is preparèd

There for thee, or hell.

As the sacred taper burning

Dwindles in its size,

So the presbyter, if guilty,

Celebrating, dies.

Think of these — the death of Jesus,

Thine own death as well,

Earth’s deceptions, heaven’s glories,

And the pains of hell.

– The Sarum missal in English, F. E. Warren, trans.