Second Sunday after Epiphany Mass and Picnic

Today the Latin Mass community, North and South, gathered at Colebrook to attend the monks’ Mass for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, reflecting on the mystery of the Wedding feast at Cana and Our Lady’s intercession thereat, and afterwards to have a pleasant picnic at their property at Rhyndaston. Mass was glorious and moving, the elevation barely visible through clouds of incense – “and the glory of God filled the sanctuary” – and put me in mind of what Dom Anscar Vonier wrote about “The Doctrinal Power of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church” in his Sketches and Studies in Theology:

One of the great advantages of the liturgical presentment of Catholic dogma is found in this, that it sets forth revealed truth in a non-combative and non-controversial way. It is truly the divine bread prepared for the use of the children. We forget the unbeliever, the heretic, the schismatic, when we are gathered together for the Feasts of the Lord; instead, we are made to remember the Angelic Choirs and the Saints of heaven. If evil and Satan are at all alluded to in the liturgy, such remembrances are songs of triumph, because in the Liturgy the powers of darkness are mentioned only in connexion with Christ's victory over all sin. It is indeed a supreme satisfaction to the Catholic soul to be thus left to enjoy the Faith for its own sake; it creates in the Church a spirit of confidence far more potent than any controversy, however well conducted, can do.

(I quoted quite a lot more of this back in 2008.)