Off to Hobart

"Loose the bonds that hold us / Bound with sin's own blindness / That with eyes now open'd / God's own light may guide us." - the Ave maris stella is a favourite hymn of mine (as it was St Dominic's), and this verse is very appropriate for the feast of St Peter's Chains, especially as this year it falls on Saturday, my customary day for going to confession.

How blest the tribunal of penance, wherein the priest sits so patiently, waiting to wash clean all sinful souls! How kindly is Christ to errant sheep: Erravi sicut ovis, quæ perierat: quære servum tuum, quia mandata tua non sum oblitus - Ps 118:176, the very last verse of the longest psalm: "I was lost like a sheep that was perishing: seek Thy servant, for I have not forgotten Thy commands". Glory be...

I got a little mixed up this morning when telling the priest my misdeeds, but to avoid all scrupulosity I know it sufficient to earnestly state what one remembers, and not stupidly to worry afterward if one recalls something one had forgotten to say, since Christ is the Healer of sinners, not a stern schoolmaster smiting those who forget to say their piece word-perfect.

Very often, when bewailing my faults, I'll say the Miserere, then a Kyrie and Pater with versicles, before the hopeful penitential collect:

Deus, cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere, suscipe deprecationem nostram: ut nos, et omnes famulos tuos, quos delictorum catena constringit, miseratio tuæ pietatis clementer absolvat. Per...

(God, Whose property it is ever to have mercy and to spare: receive our humble prayer, that we, and all Thy servants, who are bound with the chain of sins, the mercy of Thy piety may clemently absolve. Through...)

To-day is a good day to recall that it is God Who breaks the bonds that bind us, since Christ broke the bars and burst the gates of Hell, setting us free. Sin is so petty, banal, repetitive and slavish - whereas grace flowers in all manner of virtuous right conduct, ever new, ever varied, ever tending to excellence. There is far more choice of good than there is in doing ill, which is no liberty but captivity: this is the lesson to be learnt from the prisoner released from his chains.

Now, off to Hobart to stay with some dear friends, and with them to attend the Mass of the Ages...

Lammas - II

Anciently this feast was kept as a harvest festival in England - whence its name Lammas, from hlaf-mæsse (loaf-mass). But until the late pre-Conciliar reforms, or rather prunings, to-day was the feast of the Chains of St Peter (S. Petrus ad Vincula), the celebration of the hallowed fetters that held the Prince of the Apostles in his Roman prison (as earlier Herod had vainly enchained him), or rather, the celebration of his holding fast to Christ until death, death on an upside-down cross. This day is the anniversary of the consecration of the church of St Peter ad Vincula, called the Eudoxian Basilica after Princess Eudoxia who had it rebuilt in the fifth century.

But to-day is also the commemoration of the Holy Machabæan Martyrs, seven brothers and their mother put to death by Antiochus Epiphanes a century and a half before Christ: their great constancy under torture, their stedfast refusal to betray God and His Law, their belief in a future resurrection, all these make them great forerunners and models of Christian martyrs, and so the Fathers frequently preached. (Apparently their commemoration is held to-day because relics believed to be theirs were kept at the Church of St Peter in Chains.)

May the prayers of St Peter and these Martyrs unchain the bonds of sin that bind us: see my comments and the Collect and so forth that I quoted last year.

Lammas

Mass at the Pro. this evening (after the First Friday Holy Hour) was of the Chains of St Peter. While still subsisting as an option (!) in the 1962 Missal, Bugnini & co. had removed it from the Breviary. Today is in fact a triple feast: in England of yore, it was the harvest festival (Lammas derives from hlæf-masse, "loaf Mass"); it is the feast of St Peter ad vincula; and today we commemorate the Holy Machabees, famous Martyrs of Old Testament times.

In any case, the Alleluia verse and Collect sum up the principal mystery represented very well, as does the extract from St Augustine formerly read at Matins as Lessons vii and viii:

Alleluja, alleluja. V/. Solve, jubénte Deo, terrárum, Petre, caténas, qui facis ut páteant cæléstia regna beátis. Alleluja.

(Loosen, at the command of God, the chains of the earth, Peter, who openest the heavenly kingdom to the blessed.)

Deus, qui beátum Petrum Apóstolum, a vínculis absolútum, illæsum abíre fecísti: nostrórum, quæsumus, absólve víncula peccatórum ; et ómnia mala a nobis propitiátus exclúde. Per...

(O God, Who didst loose blessed Peter Apostle from his chains and didst make him to go forth unharmed: loose, we beseech thee, the chains of our sins, and in thy mercy keep us from all evil. Through...)

Peter was the only one of the Apostles who was worthy to hear the words: Verily, I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. Worthy indeed must he be, who, when the nations are to be built up into a Temple of God, is chosen as the ground-stone whereon the building is to stand: the pillar whereby it is to be held up, and the key wherethrough entrance is to be made into the kingdom. Concerning him the Word of God saith: That they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and counches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. If the shadow of his body then could give help, how much more shall the fulness of his strength give help now? If the very air, as he passed by, was then profitable to such as besought him, how much more shall his favour profit where now he abideth? It is with reason that, throughout all the Churches of Christ, the iron chains wherewith he was afflicted are reckoned more precious than gold.

If his shadow as a visitor was so healthful, what is his chain now that he bindeth and looseth? If his empty image in the air had healing power, how much power must have been contracted from his body by those chains, whose iron weight sank into his holy limbs during his suffering? If, before he testified, he was so mighty to aid them that called upon him, how much mightier is he now since his victory? Blessed were the links, doomed to be changed from fetters and shackles, into a crown, which by touching the Apostle, made him a Martyr. Blessed were the chains, whose prisoner left them for the Cross of Christ, and which brought him thither, not as the instruments of condemnation, but of sanctification.