Because the Gospel for this 11th Sunday after Pentecost concerns the miraculous healing of a man’s deafness and inability to talk, before I drill into the Sunday passage and risk losing most of you because I go on and on and on, let me offer this from the top. St. Gregory Nazianzen (+390) says that…
My apologies for a rather briefer offering for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost, although I have in my mind’s eye an image of you doing a fist pump while exclaiming, “yesssss”. This is in part a gesture of self-defense. In the Epistle reading, Paul tackles for the Corinthians the issue of idolatry. Idolatry is contrary…
Let us be swift. In the Gospel reading for this 9th Sunday after Pentecost, we hear that the Lord was getting closer to Jerusalem. What you should remember is that He was making His triumphal “Palm Sunday” entrance seated like a Davidic Priest King on the colt of an ass. The people, having heard about…
This week’s task is scary. The Gospel for this 8th Sunday after Pentecost presents probably the most difficult of the Lord’s parables to explicate. This week we hear the Parable of the Unjust Steward from Luke 16. Context: For the last few chapters of Luke we have been presented with Our Lord telling many parables.…
With this 7th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo Holy Church began a series of contrasts. She shows us the difference between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, between the divine and the mundane. Context is called for. The Gospel passage in Matthew 7 is at the end of the…
As I write, it is the anniversary of the imposition of Traditionis custodes, certainly the legacy document of the Francis pontificate. While it seems, ultimately, destined for dusty irrelevance, it is now a neuralgic sign of the times. Almost by way of a celebration of TC, bad news comes from Chicago for the faithful who…
The context of Sunday’s Gospel passage is one of the most powerful moments in the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord, in His Sermon, set up a series of contrasts between how thing were under the Law of Moses, with how things are now to be. Just before our “cutting… pericope,” He…
Entropy, in physics, describes the measure of disorder. In the entire universe there is a rise in disorder as, slowly but surely, energy dissipates. You know how this works in daily life. When your ice cube melts, heat, energy, goes into the ice, not cold into the air, even though if you put your hand…
It has been quite a liturgical ride over the last few weeks, with Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, coincidental Sacred Heart and Nativity of John the Baptist. Coming up in Rome, where I write this entry, will be Sts. Peter and Paul, which shuts everything down here for reasons that are obvious. On this…
The medieval period was an era of rich and accelerating reflection about the Eucharist. One of the benchmarks of this increasing devotion to the Eucharist was the establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christ by Urban IV in the last year of his life, 1264, especially for the Roman Curia and then its extension to…
Pentecost is perhaps the richest of all the liturgical Feasts of the Holy Roman Catholic Church… in the Vetus Ordo, at least. In the Church’s Vetus Ordo, like Easter, Pentecost has a Saturday Vigil with the blessing of baptismal water and an Octave, during which we sing the stunning Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the…
