This year the 1 May observance of the 2nd Sunday after Easter gives way in honor of St. Joseph, whom we venerate among his other many roles and titles as a patron of laborers and as the “Worker.” In contrast to what we see now in the Church, to create counterplay against the rise of…
This Sunday we complete the Octave of Easter. In the post-Conciliar calendar, it is creatively called the “Second Sunday of Easter” or, since John Paul II was greatly interested in the theme, “Divine Mercy Sunday”. However, historically we call the Easter Octave, “Low Sunday”, probably because it was celebrated with less pomp than Easter. It…
Happy Easter! My hopeful prayer is that you experience, in this Easter Season, true joy in a personal encounter with the Risen Lord. The Church’s firehose of imagery and traditions and sacred liturgy has been blasting fully at our little drinking cups. Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum can overwhelm as we reach the apex…
Ever since we set out on our spiritual journey on pre-Lent Septuagesima Sunday, step by step we have approached Holy Week. While a measure of weariness might distress us as we slog along the paths of penance and discipline, of self-denial and self-examination, our hearts rise because we draw nearer to the goal of victory…
From the pre-Lent, “Gesima” Sundays onward, Holy Mother Church began her plunge into liturgical death. At first we lost the “Alleluia,” the Gloria, and on Sundays we dressed in penitential violet to herald the proximity of Lent. With Lent, these privations applied every day, with the exception of our great feasts. Moreover, we became stiller…
It is a fact of human nature that if our senses are constantly bombarded with the same thing, say for example, music that is too loud or an environment that is all the same color, or even violent or wicked images, we become numbed and even start to tune out, shut down. Too much of…
The Roman Station for the 3rd Sunday of Lent is the Minor Papal Basilica of St. Lawrence outside-the-walls. There are five Papal Basilicas, four Major and one Minor. They were once called Patriarchal Basilicas and they corresponded to the five ancient Patriarchates, St. John Lateran in Rome with the Patriarch of the West, the Pope.…
You’ve probably noticed that Gospel readings begin, “In illo tempore… in that time.” Well… what time is that? It is helpful to interrogate texts with classic questions from ancient rhetoric: “Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?” You can probably recognize what I am about without me telling you. Aristotle formulated them, Cicero rendered…
With the “Gesima,” pre-Lent Sundays we added a layer of context to our contexts: Roman Station churches. Each day of Lent has, by millennial tradition, an assigned church in Rome. On weekdays, people gathered at a nearby “collect” church and then processed singing penitential litanies and hymns to the “stopping” church, or “statio” where the…
Context is important. We are in “Gesima” time, Pre-Lent, a time of preparation, for the time of preparation, for Easter. Holy Church, like our mothers, remind us that we have some chores coming due; she reminds us that Lent is around the corner: after this “Fiftieth” Sunday, Quinquagesima, in three days is Ash Wednesday and…
In union with the catechumens preparing for baptism in the early Church of Rome, we stroll from the heart of the City under the long covered walkway that stretched from the great walls to the Ostian Basilica, the Roman Station church for Sexagesima Sunday, St. Paul’s outside-the-walls. Last week we went to St. Lawrence outside-the-walls,…
