I’ve been under the gun lately because of various personal things and preparations for travel. Therefore, I am channeling my inner environmentalist activist and recycling something I wrote for my own blog, perhaps already known to you. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. Holy week includes the Sacred Triduum. The principal ceremonies of…
In the ancient Roman Church, before the establishment of what we now call Lent, we would have begun today, now called 1st Passion Sunday, a more intense fortnight fast leading to Easter morning. It is important for us to keep in mind that another source for teasing forth the themes of the seasons and feasts…
“To say that Bilbo’s breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful” (The Hobbit, Ch. 12). This is rather how I feel in approaching this magnificent…
The Missale Romanum is one of the principle means by which Holy Church gave two great gifts to the entire human race across the globe through centuries: art and saints.
Peter denied the Lord, James fled, and only John returned to be at the foot of the Cross. Let us not get puffed up about how tough we are in view of the Enemy of the soul’s relentless grinder.
How many times do we hear today from leftists and modernists, German theologians and Jesuits activists, that “that was maybe true back then, but this is now; that teaching was culturally conditioned and doesn’t apply to us anymore!”?
Without charity we are in darkness, and all our works are profitless.
...be it relief even through a miracle, or be it silence through a suspension of consolations...
Our salvation is not automatic. It must be won, as Paul says with his athletic images, through great effort and suffering when necessary supported by the grace of the Sacrament, especially Baptism and Eucharist, which must never be abused or approached unworthily.
For this 4th Sunday after Epiphany the Vetus Ordo gives us the ultra-dramatic Gospel scene of the Apostles with the Lord in a boat being swamped by the waves during a great storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Lord was asleep. That’s the Gospel for Sunday. But this year I’m writing about the first…
We are looking at the Epistle readings for the Vetus Ordo on Sundays. This week we continue what we prayed last week. I say, “what we prayed,” because the readings themselves are part of a sacrificial offering, the Word being raised to the Father, as the Word made flesh was raised on the Cross, as…
