We move liturgically now into the epilogue of the Christmas Cycle, which began with Advent. These Sundays after Epiphany are counted as part of the tempus per annum… time through the year. As such they don’t have a specific character, but function as a transitional stage between the cycles of Christmas and Lent/Easter. There is…
In 1944 the singing group the Mills Brothers recorded You always hurt the one you love The one you shouldn’t hurt at all You always take the sweetest rose And crush it till the petals fall You always break the kindest heart With a hasty word you can’t recall So, if I broke your heart…
Merry Christmas to you all on this Octave of the Nativity of Our Lord. In her wisdom Holy Church knows that we need time to rest within the liturgical celebration of awesome mysteries of our salvation: the Lord’s Birth, His future Sacrifice, and the Divine Motherhood of Mary. We have this pause as the liturgical…
I have been tasked to help you prepare your full, conscious and active participation at Holy Masses on Sundays. This year I am giving primary attention to the first reading in the Vetus Ordo, usually from one of the Letters, or Epistles, in the New Testament. This Sunday presents a happy problem. This year, Christmas…
Some context for our 4th Sunday of Advent and for our Epistle reading are in order. The 4th Sunday of Advent originally did not have a Roman Station church because of the linkage between Ember Saturday and Sunday. Eventually, to bring the Sunday into harmony with other great Sundays it gained a Station at the…
In the movie Bridge of Spies, set in the depths of the Cold War, Tom Hanks’ character is a lawyer assigned to defend an accused and obviously guilty Russian spy. Meeting in prison for the first time, Hanks explains to the spy that everyone wants to send him to the electric chair. The Russian spy…
For this 2nd Sunday of Advent the Roman Station church is the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem where the wooden beams of the Cross and relics of the Passion brought to Rome by the Empress Helena were deposited and are venerated still today. Last week we were stationed at St. Mary Major where…
In 589 Deacon Aigulf trekked home to Tours with relics he had collected in Rome. St. Gregory of Tours relates in his Historia Francorum that Aigulf saw with his own eyes the disasters that struck Rome that year. The Tiber rose to such a flood that buildings were washed away, ancient temples destroyed, and the…
The onset of Hansen’s Disease comes with patches of skin that change color and become numb. If left untreated, it can result in paralysis, the reabsorption into the body of the extremities, ulcerations, blindness, disfiguration. It is not highly contagious, but it can spread through contact or breathing in airborne droplets from coughs. Most people…
Let’s have a peek at the Gospel for this 12th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo. Context. In Luke 10, the Lord has sent out the 72, two by two, with instruction about how to travel and behave. He pronounces a terrible destiny, worse than Sodom, for Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum which had…
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…
