We are now nine Sundays out from Easter. Once again, context helps. In the course of the Church’s liturgical year, we have great cycles, such as the one we just concluded, which stretched from Advent, through Christmas, Epiphany and, in important respects, ended with the Feast of the Purification or Presentation. Advent was the joyfully…
As it happens, I wrote about this very Sunday a couple of months ago, at the beginning of November. That’s because of when Easter fell last year. There were few Sundays between Epiphany and pre-Lent’s Septuagesima Sunday and empty slots to fill before Advent 2021 began. Hence, this Sunday’s and next Sunday’s (5th and 6th)…
As a reminder, the antiphons for Holy Mass for these last Sundays of Epiphanytide are the same. This shows us how, linked as they are, they are anchored in the Feast of Epiphany and they underscore the divinity of the Lord manifested through His miracles. The nature of the miracles themselves reveal that Christ is…
We enjoy this year a goodly stretch of verdant Epiphanytide. Some years it is very short indeed, depending on when Easter falls. This year we get through the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sundays after Epiphany, though not the 6th, which gives way to Septuagesima Sunday. Take note that the opening chant for Holy Mass in…
We made a firm move into Epiphanytide, the few weeks before pre-Lent’s Septuagesima Sunday. There is a strong magnetic attraction back to Epiphany on this 2nd Sunday after that great feast. Epiphany, really always on 6 January, was once endowed with its own Octave, regrettably abolished in 1955. The former Octave Day, always 13 January…
The calendar of feasts during this part of the liturgical year is very complicated because it has undergone a great deal of adjustment in a relatively short period of time. Popes moved things around over the last seven decades or so. Our Christmas cycle that began with Advent now continues with the Epiphanytide which embraces…
What are we doing here? The top of a new calendar year, and the Octave of the Nativity, invite some self-reflection for this column. This column is work: both work to write and work to read. Let’s start with that. The word “liturgy,” broken down into its Greek components (leitourgia), is about “work” (ergon) and…
These are busy days so let’s plunge right in. Here are a few fast points to enrich your participation at Holy Mass for Christmas and for the Sunday in the Christmas Octave, back to back this year, in the Vetus Ordo, the Traditional Roman Mass, the Mass of our forebears which gave shape to all…
Do you remember doing Venn diagrams in elementary school? Overlapping circles to demonstrate how different sets of things share common traits? Perhaps children today don’t do that sort of thing, except maybe to reinforce triggers and pressure them into thinking about how exclusionary and racist “other” people are. In any event, in our Gospel passage…
Consider where we have been so far in Advent. On the first Sunday of Advent, we heard in the texts of Holy Mass that the Lord was still distant, but that He was coming. Then the pace picked up. In the Second Sunday’s Gospel, Christ explained that John the Baptist’s followers should tell the great…
The Gospel for our 2nd Sunday of Advent according to the Vetus Ordo, the Roman Mass, has two sections which need to be addressed separately, though they are connected. Firstly, in Matthew 11 John the Baptist is in prison because he preached about Herod’s unlawful marriage. He learned of the wonders his cousin Jesus was…
