Is there a vice which God hates more than pride? It was pride that brought down Satan and the other apostate angels. It was pride that brought down the entire human race in our First Parents. Pride turned angels into devils, turned Paradise into this vale of tears. What does pride do to your interior…
We come now to the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, known in older Roman reckoning as Quinta post Sancti Laurentii, the fifth Sunday after St. Lawrence, so beloved by the Romans. In the ancient system, most Sundays of the year had station churches, not only the Sundays of Advent or the days of Lent. Blessed Ildefonso…
When Benedict XVI chose precisely the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross for the coming into force of Summorum Pontificum in 2007, he taught that the Cross is central to the Roman Rite.
The onset of Hansen’s Disease, known in antiquity under the broad rubric of “leprosy,” comes with patches of skin that change color, grow numb, and progress toward ulcerations, paralysis, even the absorption of extremities back into the body. Untreated, it may bring blindness, disfiguration, and social ruin. Though today we know that the cause is…
For this 12th Sunday after Pentecost the readings in the Vetus Ordo places before us, from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 3:4–9), a meditation on the surpassing glory of the New Covenant, and from Luke 10:23–37, the parable of the Good Samaritan, provoked by a nomikos who wished to test the Lord.…
Pius Parsch noted that the 11th, 12th, and 13th Sundays after Pentecost form a triad on sacramental grace: baptism, healing, and gratitude for purification. The context of summer, with its harvests, provides the natural analogy. Just as zucchini overflow gardens with comic abundance, so grace superabounds. The cycle of Sundays after Pentecost is like a…
We have come to the 10th Sunday after Pentecost in the Usus Antiquior, the Vetus Ordo. In this Sunday’s Epistle, Paul confronts the Corinthians with the issue of idolatry, reminding them that “when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols” (1 Cor 12:2). To serve idols is to turn from the living…
The treasury of Holy Church’s sacred worship truly overflows with inexhaustible wealth, as the 20th-century commentator Pius Parsch reflects in The Church’s Year of Grace, dividing the Sundays after Pentecost into three stages: first, those that highlight the Lord’s miraculous healings pointing ultimately to the salvation of souls; second, from the 7th to the 14th…
This 8th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo of the Roman Rite offers us a Gospel passage which is challenging to interpret: the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–9). The Epistle from Romans 8:12–17 unfolds the mystery of our divine adoption and the contrast between life according to the flesh and life according…
The texts for this 7th Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Missale Romanum, the Vetus Ordo, challenge us to examine the alignment between the profession of our faith and the actual fruit borne in our lives. “By their fruits you shall know them,” the Lord says in today’s Gospel (Matthew 7:15–21). This is a proffered…
The old man is not healed. He is executed.
