Our Mass formularies for pre-Lent and Lent go back to at least the time of St. Gregory the Great (+604), and certainly before. What was going on back in the day? Plague and famine had ravaged the population. The invading Lombards threatened Rome itself with sword and fire. Both for Septuagesima and this Sexagesima Sunday…
Pre-Lent is here. With the traditional calendar of the Roman Rite, in the Vetus Ordo, you cannot be surprised by Lent sneaking up on you. You have no excuse. Start thinking about your Lenten discipline now. There are three Pre-Lent Sundays, Septuagesima Sunday, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima, which in Latin respectively mean “Seventieth, Sixtieth, Fiftieth”. These…
Easter can fall at its latest on 25 April in the Gregorian Calendar codified by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. In this 2025th year of our salvation Easter is quite late, occurring on 20 April. This is because the first full Moon after the Vernal Equinox will be at 20:22 of 12 April EDT which…
The Feast we celebrate this Sunday is called the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On this day we definitively close out the Advent/Christmas cycle. It is forty days since Christmas. According to Mosaic Law, women who had given birth were required to offer a sacrifice for ritual purification. Of course, Our Lady was not…
Because of the vagaries of your planet’s Moon, toward the end of this liturgical year and before the beginning of the next Advent, we will not have Remaining Sundays after Epiphany to fill in the calendrical gaps. This year, we sail straight through the Sundays after Pentecost all the way to the 24th and Last…
Holy Church, knowing that we need more than one day to reflect manifestations of Christ’s divine nature, teased three miraculous events out into a chain of related holy days. This was not wholly obliterated in the post-Conciliar calendar, but it is greatly obscured by the juggling of Epiphany onto this or that Sunday, the ending…
On 6 January Epiphany, the Magi – at the octave, 13 January, the Lord’s Baptism – on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, the Wedding at Cana which in John 1 and 2 is the “octave” of the Baptism.
Keep in mind not only love for the Name but also the fear which is Its due.
In our Epistle reading for this Sunday in the Octave of Christmas we hear from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 4:1-7. There are two special points to underscore. Let’s see the reading: [Brethren] [T]he heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all…
A formulary was pieced together from the Masses of the Ember Days, which gave people who couldn’t attend on those days themselves an opportunity to have something of an Ember Day experience.
Whether we are Western Latin Catholics or Eastern Catholics we ought to be interested in what our forebears did in Rome for these Sundays of Advent. Our traditions run deep. We know better who we are by knowing who they were. On this 3rd Sunday of Advent the Roman Station is at St. Peter’s on…
