Context is always important, as I am wont to say. For example, where are we in the liturgical year on this 20th Sunday after Pentecost? Historically, in an earlier reckoning before the concretization of seasons, this was the 5th Sunday after the feast of St. Cyprian. Bl. Ildefonso Schuster explains that Rome once reckoned Sundays…
In the words of the singer Peggy Lee… The window she is broken and the rain is comin’ in If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaking to my skin But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day Mañana,…
As summer yields to autumn in the lands where the Roman liturgical year took shape, the Church turns our attention toward harvest and reckoning. The shortening days give a certain urgency to the Epistle of the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Paul thanks God for the grace bestowed on the Corinthians, even as they await…
It was pride that brought down Satan and the other apostate angels. It was pride that brought down the human race in our First Parents. Pride turned angels into devils and Paradise into this vale of tears. St. Bernard of Clairvaux called pride “initium omnis peccati … the beginning of every sin” (De gradibus humilitatis…
We come now to the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, known in the older Roman reckoning as Quinta post Sancti Laurentii, the fifth Sunday after St. Lawrence. The Romans loved their deacon martyr, whose basilica stood beyond the walls along the Via Tiburtina. In the ancient arrangement, Sundays throughout the year had their station churches, not…
“So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit…. Thus you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:17, 20 RSV). Our Lord’s scriptural lantern illuminates the Epistle for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Galatians 5:16-24, where St. Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the…
For some weeks the Sunday Epistles have been taken from St. Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians. With the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, which our ancient Roman forebears would have called the 3rd Sunday after St. Lawrence, we begin to hear from Galatians. That older Roman way of counting itself says something about the immense place…
Deep in the green season after Pentecost, when the Church has passed through the great mysteries of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, the Roman liturgy turns our attention toward the harvesting of what has been planted. Pius Parsch observed that the 11th, 12th, and 13th Sundays after Pentecost form a kind of triad…
We have come to the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost in the Usus Antiquior, the Vetus Ordo. Pius Parsch (+1954) saw in the Sundays after Pentecost a progressive schooling in Christian life. The earlier Sundays dwell frequently upon healing, the middle portion upon the conflict between God’s reign and the dominion of sin, and the later…
Pius Parsch observed that the Sundays after Pentecost may be viewed in three movements. The first draws attention to Christ’s healings and, through them, to the salvation of souls. The second, from the Seventh through the Fourteenth Sunday, sets God’s kingdom against the world. The final group turns toward the Parousia. The Ninth Sunday belongs…
The Mass of the 8th Sunday after Pentecost sets before us the household of God and the household of this world, the inheritance promised to sons and the account demanded of stewards, the freedom of those led by the Spirit and the anxious calculations of those who live according to the flesh. The Collect, Epistle,…
