This week’s task is scary. The Gospel for this 8th Sunday after Pentecost presents probably the most difficult of the Lord’s parables to explicate. This week we hear the Parable of the Unjust Steward from Luke 16. Context: For the last few chapters of Luke we have been presented with Our Lord telling many parables.…
With this 7th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo Holy Church began a series of contrasts. She shows us the difference between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, between the divine and the mundane. Context is called for. The Gospel passage in Matthew 7 is at the end of the…
As I write, it is the anniversary of the imposition of Traditionis custodes, certainly the legacy document of the Francis pontificate. While it seems, ultimately, destined for dusty irrelevance, it is now a neuralgic sign of the times. Almost by way of a celebration of TC, bad news comes from Chicago for the faithful who…
The context of Sunday’s Gospel passage is one of the most powerful moments in the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord, in His Sermon, set up a series of contrasts between how thing were under the Law of Moses, with how things are now to be. Just before our “cutting… pericope,” He…
Entropy, in physics, describes the measure of disorder. In the entire universe there is a rise in disorder as, slowly but surely, energy dissipates. You know how this works in daily life. When your ice cube melts, heat, energy, goes into the ice, not cold into the air, even though if you put your hand…
It has been quite a liturgical ride over the last few weeks, with Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, coincidental Sacred Heart and Nativity of John the Baptist. Coming up in Rome, where I write this entry, will be Sts. Peter and Paul, which shuts everything down here for reasons that are obvious. On this…
The medieval period was an era of rich and accelerating reflection about the Eucharist. One of the benchmarks of this increasing devotion to the Eucharist was the establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christ by Urban IV in the last year of his life, 1264, especially for the Roman Curia and then its extension to…
Pentecost is perhaps the richest of all the liturgical Feasts of the Holy Roman Catholic Church… in the Vetus Ordo, at least. In the Church’s Vetus Ordo, like Easter, Pentecost has a Saturday Vigil with the blessing of baptismal water and an Octave, during which we sing the stunning Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the…
The overarching context for our Sunday after the Ascension of the Lord is this: What was not assumed, was not redeemed (St. Gregory of Nazianzus). At the Annunciation, our humanity, body and soul, was taken by God the Son into an unbreakable bond with His divinity. Therefore, when Christ died and went into the tomb,…
For this 5th Sunday after Easter we are still moving through John 16 and the Lord’s Last Supper Discourse as well as the Letter of James. Our Gospel readings are inexhaustible and there are always manifold treasures to unlock. At the same time and for the sake of brevity, we will entrust ourselves to the…
Our context for the 4th Sunday after Easter is, in the liturgical year, our preparation for the Ascension of the Lord. Sometimes the Feast of the Ascension Thursday is given short shrift, which is unfortunate. One could argue that transferring Ascension from Thursday to Sunday was intended to emphasize the feast by making it more…
