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…
There is a Latin adage: motus in fine velocior, sometimes expressed as in fine citius. Things go faster the closer they get to the end. This is an overarching context for our days. For this 3rd Sunday after Easter we begin once again in an orderly way and check on our contexts. In our liturgical…
This year the 1 May observance of the 2nd Sunday after Easter gives way in honor of St. Joseph, whom we venerate among his other many roles and titles as a patron of laborers and as the “Worker.” In contrast to what we see now in the Church, to create counterplay against the rise of…
This Sunday we complete the Octave of Easter. In the post-Conciliar calendar, it is creatively called the “Second Sunday of Easter” or, since John Paul II was greatly interested in the theme, “Divine Mercy Sunday”. However, historically we call the Easter Octave, “Low Sunday”, probably because it was celebrated with less pomp than Easter. It…
Happy Easter! My hopeful prayer is that you experience, in this Easter Season, true joy in a personal encounter with the Risen Lord. The Church’s firehose of imagery and traditions and sacred liturgy has been blasting fully at our little drinking cups. Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum can overwhelm as we reach the apex…
Ever since we set out on our spiritual journey on pre-Lent Septuagesima Sunday, step by step we have approached Holy Week. While a measure of weariness might distress us as we slog along the paths of penance and discipline, of self-denial and self-examination, our hearts rise because we draw nearer to the goal of victory…
