This Sunday, Christ’s final days began. This Sunday they begin again liturgically. Through our sacred liturgical worship and by our baptismal character these sacred mysteries are made present to us and we to them in their devout celebration. Now, again, our Lord comes to Jerusalem, mounted on the colt of a donkey. Context. For months…
From the pre-Lent, “Gesima” Sundays onward, Holy Mother Church began her plunge into liturgical death. At first we lost the “Alleluia”, the Gloria, and on Sundays we dressed in penitential violet to herald the proximity of Lent. With Lent, these privations applied every day, with the exception of our great feasts. Moreover, we became stiller…
I will guess that we have all heard the explanation of why this Sunday is called Laertare (“Rejoice”) and why we have rose (rosacea) vestments and that the Roman Station is at the Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. St. John Henry Newman wrote of this church: “This Basilica is so called, because Saint…
Welcome to the second part of Lent. As Pius Parsch puts it in The Church’s Year of Grace, in the first two weeks we put ourselves on guard against attacks by the Prince of this world, the Devil and fallen angels, with the weapon of mortifications. On this Sunday we move from defense against the…
If we try to put ourselves into the shoes of the ancient Roman catechumens, being prepared from the pre-Lent “Gesima” Sundays onward, we can perhaps grasp the psychological and pedagogical importance of having the Gospel reading about the Transfiguration on this 2nd Sunday of Lent. Much of the content of the Mass formularies and the…
With the “Gesima”, pre-Lent Sundays we added a layer of context to our contexts: Roman Station churches. Each day of Lent has, by millennial tradition, an assigned church in Rome. On weekdays, people gathered at a nearby “collect” church and then processed singing penitential litanies and hymns to the “stopping” church, or “statio” where the…
With Quinquagesima Sunday we are at the threshold of the season of Lent. Holy Mother Church has been preparing us for spiritual combat through these preparatory Sundays. When you follow the Vetus Ordo of the Roman Rite, Lent can never take you by surprise. As part of our arming for battle, this Sunday asks us…
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…
