Our context in the liturgical year for the 4th Sunday after Easter is our preparation for the Ascension of the Lord. We are now in the second phase of Paschaltide. The first stage looked back toward the empty tomb and drew us into the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Now the Mass formularies shift…
The 1962 Missal suppressed various feast days about miracles.
The 3rd Sunday after Easter in the Vetus Ordo draws us into that peculiar Christian experience of living between gift and fulfillment, between consolation remembered and consummation promised, between the joy of Easter already given and the greater joy that still presses toward Ascension and Pentecost. The whole formulary has a tensile quality. Expectancy. Movement.…
The 2nd Sunday after Easter in the traditional Roman Rite is called Good Shepherd Sunday. The nickname is well deserved. The Gospel presents Christ’s discourse in John 10, the Epistle from 1 Peter gathers into itself Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, and the Roman Station in ancient times was St. Peter’s on the Vatican Hill, at the…
We bring to completion the great Octave of Easter this Sunday, though “completion” here is to be understood in the Church’s own liturgical sense. For a full eight days, by that ancient inclusive counting which the Romans knew so well and Christians inherited, it has still been Easter Day. The Church has, as it were,…
Ever since we set out on this spiritual journey on the Gesima Sundays, step by step we have drawn nearer to Holy Week. Now we stand at the threshold of the remaining days of Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum, those three days which are at once the Church’s deepest descent and highest elevation. Weariness…
Above: Christus mit der heiligen Veronika auf dem Weg zum Kalvarienberg, possibly from the Danube school, c. 1520. From The Liturgical Year. The holy liturgy is rich in mystery during these days of the Church’s celebrating the anniversaries of so many wonderful events; but as the principal part of these mysteries is embodied in the…
Holy Week became the testing ground for a new liturgical methodology.
We need from time to time to take refuge in outposts of reality.
May our fast be acceptable to thee.
This time, Jesus does not hide himself.
