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.
In virtue of this decree, each of these fifteen days was considered, as far as the courts of law were concerned, as a Sunday.
From the pre-Lent Sundays onward, Holy Mother Church has led us into a liturgical dying. First there was the silencing of the Alleluia and the Gloria. Violet appeared on Sundays as a herald of the coming fast. Then Lent itself deepened the deprivation day by day, save for the interruption of the greater feasts. Flowers…
Following Ratzinger, Gamber and Sarah themselves.
It is a fact of human nature that when our senses are incessantly struck by the same impression, we begin to dull. Noise that never ceases is no longer truly heard. Color without contrast becomes flat. Images, especially wicked images, can first disturb and then stupefy. For this reason deprivation has a place in a…
