Colligite Fragmenta: 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
The fiery tongues of the Holy Ghost have fallen. The ancient Ember Days are behind us. We lingered in the mystery during the octave for the sake of the transformation of our lives in the Holy Spirit. The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, feels like the opening of a new liturgical season, Tempus per annum… Time…
Colligite Fragmenta: Trinity Sunday
“Si comprehendis, non est Deus… If you can grasp it, it’s not God.” — St. Augustine (s. 117.5) That stark declaration by the Doctor of Grace brings us, creeping like Moses, to the cleft in the rock through which we must peer longingly for the ultimate mystery. We believe in the Triune Godhead, and therefore…
Colligite Fragmenta: Pentecost Sunday
Of all the liturgical treasures of Holy Roman Catholic Church, perhaps the feast of Pentecost Sunday is the richest, at least in the pre-Conciliar Vetus Ordo. In the Church’s traditional Roman Rite, Pentecost, like Easter, has a Saturday Vigil which includes the blessing of baptismal water. This was and is also the time to baptize…
Spera in Deo: the Single Life Before Marriage
For Catholics in search of a spouse, bitterness and resentment slowly start to creep in.
Colligite Fragmenta: Sunday after Ascension Thursday
Our Sunday is ensconced in the novena days after the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord and the mighty day of Pentecost. Church’s liturgical calendar gives us … gave us, at least, until about 1970 an Octave for Pentecost was removed which allows us to contemplate the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s descent from…
Colligite Fragmenta: 5th Sunday after Easter
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. Liturgically, we are very close now to the Ascension of the Lord, on Thursday, when the High Priest, the Risen Savior, entered the heavenly temple where He continuously renews…
Colligite Fragmenta: 4th Sunday after Easter – Inauguration of Leo XIV’s Pontificate
I write this shortly before the 4th Sunday of Easter in the Vetus Ordo calendar, which is also the day when our new Pope will celebrate Mass (they call it a “Eucharistic Celebration”) for “the Beginning of the Pontificate of the Bishop of Rome Leo XIV” (18 May 2025). In the older traditional Missal there…
Pope Leo: We Need to “Recover the Sense of Mystery” in the Liturgy
"We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies"
Colligite Fragmenta: 3rd Sunday after Easter
From the onset, I am sure we all feel a sense of anticipation about the new pontificate of Leo XIV. There is anxiety in the waiting and there is joy at the fulfillment. This is a theme of today’s Gospel as well, for Christ uses the image of childbirth in speaking to His Apostles in…
We Need a Pope Who Will Address the Liturgical Question
The liturgical barbarization we have been immersed in for decades is a key to understanding the crisis of faith.