Advent Reflections on the Four Last Things: Judgment
You who burn with righteous indignation at the sins of the Holy Father, do you burn with charity also to forgive him?
6th Sunday Remaining after Epiphany: When You love, You Want More
This penultimate Sunday of the Liturgical Year brings us a pericope from Paul’s 1st Letter to the Thessalonians 1:2-10. Paul’s Letter could be one of his earliest, along with Galatians. Some scholars think it could be the earliest section of the New Testament. Thessalonica is in modern Greece. Paul visited there and converted both pagans…
Advent Reflections on the Four Last Things: Death
The World Fears Death, but Catholics Must Remember It
24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost: invitations to jubilations
All good things come to their end other than the joy of Heaven. Just so, this series ends with a dive into the Epistle reading for the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost, the final Sunday before the beginning of a new liturgical year with the 1st Sunday of Advent. Our reading is from the…
5th Sunday Remaining after Epiphany: A funny thing happened on the way to Advent
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, an odd thing happens in the Church’s traditional calendar for the Vetus Ordo. The Sundays left over after Epiphany are finally dusted off, “resumed,” and prayed until the liturgical year is concluded. This is because of the vagaries of the Moon and shifting date of Easter…
23rd Sunday after Pentecost: “Stand firm in the Lord, my beloved!”
We would have had a first selection from Philippians last week, the last Sunday of October, but the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost was superseded by the Feast of Christ the King in the Vetus calendar. Sunday’s reading from Philippians 3:17-21 and 4:1-3 is also used in the Vetus calendar on the Feast of St. Clement…
20th Sunday after Pentecost: Sober Inebriation
Context is always important. First, where are we in the liturgical year for this 20th Sunday after Pentecost Historically, this is the 5th Sunday after the Feast of St. Cyprian. Obviously, this is a telling of Sundays that existed before numbering them after Pentecost. The great liturgist, Bl. Ildefonso Schuster informs us that The computation…
19th Sunday after Pentecost: “Be angry but do not sin”
For the 19th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo we venture into a Lesson from the letter of St. Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians (4:23-28). [Brethren]: Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting…
18th Sunday after Pentecost: “Death, Rather than Sin!”
Our glimpse into the Epistle reading for Sunday’s Holy Mass in the Vetus Ordo of the Roman Rite continues for this coming 18th Sunday after Pentecost. Bl. Ildefonso Schuster, the great liturgist and once Cardinal Archbishop of Milan (+1954) informs us that our ancient Roman forbears identified this Sunday as the “third after the ‘birthday’…
17th Sunday after Pentecost: This is where the real darkness happens.
The Lesson or Epistle for Mass on the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Vetus Ordo is from Ephesians 4:1-6. [Brethren:] I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another…
16th Sunday after Pentecost: the breadth and length and height and depth
This week, for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo, we are in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 3:13-21. Paul penned this letter, along with that to the Colossians and to Philemon probably during his first imprisonment in Rome, around 62 AD. This 16th Sunday was once reckoned as the 1st after from…