You know how I like to bang on and on about context. This Sunday, the 3rd after Easter in the traditional reckoning (the 4th of Easter in the Novus Ordo calendar), we shift to a new phase in the seven Sunday Season of Easter. The first Sundays looked back to Easter and its main themes…
“What a Sacred Heart picture means commonly today, that the Good Shepherd picture meant to the early Christians.” -Pius Parsch
“Happy Easter”, we still say 7-day week afterward because, liturgically speaking, it has still been Easter Sunday during this Octave. A liturgical Octave is an eight-day arc that vibrates in anticipation of the “eighth day” of eternal rest beyond the 7-day cycle of creation. We stop the liturgical clock so that we can rest in…
There is a strong tradition that the first thing which the Risen Christ did was appear to His Mother.
The journey we began even as early as the pre-Lent “Gesima” Sundays, has brought us to this last time of trial and transformation, the four days remaining in Passiontide and the last three, their own set, the Sacred Triduum. Some people will take the road of the least they can do, and perhaps attend Mass…
We lose things during Lent. We are being pruned through sacred liturgical worship. Holy Church experiences liturgical death before the feast of the Resurrection. Music and flowers go first on Ash Wednesday, along with the word Alleluia. Today, statues and images are draped in purple. That is why today is sometimes called Repus Sunday, from…
Our forebears felt keenly the proximity of the upcoming feast because they took penance far more seriously than we do today.
On this Sunday we move from defense against the Enemy to attack on the Enemy.
Jesus used with Peter the same language He used on the Devil at the end of the Temptations in the wilderness.
The Roman Station for this 1st Sunday of Lent is Rome’s Cathedral, the Basilic of St. John Lateran, referred to as the “Mother Church of the City and of the World”. It’s full title is the Papal Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the…
Our coming Sunday is already Septuagesima. Let’s do the technical stuff first. Septuagesima slides around from year to year because Easter slides around because the Moon is a bit of a calendrical coquette, or as Juliet calls her, “inconstant”. Easter is early this year, 31 March. We celebrate Easter in the Western Churches on the…
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