The Church, as she leads us through Advent, does so with a pedagogy at once sober and exultant, marked by a rhythm that quickens as the great mysteries draw near. From the 1st Sunday, when the Lord is announced as still distant yet surely coming, the liturgy – Mass and Office – presses forward with…
The Church places before us on the 2nd Sunday of Advent a Gospel passage from Matthew 11:2-10 whose two movements mirror each other like the ends of a well bound book. The first concerns the identity of Christ as sought by the imprisoned Forerunner. The second concerns the identity of the Forerunner as confirmed by…
The paper cup must become more like the swimming pool if it is to receive what is poured out with divine liberality.
All good things come to their end, with the exception of God’s love and the eternal joy of Heaven. Thus, the Church, in her liturgical wisdom, allows the cycle of the year to come to its own solemn conclusion, so that we may be stirred up again to begin anew. As this series of reflections…
Let’s have some context. We are drawing toward the end of the liturgical year, when the Church’s gaze turns ever more intently to the consummation of all things, the Second Coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment. Pius Parsch, in The Church’s Year of Grace, sees in these autumn Sundays a…
The dedication of a church is therefore a liturgical wedding.
As the liturgical year draws to its close, the Church’s voice takes on autumnal gravity. The Sundays after Pentecost turn our eyes toward the final harvest, when the Lord will take all things to Himself. This Sunday’s Collect, Epistle, and Gospel form a single meditation on mercy and judgment, protection and peril, the divine household…
The royal families of Europe were falling one by one. Secularist atheistic materialism was on the rise. In the wake of the gory First World War, Pope Pius XI looked out over a world in chaos. Industrialization and imperialism, aggravated by political alliances, had ignited the hideous war with its trench warfare, modern artillery, and…
When this Sunday comes around, with its snappy Collect, I am minded of the early fourth-century martyr St. Expeditus. The Latin text of the Collect reads: Omnipotens et misericors Deus, universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude: ut mente et corpore pariter expediti, quae tua sunt, liberis mentibus exsequamur. Translated slavishly: Almighty and merciful God, having been…
As the northern hemisphere drifts from the fullness of summer into the crisp melancholy of autumn, Holy Church too moves into a season of spiritual harvest. In her ancient cycle of Sundays, formed in the lands where the light fades earlier each day, she begins to turn her gaze toward the final realities – the…
The 17th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo sets before us Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, a prison letter written probably from Rome, probably not far from where I sit in Rome writing this, in which he exhorts: Brethren, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of…
