Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Once again we come to a feast of All Saints. “But wait!” I hear you cry, “wasn’t that back on the first of November?” Right you are! But today on the Benedictine calendar is the feast of All Saints of the Benedictine Order. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside […]
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Part 5 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. If I had to guess, I’d say that the part of the General Instruction that has been read by the fewest is Chapter II: The Structure of the Mass, Its Elements, and Its Parts. Why? Because when you read it, you quickly come to […]
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Can we talk about Gregorian chant? Because All Souls Day – coming up on November 2nd – has some doozies. I confess that I was a fan of chant long before I was a Catholic. In part, God used the beauty of this kind of music to draw me to Him. Specific chants are prescribed for each Mass in both […]
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Saint Luke is my kind of writer. Luke the historian and Luke the lyrical poet are both in evidence in his New Testament writings, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He freely admits that he never met Christ in the flesh, that he was not a witness to the events he describes in his Gospel. Like any good […]
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Part 4 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Now we begin at last to come to the crux of the issue as we move on to Chapter I of the General Instruction: The Importance and Dignity of the Celebration of the Eucharist, which begins to lay the foundations for addressing the rubrics […]
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Do you pray to your Guardian Angel? Do you ask them for advice or help? Why not? The Church teaches that we all receive a guardian angel at birth, an angel assigned to guide and protect us, to watch over us. As it says in scripture: There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy […]
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Part 3 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Testimony of an Unaltered Faith The Introduction of the General Instruction is at great pains to place itself, and the Missal that it prefaces, in continuity with the tradition of the Roman Rite. Despite what many modern liturgists seem to think, the Third Edition […]
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Part 2 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. What authority does the General Instruction enjoy in terms of the sacred liturgy? That is, for those celebrating the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite according to the Third Edition of the Roman Missal, is the General Instruction normative or advisory? Before we can […]
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Part 1 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. At the 2019 Sacred Liturgy Conference, the question was asked, how do you celebrate the Ordinary Form in a more sacred way? How do you infuse it with the mystery and majesty of the Tradition of the Roman Rite? Monsignor Richard Huneger famously answered, “follow the rubrics”. […]
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Today is celebrated in the western Church as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Exaltatio Sanctæ Crucis). In the eastern Church, it is known as “the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating Cross”. The feast commemorates a number of events: the finding of the True Cross in 326 in Jerusalem by Saint Helena, the later dedication […]
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So saith today’s saint, the incomparable Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407). He was, of course, himself a bishop. It seems that this pithy quote is a popularization of the full (attributed) quote, where the saint is talking about the relatively few in number who will be saved and the bad shepherds who are responsible: The road to Hell is paved […]
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Only a handful of Popes ever get named “Great”. Today in the Ordinary Roman calendar is the feast of one of them, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, confessor and doctor of the Church (540 – 604). Gregory had been born into an ancient and wealthy Roman family. Before he was 30 years old, he had been a Roman Senator and […]
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Today is the Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Of old, it was the proper Vigil of Saint Lawrence. Both of these great saints suffered martyrdom, Lawrence to the Roman Empire and Teresa Benedicta to Nazi Germany. The Vigil of Saint Lawrence is still celebrated in my monastic breviary, albeit in a very peculiar fashion. Rather than praying […]
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Bishop Peter J. Elliott is the author of two invaluable books for the celebration of the modern Roman Rite. They are basically the Fortescue of the Ordinary Form. His Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite and Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year, which in my parish we sometimes call the Red Book and the Green Book, are now to be joined […]
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Chanted from the version given in the Codex Calixtinus. Neither Ordinary nor Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, but rather from the Mozarabic Rite.
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Icon of Saint Benedict at Mount Athos For today’s Feast of Saint Benedict, I thought I’d share with you some of the short videos and documentaries I’ve found over the years that give an insight into the monastic life. Every monastery is different, of course, as you will see in these videos, but these monks have all responded to the […]
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This coming Sunday my parish will participate in an outdoor Procession of the Blessed Sacrament following the Noon Mass. This will be the seventh year we’ve taken Jesus through the streets of Tacoma and amongst His people. Our outgoing parish priest, Rev. Martin Bourke, will celebrate the Noon Mass of Corpus Christi in the school auditorium, and then he and […]
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