"Now the power, Now the vessel brimmed for pouring..."

In an eMail from Magnificat - I'm not sure that the artwork isn't the greatest benefit of the magazine.
No, that would be the reflections.
Though it might be the obscure saints on various themes. Oh, except it's probably....
(Sometime I feel as if I am advertising for Magnificat, but really, you should subscribe.)
Anyway, this reminded me of the heartbreaking statue of the Man of Sorrows at St John Cantius, the same kind of stillness and power.

"Now the power, Now the vessel brimmed for pouring; Now the body, Now the blood..."

(Hymn text, by the way, which has nothing, so far as I know, to do with Magnificat, by Jaroslav Vajda.)

"King of the Friday"

Our pastor, who is, as they say, FBI, is wont to recite a poem or two he learned as a child at close of Mass or during the homily.
Often he will proclaim it in Irish as well and English.
I look forward to hearing this at least once every Lent

King of the Friday

O King of the Friday
Whose limbs were stretched on the Cross,
O Lord, who did suffer
The bruises, the wounds, the loss,

     We stretch ourselves
     Beneath the shield of thy might,
     Some fruit from the tree of thy pass
     Fall on us this night...

Beautiful, hopeful thought, is it not? that some Fruit from that tree might fall upon us?

Gregory DiPippo to the Rescue!

Do Sundays "count"?
Which "Forty Days" are we talking about?
Well, New Liturgical Movement has most interesting information on this very question.

It is a universal custom of all historical Christian rites not to fast on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, even in Lent and Holy Week. The original Roman Lent of six weeks therefore comprised forty-two days, but only thirty-six days of fasting, which St Gregory the Great describes as “the tithe of the year.” (Hom. XVI in Evang.) The Roman Missal preserves a reminder of this in the Secret for the Mass of the first Sunday of Lent, which speaks of the “sacrifice of the beginning of Lent.”

Not long afterwards, however, perhaps by [Pope Saint?] Gregory himself, the four days preceding the first Sunday were added to the fast to bring the number of days to exactly forty, the length of the fast kept by the Lord Himself, as well as by the prophets Moses and Elijah. This extension of Lent back to Ash Wednesday, once commonly known as “in capite jejunii – at the beginning of the fast”, is a proper custom of the Roman Rite, attested in the earliest Roman liturgical books of the century after St Gregory. 

And when a commentator reminds Mr DiPippo that Christ gave Himself no such break in the desert, he replies,

He had not yet risen from the dead, so there was as yet no need to observe Sunday. The sermon of Pope St Gregory the Great quoted above, in which he discounts the Sundays from the number of fast days, is from the end of the 6th century, but St Gregory was not much of an innovator, so we may safely assume that the idea was not a new one in his time.

Lent Is Upon Us.... or Almost Upon Us... Which 40 Days Are We Talking about, Exactly?

I haven't decided yet if I will give myself Sundays off - I don't usually, but I am more than usually annoyed with the Holy Types who sneer at those who do allow themselves a respite from what is VOLUNTARY PENANCE - you know, if someone is fulfilling his Sunday obligation, the daily communicant should not hold him in contempt?
When it was explained to a woman I know once that the rubrics no longer called for a double genuflection during Exposition she shot back to the person who had so informed her, "FINE.... SPARE your precious knees!"
(Of course, she also thought Heaven was going to be like my high school, with some tables in the cafeteria the property of the Kewl Kids, among which she hoped, by dint of her holierness, to be numbered. As if there were a perfecter version of perfect joy, and beatificer Beatific Vision.)
Anyway, I have a plan.
But alas, the "Three Pillars" are tilting... what do pillars hold up, a roof?... the "roof" of my Lenten practice.
Fasting? subjecting my privileged self to some sort of deprivation? check.
Prayer? something more than usual, something extra? check.
Well, planned at least.
Almsgiving?
Aye, there's the rub.
I'll figure it out.
I actually kind of love Lent. It gave me a little thrill to walk into church this morning and see the violet Tabernacle veil, and Father chanted the entire psalm. And after four years, (and with Himself in the congregation, a "ringer," with a VOICE,) the  early morning crowd finally sang the Gospel acclamation, et to attende domine, with gusto.
Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting
this campaign of Christian service,
so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils,
we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.
Isn't that a call to arms?

True Christians have cheerful faces and joy in their eyes…

"To Drive the Cold Winter Away....."

By which I mean, to feel cozy at the prospect of the mercury dipping below 70°.

But even so, sipping mulled wine and gazing happily at our Don't-You-Dare-Take-It-Down-Before-February-2 Tree feels like Yules of Yore, (meaning, not of my Youth, but of Years Yet... oh, shut up.)

But I do like spiced wine and I do like the glittering bead garlands of the tree and I do like the over-populated creche scene, (a heathen in-law looked at it and said, wow, that supposed to be Jerusalem or the east Village, or what...? Magnanimous at this festive time, I forgive him and pity him his ignorance.)

Not much time left to savor the victual delights of the season.
One last bit of "fancy" cheese - is there much tastier than Sartori's Bellavitano? I should like to know about it if there is!
Thank God for Aldi, it's the only way I'd ever have such a treat in my house, (we were almost banned from Whole Foods after Himself consumed pretty much the entire contents of a "dome" of samples once. I was made very aware of the... frugality? of my holiday larder by the aforementioned in-law. The prospect of Himself losing insurance coverage will no doubt preclude us ever again entertaining the guy in a manner he finds acceptable - if that isn't the very definition of Silver Linings I don't know what is!)

My Mother... she may have been the only person I know who also enjoyed mulled wine. And she liked cheeses as much as I. Her last Christmas is a memory that will continue to haunt and delight me.
"Lo, how a..."

I don't care what the US liturgical calendar says....

...a Blessed Epiphany!
(And I feast on this Friday...black forest ham, Mancahgocidre, fruitcake and eclairs)

St Kateri

First time out my door since Sunday, fitting that it was for the feast day of the "Lily of the Mohawks."

Here's the thing - I thought it wryly funny, and appropriate, the day in honor of a saint with scarred, and probably, let's be honest, ugly skin.
I happily implore her intercession and accept her patronage. My skin is ugly, and so the face under it is often as well, and I accept that. It's also painful, I'm not as accepting of that.

But what had somehow escaped me was that it was not just her appearance damaged by the smallpox, but her eyesight.

All my worst flare-ups until now had hurt, yeah, and had looked appalling, but this last episode had left my vision, albeit only temporarily, affected.
I didn't, couldn't help at all with the driving, (on the way south after the glorious, glorious CMAA Colloquium.)
I wore my sunglasses all through Mass on Sunday, and have pretty much stayed in dim rooms since.

I've always been very grateful for my eyesight, which was not just good but, once upon a time, exceptional.
I have noticed I don't have as much leeway with distance vis a vis music rack,as opposed to hand-held, as opposed to hand-held in a dense choral crowd, (Brower's choir at the Cathedral, f'rinstance.)
But that's a normal part of aging.
Presbyopia, no?
But now I wondering if something more specific and serious is in play.
S. Kateri, ora pro me

"Do not be afraid, I will not harm you. I come from heaven."

Today is the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima, the 99th anniversary of the first apparition.
(Those are comforting words, but we should all remember that Friar Alberto in the Decameron says something similar.)
At any rate, though I've never been one for apparitions and personal revelations, I believe I should hurry along and make more of an effort to be in time for the pre-Mass Rosary.

“Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith and must, therefore, have their focus in the core of Christ's proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the Gospel” (The Message of Fatima, CDF, June 26, 2000)

(In the old calendar 'twas the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, apologist, Cardinal, tireless enemy of schism and heresy, and perhaps most important for today, culture warrior - St Robert Bellarmine, pray for us!)

Of Waffles and Coincidence and the Hand of God

So.
Been looking for a pizzelle iron, for cheap, (because while I enjoy eating them, I may find I don't particularly like making them, and if I bought one retail, even on sale, there would be thirty-some bucks wasted, and I couldn't bear throwing it out, so it would take up space in my kitchen  WHICH  IS  AT  A  PREMIUM  for ever and ever and ever.)

Monday I had some items for the St Vincent De Paul Food Bank, and after I dropped them off, I dropped myself in to the thrift store, (it's a good time of year for NWT clothes, household goods, etc., as snowbirds decide impulse purchases are not worth packing up and transporting.)

There was a perfect, tiny electric waffle iron, which I thought might just do, for $5.

So, looking up recipes, today, what do I learn?

The Annunciation, or "Lady Day, to the Swedes, ("Vårfrudagen,") which was, because March 25 fell in Holy Week, unwontedly celebrated on April 4, this past Monday, is also, jokingly, "Waffle Day," ("Våffeldagen.")

Clearly, the Blessed Mother wants me to have waffle cookies.

Of course, she would! She loves us all and wants us to be happy!

Holy Week Film Festival

Himself is an old movie junkie, so I have no doubt that this evening or tomorrow he will begin his annual Viewing of the Passions.
I used to avoid tv this week, but now that I no longer have musical/liturgical duties I do have plenty of time, and I don't think watching certain films is an at all inappropriate way to turn ones thoughts on what our Lord has done for us, so when the DVDs come out, (yes, we're that old,) I'll probably join him for some.

There was an excellent television movie that's always in the rotation.  The crucifixion is harrowing, there are first-rate, A-lister performances, and I require about 3/4 of a large box of Puffs to be able to see anything by the end.

I can only watch parts of the Mel Gibson film, but the very end, where Christ stands, alive and naked and strides forth from the tomb into the world Made New Again? and the sunlight streams through the hole in his hand?

Epic. (And That is what that word means. It doesn't describe a kegger. Or a golf tournament. Or a new nail color.)
(That reminds me, last week EWTN showed a fascinating and very moving film about St Edith Stein, starring the thrilling actress who portrays the Blessed Mother in the PotC. Look for it.)

But a film popped into my head after Mass this morning, which, if you haven't, you should see, and Holy Week is a pretty fine time to do so.
We have a lovely mosaic of the infant Jesus behind the altar, and I suddenly remembered a scene in Robert Duvall's masterful The Apostle.

He plays a pentecostal preacher on the lam, and the story of sin, redemption, and amendment is eloquently told.
What is so good affecting about it is that while it is a satisfying plot, with a premise, action, narrative and conclusion, yes, an actual ending - it also is is about those processes of sin, redemption, and amendment in a post-lapsarian world, and the atonement is on-going.
It doesn't seem to say, once saved, always saved, at least to me.
Salvation, once found, can be lost.
Our conversion, our turning toward the Lord must be continuing - which is a very un-Protestant notion, no?

There is a magnificent scene where Duvall is preaching, and he picks up a baby from the congregation, and marvels with his congregation how beautiful the infant is, how perfect, look at his perfect little hands! How his parents must love him!
Can you imagine hurting such a lovely thing? Who would allow that?

How can we wrap our minds around a father, THE Father, Who loves us so much He would allow a nail to be driven into the palm of his Beloved, His Only-Begotten, His One-In-Being-With-Him Son?

We hardly can.

Gettin' It Out Of My System, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia....

....Alleluia.
My Sunday School Kids buried it on Sunday.

I discovered some of them, (naturally, the ones who made the most mockery of the various square-note "alleluias" we looked at,) can really sing.
Hmmm... Stabat Mater?

Now, I just need a paczki, (which I won't actually have, don't know where to find them,) and one last cheeseburger before the Great Fast.

I'm not sure I could give up cheese... should I try? I see a period of discernment in my future....

Holy Week Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

People seem quite broken up, for reasons noble and otherwise, about the official sanctioning of an illicit act that has been practiced in deliberate and, frankly, insolent disobedience, to whit -
Adding feminae selectae to the mix for the Holy Thursday foot-washing.

No doubt this will contribute to the local economy in some places as the demand for a quick pedi touch-up rises.

I think it can be a bit indelicate, (especially in consideration of the lack of sense, not to say decorum or modesty, too many exhibit in determining their outfits for Church,)  to have a priest kneeling with his face level with... well.

(And I think rewarding the flouting of liturgical law is bone stupid.)

Anyway, let the reminder go out, WEAR TROUSERS, LADIES!

That isn't the change that bothers me, I am alarmed and upset at the prospect of the day of Easter being fixed - oh, not that we and our Orthodox brothers and sisters, (and even the Anglicans, at least what's left of them in 5 to 10 years,) would finally get on the same page, (of the calendar,) but that it should be fixed, without regard to the lunar calendar, on the Xth Sunday of the month of Whosis every year.

 

It is, and should remain the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

The full moon in Holy Week, allowing for pilgrims to travel at night, and for greater visibility in Liturgies and devotions taking place out of doors after sundown is a lovely reminder of the way, even in a post-agrarian society, we are connected to nature, to the earth and the moon and the sun and the stars.

And we should be connected, in a far more profound way than we are connected to the fiscal calendar, or the school year, or when the rates go down for spring break travel.

Don't do it Fathers!
I'm not the only one., by the way, who feels strongly about this.

I Don't Care What the Calendar Says...

... not the one over my desk, not the one in the sacristy.
TOMORROW, (not this past Sunday,) is Epiphany.

And even that is not the end of the season! Yet there were the Magi and the sheep all lying in boxes at church, the trees, gone, the garland in a pile in the cloister to be mulched, the strings of  lights wound 'round their holders.

Look, even by the current liturgical calendar, the Christmas season does not end till the Baptism of the Lord.

I don't give a fig, I am celebrating until the Presentation. ( Not a fig, but I'd give a date or a blueberry -- there is a fruitcake macerating even now as we speak, been soaking up the brandy for nearly two months! and tomorrow we shall indulge...)

"St Michael the Archangel, defend us in batt---"

"That's okay, Mike, I got this."

On this Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God I like to imagine such a response to our prayers taking place.

"Meek and mild"?
I don't think so.
Amy Chua, you don't know what a real "Battle Hymn" is.
Gaea's our mother?  Bzzzzzzz, nope, but thanks for playing.

If the earth were our mother, our home would the grave.

(Props to the late, great Cardinal George.)

It's not.
Mary is.
Turn to your Blessed Mother.

I like the Litany of Loreto, which we often do before morning Mass, but I think I wish there were a litany that was... I dunno, a little more fierce?

(I have some of the convert's zeal perhaps, overcompensating for coming so late to my devotion.)

Holy Innocents, Pray For Us!

 From a Christmas homily given by a future Doctor of the Church, Josheph Ratzinger.

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.

I think the Church in the US has erred in making the anniversary of a terrible and dreadful court case the "big day" to make her pro-life stance noted.
The right day was already in the calendar.
You, abortionists, and your useful idiots,

...are threatened by the source of grace, so small, yet so great, who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil. He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.

  The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself. See the kind of kingdom that is his, coming as he did in order to be this kind of king. See how the deliverer is already working deliverance, the saviour already working salvation. 

 

“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the product of conception you have there. And how does this happen to me, that the person who may in the future be the mother of my Lord, but is not currently a mother of anything but merely the vessel for a blob of cells, should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the fetus in my womb, admittedly somewhat bigger than the embryo in yours, but still not a person, only a potential person, not a life or anything, leaped for joy!"

.... said Elizabeth never.

Plugging Away at This Churchy, Faithy Thing

I hope I do no wrong when I tell my Sunday School kids that Advent is kinda like the Church's time to be Old Testament people, to know what it was like for the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, B.(efore) C.(hrist)- waiting, longing, hoping, thirsting, begging for Him who was foretold to get here already!

I do enough complaining about it that I also need to praise, sometimes the lectionary, the choices made by its fabricators are incredibly powerful and perfect.

How many times have I read this, how many times have I PROCLAIMED the readings for this Sunday, and how have I never noticed this before?

He shall take His place as shepherd

by the strength of the Lord,

by the majestic name of the Lord, His God;

And they shall dwell securely, for now His greatness

shall reach to the ends of the earth:

He shall be peace.

Not, He will bring peace, or there will be peace in His time -- He will BE peace.

Peace Incarnate.
As He is Love incarnate, Mercy incarnate, and yes, Justice incarnate... PEACE INCARNATE.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus

The Rites of Winter

Why didn't Stravinsky or Orff write something for us?

Old people.
Shouldn't we have something vigorous and sensual and beautiful?
I digress.
Christmas approacheth, and being firmly in the lazy camp, I am happy to decry the glossing over of Advent in favor of the Buying Season. CHRISTMAS LASTS 40 DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS DAY.

But...

.. and it's a big "but"...
... some things simply must be done ahead of time if they are to be done at all..

Thus, the Rites of (Late Autumn, but let's call if) Winter!
I shall be on the road when I should be pouring brandy and rum and deliciousness over a fruitcake, so I have baked one today and doused it with the only rich alcohol to hand, (except a birthday single malt scotch of Himself's, which tastes and smells like fabric softener to me and does not enter into the equation,) cream sherry.

I am very eager to see how it turns out.

You know, I always feel sorry for people who hate fruitcake - they never tasted my Mother's.
Her Christmas baking, and trying to reflect in some small measure, the same, - after Mass and Family, it is IT for me.

Coquamo, ergo sum (christiana.) 

I realized I need to make it tonight if it was to be done, so I used what was to hand - dried blueberries feature prominently, as do almonds, pecans would have been my choice, if I had more of them, and dang it!!!! no raisins!
Bu my Mother actually hated raisins, even golden ones, (my fave,) so it's more fitting that I used only dates.
And she hated coffee, but I use a bit of strong brew in the recipe I've settled on after a few years, so that can be a little tribute to my Father, who enjoyed a cup of joe.
And now that I think of it, he was a near-teetotaller, and twice a year, anniversary and New Year's Eve, sipped a half a glass of sherry, so there you are.

Lord Jesus, we approach Your coming as man -- Christmass, quickly come!

In the World Yet Not Of the World

 Really thoughtful piece in First Things, by Robert Louis Wilken, regarding the "Church As Culture."

 Christ entered history as a community, a society, not simply as a message, and the form taken by the community’s life is Christ within society. The Church is a culture in its own right. Christ does not simply infiltrate a culture; Christ creates culture by forming another city, another sovereignty with its own social and political life.

Go read it.
One of the aspects of culture that he discusses is the ordering of time.
In Sunday school we've been talking about the whys of the Liturgy, of the liturgical calender, of the Ordo Missae, (though they inevitably think and speak of it as, "the missalette." Which reminds me, I said I'd post those lyrics.)

Nine and ten year olds have no trouble at all acknowledging the advantage of us all, "being on the same page."

Children are naturally liturgical beings and are naturally catholic.

They see the value of sharing a ritual, having a common focus of attention with persons of other places and of other times.

For all the fretting about the synod, which I admit to sharing with other right-minded Catholics, besides our surety that the gates of hell shall not, etc., I am encouraged at the constant reminders that the Truth is accessible not just to the great souls and deep thinkers among us but to any child with ears to hear and eyes to see a soul to perceive, and having perceived, love.
Or any middle-aged layabout as well, of course.
Aquinas can give me a headache, and I may become catatonic in the presence of one too many Greek theological terms, and my mind may wander when I think I'm engaged in spiritual reading, but whatever it is that is needed, I know that the Lord has created me, like every other human being ever conceived, enough of it to know Him and to love Him and to serve Him and ultimately be with Him.

I digress -- where I was really going with that was, whatever mess Catholic adults make make of things, however rough the sailing as we stupidly rush en masse to the starboard or the port railing, there are new little people all the time and the Barq will be righted.

And another aside, I know very little of this St. Isidore, and this intrigues me, (I spend a great deal of my time with a person whose use of language is imprecise to the point of random, said person's extreme tenderness of ego dates from damage in youth; I am never wholly successful in explaining that I am NOT correcting grammar or disagreeing with an expressed opinion, merely trying to ascertain what is being said - sorry, is that a yes or a no? do you mean done to them or by them? because of that or in spite of that? that sort of thing. But I digress from my digression.)

Isidore recognized that grammar, “the science of expressing oneself correctly,” is crucial not only for reading, writing, and speaking, but also for thinking and understanding. Grammar is knowledge of the way language works and of the rules that govern the relation of words and concepts. Without grammar there can be no transmission of the text of the Scriptures and no understanding of its content; hence, no grammar, no Christian culture.

Catholic Curmudgeon says....

A Catholic curmudgeon, (that would be me, incidentally, not the blogger of that name, or your favorite Christian crank.. not the "a" rather than "the," I make no claims to primacy in my persnickety prattle,)...

Where was I?

Oh, yes.
I was perusing my personal liturgical calendar, you know, birthdays of friends, memorials of favorite saints, anniversaries of family divorces, remembrances of outstanding moments of Himself and my own mythos, (which he counts almost as important as the release schedule of Star Trek movies.)

Most especially, this time of year the local public school calendar needs coordinating with Sunday school lessons, and Church holy days, (and/or excuses for snacks.)

And I know this all came about like, a month ago, and the ship has sailed.

BUT......

In my role of self-centered fault finder, I've decided that a Church that does not have room in its busy, busy life to celebrate the Real Presence, or some other day of note apart from a weekend when "ya hafta go to Church anyway," which obligation some 3/4 of us ignore, ON any given weekend to which we have shunted a Holy Day lest that obliviousness with which we shall observe it on said weekend  interfere with our workaday weekdays, did we not transfer it from its Thursday or whatever. 'Cause, you know, obliviousness takes up a lot of our energies.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.
I've decided that if we don't really have time or energy for Corpus Christi or the Ascension, we don't really have time or energy for a new holy day recognizing the cult of St Erda, or Blessed Gaia, or the Sacrament of Ecology.(And I say that as a crazed recycler/re-user/repurposer, who thinks federal taxes on gasoline ought to be raised hard as that might be on me personally, with a fairly eensie carbon footprint.)

Oh, and I feel the same way about "Catechetical Sunday."

I think a Eucharistic procession with Exposition and Adoration would afford the Church more "catechesis" than all the classes taught by all the teachers in all the religious ed programs, and all the sermons preached by all the priests in all the parishes in the US put together.

And I am unanimous in this.