Daily Masses - memorial day of the first Roman martyrs

Mass was offered today for the repose of the soul of Patrick Casey (+), may he rest in the embrace of Christ; and secondarily for his family and friends, all those who mourn his departure. Today has been a catch-all memorial for the many Roman Christians who perished for our holy religion as a result of the persecutions of the emperor Nero, which also took away the Holy Father Saint Peter and the Apostle Saint Paul in the first century. The ghastly Nero seems to have needed much of Rome destroyed for his own personal reasons, so he had it burned and blamed the hated Christians for it, whereupon he visited great destruction upon the Church. His use of burning Christians as street-lighting is legendary.

I'm going to bore you with another clip from the move Paul Apostle of Christ, which demonstrates the desperation of the Christians as their hiding places grew smaller in number and they began to get desperate. Some of them want to retaliate, but Saint Luke (played by James Caviezel) puts his foot down. 'Love!' he thunders, 'Love is the only way!'

Daily Masses - feast day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

It is a great joy to commemorate the original Rock on which the Church was built, long ago, and alongside him the wandering Apostle to the Gentiles, who built the Church far beyond its original provinces in Judaea and Syria. Mass was offered yesterday morning for the repose of the souls of Kevin, Colm and Brian Litting (++), may they rest beyond this world in the eternal embrace of Christ. Mass was offered this morning for the Holy Souls, continuing the novena sequence of Masses from last week; today was the seventh. 

I don't have to describe either Peter or Paul. Peter we remember for his impulsiveness, and his utter dedication to Christ and the Church, being carried off finally where he would rather not go (Gospel of S. John, 21: 18). Paul we remember for his beautiful letters, written to encourage the infant churches he had established and had to leave behind (such as the letters to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, etc.) and to encourage the priest-bishops he had consecrated to oversee some of these churches (such as Timothy of Ephesos, and Titus of Crete). He too was an utterly dedicated soul, who gave his life for the Church. One of the most powerful passages from his letters is used often to characterise all the Apostles of that age, who built churches in various places. It explains why we call our priests and bishops 'father,' to the confusion of certain other Christian communities. Here it is, and I should like to give Paul the last word, as usual:

"As it is, it seems as if God had destined us, His apostles, to be in the lowest place of all, like men under sentence of death; such a spectacle do we present to the whole creation, men and angels alike. We are fools for Christ’s sake, you are so wise; we are so helpless, you so stout of heart; you are held in honour, while we are despised. Still, as I write, we go hungry and thirsty and naked; we are mishandled, we have no home to settle in, we are hard put to it, working with our own hands. Men revile us, and we answer with a blessing, persecute us, and we make the best of it, speak ill of us, and we fall to entreaty. We are still the world’s refuse; everybody thinks himself well rid of us. I am not writing this to shame you; you are my dearly loved children, and I would bring you to a better mind. Yes, you may have ten thousand schoolmasters in Christ, but not more than one father; it was I that begot you in Jesus Christ, when I preached the gospel to you. Follow my example, then, I entreat you, as I follow Christ’s." - I Corinthians 4: 9-16

S. Peter and S. Paul, holding the instruments of their martyrdom 

Just finished the diary of Sr. Faustyna Kowalska...

...and I have a greater appreciation for her. I found the whole, lumbering thing to be a most touching revelation of her intimate relationship of love with Christ, which she would not have ever revealed except out of respect for her spiritual director, Father Michael Sopocko. It is interesting to discover the great affection for her that Christ showed when He called her the Secretary of His divine Mercy. She was asked by Him to put the experiences of those last four years down in writing for the benefit of the rest of us. The contents seem to be repetitive, because the themes of redemptive suffering, utter humility before God and trust in the Goodness of God recur several times, amid descriptions of life in the Mercy convents between which Sister moved.

Reading this six-book diary requires some application, and I consider it a spark of genius on the part of Sister's spiritual director, the Blessed Father Sopocko, to have her underline the precise words of Christ in the diary; this does have the effect of drawing the reader through what is, in the end, a 700-page dialogue between Christ and Sister Faustyna. The original, underlined words are reproduced in bold text in the standard versions of the diary. Sister's spiritual formation is mostly Jesuit, for that Order provided the Sisters with pastoral care, at least in those days, and there is much reference to Saint Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. It is rather difficult, but I think this is a good meditative read for all Catholics, and it needn't be read from cover to cover, as I have done. It is all quite solid and the picture of Christ that emerges is not the kindly, doe-eyed one of recent decades, but the fiery One of the Gospels. 

Here is one of the last communications from Christ, towards the end of the diary. It is a nice summary of what divine Mercy is: 

"I am Thrice Holy, and I detest the smallest sin. I cannot love a soul which is stained with sin; but when it repents, there is no limit to My generosity towards it. My mercy embraces and justifies it. With My mercy, I pursue sinners along all their paths, and My Heart rejoices when they return to Me. I forget the bitterness with which they fed My Heart and rejoice at their return. 

"Tell sinners that no one shall escape My Hand; if they run away from My merciful Heart, they will fall into My just Hands. Tell sinners that I am always waiting for them, that I listen intently to the beating of their heart... when will it beat for Me? ...I am speaking to them through their remorse of conscience, through their failures and sufferings, through thunderstorms, through the voice of the Church. And if they bring all My graces to naught, I begin to be angry with them, leaving them alone and giving them what they want." 

- Divine Mercy in my soul, #1728 in the standard text

God doesn't send people to hell. They choose it, through the way they live their lives. What He wants to see is contrition of heart and a firm desire to sin no more and His generosity abounds. This is nothing new; it's the theme of the Old Testament and the New, and it is sung by the Saints. But it's always nice to be reminded. Saint Maria Faustyna, do continue to pray for us.

Daily Masses: ferial days coming up to the great festival of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

The last few days have all had for Mass intentions the repose of the Holy Souls, in the novena sequence that will end next week and hopefully will have rescued some souls from their sentence in purgatory. The traditional feast day of the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul (who are assumed to have met their end on the same day, although in different locations outside Rome) has been moved liturgically by the bishops from Monday the 29th to tomorrow (Sunday), so we shall have a nice, smoke-filled Mass tomorrow at about 11.00, with lots of singing. 

The great excitement this last week has been about the permission given by the government for houses of prayer to be opened to conducted services from early July. I have however maintained that, since we are so very near to the great parish church of Saint Mary in Derby City (which is already open for private prayer two hours daily), we shall take a position of waiting and learning, while simultaneously preparing all the requirements for opening ourselves later on. There doesn't seem to be much sense in rushing at the moment, until we are able to form an idea of how Mass will look with a very small number of people, how that type of attendance can be managed, and how many people will indeed turn up (either for prayer or Mass) while everybody is being so very prudent in their desire to gather in large numbers. It would be necessary for us to safely open the church for private prayer first before we are permitted to have public Masses.

Meanwhile, let's continue with many rosaries and many prayers. May this entire situation be quickly remedied and the church buildings returned to regular use. I'm hoping that we should open at first on weekends, and that I should at some point soon be able to visit homes once more. 

Saint John Fisher's last words and his last prayer for his king and country...

"Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my courage hath served me well thereto, so that yet hitherto I have not feared death; wherefore I desire you help me and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of my death's stroke, and in the very moment of my death, I then faint not in any point of the Catholic Faith for fear; and I pray God save the king and the realm, and hold His holy hand over it, and send the king a good counsel."

Source: http://supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2020/06/this-morning-saints-richard-reynolds.html

Daily Mass - high Solemnity of the holy Forerunner, Saint John the Baptist

Mass today was offered once more for the Holy Souls, the third Mass in our novena of Masses that ends in the middle of next week. I needn't mention the great birthday today. But it would be nice to see the conclusion of the story of the birth of Saint John. Yesterday's part ended in Zechariah almost making fun of the angel's announcement to him about it, because he and his wife were both old, she well beyond the age of child-bearing. He at once lost his speech, the angel saying sternly that he would recover it when the child arrived. Fast-forward now to the great day:

"Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s time had come for her child-bearing, and she bore a son. Her neighbours and her kinsfolk, hearing how wonderfully God had shewed his mercy to her, came to rejoice with her; and now, when they assembled on the eighth day for the circumcision of the child, they were for calling him Zachary, because it was his father’s name; but his mother answered, 'No, he is to be called John.' And they said, 'There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name,' and began asking his father by signs, what name he would have him called by. So he asked for a tablet, and wrote on it the words, 'His name is John;' and they were all astonished. Then, of a sudden, his lips and his tongue were unloosed, and he broke into speech, giving praise to God;" - Gospel of S. Luke, 1: 57-64

Interestingly, Elisabeth's giving birth to a son was seen by her Jewish society as God having shown her mercy. It's nice to hear that, so alien to our present culture. According to ancient Hebrew custom, the child is taken up for circumcision and naming and they try to name him Zachary, after his father. But Elisabeth insists on the name given by the angel (the Greek-Hebrew name Yohanna has the meaning 'Adonai is gracious'), and the Church has always understood that she knew this name by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rather than by some note from her husband, who remained dumb of speech. This is borne out by the astonishment of the people at his having thus agreed with his wife's desire; he must have lost more than the power of speech. And then the whole thing is crowned by the miracle announced by the angel, for his speech returns at once and we get the magnificent canticle of the Church: the Benedictus. Here it is, sung:

The English is below:

"Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; 

He has visited His people, and wrought their redemption. 

He has raised up a Sceptre of salvation for us 

among the posterity of His servant David,

according to the promise which He made by the lips of holy men 

that have been His prophets from the beginning; 

salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all those who hate us.

So He would carry out his merciful design towards our fathers, 

by remembering His holy Covenant.

He had sworn an oath to our father Abraham, that He would enable us

to live without fear in His service, 

delivered from the hand of our enemies,

passing all our days in holiness, and approved in His sight.

And thou, my child, wilt be known for a prophet of the most High, 

going before the Lord, to clear His way for Him;

thou wilt make known to His people the salvation 

that is to release them from their sins.

Such is the merciful kindness of our God, 

which has bidden Him come to us, like a dawning from on High,

to give light to those who live in darkness, in the shadow of death, 

and to guide our feet into the way of peace." 

- Gospel of S. Luke, 1: 68-79

Daily Mass - memorial day of the Anglo-Saxon abbess Saint Etheldreda

Also known as Audrey, Æthelthryth (d. AD 679) was a princess in East Anglia, virgin queen of the Fenlands and later of Northumbria, before following a vocation to become a nun, Saint Wilfrid of York being her spiritual director. She later founded the double monastery at Ely. More about her here. Our Mass intention today was the Holy Souls, and this Mass was second in the sequence of nine Masses for the Holy Souls.

Big day tomorrow. Saint John the Baptist is a major patron Saint of the Latin Church, the Roman Church, in particular because of the dedication of the cathedral of the Holy Father in Rome, also known as the archbasilica of the Saviour and Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, or Saint John in Lateran. The Roman Rite is littered with references to the Holy Forerunner or Herald of Christ and tomorrow we celebrate one of only three birthdays in the Mass, aside from our Lord's own and our Lady's in September. 

So let's have a quick look at the circumstances of the birth of John. Here from the beginning of the Gospel of Saint Luke:

"In the days when Herod was king of Judaea, there was a priest called Zachary, of Abia’s turn of office, who had married a wife of Aaron’s family, by name Elizabeth; they were both well approved in God’s sight, following all the commandments and observances of the Lord without reproach. They had no child; Elizabeth was barren, and both were now well advanced in years. He, then, as it happened, was doing a priest’s duty before God in the order of his turn of office; and had been chosen by lot, as was the custom among the priests, to go into the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense there, while the whole multitude of the people stood praying without, at the hour of sacrifice. Suddenly he saw an angel of the Lord, standing at the right of the altar where incense was burnt. Zachary was bewildered at the sight, and overcome with fear; but the angel said, 'Zachary, do not be afraid; thy prayer has been heard, and thy wife Elizabeth is to bear thee a son, to whom thou shalt give the name of John. Joy and gladness shall be thine, and many hearts shall rejoice over his birth, for he is to be high in the Lord’s favour; he is to drink neither wine nor strong drink; and from the time when he is yet a child in his mother’s womb he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. He shall bring back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God, ushering in his advent in the spirit and power of an Elias. He shall unite the hearts of all, the fathers with the children, and teach the disobedient the wisdom that makes men just, preparing for the Lord a people fit to receive him." - Gospel of S. Luke, 1: 5-17

I'll make some quick observations. Saint Zachary was a priest and his wife Elisabeth (Hebrew Elisheva, 'God is abundance') was of the tribe of Aaron, the priestly caste of the Hebrew nation. Naturally then, John takes on a priestly role himself, although in a different way from his father Zachary, for he makes an offering of his life in becoming a Nazarite for all his life and then the herald of the long-awaited Messiah. His whole life can be given in that last line, where the angel says that he brings with his life the spirit and power of an Elijah (Elias, in the Greek pronunciation), for the prophet Malachi had predicted that Elijah would arrive before the Messiah:

"Trust me, a day is coming that shall scorch like a furnace; stubble they shall be before it, says the Lord of hosts, all the proud, all the wrong-doers, caught and set alight, and neither root nor branch left them. But to you that honour My Name there shall be a sunrise of restoration, swift-winged, bearing redress; light-hearted as frisking calves at stall you shall go out to meet it, ay, and trample on your godless enemy, ashes, now, to be spurned under foot, on that day when the Lord of hosts declares Himself at last. Yours to keep the law ever in mind, statute and award I gave to assembled Israel through Moses, that was my servant. And before ever that day comes, great day and terrible, I will send Elias to be your prophet; he it is shall reconcile heart of father to son, heart of son to father; else the whole of earth should be forfeit to my vengeance." - Prophecy of Malachi, chapter 4

The day of the Lord is an item in the prophecies of the Messiah, the dreadful day when the Lord will once more judge His people, as he did centuries ago in the desert. That's why the prophecy speaks of the Law once given in the desert being kept always in mind; Isaiah had said that this Law would be engraved onto the very hearts of the elect in later days, no longer kept in obedience of written word, but living among the people. And this is why we celebrate the birth of the Herald; it's a strong factor in the entire prophecy of the coming of the Messiah and instrinsically linked to it. The prophecy above is as much about John as about Christ Himself. 

Daily Mass - Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

Today we began a novena of Masses for the Holy Souls, which are counted down in the newsletters until next week. It is vital in the Judaeo-Christian tradition that we pray for the souls of the faithful departed, which we Catholics number as one of the spiritual works of mercy. Here is the list:

1. Counseling the doubtful: directing people to Christ or back to Christ.
2. Instructing the ignorant: sharing the various elements of the Faith with other people.
3. Admonishing the sinner: constructively directing people away from sin.
4. Comforting the sorrowful: bereavement counselling.
5. Forgiving injuries: primarily, forgiving those who trespass against us.
6. Bearing wrongs faithfully: mostly suffering patiently and without complaint.
7. Praying for the living and the dead: Mass intentions and prayer intentions.

Saint John Fisher makes me very sad, because he was the only bishop to stand up to the king, when Henry VIII broke with the Holy See and engineered the Church of England. We could have hoped that at least one other bishop would have stood with him. In John Fisher, we see the loneliness of the just man, the faithful man. John Fisher was a Cambridge man and in his younger days served as spiritual director to the queen mother and tutored the young Henry. He was later named chancellor of Cambridge and was appointed bishop of Rochester, demonstrating both his scholarly qualities and his love of the people. He was an early opponent of Lutheranism imported into England, and it was inevitable that he would fight for the unity of the Church. 

Sir Thomas More was an Oxford man who entered Parliament soon after being admitted to the bar. A deeply religious man, he debated a life in Holy Religion before marrying and beginning a family. His rise in politics was stellar, ending with his being named Lord Chancellor to the king, when his wife died. He had remarried when the king decided that he wanted to divorce Queen Catherine, in order to marry Ms. Boleyn. John Fisher, as bishop, defended the Queen in the divorce proceedings, and Thomas More upheld the ongoing validity of the first marriage, which could not be dissolved on Catholic principles. Unable to publicly oppose the king, he resigned from the chancellorship and fell into poverty. When the king devised the oath of Supremacy, both men inevitably refused to approve it and were sent to the Tower. On this day in 1535, both were beheaded and their heads hung from the Tower. 

People say that they are martyrs of conscience. Pish-tosh. They were martyrs for the Law of God, which they loved with all their heart. And one loves the Law of God because of their love of the Lawgiver. And Christ said in yesterday's Gospel:

"Whoever acknowledges Me before men, I too will acknowledge him before my Father Who is in heaven." - Gospel of S. Matthew, 10: 31

The medal collection

When I worked at the Cathedral, we had a nice lady who ran a small shop in the parish hall. And I started a medal collection, with my very favourite characters and some old devotions from our long history. From left to right, these are:

Saint John Henry Newman, Saint Gerard Majella, Saint John Fisher, Padre Pio, Saint Anthony of Lisbon, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint Joseph, the Blessed Virgin in her miraculous medal, the most Sacred Heart, Saint Paul, Saint Francis Xavier, the Blessed Virgin as Lady of Walsingham, Saint John Bosco, Saint Anne and the most Holy Face of the Lord.

And obviously there's room on the chain for more...

Daily Mass - the twelfth Sunday of Ordinary time

Mass was offered today for the people of the Parish.

Do not fear. Be not afraid. That's what today's readings had to say, even as God sent his prophets and apostles on difficult missions. Just this afternoon, I got towards the end of the first book of Saint Bede's history of the English people, where the mission of Saint Augustine to England at the end of the sixth century is recounted. When first sent out by the Holy Father Gregory, the mission from the monastery on the Coelian hill in Rome quickly became discouraged and the monks sent Augustine, then only their prior (first among the priests), back to the pope to plead that this mission was too difficult, and could they please return to Rome? They had heard horror stories on the way, you see, about the barbaric people who lived on our islands, and they thought it too dangerous. The Holy Father quietly consoled Augustine and sent him back on his way, with a letter to the whole mission saying that Augustine was now their abbot and they owed him religious obedience.

Do not be afraid. It is a frightening thing indeed to stick one's neck out, especially in our present society and culture that is now by nature irreligious, and more likely than not anti-Catholic as well. Some of us try to use the new media, social media (you know, e-mail, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc.) to produce a message for broadcast from the security of our homes; most of us don't do even that, and few indeed of us are on the streets and in the marketplace (in ordinary circumstances!) with an unpopular message. In the time of the prophet Jeremiah, the people of Jerusalem had become complacent, convinced of the impregnability of their city, with her great Temple to the living God. Jeremiah cried out aloud, warning them that all was at an end, that the city was on the verge of destruction, that they had to turn back to God. 

And he made lots of enemies. In our first reading today, Jeremiah (chapter 20) complains about his persecutors, those who did not want to hear him. Let us terrorise him, say these people, let us trap him and revenge ourselves upon him. But Jeremiah is mostly calm, for he has God on his side and his counsel to all would-be prophets is to sing to God, to praise God. Our reading ends there but, pulling out our Bibles to see what the Mass book leaves out, we find this startling moan from the heart of the prophet:

"Sing to the Lord yet, praise the Lord yet; he does not leave a defenceless life at the mercy of the wicked. Cursed be the day of my birth! A time for cursing it was, not for blessing, when my mother brought me into the world. Cursed be the man who told my father a son had been born to him, and brought gladness, ay, gladness, into his heart! For that good news, be he rewarded with the noise of battle-cry at morn, dirge at noon, like some city the Lord overthrows in anger unrelenting! Why did he not slay me yet unborn, the womb for my tomb, and frustrate my mother’s hope eternally? Why must I come out into the light of day, where only labour and sorrow greet me, and in disappointed striving all my life is spent?" - Prophecy of Jeremiah, 20:13-18

Jeremiah curses himself for having been given what seems to him to be an impossible mission. The mission is not supposed to be easy and we're not called to be unafraid because all will be well. As the history of all prophets and missionaries shows, the mission is not supposed to be easy. Neither was it easy for Saint Augustine and his men to Christianise and form the several tribes of post-Roman Britain. We recognise their efforts today, but Augustine may have wondered at his chances back then. The doughty Hebrew prophet expresses himself in a way Christian missionaries will not. They throughout our history have been martyred in various ways for their boldness, for their determination. Today's gospel message honours them when it says:

"Are not sparrows sold two for a penny? And yet it is impossible for one of them to fall to the ground without your heavenly Father’s will. And as for you, he takes every hair of your head into his reckoning. Do not be afraid, then; you count for more than a host of sparrows. And now, whoever acknowledges me before men, I too will acknowledge him before my Father who is in heaven." - Gospel of S. Matthew, 10: 29-31

It's a public mission, and we dare not fail. There will always be Catholics who are ashamed of being Catholics, because they don't like something the Church teaches, they think the certain Catholics have behaved badly in the past, or because they think the Church is behind the times, etc. But we cannot be among their number. We have to be faithful until the end with our unpopular message.

Tomorrow is a big day for Catholic England, for we celebrate several important martyrs. First of all, tomorrow is the traditional anniversary of the deaths of the British Roman Saints Alban, Julius and Aaron, who are honoured in the Mass on the 20th of June, and who perished all during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Diocletian. But tomorrow's Masses honour the great bishop of Rochester, Saint John Fisher, the only English bishop to stand up to the tyranny of King Harry in the sixteenth century. And we remember, alongside him, Saint Thomas More, the king's chancellor, who insisted that he be faithful first to God our Lord, and only then to the king.

Do not be afraid. Make like the great Saints of our history. There is a reason we call them Saints: they lived the Gospel we hear every day at Mass. They acknowledged Christ before men, and He acknowledged them before His Father.

Daily Masses - the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Yesterday's Mass was offered for the EMHCs and today's Mass was for the intentions of S. R. May they be blessed all, and be drawn nearer to the Sacred Heart every day.

While hunting for the Lady Mass in the book this morning, I discovered that, if not for the memorial of the Immaculate Heart, today would have been a memorial to three British Roman Saints, the most famous of whom is Saint Alban. You may learn about Saint Julius and Saint Aaron here. I just happened to be reading through the entry about Saint Alban by the Venerable Saint Bede in his English history. So, I was interested to see two other British Saints of the era. Quite simply, while the power of Imperial Rome began to totter and the legions began to be pulled back towards Italy, the British Romans, who had relied on their protection, began increasingly to be invaded from different sides, by Irish and Picts and Angles and Saxons. If I remember correctly, they eventually retreated into the West Country and maintained their society and culture under such leaders as the legendary King Arthur, until they gradually vanished into the Anglo-Saxon world of the future. Bede, writing from the middle of the Anglo-Saxon period could look back and marvel at the Roman period in Britain and the faithfulness of Christian martyrs during the persecutions of Roman emperors like Diocletian, when Alban and the others suffered. Bede's account may be read here; much of it he takes from the work of Gildas the Wise, another monk historian, who covered the period of the arrival of the Saxons in Britain.

It's all quite interesting. I fancy I'll go a little bit further into it, as I've just found an old primer of the Anglo-Saxon language, which should provide a useful insight into the intricacies of the English language. I should end this post with an old hymn for the Lady day:

Candles out...

O Heart of Jesus, burning with love of us, inflame our hearts with love of Thee.

Sweet heart of Jesus - a Catholic hymn

I can still hear my mother singing this. She absolutely loved this rather simple hymn, so beloved also of Catholics all over the English-speaking world. Here is the second set of verses:

Sweet heart of Jesus, make us know and love thee,

unfold to us the treasures of thy grace;

that so our hearts, from things of earth uplifted,

may long alone to gaze upon thy face.

That's a marvellous little prayer, and summarises at once hundreds of years of Christian mysticism. Catholic mystics and visionaries have ever sought to achieve union with the Godhead through lives of profound prayer and contemplation. That may be beyond so many of the rest of us, because of the business of our lives, but it is not impossible at all. All of us may aspire to that goal of our spiritual lives. All of us may fall head-first into the love of God our Lord.

These fat candles burn all day today for the intentions of all our parishioners...

You are all remembered at Mass and at prayer today. Before the image of the most sacred Heart of our Lord, I ask for peace and prosperity for your families, for the strength of faith in these difficult times, and that you may turn ever more towards prayer, for prayer will save our souls.

Daily Masses - ferial days before the feast day of the Sacred Heart (2)

Here we are, and it's Sacred Heart Eve. Yesterday's Mass intention was for the repose of the soul of Pat Lewis (+) and today's Mass intention was for Ita Lynch (+). May they rest forever in the embrace of Christ.

 

Bit of excitement in Derby city this last two days for, after weeks of mostly endless sunshine, the heavens burst forth and its been raining almost continuously. The garden is happy, the birds are still singing, and the roof of the parish centre is not leaking. So, all's well.

At Mass today, we had the introduction to the Lord's Prayer for the Gospel, but a startling warning from Saint Paul in the first reading, to not be deflected away from the Apostolic Church by false prophets. Centuries later, the warning sounds loud again. Here it is:

"If you would only bear with my vanity for a little! Pray be patient with me; after all, my jealousy on your behalf is the jealousy of God himself; I have betrothed you to Christ, so that no other but he should claim you, his bride without spot, and now I am anxious about you. The serpent beguiled Eve with his cunning; what if your minds should be corrupted, and lose that innocence which is yours in Christ? Some newcomer preaches to you a different Christ, not the one we preached to you; he brings you a spirit other than the spirit you had from us, a gospel other than the gospel you received; you would do well, then, to be patient with me. I claim to have done no less than the very greatest of the Apostles. I may be unexperienced in speaking, but I am not so in my knowledge of the truth; everybody knows what we have been in every way to you. Unless perhaps you think I did wrong to honour you by abasing myself, since I preached God’s gospel to you at no charge to yourselves? Why, I impoverished other churches, taking pay from them so as to be at your service. I was penniless when I visited you, but I would not cripple any of you with expenses; the brethren came from Macedonia to relieve my necessities; I would not, and I will not, put any burden on you. As the truth of Christ lives in me, no one in all the country of Achaia shall silence this boast of mine.

The marital language of Catholic communion is very evident here. One of the reasons the Church forbids divorce is because of this understanding of the Church as married to God. The Church teaches that all marital fidelity is an image of that fidelity of God to the Church. That's what Paul means by the jealousy of God for the Church, which causes his priest (here, Paul) to be jealous for the Church on God's behalf. So, every Christian spouse should be jealous for his or her spouse, so that nobody else should claim him or her. But here, Paul is talking about the Corinthian Christians being chased after other preachers claiming to be Christians, but not following the Apostolic line. Serpents, he calls them, trying to beguile God's own bride. Paul is beside himself with jealousy for the people he baptised falling into the arms of false preachers. Be patient with me, he says, I'm nothing less that an Apostle, if only the least of the Apostles, I'm not even a gifted speaker, but, look here, I know what's what, and I haven't even taken money from you, so see here, I'm not in it for the money, like those jackals are.

I think that's lovely, it's a very human statement and makes me think rather fondly of Paul. And that brings me to one of my very favourite online videos. I may have mentioned it previously in these blog-posts. It comes from the end of that nice film that was released recently (was it two years ago?), called Paul Apostle of Christ, which told the story of Paul's final days. The narration in this video is from the second letter of Saint Paul to Saint Timothy, the bishop of Ephesos; this was Paul's last letter, written in prison. In this video, he faces the sword and finds himself in a land of perpetual sunrise, where a crowd of the Christians he once hunted down in Judaea and Syria welcome him with great joy. Then Paul sees the figure he once saw on the road to Damascus, and the film ends. 

Daily Masses - ferial days before the feast of the Sacred Heart

Yesterday's Mass intention was for the repose of the soul of the Reverend J. D. Key (+) and Mass was offered today for the repose of the souls of Bess and Tom Morris (++). Eternal rest may they have and let perpetual light shine upon them; may they rest in peace. 

I don't have much to say tonight. I'm going to post some nice pictures of the Sacred Heart, the feast day coming on Friday.

The great hymn to the Blessed Sacrament

My favourite hymn, dear Reader. This is the English translation made by the famous English Jesuit, Father Gerald Manley Hopkins of the original Latin hymn of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Here are the words. 

"Godhead here in hiding, Whom I do adore

Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,

See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart

Lost, all lost in wonder at the God Thou art.

"Seeing, touching, tasting are in Thee deceived:

How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;

What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;

Truth Himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.

"On the cross Thy godhead made no sign to men,

Here Thy very manhood steals from human ken:

Both are my confession, both are my belief,

And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

"I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,

But can plainly call Thee Lord and God as he;

Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,

Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

"O Thou our reminder of Christ crucified,

Living Bread, the life of us for whom He died,

Lend this life to me then: feed and feast my mind,

There be Thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

"Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;

Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what Thy bosom ran

Blood whereof a single drop has power to win

All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

"Jesu, Whom I look at shrouded here below,

I beseech Thee send me what I thirst for so,

Some day to gaze on Thee face to face in light

And be blest for ever with Thy glory's sight."

Daily Masses - feast day of Saint Anthony of Lisbon and Corpus Christi Sunday

Yesterday's Mass was for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+), may he be forever blessed. Mass was offered this morning for the people of the Parish. 

Yes, I did mean Saint Anthony of Lisbon. The Portuguese Saint is known as that in the larger Portuguese world to which I belong for, although he died at Padua/Padova, he was born Ferdinand (or Fernando) right next to the cathedral church in Lisbon city and in his youth was an Augustinian canon in a house by the walls of the city. Later on, inspired by the Franciscan missionaries who were giving their lives to re-evangelise the north of Africa, which had been under Islamic rule for centuries, Ferdinand joined the first Order of Saint Francis, called the Friars Minor, and took the name Anthony, becoming a formidable preacher and teacher, often called the Hammer of Heretics, and Evangelical Doctor. Better known as a fabulous miracle-worker, he has many tales told of his miracles, such as concerning the preaching to the fish and the double-genuflection of the donkey.

And that brings us happily along to the feast day of today, Corpus Christi, transferred over from the Thursday last. The story, in short, is this: the Saint met a Jewish man who made light of the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of our Lord in the holy Eucharist and wished to challenged Anthony publicly. He proposed to starve a donkey for three days and see if the beast would prefer to eat hay or approach the Blessed Sacrament. While the donkey was being starved, Anthony himself went on a total fast. On the day of the trial, Anthony brouth the Blessed Sacrament to where the donkey was tied (as in the picture, in a monstrance). The donkey being untied headed for the pile of hay that had been prepared, when Anthony raised the Sacrament and commanded the beast to adore Christ in the Sacrament. To the surprise of all, the donkey changed its mind at once, ran over to the priest and, folding its forelegs, bowed its head to the ground before the Sacrament. According to the story, the Jewish man became a Catholic at once, and so on and so forth. This story comes into its own on this significant feast day, when we as Catholics meditate on that very central truth of the Faith: that the bread and the wine, when consecrated at the altar, become in very reality the Body and Blood of the Lord. The Church has asked us to accept this on faith since the very beginning, and only long after Apostolic times did theologians and philosophers begin to speculate as to how this can have been achieved and at what precise point during the Mass it takes place.

There are two key texts from the New Testament to consider today. The first is the entire sixth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, a part of which is given as the gospel reading at Mass today. In it, the Lord Himself describes the Sacrament and suffers the loss of many disciples, who cannot accept the novelty of the new institution. 'I tell you solemnly,' He says, 'that if you do not eat of the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you will not have life in you.' The second text I wanted to mention comes towards the end of the eleventh chapter of Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. This is what Paul says: 

"So it is the Lord’s death that you are heralding, whenever you eat this Bread and drink this cup, until He comes. And therefore, if anyone eats this Bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be held to account for the Lord’s Body and Blood. A man must examine himself first, and then eat of that bread and drink of that cup; he is eating and drinking damnation to himself if he eats and drinks unworthily, not recognizing the Lord’s body for what it is. That is why many of your number want strength and health, and not a few have died. If we recognised our own fault, we should not incur these judgements." 

We've got to get this right, about our relationship with God, as it is described in holy Scripture and in the writings of the Saints: it is a relationship of love, it uses the language of a love affair. We are not slaves to God, but children, and the relationship is not one-sided but mutual. And God respects our own contribution to the relationship, whether or not we accept Him and return His love. He will not drag us into heaven, kicking and screaming, but He nonetheless desires that we attain that happiness and pours out His gifts of grace to enable to do so. And he wishes us to desire that grace and to accept it and be blessed. God is endlessly merciful, but He wishes us, as Paul says, to recognise our faults, to be humble before Him, to be contrite of heart, wishing to ever avoid sin in the future. And then His graces abound. The immense Mercy of God enables Him to welcome back with an embrace the biggest of sinners who has found contrition, and the greatest sign of His Goodness and Mercy to us is the gift of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord.

"I see only your love and humility..."

When she fell into a minor error, Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska agonised over her weakness and ran to Christ for forgiveness. On one such occasion, His reply was this:

"If it hadn't been for this small imperfection, you wouldn't have come to Me. Know that as often as you come to Me, humbling yourself and asking My forgiveness, I pour out a superabundance of graces on your soul, and your imperfection vanishes before My eyes, and I see only your love and your humility. You lose nothing, but gain much..." - #1293 in the standard copies of Divine Mercy in my soul: the Diary of Sister Faustyna

 

Daily Mass - feast day of the Apostle Saint Barnabas

Anybody following these blog posts would know that I have much affection for the Acts of the Apostles, that early history of the Church, with Apostolic characters running enthusiastically around the Holy Land, while the body of the Christians steadily grows, bursts forth into Syria, and then further afield, travelling westward towards the imperial capital at Rome. Today we honoured one of those Apostolic characters, the Cypriot Joseph, whom the Apostles renamed Barnabas, perhaps because he was a consolation to them in his zeal.

"There was a Levite called Joseph, a Cypriot by birth, to whom the Apostles gave the fresh name of Barnabas, which means, the man of encouragement; he had an estate, which he sold, and brought the purchase-money to lay it at the apostles’ feet." - Acts of the Apostles, 4: 36-37

Barnabas was already of the Jewish priestly caste, the tribe of Levi, and it would have been natural for him to be one of the first Christian priests. As can be seen with his very introduction (above), he was high in the estimation of the Apostles, a source of encouragement to them on the Christian mission. In the reading at Mass today, we get a picture of Barnabas' friendship with Saint Paul. After Paul's conversion to Christianity and a brief sojourn in the Holy Land and contact with the Apostolic headquarters in Jerusalem, he had returned home to Cilicia, in the south-east corner of Asia Minor. The reading takes us to a point where Christianity has spread marvellously to the north of Syria, where the great Greek metropolis of Antioch-on-the-Orontes has developed a strong Christian community. Jerusalem sends Barnabas up on the mission, and Saint Luke takes this opportunity to give us an appreciation of Barnabas' character:

"But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they found their way to Antioch, spoke to the Greeks as well, preaching the Lord Jesus to them. And the Lord’s power went with them, so that a great number learned to believe, and turned to the Lord. The story of this came to the ears of the Church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas on a mission to Antioch. When he came there and saw what grace God was bestowing on them, he was full of joy, and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with steady purpose of heart, like the good man he was, full of the Holy Spirit, full of faith; a great multitude was thus won over to the Lord." - Acts of the Apostles, 11: 20-24

It wasn't a one-man job. Barnabas ran off to nearby Cilicia to find Paul, and they spent at least a year in Antioch, where we were for the first time called Christians:

"He went on to Tarsus, to look for Saul, and when he found him, brought him back to Antioch. For a whole year after this they were made welcome in the Church there, teaching a great multitude. And Antioch was the first place in which the disciples were called Christians." - Acts of the Apostles, 11: 25-26

Mass was offered this morning for vocations to the priesthood and the Religious life, a significant weekly intention. The Mass has always been our mainstay and our strength, from those early days until today. The Mass endures because the priesthood endures. We must always pray for more men to come forward to this sacred ministry. Meanwhile, there are still others, men and women, who are called to the life of the Gospel as it was lived by the primitive church - these are the Religious Brothers and Sisters of the several Orders and Congregations, who sustain the Church and the World through their lives of prayer and sacrifice. May we ever have generous souls, who will give of themselves to Christ and His Church and so advance the Christian cause. In this desire and in our continued pursuit of Christ, may Saint Barnabas be our strong help and guide.

Daily Masses - weekdays after Trinity Sunday (the tenth week of Ordinary time)

Right. A bit of a catch-up, on the ramp down after the glories of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Mass was offered on Monday for the repose of the soul of Tommy Gilligan (+), may he be eternally blessed. Yesterday's Mass was offered for the repose of the soul of Jerry Hanifin (+) and Mass was offered this afternoon for the repose of the soul of Bridie Mullin (+). Eternal rest grant unto them, o Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.

The first readings at Mass this week have been working their way through the second letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, with the gospel readings from the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel gently walking alongside. The letters to the Corinthians are masterpieces of apostolic ardour, addressing complicated social situations that caused the newly-born Christian community in Corinth much temptation. Ancient Corinth was known for her licentiousness, given the fertility cult that operated in the vicinity, employing hundreds of pagan priestesses, that is, ritual prostitutes. Aside from that, the Corinthians lived in a multi-tiered society and the new Christians still maintained such caste-like divisions, yet unable to understand the radical equality of the Christian religion. We know of at least two corrections administered to them by Saint Paul, because we have two apostolic letters in the Bible. There may have been more.

So on Monday, Saint Paul begins the letter with his usual salutation and praise of almighty God and His support of the Christian mission and the mediation of the Christian priests:

"He it is who comforts us in all our trials; and it is this encouragement we ourselves receive from God which enables us to comfort others, whenever they have trials of their own. The sufferings of Christ, it is true, overflow into our lives; but there is overflowing comfort, too, which Christ brings to us. Have we trials to endure? It all makes for your encouragement, for your salvation. Are we comforted? It is so that you may be comforted." - II Corinthians 1: 4-6

And then the gospel reading reads out the Beatitudes from Saint Matthew's Gospel, almost in a commentary of those brave early missionaries, suffering for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. Then, on Tuesday, the Apostle says to the Corinthians that Christ makes possible for us to merit the promises made by God, so that it is through Christ that we make our praise of God. He speaks of our belonging to God, who has anointed us and marked us as his own, completing the contract, so to speak, with the gift of the Holy Spirit:

"It is God who gives both us and you our certainty in Christ; it is he who has anointed us, just as it is he who has put his seal on us, and given us the foretaste of his Spirit in our hearts." - II Corinthians 1: 21-22

And the gospel reading tells us what it should mean to us to be Christians. Christ says that we are the salt of the earth, but we must beware losing our saltiness; we are the light of the world, but we shouldn't hide our radiance away - we must make a public show of our works of love. This is a rebuke of 'lukewarmness' in the observance of religion and a challenge to us to be true to the God who has taken ownership of us. Today's first reading leaps over to the third chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, where Saint Paul declares that the new Covenant of Christ is written upon the hearts of Christians through the workings of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the old Covenants, which were engraved or written down as a set of laws. Paul says that if even these written laws had great power, the new Covenant surely surpasses the old Covenants in its splendour, for they were temporary and it is eternal:

"We know how that sentence of death, engraved in writing upon stone, was promulgated to men in a dazzling cloud, so that the people of Israel could not look Moses in the face, for the brightness of it, although that brightness soon passed away. How much more dazzling, then, must be the brightness in which the spiritual law is promulgated to them! If there is a splendour in the proclamation of our guilt, there must be more splendour yet in the proclamation of our acquittal." - II Corinthians 3: 7-9

And in the gospel reading, Christ declares that He had come not to abolish the old Covenants, but to complete them, to fulfil them. What do you take away from all this? I would say that the old Covenants remain, but they are brought to fulfilment in Christ. The Old Testament is not merely a preface to the Gospels, as so many Christians seem to think. Rather, the ancient Covenants made by God with his chosen People form the heart of the Christian religion, in so far as the life and mission Christ may be both discerned as being in some way typified or prefigured in the dialogue between God and the People in the Old Testament; and then understood as the termination of that dialogue. Thereafter, all things are renewed. There is a new People of God, anointed by Him and signed by Him as His own. 

And this anointing and signing cause the Law of God (not abrogated but completed), to be written by the working of the Holy Spirit onto the hearts of Christians. Obeying this Law is no longer a matter of legalism and ticking a series of boxes to say that one is an observant religionist; rather obeying the Law is a matter of love for God. The relationship between God and man of Master-slave has been radically transformed into one of Father-child, and we are challenged by the Apostolic voices of the New Testament to be true to that new relationship and not lose our flavour, to love God and to love those others that He loves, to love our neighbours.

Just took a delivery of a cope, stole and humeral veil...

I found ones with this nice working of the holy Name of Jesus. IHS is a latinisation of the first three letters of the Name in Greek, which looks like IHSOUS, but is pronounced Yaysoos. 

Almost ready for the service of Adoration and Benediction. Below, another find in our sacristy drawers: the old rite of serving Adoration and Benediction (picture below).

My posts are a little delayed at the moment

I'll have to start again tomorrow. I'm beginning to go through Saint Ignatius of Loyola's famous Spiritual Exercises. Rather informally, since I don't have a Jesuit chaplain. There might be some echoes of it all in future posts. Meanwhile, here are some singing nuns:

Daily Mass - Trinity Sunday

Catholics were buzzing this morning with the news that churches will be permitted to open from next week. That is excellent news, certainly, but I'm sure most of you will have expected to hear that not all churches will be opened at once, that there would be a sequence of health and safety hurdles to get over before a building could be safely made available. If there is any change at Saint Joseph's, that will be made known at first on the parish website and social media channels, since those are the easiest ways to make news available these days.

Mass was offered today for the repose of the soul of Iwan Parasyn (+), may he be blessed. And so it's Trinity Sunday, and the rest of the year (until Advent) now rolls out before us in the green of Ordinary time. I always feel rather uplifted by Trinity Sunday, since it celebrates that very august mystery of our Faith, that odd and paradoxical concept of a Trinity in Unity and a Unity in Trinity, a stumbling-block for other monotheistic religions and a point of amusement for polytheistic religions. It is a type of running joke among the clergy that it is rather difficult to compose a homily or make any discourse about the Trinity, for one needs stumble only just slightly to fall foul of the carefully composed statements of Faith (creeds) of the early Church. The attitude of these old formulations is best captured by the so-called Athanasian creed, and I do recommend having a listen through this:

In those days, an innovation such as the infamous Arian position could create a significant schism and disunity in the body of the Church. Things are very much the same today (even if we don't fight as hard as in the past), when Christ is seen by a large number of people, Christian and non-Christian, as not as much divine as a wise and human teacher (and adjustment to Arianism). Against this, the Church continues to repeat and recite the ancient Creeds that were produced with so much care and defended with so much suffering. Above all, we have to remember that, in Catholic theology, a 'mystery' is not something that can be solved or needs to be solved. It is always beyond us, may always be beyond us. There are mystics among our Saints who have said that even to the Saints in heaven and to the angels, the Godhead is not fully understandable. And so, today, we are in a sense very like Moses on that mountain in the first reading. 

"Thus the Lord passed by, and [Moses] cried out, 'It is the Lord God, the Ruler of all things, the Merciful, the Gracious; slow to take vengeance, rich in kindness, faithful to His promises. He is true to His promise of mercy a thousand times over; shame or sin or guilt is none but He forgives it; yet, before Him, none can claim innocence in his own right, and when He punishes, the son must make amends for the father’s guilt, to the third and the fourth generation.' Then, without more ado, Moses fell prostrate with his face to the ground in worship. 'Lord,' he said, 'if Thou dost look on me with favour, I entreat Thee to go with us on our journey, stiff-necked as this people is; guilt of our sins do Thou pardon, and keep us for Thy own." - Exodus 34: 6-9

We know more than Moses did, for God has since described Himself as a Trinity in Unity, one God in three Persons. And one of those three Persons entered the realm of the visible and has been described in detail. Nevertheless, before the magnitude of the Being of God, we can still do little more than say, 'Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, may he ever be a Father to us and accept us as his very own,' and bow down in worship.

And that's what's so very important: belonging and fellowship. The greatest mystery perhaps is that this God of ours, so different from us, wishes to commune with us, to draw us (if we would only cooperate) into Himself, so that we may be at one with Him. He wants to give us Eternity, as Saint John says in the Gospel today. One of things Christ kept saying to his disciples, even begging them, I should say, was to keep His commandments and so remain in His love. He keeps His promises, but will we keep our part of the bargain? Saint Paul suggests to us how at the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, our second reading today. He counsels perfection, mutual agreement, peace-making:

"Finally, brethren, we wish you all joy. Perfect your lives, listen to the appeal we make, think the same thoughts, keep peace among yourselves; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with the kiss of saints. All the saints send you their greeting. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the imparting of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen." - II Corinthians 13: 11-13

Daily Mass - Saint Norbert of Magdeburg

Mass was offered yesterday morning for the peaceful repose of the soul of Canon J. Beel (+), may he be forever blessed in the Lord. Mass was offered this morning for the people of our Parish. I am pleased to be seeing more of you all every day, as the school has opened a little further this past week and as the traffic on the pavements and on the road steadily increases.

Today is the feast day of Saint Norbert, and my mind flies across to county Essex, where his Norbertines have a small abbey outside Chelmsford town. You may find their website here, and the YouTube channel where they broadcast services from their chapel here. They have in the past kindly hosted me, once on retreat and another time, last summer, when I needed to make a quick pit-stop. Norbert was an twelfth-century bishop with a strong devotion to the most Blessed Sacrament, and a reformer of the morals of the clergy, which were in very bad repute in those times. Long before his consecration as bishop, he found support in the reforming popes of his time and eventually built his own Order of Augustinian canons at Prémontré, near Rheims in north France. They were therefore called Premonstratensians, and were known for their austerity and their great devotion to the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament. In AD 1126, Norbert became the archbishop of Magdeburg and joined the battle for the rights and liberty of the Church and the Holy See. Find out more about Saint Norbert here. 

Our school children missed their May devotions this year...

...but there were some nice videos and pictures. Find them here. As I must have said somewhere already, we're going to have the Marian devotions anyway, probably roundabout our Lady's birthday in September if, please God, the school community is mostly all assembled by then. 

Daily Mass - OLJC the Eternal High-priest

Mass was offered today for vocations to the priesthood and the Religious life in general, and for our Diocese in particular. It seems to me to be a good thing to keep this as the ordinary intention for Masses on Thursdays, in the absence of a particular and requested intention. A good priest once told me that you have to pray for these things, and pray hard, for such vocations are a gift from God. Consequently, and according to that request from the Diocesan vocations service, special prayers are said for that intention on Thursday, after Mass. At Saint Joseph's, that takes the form of devotion to the Sacred Heart, according to the old invocation to Christ,

Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

And that brings us nicely to the feast day of Our Lord, in His Being as the Eternal High-priest, a nice coincidence today with our Thursday theme of vocations made to souls consecrated to God. In both the priesthood and the Religious life, men and women are called to extraordinary perfection, to live in so far as possible the life of the Gospel, and so to cooperate in the Jesusification of their hearts.

But above consecration to God, the priest is also a mediator, standing in the immense breach between God and mankind. We celebrate here this vital feature of the Being of Christ, Who is both fully God and fully Man (the ordinary priests we know merely participate in the high-priesthood of Christ, Whom they represent). Because Christ is both, because He has a foot in two worlds, because He can represent both, He is the bridge between both and He makes His sacrifice to God on the behalf of all mankind. The key to all of this is the letter (of Saint Paul) to the Hebrews, which develops the theology of the Hebrew high-priesthood and applies it to the particular case of Christ:

"The purpose for which any high priest is chosen from among his fellow men, and made a representative of men in their dealings with God, is to offer gifts and sacrifices in expiation of their sins. He is qualified for this by being able to feel for them when they are ignorant and make mistakes, since he, too, is all beset with humiliations, and, for that reason, must needs present sin-offerings for himself, just as he does for the people. His vocation comes from God, as Aaron’s did; nobody can take on himself such a privilege as this. So it is with Christ. He did not raise Himself to the dignity of the high-priesthood; it was God that raised Him to it, when He said, 'Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee this day, and so, elsewhere, Thou art a priest for ever, in the line of Melchisedech.' Christ, during His earthly life, offered prayer and entreaty to the God who could save Him from death, not without a piercing cry, not without tears; yet with such piety as won Him a hearing. Son of God though He was, He learned obedience in the school of suffering, and now, His full achievement reached, He wins eternal salvation for all those who render obedience to Him. A High-priest in the line of Melchisedech, so God has called Him." - Hebrews 5: 1-10

The letter here refers to the famous Psalm 109 (110), the preeminent Messianic psalm that is recited every Sunday evening in the Divine Office of prayer. 

"To the Master I serve the Lord’s promise was given, 'Sit here at my right hand while I make thy enemies a footstool under thy feet. The Lord will make thy empire spring up like a branch out of Sion; thou art to bear rule in the midst of thy enemies. From birth, princely state shall be thine, holy and glorious; thou art my son, born like dew before the day-star rises.' The Lord has sworn an oath; there is no retracting, 'Thou art a priest for ever in the line of Melchisedech. At thy right hand, the Lord will beat down kings in the day of His vengeance; He will pass sentence on the nations, heap high the bodies, scatter far and wide the heads of the slain.' Let him but drink of the brook by the wayside, he will lift up his head in victory." - Psalm 109 (110)

Notice the importance of the name Melchisedech, which is vital also to the Catholic Mass. Melchisedech was the king of Salem in the time of Abraham, and at one notable point, recognised the vocation of Abraham by God and congratulated him on his victory in battle:

"Melchisedech, too, was there, the king of Salem. And he, priest as he was of the most high God, brought out bread and wine with him, and gave him this benediction, 'On Abram be the blessing of the most high God, maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be that most high God, whose protection has brought thy enemies into thy power.'" - Genesis 14: 18-20

Looking past the offering of bread and wine, we see that Melchisedech was a 'priest of the most high God,' and recognised as such by the Hebrew tribes who traced their lineage to Abraham. In Hebrew and Christian tradition, he became a mystical figure - a priest of God before the Hebrew priesthood was instituted - and his gift to Abraham a sign of the blessing of God that he bestowed. The devotion of the Hebrew shows in Psalm 109, which elevates the 'order of Melchisedech' to a level beyond the Hebrew priesthood, a mysterious, eternal priesthood as compared to the time-limited and localised Hebrew priesthood. And later Judaism based its hopes in the Hebrew Messiah on this particular Order of Melchisedech and on this Psalm, as demonstrated by the letter to the Hebrews, which proceeds to connect it with Christ Himself. 

This post has grown long enough. I end it with this nice, old prayer card. The line in Latin at the bottom is from Psalm 109: "Thou art a priest for ever in the line of Melchisedech."

Daily Masses - Saints Marcellinus and Peter, and Saint Charles Lwanga and the martyrs of Uganda

That must be the longest title yet for the blog posts here. After Pentecost Sunday, and the feast of our Blessed Mother on Monday, we've dropped down a little to Ordinary (or Ordered) time, where we count down the weeks of the year in an ordered manner, from the ninth to the thirty-first in November, when we shall be all ready again for Advent.

Mass was offered yesterday for the Holy Souls and today for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+). May they rest in the peace of Christ. The readings at Mass are rather random at the moment, so I'm more interested in the Saints whose memorials we are marking in these days. Yesterday was the memorial of the ancient martyrs Marcellinus and Peter, whose names are among the many at the end of Eucharistic Prayer I, which tells us of their immense status in the Roman Church of the early centuries. Marcellinus is called a priest and Peter an exorcist (one of four minor orders of the ancient church, the others being porter, lector and acolyte; the major orders were subdeacon, deacon and priest). They were victims of the persecution of the anti-Christian Roman emperor Diocletian. More about them here.

Today's Saints, Charles Lwanga and the other Uganda martyrs, are newer to me than the old Roman martyrs, for they are more recent in the memory of the Church, their story beginning in the late nineteenth century. Charles was a convert to Catholicism, a member of the Baganda tribe and with a significance office in the court of king Mwanga II of Buganda. Wikipedia talks about a 'ritual pedophilia,' which seems to have been a part of Ugandan culture of the time, and was the cause of the several martyrdoms. The king would have his wicked way with the young boys who were part of his entourage. When Mwanga, who found the Christians to be a strong opposition to his pedophilic ways as well as an unwanted, foreign challenge to the integrity of his personal rule, orchestrated the massacre of Anglican missionaries in 1885, and had an influential Catholic courtier and lay catechist called Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe beheaded for opposing him, Charles Lwanga arrived on the scene. He was to take up Balikuddembe's job, and almost immediately sought baptism from a missionary White Father, along with several other catechumens. Lwanga came to protect boys in his charge from the sexual advances of the king. A few months later, the king called an assembly of his court to see if the Christians would renounce their religion, and Lwanga and the royal pages he led refused to do so; they were sentenced to death. Charles Lwanga was burnt alive on the 3rd of June, 1886, and soon after him twelve Catholics and nine Anglicans. Another Catholic, Mbaga Tuzinde, was clubbed to death and his body thrown into the furnace with the others. Thus the Ugandan martyrs, and may they pray for us and for Christians everywhere who are persecuted for their religion and for their strong sense of morality and social justice.

Daily Mass - the feast of the BVM as Mother of the Church

Mass was offered this morning for the intentions of S. R.

It was only about two years ago that the Holy Father Francis gave us the present feast day of Mary, Mother of the Church. This is an old dedication, certainly, but the Holy Father, in a bid to increase Marian piety in the Catholic Church, gave it a shot in the arm. What was a votive Mass in our books, he gave a fixed date, the first after Pentecost Sunday. More about that here.

And so we honour the dear Lady, through whom our salvation became possible, who accepted us as her children in the person of the Apostle Saint John, at the foot of the Cross. In that most painful moment, when her golden Child was dying in torment, she received the command to be mother again. 

"...and meanwhile His Mother, and His Mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen, had taken their stand beside the cross of Jesus. And Jesus, seeing His Mother there, and the disciple, too, whom He loved, standing by, said to His Mother, 'Woman, this is thy son.' - Gospel of S. John, 19: 25-26

And she has more than fulfilled her mandate, accompanying the Church through every generation. Here are the readings from today's Mass. The first reading is about the curse of Adam brought about as a result of a temptation to pride brought about through his love for his wife. I can feel the dread in the voice of God as he says to Eve:

"Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What made thee do this?' 'The serpent,' she said, 'beguiled me, and so I came to eat.'" - Genesis, 3: 13

Even in that moment, God speaks of a remedy, lain in the distant future, for he says to the serpent, who had become an instrument of the Enemy of mankind:

"And the Lord God said to the serpent, 'For this work of thine, thou, alone among all the cattle and all the wild beasts, shalt bear a curse; thou shalt crawl on thy belly and eat dust all thy life long. And I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in ambush at her heels.'" - Genesis, 3: 14

And that is why we often see the Blessed Virgin in pictures with a foot upon a serpent's head, undoing the pride of Eve in her own life of innocence and humility, even as her Son undid the curse of Adam. More importantly, it speaks of the offspring of the woman as enemies of the offspring of the serpent, an indication of a battle between the dark and the light, which also is present in the Apocalypse of Saint John (Revelations), the last book of the Bible.

"...in his spite against the Woman, the dragon went elsewhere to make war on the rest of her children, the men who keep God’s commandments, and hold fast to the truth concerning Jesus. And he stood there waiting on the sea beach." - Apocalypse of Saint John, 12: 17-18

And that brings it all in full circle: from Apocalypse back to Genesis. This is the painting of the Immaculate by the eighteenth-century Italian Tiepolo.