On Sunday, 1 November in both the Vetus Ordo and the Novus Ordo Holy Mother Church celebrates the great feast of All Saints, Omnium Sanctorum. We honor all who have attained the Beatific Vision, including the vast multitude of blessed souls whose names and histories are known to God alone. It is a beautiful bouquet…
When Benedict XV died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1922, Achille Ratti, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, was elected to the See of Peter. His election to the See of Peter came on the fourteenth ballot. It is said that when asked whether he accepted Ratti remained silent for several minutes. One Cardinal reportedly quipped that they…
As October gives way to November, Holy Church chants in autumnal tones. The end (of the Church year) is near. In the Vetus Ordo our remaining Sundays after Pentecost lead us toward our reckoning with the King, that is, the King of EVERYTHING and not just Heaven. The King will return, open the books, and…
They lost a habit of prolonged attention.
Context is always important, as I am wont to say. For example, where are we in the liturgical year on this 20th Sunday after Pentecost? Historically, in an earlier reckoning before the concretization of seasons, this was the 5th Sunday after the feast of St. Cyprian. Bl. Ildefonso Schuster explains that Rome once reckoned Sundays…
As summer yields to autumn in the lands where the Roman liturgical year took shape, the Church turns our attention toward harvest and reckoning. The shortening days give a certain urgency to the Epistle of the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Paul thanks God for the grace bestowed on the Corinthians, even as they await…
It was pride that brought down Satan and the other apostate angels. It was pride that brought down the human race in our First Parents. Pride turned angels into devils and Paradise into this vale of tears. St. Bernard of Clairvaux called pride “initium omnis peccati … the beginning of every sin” (De gradibus humilitatis…
We come now to the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, known in the older Roman reckoning as Quinta post Sancti Laurentii, the fifth Sunday after St. Lawrence. The Romans loved their deacon martyr, whose basilica stood beyond the walls along the Via Tiburtina. In the ancient arrangement, Sundays throughout the year had their station churches, not…
“So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit…. Thus you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:17, 20 RSV). Our Lord’s scriptural lantern illuminates the Epistle for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Galatians 5:16-24, where St. Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the…
Why did Martin Luther hate the Roman Mass?
For some weeks the Sunday Epistles have been taken from St. Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians. With the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, which our ancient Roman forebears would have called the 3rd Sunday after St. Lawrence, we begin to hear from Galatians. That older Roman way of counting itself says something about the immense place…
