@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
“Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”
"Support us, Lord,
as with this Lenten fast
we begin our Christian warfare,
so that in doing battle against the spirit of evil
we may be armed with the weapon of self-denial.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen".
----------------------------------------------
...and now for the necessaries.
Please note: St. Anthony Catholic Church is one of two local churches celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (EFLR) in the Wichita area. Though this blog is loosely centered around this parish and it's members, Venite Missa Est! is by no means, in any way an official voice of, or for, St. Anthony Parish or the Diocese of Wichita. Venite Missa Est! is strictly a private layman's endeavor.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The Annunciation and Saint Gabriel
By Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The American society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/plinio-correa-de-oliveira/the-annunciation-and-saint-gabriel.html
The following is a reflection on Saint Gabriel and the Annunciation. It comments on both the archangel and Our Lady since the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel is on the vigil of the Annunciation.
We will comment on this passage taken from Saint Luke:
“And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God.
Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.
And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man?
And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: Because no word shall be impossible with God.
And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”
* * *
As far as I can recall, the only thing we know of Saint Gabriel, the Archangel is found in this episode. He was sent by God to deliver this magnificent message to Our Lady. We can have some idea of what this archangel is like by looking at the nature of the task he was given. There is a correlation between the angel and his virtue on the one hand, and the mission he receives from God, on the other. Through one, we can make conjectures about the other.
Thus, what was the message that Saint Gabriel, which means “the strength of God,” took to Our Lady? It is a message that affirms the Incarnation of the Word and therefore the greatest act of power and domination that God could exercise upon the world. With the Incarnation of the Word, God was preparing to rescue the world. In doing this, He, who is king of the world by right, also became king by conquest. Thus, He – the second Person of the Blessed Trinity – entered the earth to conquer on the cross, in this special way, He established His kingship upon the world.
“Behold the king has come! He is going to reign!”
Saint Gabriel must be seen, therefore, as announcing the victorious entry of Our Lord Jesus Christ into humanity. He was like a herald that goes before a victorious king overcoming all obstacles in his way and announcing: “Behold the king has come! He is going to reign!” This is a first view that we have of this archangel.
Another view we must have is that of the devotee of Mary par excellence. He was the one who made the first Hail Mary; he was the one who gave Our Lady a message that revealed to her who she was. For up until that moment, according to all the interpretations I have read, she did not know she was to become the Mother of God. She prayed for the Messias to come soon to the earth and also that she might become the servant of His Mother so as to render her some small services. That was her great ambition.
When Gabriel the Archangel came and announced that she herself was going to be the Mother of the Messias, he made her, so to speak, understand who she was. His message explained to her why she had continuously received an immense river of graces throughout her life. She understood the depth of the sanctity for which she was called. The angel’s announcement made her comprehend her own mission.
Hence, when he made this revelation to Mary, he rendered Her this outstanding service, which was an act of supreme nobility ordered by God. As a result, this act established a very special bond between Saint Gabriel and Our Lady. In this sense, he was a kind of prophet who manifested to Our Lady what her whole life would be like and what her mission would be. Thus, another aspect of this archangel’s personality is a great union with Our Lady and a great devotion to her.
Finally, we can consider another side, which is the manner in which he gave his message. It was impregnated with a great purity. No message is more chaste than this one, which announced the virginal maternity. It showed such a love for purity on the part of God, that, in order to safeguard Our Lady’s virginal chastity, He decided on a way to conceive Our Lord Jesus Christ that involved no work of man: She would be the Spouse of the Holy Ghost.
In the Annunciation, the archangel is particularly protective of her purity and chastity. If we were to see him, he would inspire in us a thousand desires and acts of admiration and longing to possess purity to a eminent degree.
From this, we can draw some applications for the prayers we can still address to him today. Saint Gabriel announced the coming and triumph of the Messias to Our Lady and thus to all men. We should ask that he now announce the recovery of God’s effective kingship upon the earth through the coming of the fulfillment of the Fatima message.
Today we are in a situation that is even worse than that of the ancient world before Our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we can ask that Our Lord Jesus Christ reign once again, that He establish His reign on earth in Mary and through Mary, and that this period of darkness in which we find ourselves come to an end. He has done one thing, let Him do the other. He had the key to do it to close the era of antiquity, and thus opened a new epoch. Let Him close this era and open the Reign of Mary.
Second: we should ask Saint Gabriel for an enormous, superabundant devotion to Our Lady and that this devotion grows every instant until the end of our lives.
Third: we should ask him for a most ardent, intransigent, vigilant and therefore most militant love of purity; and to have every form of revulsion and disdain for impurity in every way and degree. This is what we should ask him. May he thus protect us and bring us closer to Our Lady.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The Traditional Latin Mass in Seminaries? The Magic Circle will Have a Fit
By Damian Thompson
The Telegraph
Will it soon be a requirement for Catholic seminarians to learn to say the Traditional Latin Mass? Bobbie Mickens made this claim in the Tablet a couple of weeks ago – just think how livid he must be at the prospect! – and now John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter is saying exactly the same thing. He reckons that Ecclesia Dei’s forthcoming instruction on the implementation of Summorum Pontificum will “call for seminarians to be trained not just in Latin, but in the older rite itself, at least so they will know how to execute it faithfully and understand what’s being said”.
 |
| Magic Circle nightmare: conservative seminarians |
Allen’s piece is headed “April may be cruel month for relations with traditionalists”, which I find puzzling. Cruel? What he means is that some traditionalists will be upset by (a) the instruction’s apparent refusal to allow diocesan seminaries to ordain priests according to the pre-Vatican II ritual and (b) the collapse of negotiations with the SSPX.
Actually, I think most traditionalists will be relaxed on both counts (not to say relieved that the instruction doesn’t revoke their privileges, as they had feared). It doesn’t greatly matter which rite of ordination is used if a priest is perfectly free to celebrate in the Extraordinary Form. As for the SSPX negotiations, did anyone seriously think they were going to succeed? The Lefebvrists won’t budge on Vatican II any more than the C of E will accept papal infallibility. It’s a shame, but there you go.
In contrast, the proposal to teach all seminarians to celebrate the Tridentine Mass is a seriously big deal. In many ways it’s as radical asSummorum Pontificum itself.
According to John Allen, bishops around the world “haven’t exactly bent over backwards” to make the Old Mass widely available since 2007. That sounds about right. In England and Wales, most dioceses don’t flagrantly disregard Summorum Pontificum – but they don’t need to. On paper, the self-implementing features of the motu proprio challenge the power of the bishop: a priest doesn’t need permission to celebrate the EF. In practice, it’s easy to turn the document into a dead letter, since most parish priests come from a Vatican II generation unsympathetic to traditional rubrics and most lay people have never been near a Tridentine Mass and don’t know what they’re missing.
I don’t think the older form of the Roman Rite will ever supplant the vernacular liturgy. But we won’t discover the true level of demand for it until there are priests happy to celebrate it – offering it, perhaps, as an early morning service like BCP Holy Communion in Anglican parishes, or as the centrepiece of particular feast days. Most of the pious young Catholics I know agree with Pope Benedict that the Ordinary and Extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite should complement each other – but then they’re lucky enough to live in or near London, where the Old Mass is unusually accessible.
The nightmare for diehard opponents of the EF is the formation of a generation of priests who know how to use the 1962 Missal and are perfectly happy to do so in every diocese.
This is only a guess, but I reckon that half our current seminarians would like to be taught how to say the Old Mass – an unthinkable proportion 30 years ago, when today’s senior clergy were training for the priesthood. However, these students are smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Seminaries are run by the Magic Circle: until recently, rectors had no difficulty picking out the matey-but-deferential liberal students who would be tomorrow’s monsignors; now the supply of liberals has all but dried up, and they face the tougher task of distinguishing moderate conservatives from secret traditionalists.
The last thing they want – absolutely the last thing – is for every seminarian to be trained to celebrate the “Mass of the Ages”. Not only would this make it more difficult to root out undesirable traddies, but it would also eventually carry the ancient liturgy into parishes untouched by Summorum Pontificum. That would be a disaster from the Magic Circle’s point of view. The promotion of the Extraordinary Form even as an occasional alternative in local churches would accelerate a cultural shift towards traditional Catholicism that the hierarchy is already struggling to control.
The ramifications of an instruction to seminaries to teach students the Extraordinary Form – and enough Latin to know what they’re saying – are enormous. For that reason, I expect a very big effort to circumvent any such obligation. We can’t be sure that Mickens’s and Allen’s sources are right about the document, of course; but we can be certain that bishops and seminary rectors have heard the same rumours and are working on a contingency plan. If the instruction tries to force the Old Missal into seminaries, then liberal canon lawyers will be crawling all over it the second it appears, looking for loopholes. And if there aren’t any, then expect lots of delaying tactics and excuses involving lack of staff, resources, time etc.
And all this just as the new English Missal is coming in. We do live in interesting times.
No comments:
Post a Comment