Tag: liturgy

Good Church Music Starts with Kids

Music is essential to life. Sacred music –that which is lived and performed in the Liturgy– is crucial important and integral to the worship of God. Yes, we live the text and the notes.

I love music. I love listening to music. I love sharing the experience of listening to music with others. I love purchasing, supporting musicians, and the like. I don’t sing even though I probably have one note (like everybody else).

The “normal” parish does not spend enough time thinking about the sacred music program never mind spending money on it. Even a financially strapped parish could put $50.00 per week away for sacred music. More important to money is the understanding of pastor and laity have regarding the music and give personal, informed and reasonable interest to it and the people involved. The worship of God is paramount; the lifting of our soul is desired and beautiful and healing.

I stumbled upon Benedict Sheehan’s blog post “Good Church Music Starts with Kids” and I think he’s spot-on and parishes, especially Catholic parishes, need to attend to what he Benedict proposes.

Benedict Sheehan regularly posts at The Music Stand –visit him there.

Propers for Mass of Mary, Mother of the Church

Here are the Propers for the Mass of Mary, Mother of the Church (in Latin).

Here is the Collect for the Mass (and hours) for Memoria Beatae Mariae Virginis Ecclesiae Matris, which is simply from the Votive Mass Mary, Mother of the Church:

Deus, misericordiarum Pater, cuius Unigenitus, cruci affixus, beatam Mariam Virginem, Genetricem suam, Matrem quoque nostram constituit, concede, quaesumus, ut, eius cooperante caritate, Ecclesia tua, in dies fecundior, prolis sanctitate exsultet et in gremium suum cunctas attrahat familias populorum.

LITERAL VERSION:

God, the Father of mercies, whose Only-Begotten affixed to the Cross established His Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary also as our Mother, grant, we beg, that as her charity is also at work, Your Church, ever more fruitful each day, may exalt in the sanctity of progeny and may draw into her bosom all the families of peoples.

(courtesy of P. JZ)

Ecclesiae Mater Liturgical texts

Pro-Life is to be pro-Liturgical Life

A recent article by Peter Kwasniewski, “Why pro-life Catholics should strive for a higher and deeper life” caught my attention and I think you ought to read it.

Kwasniewski states,

“…to be pro-life in its most profound sense is to be pro-liturgical life. As the Second Vatican Council says about the baptized: “Participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and culmination of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with It” (Lumen Gentium §11). “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows” (Sacrosanctum Concilium §10). The font from which all her power flows … The power to welcome children, to love them into the Church, to care for them over all the years; the power to value every human person, well or ill, hale or handicapped, conscious or comatose, embryonic or elderly; the power to build a culture of life, a culture of beauty, a culture of intellect consecrated to the truth—all this flows from the Holy Mysteries. Without the Church’s liturgy, we fail to grasp the infinite dignity God has bestowed on us in Christ. We miss out on the flesh-and-blood encounter with the Source of Life, Life incarnate, Life outpoured for eternal life.

“Correctly understood, then, the pro-life movement is pro-human life, pro-intellectual life, pro-cultural life, and pro-liturgical life. When we see this movement in its full breadth and depth, we see the prerequisites of our vision, the scope of our struggle, the source of our strength, and the glorious destiny of our toil.

Read the entire article here.

Blessing of Basil on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

I am giving emphasis these days on knowing what we believe as Catholics by looking at the liturgical sources. We first go to the sacred Liturgy to study and pray the prayers prayed by the priest for Mass, Lauds, Vespers, or those smaller rites such as the Blessing of Basil that you would find on today’s feast of the Holy Cross, also called the Roodmas. Ours is a richly endowed sacramental faith.

“The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which, the day after the dedication of the Basilica of the Resurrection raised over the tomb of Christ, is exalted and honored, in the manner of a memorial of His paschal victory and the sign which is to appear in the sky, already announcing in advance His second coming” (from the Roman Martyrology).

basil3.jpg
The Blessing of Basil

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who made heaven and earth.

Let us pray.

Almighty and merciful God, deign, we beseech You, to bless + Your creature, this aromatic basil leaf. Even as it delights our senses, may it recall for us the triumph of Christ, our Crucified King and the power of His Precious Blood to purify and preserve us from evil so that, planted beneath His Cross, we may flourish to Your glory and spread abroad the fragrance of His sacrifice. Who is Lord forever and ever.

R. Amen.

The bouquets of basil leaf are sprinkled with Holy Water.

Some account for the connection between the herb basil and the Cross as follows:

The herb, basil has long been associated with today’s feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The word “basil” is related to basileios, from the Greek word for king.

According to the liturgical legend, the Empress Saint Helena found the location of the True Cross by digging for it under a colony of basil. Basil plants were reputed to have sprung up at the foot of the Cross where fell the Precious Blood of Christ and the tears of the Mother of Sorrows.

A sprig of basil was said to have been found growing from the wood of the True Cross. On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross it is customary in the East to rest the Holy Cross on a bed of basil before presenting it to the veneration of the faithful.

Also, from the practice in some areas of strewing branches of basil before church communion rails, it came to be known as Holy Communion Plant. The blessed basil leaf can be arranged in a bouquet at the foot of the crucifix; the dried leaves can also be used by the faithful as a sacramental.

A return to our Catholic inheritance through the Liturgy

We can’t escape the fact that the paradigms of modern society are suffocating the intellect, the heart and the souls of  men and women. What has efficacy for salvation? What conveys grace most authentically? It would be, I have come to believe, is the traditional form of the sacred Liturgy, either the older form of the Roman Rite or the Liturgies of the Eastern Churches (that of the liturgical families of Greece, Armenia, Syria and Egypt). There is Someone and Something that is transmitted the traditional forms of the Liturgy absent, minimized and moralized in the reformed rites of the 1960’s. While there are some good things that came about in some of the liturgical reforms, but there is a mystagogical diminishment therein. In fact, you could argue there has been a significant loss of shared transcendence available to the most humble of people. The Christian mystery, therefore, is highly reduced sense of the sign and symbol of Catholic worship of the Triune God.

In a First Things article, German philosopher Martin Mosebach publishes his thinking on this subject in “Return to Form: A Call for the Restoration of the Roman Rite” (April 2017). Pay close attention to Mosebach’s argument; it is a needed call to renew the Covenant and mark a path of redemption.

Our Christian Object of Faith

Today gave me the opportunity to read through some things today that I have put on the back burner. You can see why I would post this thinking. One such item includes the following:

“The Christian faith has only one object: the mystery of Christ dead and risen. But this unique mystery subsists under different modes: it is prefigured in the Old Testament, it is accomplished historically in the earthly life of Christ, it is contained in mystery in the sacraments, it is lived mystically in souls, it is accomplished socially in the Church, it is consummated eschatologically in the Heavenly Kingdom. Thus the Christian has at his disposition several registers, a multi-dimensional symbolism, to express this unique reality. The whole of Christian culture consists in grasping the links that exist between Bible and Liturgy, Gospel and Eschatology, Mysticism and Liturgy. The application of this method to Scripture is called spiritual exegesis; applied to liturgy it is called mystagogy. This consists in reading in the rites the mystery of Christ, and in contemplating beneath the symbols the invisible reality.”

Jean Cardinal Danielou, SJ

An everlasting inheritance promised

The Mass Collect prayed by the priest states that by God’s grace we are adopted children and by His grace we ask for a share in the gift of freedom and an everlasting inheritance. What is this inheritance? It is the gifts of the hundredfold in this life and living in His holy Presence in the next. The Church begs the Holy Spirit for these gifts for her children as the sacrament of Christ’s Presence on earth, as the mediator between God and humanity. The sacred Liturgy is the method of our conversion and our Christian identity; the prayer of the Liturgy is about giving glory to God.

The Scripture readings for the 23rd Sunday through the Year has us hearing Matthew 18:15-20. Here is a reflection from St. John Chrysostom:

“You will be doing everything for the glory of God if, when you leave this place, you make yourself responsible for saving your brother or sister, not just by accusing and rebuking him or her, but also by advising and encouraging, and by pointing out the harm done by worldly amusements, and the profit and help that come from our instruction. You’ll also be preparing for yourself a double reward, since as well is greatly furthering your own salvation, you will be endeavoring to heal a fellow member of Christ’s body. It is the Church’s pride, it is the Savior’s command, not to be concerned only about our own welfare, but about our neighbor’s also.”

The Christ, the Son of God, St Peter declares

St Peter with key to heavenOur reflection for the 21st Sunday through the Year on Matthew 16:13-20 comes from St. Cyril of Alexandria:

“Peter did not say ‘you are a Christ’ or ‘a son of God’ but ‘the Christ, the Son of God.’ For there are many christs by grace, who have attained the rank of adopted sons, but only one who is by nature the Son of God. Thus, using the definite article, he said, ‘the Christ, the Son of God’. And in calling him the Son of the living God, Peter indicates that Christ himself is life and that death has no authority over him. And even if the flesh, for a short while, was weak and died, nevertheless it rose again, since the Word, who indwelled it, could not be held under the bonds of death.”