Author: redpenguinweb

There is a story told in the history of a Prince who wished to convert to the Christian Faith both for himself and for his nation. He sent delegations to the great Christian cities to report back to him on their worship. One delegation returned from one such city where they had witnessed a splendid celebration of the Liturgy and told their Prince that ” We knew not whether we were in Heaven or on Earth, but truly God is in that place!”

After yesterday’s celebration of the Corpus Christi Mass and Procession with its splendid music, the joyfully solemn ceremonies of the traditional Missa Cantata in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, so many remarked on the experience in almost the same terms as above.

The magnificent music, the Gregorian chants, the polyphony, the works of Mozart, Faure, Recife; the incense, candles, the poetry, and Scripture of the 13th century Mass texts along with the old and still living  Latin Missal all transported us back to our roots. Many of us felt, I think, like we had paid a quick visit back to the “old country” from our everyday lives and there refreshed ourselves with the sights, sounds, language, and rituals of our ancestors.

I am particularly grateful to Thomas Tirino, our Music Director, the Parish Choir, all the visiting musicians, instrumentalists, schola members, seminarians, servers, and First Communion children who helped make this Mass the truly “extraordinary” Mass that it was. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bissez and Lynn Wilson did much on the “logistical” side that must be acknowledged as well.

As I mentioned in my sermon, while such rich fare cannot be our ordinary sustenance, it must be an available part of our lives as Catholics.  The traditional Latin Mass is offered here at St. Matthew’s every Sunday at 9AM in the Chapel as well as on Holy Days of Obligation at 10:30 in the church.

Also, please note that the Mass and homily in Spanish is offered every Saturday evening at 7:30 PM in the church. One need not belong to a specific “Spanish” group to attend.

I feel that the richness and variety of our liturgical life here at St. Matthew’s also will serve to prepare us for the upcoming new English texts of our “Ordinary” Masses that comprise the vast majority of the liturgical life of the Parish every day and every Sunday. This new edition of the Missal will take effect this coming Advent. We will be preparing, both clergy and laity, for that event ahead of time.

June 27, 2011

Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

In the last few years, the Holy Father has addressed himself to the continuation of the Usus Antiquior or older form of our Rite of Mass, the Roman Rite.  The form of Mass that existed for centuries prior to the 1960’s aftermath of the Second Vatican Council’s initiation of liturgical reform was in development at various stages for 1,500 years and was codified in 1570 and known variously as the “Tridentine Mass” (after the Council of Trent in the 16^th century “Concilium Tridentina”) or simply as the “old Latin Mass.” The use of the Latin language is only one part of its celebration along with Gregorian Chant and other classic sacred music, the use of incense in its solemn form, and the literal orientation of the altar and the priest and people: facing liturgical ( if not geographical) East. This is the Mass most of us who grew up in the early 1960’s and before knew and attended. It was also the Mass brought by the missionaries to the New World, Africa, and Asia and survived at great cost in lands where the Faith was persecuted. Of course, the preaching was, and is, in the vernacular, in our case, English.

The Pope has in two recent documents made it plain that this “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite is not only to be allowed to continue but also to be fostered and made available on a reasonable, open and respectable basis as a legitimate form of the Catholic Church’s worship once more where possible.

 The “Ordinary Form” of the Mass (often called the “New Mass” or the Mass of Paul VI  in English) is as the name implies the usual form of the Mass we celebrate and will itself be revised and enriched this coming Advent with newly rendered English texts.

However, as you know St. Matthew’s has had for several years now a tradition of offering one Sunday Mass, at first in the Ordinary Form in Latin, and then beginning in 2007 in the Extraordinary Form at  9 am in the Chapel; as well as one Holiday of Obligation Mass in the church at 10:30 am.

The Holy Father has clearly expressed a desire that this precious heritage of the Church not disappear, but rather be cherished and celebrated more widely.

So, as a special occasion, on Sunday, June 26^th the Feast of Corpus Christi  or of “The Body and Blood of the Lord”,  the 12:15 Mass will be celebrated in the Extraordinary Form as a Missa Cantata or “High Mass”  and followed by a Eucharistic Procession and Benediction. This Feast was one of the great features of Catholic life for so many years and sadly has often fallen into neglect. Our Parish Choir will be joining forces with the Tridentine Scholas, as well as guest singers and musicians for a High Mass that on this beautiful feast we may render praise and love to the Lord in His gift of the Blessed Sacrament in a truly extraordinary way and in the very words Saint Thomas Aquinas and so many other Saints and faithful Catholics have used for centuries.

Mass booklets will be provided so that all present may follow the Latin words and prayers in an English translation.

In the early part of the twentieth century, G.K Chesterton reigned as one of the most popular literary figures in the English-speaking world. He also made no attempt to hide the fact that he was a convinced, and convincing, aggressively Catholic layman and apologist.

In one of his works on English history in the Catholic days before the Reformation, so often slandered by the later Protestant propagandists, he made an observation about Saint Thomas Becket, the 12^th century Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr. As many of you might remember, Thomas had started life a boon companion and minister of King Henry II who was elevated from a worldly life to the pinnacle of the English Church as Primate and Archbishop. The King had thought that in so convincing the Pope to appoint his old friend as the highest churchman in the Kingdom he might have thereby a pliant and submissive partner in his plans for the governance of England and the regulation of the place of the Church in that realm.

Well, once consecrated and enthroned at Canterbury in the Chair of St. Augustine, Henry found that “his” new Archbishop was no meek tool but resisted him as he had hitherto supported him. Henry II was a vigorous and passionate man who did not brook resistance well. The story finally ended with the violent murder of the Archbishop in his own cathedral at Vespers on December 29, 1170, by knights ashamed by the King’s drunken lament Have I no men about me? Who will rid me of this insolent priest?

The event shocked all Europe and Thomas was canonized soon after his death and his shrine at Canterbury became a renowned place of pilgrimage.  That is until a later Henry (VIII) wanted no resistance to his plans and sent his Thomas (More) to his death in 1535. Saint Thomas a Becket was declared a posthumous traitor and his very bones destroyed (so it is assumed) and his great shrine leveled.

It can be said with some justice that the 12^th century Henry was not all wrong: the issue that divided him from his former friend is one no one quibbles at now: that a priest accused of a civil crime should be handed over to the royal (or public) justice system. Also, Thomas Becket retained his old lordly temper and taste for command even as Archbishop. It was remarked too that he kept a splendid table (we would say today he entertained guests well) and never stinted on the brilliance and ceremony of his office.

Chesterton made a shrewd observation about that last point: Becket was outwardly magnificent alright. He wore his gold outside in the form of ornate and gorgeous vestments and plate, but wore a grey hair shirt next to his skin underneath it all and personally fed poor travelers in his hall. However, our modern millionaires, said Chesterton, are outwardly sober and grey in their apparel, but keep their gold close to the hearts and only feed the poor through proxy organizations.

The outward display of beauty and ceremony is free and gives joy to the onlookers and the worshippers whatever their status. The outwardly drab but greedy man rejoices himself alone if that.

I take this as a springboard to another of my series of columns on the “Pre-Vatican 2”/”Post-Vatican 2” dichotomy I’ve been commenting on in prior blogs.

Back in 1978 when Pope Paul VI died and Pope John Paul I was elected we saw for the first time a “post-Vatican 2” cycle of papal liturgy at its most intense. After it was over, a man approached me and said “We Catholics used to know how to do two things: grandeur and grief. Now we don’t do either.”

While one can dispute that, it is unmistakably true that the outward ceremonies and rites of the Church had been significantly altered.

It is indeed true, in the words of Pope St. Gregory the Great, that Ecclesia semper reformanda (The Church is always in need of reform.)

However, in the light of the past forty years, I believe one has some perspective on what went on in the name of an oft-quoted phrase in one of the Council’s documents: noble simplicity.

For the average Catholic, lay or priest, the most visible and striking changes are those in the Liturgy.

I mentioned in my last entry of the destruction or at least “burying” and burning (in some cases literally) of artifacts and books associated with what was called “the old Liturgy”. It seemed what was let loose was not so much a “reformation” in the Catholic sense but an iconoclastic passion.

That outward “gold” that Becket displayed had to be removed, indeed, derided it was felt.

There was (and is) a view that somehow “the Council” required that everything be plain, unadorned, if not cheap: “Vestments on the half-shell”: chasubles so cheaply made that whatever symbol is on it is only on one side; chalices become “cups”, often so poorly made that they tarnish; altars stripped of all adornment; Hosts become huge ugly brown roundels scored in a dozen places; everything “plain and simple”.

I remember thirty-five years ago now when we were in the Seminary a classmate turning to me on “Candlemas Day” (February 2^nd) and saying “I’m starved for ceremony!” Every day Mass was the same there at that time: a bare square wooden block-altar, two wooden candle-sticks; dark green ceramic “cups and plates”; the same off-white non-descript chasubles with the same plain overlay stoles. Any suggestion of anything more “traditional” would invite mockery and a not so veiled danger to one’s ordination with the dread label “ Pre-Vatican 2!!” or the ultimate in epithets “Pre-Trent!”

So deep did this go, that there is still an entrenched ( though aging generation) of the clergy, religious, and laity who react with horror, fear, and even anger, at what seems like any “going back” or return to “the old Church”. Adorned and beautified altars, more ornate or beautiful vestments, the use of incense and Holy Water ( at least apart from their vestigial survival at Funeral Masses); the use of even the simplest Latin Chants can produce a deep unease in the “post-Vatican 2” generation.

Why?

Again, allow me a historical anecdote. It is recorded that the 5^th century Frankish chieftain Clovis decided that he would turn from a persecuting paganism to an equally rigorous Christianity both for himself and his people. At the event that would later go down in history as “The Baptism of France” one of his paladins remarked with wonder “We will now adore what we have burnt, and burn what we have adored.”

The 1940’s and 50’s were in the United States at least a “boom time” in vocations. Seminaries routinely turned away men with even the slightest defect of body and still produced ordination classes of 20, 30, even 40 ordinands a year; Religious Orders were building new “motherhouses” and novitiates to accommodate all the postulants, etc.

And if the truth be told, many were attracted by the very things at first (the “mystique” of the Mass, the priestly look, and style, the religious habit, the life of obedience, simplicity and silence, etc.) that they would be called upon to burn. While these things are superficial and are not enough to sustain a lifetime’s vocation all by themselves; is not man himself a bit “superficial”? Are we nothing but intellect? Or do we all crave at some level for the outward beauty, color, ritual, sounds, sights, and smells that produce in us what one historian of religion called “the awe-filled and fearsome mystery”?

However, many were told now that such things were “infantile”, “outdated”, “childish” and had “to be let go”. And let go they were. We got back to “the early Church” or to the “original charism of the Founder/Foundress.” And soon after, even the very vocation was “let go” too.

Thousands of clergy and religious abandoned the sacramental and vowed life that had once attracted them to go “back to the world.” Many ( but not all) to “get married” but all at some level found what once they had “adored” was now unsupportable or even toxic without the “externals”.

It was the age of “finding yourself”. The comedian Alan King once remarked about someone that “Once he finds himself, he’s going to be disappointed.”

Many found that if you do strip away all the “externals”, the “internals” don’t stand by themselves: any more than the “substance” of a being can stand without any “accidents”.

In these last few decades, just when we thought we were making the Church more ”relevant” or attractive to the world, and our Liturgy more “meaningful” the pews began to slowly, but inexorably empty as well as our rectories and convents.

I know there is a logical fallacy called the “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy: meaning that just because something happens AFTER something else it doesn’t mean that it happened BECAUSE of that thing.

But let’s assume that if in the last few decades that Church became even more numerous, vigorous, respected and our seminaries and convents were overflowing and our Masses packed, I think someone might say that “maybe” the “Changes” worked.

But it seems…well…enough for now, dear reader.

 

As we near the very significant implementation of the first major change in decades of the way we we celebrate the Mass I feel both a hope that we have an opportunity to genuinely renew and purify our celebration of the Eucharist; and a sense of concern that a mentality and the change in the very words that we all have grown used to are going to challenged and, in some cases, ignored or resisted.

I’ve written before about the individualistic style and assumptions that characterize the common approach to liturgical texts and practices in our era.

The remarks linked to below go to this point.

As many of you know, the Holy Father Benedict XVI, building on the initiatives of the Blessed John Paul II ,has reopened and expanded the celebration of what is officially called “The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite” a/k/a “The Tridentine Mass”.or..”the old Latin Mass.”

Make no mistake, this is an issue that goes to the heart in my opinion of an extremely destructive mentality in our Church since the close of the Second Vatican Council II: namely, the assumption that “Vatican 2” marked a break with hundreds, if not thousands, years of Catholic worship and doctrine. I twas so often assumed that my  vestige of the “old Church” from a priest’s cassock to a single word of Latin marked a resistance to “the changes” that needed to be either persuaded away or repressed. Vestments, sacred images, sacred vessels, liturgical and devotional books that aided and nourished the spiritual life of whole generations were figuratively ( if not literally) consigned to the flames or the scissors in a spiritual and physical holocaust eerily reminiscent of Reformation England and Ireland in the Penal Days. There was also significant ( if not always recognized) psychological harm done to whole communities, families, and individuals as a result of what was in fact a revolution rather than a gradual and traditional Catholic reform. The results are all around us.

Now we see the beginnings of what I hope will be a genuine reform and reevaluation of the Church’s Liturgy and life. I offer the article as part of that; and as food for thought.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1101922.htm

May 17, 2011.

Feast of Saint Paschal Baylon

That line above appeared in two recent movies on modern British royalty: The Queen and The King’s Speech in which a stranger to royal protocol is cheerfully instructed to only use the full honorific once, then afterwards that it’s the decidedly non-posh “M’am as in HAM, not MAHM as in palm.”

This gives me a chance to make a point about titles and terms of address specifically as it pertains to ME.

Not for the first time, today I was greeted by a Catholic (in this case at a Funeral) with the words “Hello Pastor!” I don’t know what it is with funerals or this particular funeral home but this is how I’ve been addressed too often in this particular situation since I got here.  To be fair, this first started when I was made the pastor of Saint James Church in Seaford eleven years ago. For twenty-two years of priesthood I’d been addressed as “Father”; then all of a sudden I was being addressed in speech as “Pastor”.

Today I replied to the good-hearted cheerful soul who addressed me as such with blunt but humorous reply “I aint’ no Lutheran, call me Father”.

I make this point because it marks (at least to me) another diminution of Catholic culture that if not corrected would simply be another item on the “There’s another thing people don’t know today” list.

OK, here it is: In the English speaking world Roman Catholic diocesan and most religious priests are addressed as Father. It was also the custom that secular (i.e. priests not members of religious orders) are also addressed by their last or family name: not their first name. This is a custom I prefer; hence I refer to myself as Father Hewes. If I were a monk or a friar I would properly be called Father Robert, but I’m not. As for the occasional Father Bob, the least said the better. J

The modern cult of never using last names has produced some interesting dialogue at times along the lines of:

Father, do you know Father Bill in Cape Spondoolic in Florida?

Oh, what’s his last name?

I don’t’ know. He’s just Father Bill.

Oh yes, he’s the only priest named Bill, of course, I know him.

Now, what about “pastor” then?

First, “pastor” is my title, my job description so to speak. It’s the office I hold. (By custom Lutheran and some other Protestant clergy are called “pastor” as a form of address, but not Catholic priests.)

When you had a “Monsignor” as pastor I bet nobody greeted him with “Hello, Chaplain to His Holiness!”

Or to use a secular example: if you had occasion to visit a medical specialist you probably said “Good morning, Doctor” NOT “Good morning, gastroenterologist!”

While I hold the office of pastor, I’m still a Catholic priest, so kindly call me “Father”.  (Unless one day I get to add a set of purple buttons to my cassock: then I’ll write another blog like this.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, (not “men and women”) is my lighter-than –usual latest blog.

May 9, 2011

This morning I woke up to the news that after nearly ten years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the self-proclaimed author and sponsor of these and other acts, Osama bin Laden was located and killed by US forces operating in Pakistan.

The Vatican issued the statement that appears on the front page of this website.

I must confess I was surprised at today’s events. It seemed that bin Laden was free for so long despite all our best efforts to find him that he would never be brought to justice.

Also, the jubilation of crowds seen in Washington and here in New York surprised me as well. From looking at many of the faces of the crowd I have the impression that many were college kids out on a bit of a toot, with patriotism as a good excuse or motivation.

The courage and professionalism of our Armed Forces involved in this and many other operations are indeed, however, a source of pride.

I think for anyone who experienced the events of 9/11 and/or who lost loved ones a certain amount of grim satisfaction is both understandable and perfectly acceptable.

For me, I feel no jubilation but a sense of moral quietude in that justice has in fact been done.  Sometimes justice is harsh. However, as the Lord said, “Those who live by the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

Unlike the events of around this very time in 1945 however, this spectacular death does not mark the end of the struggle or war on terrorism.  It will go on, it seems, fuelled by a fanaticism unknown to our secular West or our ecumenical ways of viewing other religions.

Not everyone shares that view and indeed it must be said that many Muslims themselves are often victims of violence carried out in the name of Islam or by governments reacting to it.

However, peace as distinct from justice or even vengeance requires wider and deeper means than political or military ones.

I happen to believe that a conversion to Christ is the answer. A conversion carried out as it has so often been carried out: by martyrs, confessors, and virgins who witness to the truth against (and on behalf of) those blinded by both a vulgar materialistic hedonism or crude and retrograde notions of religion and of society.

Give peace in our time, O Lord, for there is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thee, O Lord!

May 2, 2001.

Feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor.

I write this late Holy Saturday night after having presided over the Solemn Easter Vigil Mass. It was a splendid celebration: full of color, glorious music, beauty and the blessing of a Baptism and Confirmation of a new adult member of the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

The church was full, and so many added to the reverent celebration of this most blessed night.

This Easter we are especially blessed in that the entire Christian world is celebrating Easter at this moment: the Catholic and Protestant West, and the Catholic and Orthodox East all acclaim the Risen Christ.

One of my favorite Easter hymns is drawn from the Byzantine Liturgy:

Christ is risen gloriously from the dead, trampling down death by death, giving life to those in the tomb!

There is a beautiful tradition or pious belief that our Risen Lord would have never omitted to appear privately and tenderly to His Blessed Mother early on that Easter day. St. Thomas Aquinas said a beautiful practice is to recite the Regina Caeli… Queen of Heaven, rejoice! upon rising on Easter Day in union with Jesus.

As people were leaving the church tonight one woman remarked how moving she found the Mass, and then said God deserves it!

Indeed! All our talents, efforts, skill are all to serve His Glory.

A blessed Easter!

Preaching on the Passion of Christ, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) pointed to a large Crucifix and asked his hearers Who did this? He paused, and asked again more insistently WHO DID THIS? After a further pause, he gave the answer: Love did this, heedless of His dignity!

Love is a powerful thing. The Scriptures tell us it is as stern as death, relentless as the netherworld.

It is so powerful and complex that the Greeks used three words for it: Eros (physical passion and desire); Philia (friendship and loyalty); and Agape (a profound unselfish desire for the true good of the other, undefeated and undaunted in its desire to go good to the Other). It is this latter word that we find used in the New Testament to describe Christ’s love for us.  When Saint Jerome translated the Greek texts into the common Latin of the 4^th century he used the word Caritas rather than the more common Amor. Over the centuries that was rendered into English as “charity” which has become for many a somewhat impersonal word redolent of organized “charities”. We tend to use the single word “love” for what the Gospel and Saint Paul meant by agape or caritas.

Odd that our English tongue, so rich and varied in so many ways, has but one word for that many-splendored thing.

There are all kinds of love.

There is even a love to BE loved.

Another story from history comes to mind; this time closer to us.

In 1774 the aged libertine King Louis XV of France lay dying of unsuspected small pox at the age of sixty-four. He had come to the throne as a boy of only five succeeding his great grandfather Louis XIV. So handsome and winning was he in his youth that he acquired the sobriquet amongst his subjects as Louis le Bien-Aime ( Louis the Well Beloved.)  As a young man, it was thought he had smallpox and his people were so disturbed by his possible early death that it was said that 10,000 candles burned before the shrines of Notre Dame Cathedral for his recovery. He did recover only to ruin his good name by decades of waste, debauchery, and sexual promiscuity of a prodigious renown. Now he lay dying, unbeloved.  But only a year before he had insisted on a reform that promised well for the future but stirred up controversy and resistance in the present.  To make it simple, he had begun to turn the privately run legal system of France from a monopoly of the lawyers’ guilds into a true royal/public service.  Needless to say, the barristers and avocats were not happy and stirred popular fears of tyranny against the elderly King. It was a cynical ploy leading a true cynic, Voltaire, to say that this so-called alliance between the lawyers and the people was like an “alliance between the spiders and the flies.”

Nonetheless, it seemed to be the last nail in the coffin of an unpopular King.  The courtiers at Versailles forsook his room to seek out the “rising star”: the twenty-four year old Dauphin Louis-Auguste. The young prince was Louis XV’s grandson, large of body, slow of speech, well-intentioned, but uncertain and fearful of the future.

When the old King died pressure was brought on the new Louis XVI to reverse his grandfather’s law policy.  He withstood it only a short while, then reversed the reform, not wishing to be seen as no better than his despised grandfather. It garnered him some immediate popularity. A historian of his reign records that the new King remarked to those urging him to remain firm “Yes…yes…you might be right…but…we wish to be loved.”

We wish to be loved…the writer remarked that was the beginning of the end for the King who would end up on the guillotine eighteen years later. From that point on, he would sacrifice firm insistence on his own judgment to pleasing his frivolous wife, his shallow brothers, his advisers, his people and wound up as Louis Sans-Tete (Louis the Beheaded.)

To return to our subject on this Good Friday, it was Love that did the “this” of the Passion and Death of Christ on the Cross. It was His love for us; NOT His desire to BE loved by us that drove Him to the foreseen Cross.

If Jesus desired “to be loved” first and foremost, He would have betrayed His Father’s will. His human nature recoiled in horror at the prospect of the Passion and all its horrific features, but He would not renounce the proffered cup in Gethsemane if it meant abandoning His very purpose.

He would have come down from that cross as He was taunted to do if He wanted to BE loved.

No, He loves us too much to merely please us.

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee. For by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world!

Good Friday, April 22, 2011.

 

It has been observed that Holy Thursday was one of the best days in the Church’s history and one of the worst. The Liturgy of this day has always been ambivalent in the Roman tradition: while the vestments are white; the Crucifix and sacred images remain veiled and no alleluias are sung and the altar is stripped of its cloths and the Blessed Sacrament is housed in a temporary abode.

One of the best days in that during this evening the Old Testament Passover is fulfilled by the New Passover. The astounding gift of the Lord’s abiding presence in the Most Holy Eucharist is instituted and the Sacred Priesthood begun that will renew upon countless altars until the end of time that Paschal Sacrifice of the Dying and Rising of Christ so that He may enter the hearts of the Faithful and abide amongst us until He comes again in glory. The kenosis or emptying out of the Lord’s Eternal Glory is symbolized by the touching ceremony of the Mandatum or foot-washing.

One the worst in that by its end all but one of His new priests have either fled into hiding or denied Him before slaves and little girls; and another is swinging from a rope in suicide.  The Lord Himself sweats blood while his closest three Apostles sleep or ineptly and foolishly thrash about with swords.

Fine way to end a day!

The figure of Judas figures prominently in the Gospel texts today as much as anyone.

The amazing thing, if I may put it so boldly, is that the Lord allowed this to happen. If I were in charge I’d make other arrangements; surely find some better human material than this bunch of so-called disciples!

But then again, I AM one of those disciples.

It was to just such as me that Jesus entrusted His Body and Blood, and His flock.

It was people like you and me that He calls to “keep watch” with Him.

He didn’t decide to go with “the best and the brightest” as the world’s standard would define them.

Peter “following at a distance”, the others all fleeing, Judas’ despair, John’s sympathy are played out in every age of the Church and in every age of the priesthood and discipleship.

I remember listening to an aria from a cantata on the Passion where the soloist sings of Peter’s denials and cowardice, and then asked “And how many times has the cock crowed since you first met Him?”

I remember too the story of the genially humorous but burningly zealous St. Philip Neri (1515-1591) saying every morning in his prayers “Lord, keep your eye on Philip today, for today Philip might betray thee.”

Yet the Lord hasn’t ceased giving Himself sacramentally and figuratively into our hands for two millennia, and He won’t stop till the last day of the world’s existence.

Let us give thanks, Eucaristia, literally Eucharist in Greek for both His Sacramental Real Presence and His priesthood conveyed to men, so often feeble or unworthy, and the fact that He still stays with us here on earth.

Let us stay with Him.

Holy Thursday

April 21, 2011.

 

 

It has been observed that Holy Thursday was one of the best days in the Church’s history and one of the worst. The Liturgy of this day has always been ambivalent in the Roman tradition: while the vestments are white; the Crucifix and sacred images remain veiled and no alleluias are sung and the altar is stripped of its cloths and the Blessed Sacrament is housed in a temporary abode.

One of the best days in that during this evening the Old Testament Passover is fulfilled by the New Passover. The astounding gift of the Lord’s abiding presence in the Most Holy Eucharist is instituted and the Sacred Priesthood begun that will renew upon countless altars until the end of time that Paschal Sacrifice of the Dying and Rising of Christ so that He may enter the hearts of the Faithful and abide amongst us until He comes again in glory. The kenosis or emptying out of the Lord’s Eternal Glory is symbolized by the touching ceremony of the Mandatum or foot-washing.

One the worst in that by its end all but one of His new priests have either fled into hiding or denied Him before slaves and little girls, and another is swinging from a rope in suicide.  The Lord Himself sweats blood while his closest three Apostles sleep or ineptly and foolishly thrash about with swords.

Fine way to end a day!

The figure of Judas figures prominently in the Gospel texts today as much as anyone.

The amazing thing, if I may put it so boldly, is that the Lord allowed this to happen. If I were in charge I’d make other arrangements; surely find some better human material than this bunch of so-called disciples!

But then again, I AM one of those disciples.

It was to just such as me that Jesus entrusted His Body and Blood, and His flock.

It was people like you and me that He calls to “keep watch” with Him.

He didn’t decide to go with “the best and the brightest” as the world’s standard would define them.

Peter “following at a distance”, the others all fleeing, Judas’ despair, John’s sympathy are played out in every age of the Church and in every age of the priesthood and discipleship.

I remember listening to an aria from a cantata on the Passion where the soloist sings of Peter’s denials and cowardice, and then asked: “And how many times has the cock crowed since you met Him?”

I remember too the story of the genially humorous but burningly zealous St. Philip Neri (1515-1591) saying every morning in his prayers “Lord, keep your eye on Philip today, for today Philip might betray thee.”

Yet the Lord hasn’t ceased giving Himself sacramentally and figuratively into our hands for two millennia, and He won’t stop till the last day of the world’s existence.

Let us give thanks, Eucaristia, literally Eucharist in Greek for both His Sacramental Real Presence and His priesthood conveyed to men, so often feeble or unworthy, and the fact that He still stays with us here on earth.

Let us stay with Him.

 

 Holy Thursday, April 21, 2011