Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song (Pope Saint John Paul II)
Year: 2020
Just as when we were children, we were afraid to be alone in the dark and could only be assured by the presence of someone who loved us. Well this is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday, the voice of God resounded in the realm of death. The unimaginable occurred; namely, love penetrated Hell (Robert[…]
The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood – Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. (T.S. Eliot)
Evelyn Waugh and the Mass of the Ages
I was struck as I finished up reading over a small volume of letters by the great English writer Evelyn Waugh, author of such treasures as Brideshead Revisited, Love Among the Ruins, A Handful of Dust and numerous others, that this was the day he died, on April 10th, 1966, which was, fittingly, Easter Sunday.[…]
Listen and Pray with the Monks at Barroux
If you are so inclined on this Holy Thursday – and a blessed one to all our readers – you may listen to, and participate in, (you may even be able to watch) the Mass as chanted by the Benedictine monks at Barroux, in the usus antiquior. The following link will take you there, and[…]
Australia needs the Sacred Heart of Jesus
(Australia, the antipodean Land Down Under, is under a severe lockdown, with people arrested for surfing all alone, and, what is far worse, no sacramental participation, not least the Eucharist on this Holy Thursday. So perhaps this meditation will help life their, and our, spirits in this time of isolation. For the Heart of Jesus[…]
Were we to fully realize what a priest is on earth, we would die: not of fright, but of love… Without the priest, the passion and death of our Lord would be of no avail. It is the priest who continues the work of redemption on earth… What use would be a house filled with[…]
Palestrina’s Lamentations of Jeremiah
In this last day of Lent, Spy Wednesday, we may profit from another musical adaptation of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in the style of the perfect art – ars perfecta – of Palestrina. All part of that incarnational liturgy, that by force of circumstances, we must adapt for ourselves, in light of the Church’s Tradition[…]
Clarificatio, Dialectica, et Rhetoricae
As I began these podcasts, I deleted the first one I did, for I said something I regretted, and thought, do I do this all over again? Re-takes take up a lot time, as the perusal of the biography of any actor will evince. Yet a visiting alumnus said to me, and I paraphrase –[…]