Re-enchanting through marbling and gilding

Occasionally I get a visitor at Mass who say they read the blog. I had one today, a teacher, I think he must be teaching R.E., he was at a Catholic Secondary School as far as readers are concerned at "somewhere in England". In a brief conversation he told me he and some of his colleagues are concerned about re-enchanting the faith, and consequently the liturgy, for their students. They seem to have a deacon as a school chaplain who is quite enthusiastic about their approach. So what is he doing?

• They teach children to be recollected, the use recordings of plainchant.



• They have been teaching their students to sing plainchant.



• They are preparing them to take part in Benediction with the proper chants, it sounded like EF to me.



• They have taught them marbling



• They have taught them gilding

The last two, are so they can do up their school chapel and altar, I just think that is wonderful! So often we underestimate the importance of the visual for children, that which we do give them is so often ephemeral.

Love itself is passion

Cardinal Ratzinger in 2002:
Today what people have in view is eliminating suffering from the world. For the individual, that means avoiding pain and suffering in whatever way. Yet we must also see that it is in this very way that the world becomes very hard and very cold. Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain.

When we know that the way of love–this exodus, this going out of oneself–is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.

Love itself is a passion, something we endure. In love experience first a happiness, a general feeling of happiness.

Crux fidelis

Crux fidelis inter omnes arbor una nobilis:

nulla silva talem profert fronde, flore, germine.

Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulce pondus sustinet.

Pange lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis,

et super vía trophæo dic triumphum nobilem:

qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.

......

Sempiterna sit beatæ Trinitati gloria;

aequa Patri Filioque, par decus Paraclito;

unius Trinique nomen laudet universitas.

Amen

I exult in the cross of Christ

I used to think that vestments should be clothes without any iconography, I also used to believe that we should carry our cross rather than wear it round our neck.

I remember an elderly nun telling about washing the dead body of a saintly old priest when she was a novice, the only priest she seen naked, he had the Crucifixion tattooed across his back, scarred with marks of his own penance. She said she believed for ages that all priests were literally marked with the Cross before ordination.

Now, I think that all vestments should bear the cross, a priests vocation is to carry the crucified on his back*. I also think it is a good and holy thing to wear the image of the crucified next to one's heart.

*One of my servers suggested, when I said this, that possible Christ was carrying me on his back.

Esplanade des Invalides

AP) — Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague Saturday as he led more than a quarter million Catholics at an outdoor Mass in Paris.
Benedict spoke as he was making his first visit as pontiff to the French capital, renowned for its luxury goods, fashion sense and cultural riches.
"Has not our modern world created its own idols?" Benedict said in his homily, and wondered aloud whether people have "imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity?"
"This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask," the pontiff said.
The 260,000 or so people who gathered on the lawns of the Esplanade des Invalides displayed a joyful outpouring of faith for this traditionally Roman Catholic country, which has witnessed a sharp decline in churchgoing in recent years.
Benedict has continued with a campaign started by his predecessor, John Paul II, who worried that the ever-more affluent West was turning consumerism into a kind of religion and ignoring spiritual values.
Paraphrasing from the New Testament, Benedict decried "insatiable greed" and said "the love of money is the root of all evil."
"Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true destiny?" the pope asked.
In his homily, Benedict blasted modern society's thirst for these new "pagan" idols as a "scandal, a real plague."
The pope urged the faithful to "shun the worship of idols. Do not tire of doing good!'"
Listeners welcomed his message.
Jacqueline Dudek, a 76-year-old great-grandmother from Paris attending the Mass, said she was glad much of France's political elite was there to hear the anti-materialism homily.
"They have plenty of things to learn," she said.
The late-morning Mass is Benedict's only public appearance Saturday before he flies to Lourdes on a pilgrimage to the shrine there, which draws millions of pilgrims each year, many hoping for miracle cures of physical or psychic ills.
Tens of thousands of faithful, many of them young people, had camped overnight on the field after hearing greetings from the pope Friday night as he left a prayer service in Notre Dame.
On Friday, Benedict told young people they shouldn't fear spreading their faith in a society where secularism is entrenched and Islam is growing.
While most French are Catholic at least by tradition — if not in practice — the old yarn is that most go to church three times in their life: at their baptism, their wedding and their funeral.
France also has a fervent belief that faith and the state should be kept strictly separate.
Benedict and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who held talks on Friday, spoke publicly of the contribution that religion can make to forging an ethical society.
"They say that Catholics in France are fewer and fewer, and less devoted. But you can see here that is not true," said Robert Pavilla, a 58-year-old school groundskeeper, gesturing toward the throngs of people on the esplanade.

Help with TLM

If there is priest reader, in good standing etc., who could say the low TLM next Sunday evening at 6pm. 21st September.

I can offer supper and if needed a bed for the night. One of the problems caused by Summorum Pontificum is that there are so many demands made on the FSSP on the continent that in the South of England there is now only one priest serving the growing community of young families in Reading, they are no longer able to come to Brighton.

If I can't find a priest, the small community who come to the Mass will have to have a Latin Pauline Mass, ad orientem. I suppose there is no reason why we can't have prayers at the foot of the altar before, the Leonine Prayers after. I don't have a modern Latin Lectionary, but I presume I can take the readings from the Neo-Vulgate, and for pastoral reasons reduce the number. And as Archbishop Ranjith at Maria Vesperbild introduced various blessings and the genuflections before the elevations there are presumably other elements of the Traditional rite that can legitimately be introduce without compromising the the Novus Ordo.

Power of the blog: Father Peter Gee has agreed to come

Notre Dame

"Always cultivate a thirst for the word of God," he said. "Thus you will learn to love everyone you meet along life's journey. In the church, everyone has a place, everyone." see CNS

Our pilgrimage to the holy city would not be possible if it were not made in the Church, the seed and the prefiguration of the heavenly Jerusalem. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain” (Ps 126:1). Who is this Lord, if not our Lord Jesus Christ? It is he who founded his Church and built it on rock, on the faith of the Apostle Peter. In the words of Saint Augustine, “It is Jesus Christ our Lord who himself builds his temple. Many indeed labour to build, yet unless the Lord intervenes to build, in vain do the builders labour.
Rocco Palmo carries the full text