Monthly Archives: March 2019

New Oxford Book of Christian Verse as sermon fodder . . .

 . . .  as using George Herbert’s “Redemption,”  — on a platter for the inventive preacher — which 

condenses Christian teaching about redemption in Christ’s death on the Cross into a single image of a tenant seeking a new lease from his lord.

 “Single image,” yes. Every preacher wants that.

In the poem drawing on Luke’s parable of the tenants but with a twist, namely that this tenant is not wicked, but 

recognizes his own fruitlessness, and seeks out his lord.

And, seeking Him out,

journeys to heaven, then to the wealthy on earth, but [only] among sinners finds his lord dying, and receives his new lease.

 On life, yes.

But I have in mind a selective reading of the poem, aiming at driving home a general point — note well, one general point — planting perhaps a seed of wonder at what God hath wrought for those who love Him, letting the poet make that point.

One such point is the most a sermon can do, I hope we agree.

For instance, in the case of “Redemption,”

Having been tenant long to a rich lord,
    Not thriving [in trouble], I resolvèd [3-syllable word here] to be bold,
    And make a suit [put my case] unto him, to afford [grant me]
A new small-rented lease [something I can afford in a landlord’s market], and cancel th’ old.
In heaven at his manor I him sought;
    They told me there that he was lately gone [to see]
    About some land, which he had dearly bought [at such a price!]
Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.
I straight [immediately] returned, and knowing his great birth,  [how great he is]
    Sought him accordingly in great resorts; [where the elite meet]
    In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts; [where great people gather]
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
    Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied, [saw]
    Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
Wow.
It’s all about Jesus buying our salvation and us going to Him to cash it in, one might say, in a once-in-a-lifetime transaction, meaning how marvelous it is, taken pure and simple, making no complicated doctrinal statement, nor implying one.

Sung Latin Mass Saturday March 16, St. Ita’s Chicago

Blithe Spirit

From Veritas, Bonitas, Pulchritas — the True, the Good, the Beautiful:

Discover the Latin mass.  You’re invited to a SUNG LATIN MASS, 1962 Roman Missal. Antonio Lotti’s Mass for Three Voices. Saturday March 16, 2 PM

Site also has list of events, mostly sung masses as above, in or centering on churches throughout the archdiocese since October, 2017.

Quite an operation, bearing unmistakable organizational and doctrinal-fidelity mark of Opus Dei, which operates almost always under media radar, relying on focused communication.

Go here for Facebook and here for Twitter elaborations.

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The doctoring of a council document, the one on worship, from which important footnotes disappeared

Why important? Because they referred to council fathers’ reasoning behind liturgical changes, positioning them in the history of such change, from Pius X to Pius XII.

From the article pointing this out, by Dr. Susan Benofy, in the Adoremus Bulletin, June of 2015, cited here:

[T]he idea that the council was a continuation of work already begun was obscured by numerous commentaries that treated [Sacrosanctum
Concilium, the document in question] as a departure from the past, the beginning of a “new” liturgy for the “new” post-Vatican II church.

This brave new world concept, was declaimed happily by Joseph Gelineau, S.J., in his book The Liturgy: Today and Tomorrow (New York: Paulist Press, 1978): “the Roman rite as we knew it exists no more. It has gone. Some walls of the structure have fallen, others have been altered; we can look at it as a ruin or as the partial foundation of a new building… The liturgy is a permanent workshop.”

Indeed, you would think so, were it not for the missing references, wrote Benofy:

Readers of SC who are not familiar with the liturgical teachings of earlier twentieth-century popes and are not led by footnotes to the documents that explain them will almost certainly see SC as a document with no connection to the recent past. They are thus unable to see SC as the Council Fathers did – as the continuation of reform begun by Saint Pius X.

Not as a license to make it a living document, as many in the U.S. would like to consider the constitution.

“Had even some of these references to documents such as Tra le sollecitudini and Mediator Dei been kept in,” she continued,

it would certainly have been harder to interpret SC with a hermeneutic [interpretation] of rupture and discontinuity.

As it stands, Vatican II’s Liturgy Commission – inadvertently or by design – made it a lot easier for various people to interpret SC as advocating a kind of ‘year zero’ liturgical reform, disconnected from the reforms of the earlier 20th century popes. (Italics mine)

More to come on these behind-scene maneuvers, if that’s what they were, rather than well-meant omissions . . .