Monthly Archives: April 2022

Battle is o’er, hell’s armies flee, sang British Catholics in the ’30s and ’40s

Blithe Spirit

Hymn translated by Ronald Knox, one of many which he translated for the Westminster Hymnal in the late ’30s.

The very forcefulness of it would never pass in a church of today. (Here repeated as a much-loved post.)

Finita jam sunt proelia
Battle is o’er, hell’s armies flee;
Raise we the cry of victory
With abounding joy resounding, alleluia.
Christ, who endured the shameful tree,
O’er death triumphant welcome we,
Our adoring praise outpouring, alleluia.
On the third morn from death rose he,
Clothed with what light in heaven shall be,
Our unswerving faith deserving, alleluia.
Hell’s gloomy gates yield up their key,
Paradise door thrown wide we see;
Never-tiring be our choiring, alleluia.
Lord, by the stripes men laid on thee,
Grant us to live from death set free,
This our greeting still repeating, alleluia.
=====================================
Simphonia Sirenum, 1695, translated by R.A.Knox
Westminster Hymnal, 1939
It’s joyful…

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The “old Mass” out of bounds for a pope. Any pope. You don’t have to be a fiddler on a roof to know it’s TRADITION.

Banning it is a no-no.

“Pope Benedict did not “allow” the “old Mass,” and he granted no privilege to celebrate it. In a word, he did not take a disciplinary measure that a successor can retract. What was new and surprising about [his] Summorum Pontificum was that it declares that the celebration of the old Mass does not need any permission. It had never been forbidden because it never could be forbidden.

One could conclude that here we find a fixed, insuperable limit to the authority of a pope. Tradition stands above the pope. The old Mass, rooted deep in the first Christian millennium, is as a matter of principle beyond the pope’s authority to prohibit.”

It’s in the category of what no man can tear asunder.

Prayer for those who at least now and then think they are great stuff

O my most humble Jesus, who for love of me humbled yourself and become obedient unto the death of the Cross, how dare I appear before you and call myself your follower when I see myself so proud that I cannot bear a single slight without resenting it!

How, indeed, can I be proud, when by my sins I have so often deserved to be cast into the abyss of hell! O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, help me and make me like you. You, for love of me, bore so many insults and injuries. I, for love of you, will bear slights and humiliations patiently. But you see, O Jesus, how proud I am in my thoughts, how disdainful in my words, how ambitious in my deeds.

Grant me true humility of heart and a clear knowledge of my own nothingness. May I, for love of you, rejoice at being despised and feel no resentment when others are preferred before me. Let me not be filled with pride when I am praised, but seek only to be great in your sight and to please you in all things. Amen.