Category Archives: Mass and the Liturgy
Mass and the Liturgy
The Holy Mass is an inexhaustible fountain of grace. As a most divine mystery it is an unfathomable source of wonder and contemplation. Countless spiritual writers have made it, and the divine liturgy enshrining it, the subject of their books and meditations, each attempting to glorify so great and terrible a gift, so holy a sacrifice. That is what the Mass is, first and foremost, the unbloody sacrifice of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, our Victim and Priest. It is the same identical sacrifice as that offered on Calvary near two thousand years ago, only the manner of offering being different. It is Calvary re-presented in an unbloody manner in every time and every place until the end of the world.
Four hundred years before the Incarnation of the Son of God, Malachias, the last of the Old Testament prophets, foresaw the Holy Mass, and, through him, God announced to Israel its advent with these words: “For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts” (Malachias 1:11).
The liturgy of each individual Mass, in every approved rite, honors the whole life of Our Lord. At the consecration of the bread the altar becomes Bethlehem; with that of the wine, the altar becomes Calvary; with the covering of the chalice with the pall after consecration is symbolized the burial of Christ; and with the Minor Elevation before the Pater Noster is symbolized the Resurrection. The Victim who is glorified and Immortal cannot be slain again, but He is truly made present under the sacramental species, and He appears in that guise, as the Apostle John saw Him in vision, “as a Lamb standing as it were slain” (Apoc. 5:6).
The articles in this section deal in some way with the Holy Mass and/or the liturgical life of the Church in her feasts. Gary Potter’s article, for example, on the greatest of all liturgical writers, Dom Prosper Guéranger, is a magnificent tribute to this prolific Benedictine reformer and writer. Guéanger’s masterpiece, The Liturgical Year, employs all the Church’s liturgical treasures, East and West, to immerse the reader in the life of Christ as He lives it in our sanctuaries from Advent to last day of Pentecost.
The Nine Prayers of Holy Mass That Forgive Venial Sins
There are nine prayers in the Ordinary of the traditional Latin Mass that may be efficacious for the forgiveness of venial sin.
Latin Mass Community in Hong Kong Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Cardinal Tong
side from celebrating the joys of Easter this Sunday past, the usus antiquior community in Hong Kong were also celebrating their 10th year as a community, marked by a Solemn Pontifical Mass at St. Teresa’s church, and celebrated by their ordinary, John Cardinal Tong. They have sent in a few photos to NLM which we are only too happy to publish. Read more here.
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Happy Mid-Lent Thursday!
Today is Mid-Lent Thursday, day twenty of our forty-day fast. The Church defers celebration of this Lenten midway mark to Laetare Sunday, when the Introit tells us to “Rejoice” (Laetare), and some non-Lenten modifications make their way into the liturgy, including “the use of flowers on the altar, and of the organ at Mass and Vespers; rose-coloured vestments also allowed instead of purple, and the … More →
Cardinal Cañizares Addresses Abuse of Concelebration in Presentation of New Book on the Eucharist
Yes, from what the Cardinal writes concerning La concélébration eucharistique. Du symbole à la réalité there are points with which we who are loyal to the traditional Latin Mass would disagree with the author, Msgr. Guillaume Derville. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments come out and identify abuses that have been routinely indulged in since … More →
Suggested Lenten Penances
The best penances are those that God sends us. These penances are immediately consequent upon His “will signified,” that is, the natural moral law and any positive law to which we are bound in conscience, e.g., the Church’s laws on fast and abstinence, or the rule of a religious congregation. They are also consequent upon God’s “will of good pleasure,” which we see in the … More →
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Prayer for Church Unity Is a Prayer For Our Own Conversion and For Non-Catholics To Enter the True Church
It’s that simple, as Father Paul Wattson intended it in petitioning Rome to approve the liturgical octave. Pope Saint Pius X approved of the octave in 1908 and Pope Benedict XV promoted its observance throughout the whole Catholic Church. The eight days of prayer begin on January 18, the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, and end on January 25, the feast of the … More →
Traditional Mass at Two New Hampshire Colleges
The traditional Roman Rite of Mass has made its way onto the campuses of Thomas More College and the College of Saint Mary Magdalen. These are two of the country’s most respected Catholic liberal arts colleges. It so happens that they are both located in New Hampshire. It also happens that our brothers have trained young men who serve as acolytes at both institutions.
The Story We Live By and the Foundations of Our Faith: Implications of the Incarnation and of the Bethlehem Nativity
[Originally authored 13 December 2003, the Feast of Sancta Lucia] At this time of the Christian Feast of the Nativity, when we are also expectantly considering the coming year of 2012 (as was so in 2003) and the pressures of deepening war and religious conflict, we more openly allow ourselves to consider the foundations of things. Did the Incarnation happen? Or was it an illusion, … More →
The King and the ‘Lex Orandi’
Tomorrow is the Feast of Christ the King, the glorious Christian festival instituted by Pope Pius XI to remind the world of the truth taught by his own papal motto: Pax Christi in regno Christi (the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ). There will be no peace among nations without the social reign of Jesus Christ. And what is that? In brief, all nations, … More →
Traditional Latin Mass in Afghanistan? Yes
Rorate Caeli: The photo above usually would be very newsworthy: a priest, one of the 15 that say a weekly or monthly Traditional Latin Mass for the souls of our Purgatorial Society, saying a Requiem Mass for the souls enrolled in the Society. What makes this not only newsworthy, but extraordinary, is that this Traditional Latin Mass is being said in Afghanistan. More here.
