St Edward, Blessed Alexandrina and Fatima

P5010084


Rather a rich day, devotionally speaking, when it is the feast of St Edward the Confessor, also of Blessed Alexandrina da Costa, and the anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, coupled with the miracle of the sun.

After my own Low Mass, Exposition, Confessions and Benediction in the parish, I set my trusty Hyundai off on the A2 to Aylesford, a lovely location to celebrate further. Today was the Latin Mass Society Pilgrimage to Aylesford. We had Missa Cantata with John Taverner's Kyrie "Leroy", the rest of the Mass being his "Western Wynde". The singers were the group Cantus Magnus, led by Matthew Schellhorn, the LMS representative for Southwark North.

For the sermon, I concentrated on St Edward the Confessor, relating his saintly preservation of peace in the realm to the need for spiritual peace today in the face of of sin, the moral corruption of the young, the redefinition of marriage and the increasing encroachment of the state on the rights of the family. The sermon will be posted in due course.


For the talk later in the afternoon, I turned to Blessed Alexandrina da Costa. This was from notes and so will not be published here. (I have had to prepare two sermons, and three talks for Friday to Sunday and have not had time to get them all into publishable form.) I gave a potted life of Blessed Alexandrina: you can find a good summary of her life at the Vatican website, there is more information at Blessed Alexandrina, and Kevin Rowles has written a short life which introduced me to her, and which I warmly recommend.

The lesson which I drew from her life is that God raised up some truly great souls in the early 20th century, in advance of the terrible atrocities that were committed through war, genocide and the killing of millions through atheistic communism. The spiritual devastation of the West after the World Wars should also be seen as a disaster, even within the Church herself.

I did urge people to optimism in England at the present time, with the prospect of many episcopal appointments soon to be made. I suggested that if people really could not bring themselves to be optimistic, they should at least prepare for the possibility that things might get better in a quite brief space of time, and for the challenges that such an improvement would put before us.

Naturally, at the home of the brown scapular, in front of the relic of St Simon Stock who received the brown scapular from our Lady, I finished the day, after Rosary and Benediction, with the enrolment. Actually most of the congregation were already enrolled but I was glad that there was one person so that we could have the prayers from the ritual.

Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Request for Novena to Blessed Pius IX

Image
A priest friend of mine is ill in hospital. He has a special devotion to Blessed Pius IX. Could I ask you, of your charity, to say a Novena for his speedy recovery. Novena In Honour of Blessed Pius IX Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX, who consecrated the Universal Church to you. (Our Father...) O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you Immaculate. (Hail Mary...) Saint Joseph, spouse of the most pure Virgin Mary, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you the Patron of the Universal Church. (Glory be...) Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Mary, our Hope, and Saint Joseph hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX , granting to us through his merits and intercessions the graces which we ardently desire: that the glory of God be revealed through Father's illness. (Our Father..., Hail Mary..., Glory be...
Read more

Saint Gabriel

Image
The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
Read more

Saint Ignatius on heresy, and the capsizing boat

Image
On the feast of St Ignatius, I offer my prayers and good wishes to some great Jesuits. Just off the top of my head, I think of Fr Joseph Fessio SJ the founder of Ignatius Press which has not only published the English translations of various works of Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, but has also given a break for good Catholic authors both of theology and of Catholic fiction. Then there is Fr Bob Spitzer SJ, with whom I studied in Rome many years ago, and Fr Paul Mankowski SJ who has written some superb articles over the years. Here in England, I recall Fr Anthony Meredith SJ, the great fatherly commentator on the Fathers of Cappadocia and in Rome, there is Fr Gilles Pelland SJ, the fierce French-Canadian patristics scholar was a bit harsh when I first arrived in the Holy City, but seemed to soften a bit when after 5 years he seeme satisfied that, though English, I was not a modernist. Many of my Jesuit priest friends and mentors have now reached “that night when no man can work”...
Read more

Downloadable booklets for Vespers

Image
Gregorian Chant Hymns is a most helpful website that I mentioned in a post just over a year ago. As I said then, the site "[...] promotes the learning of Gregorian Chant by making sheet music, recordings, translations, and instructions. There is a short guide to Gregorian Notation (those square notes) and to Latin pronunciation. Everything is available free of charge, in line with other great traditional music websites." Work has continued at the site and there is now a section which makes available pdf (or .docx format) booklets for Vespers for every Sunday of the Year and a few major feasts. There is the basic booklet for ordinary Sunday Vespers which is supplemented by separate files for the Sundays after Pentecost which contain the Magnificat and Collect. Then there are booklets, for example for Advent and Lent, where the office is different from the regular Sunday Vespers with its antiphons. All of the booklets have texts and notation for Benediction and the Maria...
Read more