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Showing posts with the label Alphonsus

Heretical "Catholic" group spends £15,000 on anti-Papal posturing and is promoted in Redemptorist Papal visit leaflet

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"Celebrating the Papal Visit. Your spiritual companion" sounds a promising title. I'm keen to promote anything good that comes my way as a parish priest so this was one piece of mail I put aside to read over coffee. Inside the four page leaflet produced by the Redemptorists, there is an article about how it is not easy to be a Catholic, accompanied by a related "Hot topic" piece. Laurence England has kindly typed them out so you can read both articles over at The Bones . The first article includes a disturbing account of Lucy Russell's response to a question about Catholic sex education which implies that her school gave no distinctively Catholic teaching at all. The sidebar article talks about the ordination of women, encouraging people to decide what they think about it. At the foot of the article is a link to the Catholic Women's Ordination website. How either of these pieces is supposed to help Catholics to prepare spiritually for the Papal Visit...

Defending St Alphonsus

It is interesting (and indeed welcome) to have some reaction to the prayer of St Alphonsus. "Anonymous sinner" struggles with the notion of a God who will damn people for an unrepented mortal sin, "Peter" thinks that recommending St Alphonsus is as loopy as promoting devotion to St Philomena, and an elderly priest questions the relevance of 18th century prayers for today. Regular readers of the blog will not be surprised to find that I stick firmly to my guns on this one. Being thought "loopy" is certainly no deterrent. ( St Philomena, pray for us. ) I do not find St Alphonsus' focus on the last things in any way gloomy or morbid. Hell is rarely mentioned nowadays except to try to explain why nobody is likely to go there; and yet it is a part of our faith expressed unambiguously in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. For that matter, it would be difficult to read the gospels honestly without accusing Jesus Christ of having the same preoccupation as S...

Returning to St Alphonsus

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Many months ago, I posted my translation of the Tuesday prayer from those composed by St Alphonsus Liguori for priests to say as part of their thanksgiving after Mass. After a reminder today, I have now posted a translation of the Wednesday prayer to continue the series. See the introduction for more information. St Alphonsus was, in my opinion, a master of psychology where that discipline is seen in the light of the eternal truths (viz. death, judgement, hell and heaven.) He had a piercingly accurate understanding of fallen human nature and knew how to drive home the truths of the faith in such a way that people changed their lives - his prayers can still help us in our daily conversion to the closer following of Christ. One project that I would like to get started is a "Wikipedia" style collaborative effort to collect Latin original texts and English translations of prayers for priests. At some point we could publish a little book with some of the classics that would suppo...

St Alphonsus for priests (Wednesday)

Prayer to be said by the priest after celebrating Mass (Wednesday) O my Jesus, I see how much you have done and suffered so that you might impose on me the necessity of loving you: and how ungrateful to you I have proved to be! How many times have I exchanged your grace for vile delectation and evil desire and lost you, O God of my soul? To the benefits of created things I have shown grateful appreciation; to you alone have I have shown myself ungrateful. Forgive me, my God; I grieve the crime of such an ungrateful soul, I mourn with all my heart, and I hope for forgiveness from you because you are infinite goodness. If you were not infinite goodness, I would have to despair and never again dare to implore your mercy. Thanks be to you, my love, because you have sustained me for so long and have not damned me to hell which I have deserved. Indeed your patience alone with me, my God should draw me to love you. Who could ever have tolerated me except you, God, who are infinite mercy. It i...

St Alphonsus for priests (Tuesday)

Prayer to be said by the priest after celebrating Mass (Tuesday) Ah! My Lord, how could I have offended you so many times, knowing that by sinning, I was so greatly displeasing you. I beg you, through the merits of your passion, forgive me, and bind me to you by the bond of your love; may the stench of my faults not separate you from me. Make me acknowledge more and more your goodness, and the love which is owed to you, and the love with which you loved me. I desire, O good Jesus, to devote my whole self to you, who have willed to offer yourself in sacrifice for me. You have bound me to yourself by innumerable proofs of charity; do not permit me, I pray, ever to separate myself from you. I love you, my God, and I wish always to love you. And how can I live separated from you and without your grace when I have known your love? I give you thanks because you have borne with me when I was living without your grace and because you have still granted me time for loving you. If destruction sh...

The practice of mental prayer

Mental prayer, meditation, lectio divina , there are various names for the practice of private prayer urged by the saints. St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis de Sales, St Alphonsus Liguori, Pere Grou, and St Josemaria Escriva are among those who have recommended this practice to any person who wishes to advance in holiness. It can become confusing for people to see how many different "methods" of prayer have been suggested. I think it would be right to say that they are essentially the same. The most important thing is that we spend some time in personal prayer, giving God the opportunity to love us and to work his grace in our lives. For those who work in the active apostolate, Dom Chautard's book "The Soul of the Apostolate" sets out the reasons why the interior life is always to be given priority: our exterior apostolic works will only bear fruit insofar as they are themselves the fruit of our interior life of prayer. For someone who wishes to start out on...

The value of time

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I was reading St Alphonsus this morning on the value of time. "St Bernadine of declared that a moment of time is of as much value as God; because in each moment a man may, by an act of contrition or of love, gain Divine grace and eternal glory. [...] Time is a treasure which is found only in this life; it is not to be found in the next, neither in hell nor in heaven. In hell, the lamentation of the damned is O, si daretur hora! - Oh, that an hour were given us! They would pay any price for one hour of time to redeem the past; but never will they have this hour. In heaven there is no weeping; but if the blessed could weep. their tears would only be shed for having in this life lost time, in which they might have acquired greater glory, and because this time they can never again possess. He then quotes a story which is given in a slightly different form by St Louis Grignon de Montfort in his little book on the Rosary. "A deceased Benedictine nun appeared in glory to a p...

A rule of life from St Alphonsus

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I read this passage today from St Alphonsus' "Preparation for Death". It is a summary of the devout life to which he recommends his hearers: That which is of most importance is to resolve to practise the means for preserving yourself in the grace of God. These means are, Mass every day, meditations upon the eternal truths, frequenting confession and communion at least every eight days, a visit every day to the Most Holy Sacrament and to the Divine Mother, to belong to a confraternity, spiritual reading, examination of conscience every evening, some special devotion to our Blessed Lady - such as fasting on the Saturday - and above all to propose to recommend yourself often to God and to the Blessed Virgin, invoking frequently, and especially in time of temptation, the most holy names of Jesus and Mary: these are the means by which you can obtain a happy death and eternal salvation.

St Alphonsus for priests (Monday)

Prayer to be said by the priest after celebrating Mass (Monday) O infinite goodness! O infinite charity! God has given his whole self to me and has become all mine! My soul, arouse all your affections and join yourself intimately to your Lord who has purposefully come to be joined to you and to be loved by you in return. O lovable Redeemer, I embrace you, my love and my life, I join myself to you: do not despise me. How wretched I am! For a certain time of my life, I have turned you out of my soul and separated myself from you; but from now on, I wish rather to lay down my life a thousand times, than to lose you again, the Supreme Good. Forget, O Lord, all the injuries I have inflicted upon you and being merciful, forgive me; I repent of them with my whole heart and I would like to die with sorrow. Even though I have sinned against you, you have commanded me that I should love you: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart. Oh, my Lord, who am I that you should desire to ...

St Alphonsus for priests (Sunday)

Prayer to be said by the priest after celebrating Mass (Sunday) O most loving Jesus, my Redeemer and my God, I adore you, present in my breast under the appearances of bread and wine, by which you have become the food and drink of my soul. May your advent to my soul, O my God, be infinitely blessed; I give you thanks from the depth of my heart for such a great gift, and I lament that I have not the power to pour out worthy thanks to you. And what worthy thanks could a humble peasant offer, if he were to see himself visited in his rustic home by the king himself, except to cast himself down at his feet and silently to admire and praise such appreciation? Therefore I fall down before you, O divine King, O most sweet Jesus, and I adore you from the abyss of my vileness. I join my adoration to the adoration which the most blessed Virgin Mary offered to you when she received you into her most sacred womb, and I would like to show you the love with which she loved you. O lovable Redeemer, to...

St Alphonsus for priests - introduction

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The Roman Missal (classical) contained a set collection of prayers for the priest to say before and after Mass. The Novus Ordo missal contains some of these. The full set can be found in any old Altar Missal and most missals produced for the faithful contain them with a translation. In my little treasure of a book, Clericus Devotus , there are three schemes of preparation and thanksgiving for Mass. The first is that from the Roman Missal. The third is another collection of prayers. I knew that the second scheme was composed of prayers by Cardinal Bona. I now realise that they are from his ascetical treatise on the sacrifice of the Mass that I found in the Wonersh library. However, there is another gem added in this prayer book to the traditional scheme. After the prayers given in the Missal, there is another prayer, composed by St Alphonsus, and divided into seven days in the same way as the prayer of St Ambrose before Mass. I find these prayers to be a very moving reminder of the...

Time travel preferences

Fr Nicholas Schofield tagged me with this one: If an angel could take me back in time, what five things or occasions would I like to experience? I'll follow his lead and ignore Biblical events - nevertheless, I can't bear to limit the list so I'll do a secular one and a sacred one SECULAR 1. Being in the Roman senate to see Catiline's supporters shuffle away from him during Cicero's first Oratio in Catilinam in 63BC 2. Attending the ludi saeculares at Rome in 17BC and hearing the carmen saeculare sung 3. Watching the first performance of Twelfth Night in 1602 4. Travelling on the inaugural journey on the Great Western Railway in 1841 5. Seeing the earth from space with Yuri Gargarin in 1961 SACRED 1. Attending a Sunday Mass celebrated by St Ambrose 2. Attending one of the lectures of the Blessed John Duns Scotus at Oxford 3. Walking the seven Churches with St Philip Neri 4. Listening to St Alphonsus Liguori preach on Our Lady, hell, or the Blessed Sacrament 5. B...

Breviary - how long is long?

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In addition to the offices sung in Choir and said privately, the Carthusians say the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary either before or after each main office. There was a copy in my cell and for some reason, I got the giggles when I discovered that this Little Office is actually longer than the modern Roman office - sometimes referred to unkindly as the "Liturgy of the Minutes". Here is a Roman Breviary that I found in the library, dating from 1870. For Sunday Matins, it has the traditional 18 psalms which are nowadays considered to have been such an outrageous imposition that it was only sensible for Pope Pius X to rearrange the psalter and shorten it. In the process, he also dropped the Laudate psalms from Lauds (still sung by the Carthusians). This change was commented on by Alcuin Reid in The Organic Development of the Liturgy . He pointed out that the tradition of singing these psalms is probably a remnant of the synagogue worship. Therefore they were probably s...

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