The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Here is my sermon for today, Good Friday By his wounds we are healed “ He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. ” (Is 53.5) Once again today, we hear the account of the Passion of Christ, this time read solemnly from the Gospel of St John. It is a story familiar to us which we retell year by year as part of our Sacred Liturgy. It is in the sacred celebration of the Liturgy that the Holy Scriptures find their true home. We do not read them as any other book. They are the inspired word of God which we proclaim as an act of worship in itself. In the spirit of adoration and thanksgiving, we proclaim the wonders the Lord has done, the greatest of which is the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ. The passages about the suffering servant in the prophecy of Isaiah, inspired by the Holy Spirit, teach us the meaning of the appalling suffering of Christ. He wa...

Holy Week has been quite special this year. On Palm Sunday, in addition to our Saturday evening and two Sunday Masses in the newer form, we had our usual Mass in the usus antiquior but this year with the sung Passion. It took quite a while but was a great thing to be able to do. Another lengthy liturgical marathon was Tenebrae at Maiden Lane to which several parishioners came, including several boys who sat (and fidgeted a bit) in choir. The Gregorian chant was complemented by the responsories being sung by the Cantores Missae (Director Charles Finch) to the setting by Victoria. Afterwards, Charles kindly gave me a copy of their CD of music sung at a Mass in honour of St John Fisher and St Thomas More. this includes the Byrd 4-part Mass which is one of my favourites. They sing one voice to a part which gives a great clarity to the individual lines. I have mentioned the Chrism Mass already. It was a good opportunity to catch up with people. Musically speaking it will have been nirva...

Yesterday St George's Cathedral saw the gathering of clergy for the celebration of the Chrism Mass. Above you can see our vocations director, Fr Stephen Langridge demonstrating to Fr Martin Edwards and two seminarians from the North American College in Rome a new Tae Kwon Do move for defending oneself against an assailant with a guitar. As usual, there was a group ready to greet the clergy as they entered in procession, to thank them for their priestly ministry and to offer them a little prayer card with a picture of Our Lady and some text from one of the speeches or homilies of the Holy Father. This year, the card had the Salvi Madonna (with "Our Lady Queen of the Clergy, pray for priests"): On the reverse was a quotation from Pope Benedict's address to the priests, religious, and seminarians gathered at the Shrine of Aparecida in Brazil in May 2007: The witness of a priestly life well lived brings nobility to the Church, calls forth admiration among the faithful, a...

The Latin Mass Society has a list of Masses and other services for the Triduum in various dioceses in the usus antiquior . In London, your principal options are Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, the Chapel of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth at St John's Wood, and the La Retraite Convent in Clapham. At Blackfen, we have the Triduum services in the newer form but we do have Mass on Easter Sunday at 10.30am in the usus antiquior . I will be going to assist in choir at Tenebrae at Maiden Lane on Wednesday (7pm) and I know that some of my servers are eager to be there to join in with the banging of the books.

Fr Z's post QUAERITUR: Confessions on Good Friday reminds me that it is high time to post (again) on the question of hearing confessions on Good Friday. Yes - we can . See the link above to Fr Z's post or mine from last year: Let's smash this old chestnut once and for all . Just in case anyone is in the area and wants confession, I'll be hearing confessions at Blackfen this week as follows: After 10am Mass Tuesday and Wednesday After Maundy Thursday 8pm Mass After 11am Stations on Good Friday After 3pm Liturgy on Good Friday 11am-12noon and 5-5.30pm on Holy Saturday

... has been going very well, Deo Gratias . On the evening of Maundy Thursday, I washed the feet of twelve good men and true, and celebrated Mass ad orientem with the choir singing some beautiful pieces in both Latin and English. For the procession to the altar of repose (beautifully decorated by the sacristy team), we had two thurifers walking backwards, incensing the Blessed Sacrament. My alert deacon prevented one of them from hitting a pillar on the way round. Some young people asked me whether we could have watching before the Blessed Sacrament late at night on another occasion in the year. ( Erm, let me think. Yes! ) Children's Stations of the Cross were well attended this morning and I hope that lots of indulgences were gained there - I explained about indulgences in a short homily at the end. Traditional Stations also well attended and lots of confessions afterwards - as there were during the watching last night. I was delighted that the queues were probably at least half...

Shawn Tribe has a good post discussing the colour of vestments for Good Friday. ( NLM: Red vestments, Black vestments; Two Liturgical Forms, Two Liturgical Colours ) Today in my parish, we had the Good Friday Liturgy in the ordinary form using red vestments as prescribed. I have two deacons and therefore we used our red High Mass vestments: a magnificent 19th century French set which are ideal for Pentecost or for Confirmations - or indeed for a solemn celebration of the feast of a martyr. They are not really suited to Good Friday. I see that the Holy Father had the same dilemma today. Mgr Marini has dug out a wonderful set of red Roman vestments and it is great to see Roman vestments being used more and more for papal liturgies - but surely these ones would be better suited for a more joyful occasion? I agree with Shawn's suggestion that black should, at the very least, be restored as an option for Good Friday.

The old chestnut I am referring to is the unbelievably silly interpretation of the rubric of the new Missal (older version) which said that, by tradition, the Church does not "celebrate the sacraments" on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Anyone with an ounce of sense and not infected with the daftest kind of positivism regarding liturgical law simply presumed that this did not intend to prohibit the longstanding custom of hearing confessions on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. If any support were needed, the press pictures of the Pope of Rome sitting in the confessional on Good Friday every year might just count for something? Just to make things absolutely clear, the 2000 edition of the Missal adds in the clause "except for penance and the anointing of the sick." Fr Z also has the reference to a clarification from Rome on the matter as long ago as 1977. (See: Just to be clear, Confessions on Good Friday are NOT forbidden…. duh! ) 31 years after that clarification and 8...