Tradition of Epiphany door blessing with chalk is symbol of hope in 2021

George P. Matysek Jr. reported (or reminded) at Catholic News Service.

"The blessing, popular in Poland and other Slavic countries, has spread to many parts of the world. It takes place on the liturgical feast marking the visitation of the Magi to the Christ Child and the revelation that Jesus is the son of God.

"The blessing involves taking simple chalk, usually blessed by a parish priest, and scrawling doorways with symbolic numbers and letters — this year: '20+C M B 21.'

"The numbers represent the current year and the letters stand for the first letters of the traditional names of the magi: Caspar (sometimes spelled 'Kaspar'), Melchior and Balthazar. The letters are also an abbreviation for 'Christus Mansionem Benedicat, Latin for 'May Christ bless this dwelling.'"

Husband and wife

TheCompass: Midnight Masses make comeback at churches

St John Cantius, Chicago

ALLOUEZ — Silent night, holy night.

Tradition tells us that Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem at midnight. For centuries, Catholics have observed Christ’s birth by celebrating midnight Mass. Two other Masses, at dawn and during the day, are also celebrated on Christmas Day.
...
Fr. Joel Sember, pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Stiles, said celebrating Christmas Mass at midnight actually led to an increase in Mass attendance.

“We used to have a 10 p.m. Mass that slipped to 8 and 7 p.m., with ever-decreasing attendance,” he told The Compass. “I finally canceled the Mass, only to get phone calls asking if we were having a midnight Mass.

“I’ll try anything once, so I said, ‘Fine, we’ll do midnight Mass at midnight, just to see what happens,’” said Fr. Sember. “St. Patrick, being a small country church, perfectly fit the ambiance. It has been a well-attended Mass time. It’s much more peaceful and prayerful than the zoo that is Christmas Eve. Families of all ages come and the little ones bring blankets and snuggle up by Mom and Dad. Certainly people love this Mass and look forward to it every single year.”

Among the 12 churches offering midnight Mass is the National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help. According to Corrie Campbell, communications director and event coordinator at the shrine, the first midnight Mass took place in 2016.

continue at The Compass

The Divine Worship director uses the word "nostalgia" when describing the Catholics desire for something they have never experienced in their lifetime.  I just don't think nostalgia can accurately describe the phenomenon.

Midnight Mass at the Cathedral here in La Crosse is one of the high points of my entire year.   I want to stand on the pew and cheer when the Nativity Proclamation from the Roman Martyrology is chanted.  ... How do I not have photos of this somewhere.  At any rate, I never once went as a child.  My first was probably when I was in my mid twenties(maybe at the insistence of some of you fine readers).  The human person desires what is beautiful, good and true, and those moments come most excellently each year during the liturgy.

“Tradition is not the cult of ashes, it is the transmission of fire.” - Gustav Mahler

Cardinal Sarah: Young traditionalist 'are neither nostalgic nor embittered nor encumbered by the ecclesiastical battles of recent decades'

"Some, if not many, people, call you ‘traditionalists’. Sometimes you even call yourselves ‘traditional Catholics’ or hyphenate yourselves in a similar way. Please do this no longer.

"You do not belong in a box on the shelf or in a museum of curiosities. You are not traditionalists: you are Catholics of the Roman rite as am I and as is the Holy Father.

"You are not second-class or somehow peculiar members of the Catholic Church because of your life of worship and your spiritual practices, which were those of innumerable saints.

“You are called by God, as is every baptised person, to take your full place in the life and mission of the Church in the world of today, not to be shut up in—or worse, to retreat into—a ghetto in which defensiveness and introspection reign and stifle the Christian witness and mission to the world you too are called to give.”

UK Catholic Herald

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A Primer for a Tradition-Minded Celebration of the OF Mass

Our thanks to Fr Richard Cipolla of St Mary’s Church in Norwalk, Connecticut, for sharing this article with our readers.

A PRIMER

For Priests who wish to use Mutual Enrichment to inject Tradition into the Novus Ordo Rite 

If you are a priest of the Roman Rite, as of ten years ago today, you are officially “bi-formal”; you have almost completely free access to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, as we now call it, in addition to the Ordinary Form.

Despite his shy and retiring character, Pope Benedict XVI braved a great deal of criticism, much of it very nasty, all of it completely unnecessary, to give you this gift, after devoting so much of his work to consideration of the Catholic Church’s liturgy problem.

continue at New Liturgical Movement

This is very good.  Number 16 is something I think about all the time.

THE CANON should be said audibly but quietly. God does not have to be shouted at, especially during this most sacred prayer of the Mass.

Amen!

The monks decided to burn the books, “to prevent them getting into the hands of traditionalists”

Many young Catholics feel that they have been denied an inheritance that was rightly theirs. They have had to reassemble piecemeal something that should have been handed to them intact. An English academic recently told me of his attempt to obtain a copy of the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, a reference book that went from impeccable authority to liber prohibitus at the time of the Council. He contacted a Belgian who helped declining religious houses dispose of their libraries. This Belgian found a Franciscan community that was willing to sell its set – but at the last moment took a different course. The monks decided to burn the books, “to prevent them getting into the hands of traditionalists”.

 Catholic Herald - The Kids Are Old Rite

Bells of Milwaukee seeks to ring in the New Year

Klisch, owner of Lakefront Brewery, shared his interest in Milwaukee’s bells with Michael Horne, a writer and columnist for urbanmilwaukee.com. Out of that conversation was born Bells of Milwaukee, a tax-exempt public charity, of which Klisch is president. The organization’s mission, according to a November press release, is to “identify those buildings that have inoperable bells, and to seek to repair them to working order.”

But the group’s first order of business is to have bells ringing throughout the Milwaukee area at midnight this New Year’s Eve. According to Horne, project manager for Bells of Milwaukee, the group asked the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to invite its parishes to participate – an invitation that was extended to the parishes by the archdiocese’s office of communications.

full article at Mke Catholic Herald

This is fantastic!

For a list of the parishes whose bells will be ringing, click here.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed • Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here • And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks • That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day

more options at Father Z's place. I picked my favorite.

Related: Esolen: What Will You Do When the Persecution Comes?

Only the Vatican Has More Christian Relics Than Pittsburgh

Troy Hill, population 3,000, is situated on a small plateau overlooking Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s a historically German, but quintessentially Pittsburghian, neighborhood characterized by cozy row houses, gritty neighborhood bars, cool new restaurants, and lovingly decorated front porches bedecked with Steelers flags and flower baskets. But there is more in Troy Hill than meets the eye.

At 1704 Harpster Street sits St. Anthony’s chapel, which houses the second-largest collection of Christian relics in existence after the Vatican. Within the greige brick facade are the bones, blood, teeth, ashes, hair, and personal belongings of the holiest members of the Christian church: the apostles, saints and martyrs. There are approximately 5,000 relics in total.

Inside the church, the eye is first drawn to a ceiling painted with religious symbols and names and then to tall walnut cases displaying hundreds of metal artifacts behind glass. There are miniature metal churches, monstrances, chasses (caskets), and medallions pinned to burgundy velvet. Each ornament contains a tiny, mysterious particle, tied in red embroidery thread and sealed with wax, which can be viewed through a clear glass or crystal aperture. There are what look like fingernail slivers and jagged pieces of porous grey bone. Some hold bits of cloth stained with drops of dried brown liquid.

continue at Atlas Obscura

HT Virginia

The coronation - Elendil's Oath

Jan van Eyck

Ascension marks the completion of our redemption, Christ takes up the Throne.  I was pondering the thought this week.  Much in art depicts the Coronation of Mary as Queen, but not as much I could find on the heavenly coronation of The King, just the visible part of the Ascent that humanity saw.  I wondered if it sounded like this.

Lyrics:

Et Eärello
Endorenna utúlien
Sinome Maruvan
ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-Metta

English Lyrics
Out of the Great Sea
to Middle-earth I am come.
In this place I will abide,
and my heirs,
unto the ending of the world.

Koslowski: How to Actively Participate in Mass

Are we meant to be spectators at Mass, simply watching and listening to what is happening? On the contrary, “Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §14). But what does “fully conscious and active participation” mean? Is the Church asking everyone to find a “role” at Mass, either reading, serving or distributing Holy Communion?

Quite the opposite. Here is what the Church means when she mandates that all the faithful actively participate in the liturgy.

Immediately following the Second Vatican Council, many sought to implement this principle of “active participation” but few knew exactly what it meant. At the time various bishops, priests and laity “misunderstood [it] to mean something external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action” (Spirit of the Liturgy, 171).

continue at Philip Kosloski

Be careful though, we been told the greatest sins of participation at Mass are "stoic expressions."

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A blessed Epiphany to you!

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Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!

Immaculate Conception (c. 1618)
by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660)

From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so lover her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.

- Ineffabilis Deus: Pope Pius IX

NewAdvent

The Franciscan Monk Duns Scoto in his Cell

John Duns Scotus can be described as a Franciscan theologian who provided the Church with the Christological basis for the doctrine on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, in such a way that it could truly be seen as the result of divine revelation. His Christ-centred vision of creation and redemption proves that the primacy of God’s love in the mystery of the Incarnation is still at work in the Church and in the world. The mysterium iniquitatis, or mystery of evil, has been won over by Christ and his Immaculate Mother, whom Saint Francis salutes as the Virgo Ecclesia facta, the “Virgin made Church”.


Christendom Awake

CreamCity: Altar Girls, Vocations and 'Equality'

Today, we’re going to grab ahold of a liturgical third rail: altar girls. Yea or nay? A progressive innovation employed by hip and street smart pastors? Or yet another failed, self-sabotaging attempt at secular relevancy?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s the second one.

There are a lot of orthodox Catholics who are cool with girl altar servers. In fact, some of you may be reading this article with an eyebrow raised. Well, as 21st century Americans (or at least English speakers), we need a bit of deprogramming. We have been taught from birth that men and women are equal.

THIS IS 100% TRUE.

But what does equality mean?

continue at Cream City Catholic

1P5: A Modern Catholic Gentleman’s Guide to Halloween

“Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.”
– G.K. Chesterton

At this time of the year, as they bustle about for their little mock-Patricks and Augustines, gluing miters and stitching chasubles (each of the same fine material and nearly so well-crafted as the dreck one finds on a living Bishop) the Buzzkill Catholics are once again foisting onto the faithful their annual All Saints parties.

These parties are typically scheduled not on the Feast of All Saints, but on the evening of the day before, aiming intentionally to harsh your mellow and preclude the culturally normal observance of Halloween. The Buzzkill Catholics, you see, detest cultural normalcy.

The origins of Trick or Treating are hotly debated. Are these old Catholic traditions, filtered through the experience of Irish immigrants to America? Is it door to door alms for the poor in exchange for prayers? Do more anti-religious origins lie shrouded in history, such as the annual mockery of English Catholics on the anniversary of the failed terrorist plot of poor, powder-damp Guy Fawkes? Or does something even more sinister lurk, a pagan festival perhaps, or devil worship itself?

continue at One Peter Five

Haha!  Yes!  Excellent!

ChantCafe: Let's Revisit "Praise and Worship Music is Praise But Not Worship"

Most articles in the blogosphere have a very short shelf life, which is why I am quite surprised that an article I posted on Chant Café on 2 June 2011 keeps reappearing on blogs and in my social media newsfeeds every so often. Why Praise and Worship Music is Praise and Not Worship seems to keep being resurrected, which I can only surmise because the discussion it continues to elicit is still quite relevant, and the questions it raises have not been answered to everyone’s satisfaction. What’s more, following the comments on social media on the article has been very interesting, and I think telling about where we are now with regards to the situation of praise and worship music in liturgy. Perhaps a revisit is in order.

The article has three main components. In the first part, I share my own experience with a particular use of praise and worship, the Lifeteen Mass, which was twenty years ago now, and how it caused me to reflect at the time and now on its appropriateness for the sacred liturgy. What I have found most interesting is that the most negative reactions I have come across to the article tend to parse this first section and then ignore the other two. My response to this is the following: My experience is obviously not going to be the experience of everyone; some will resonate with that experience and others will not. That’s why it is a personal reflection. I am delighted to read that there are those who have not had anything like the experience that I had with Lifeteen. I am also dismayed to read that, twenty years later, some people are having exactly the same experience I have had. I am told that the organization Lifeteen itself has repudiated many of the abusive liturgical practices which made my exposure to it so distressing, and that the guidance of Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix has been exemplary in this regard. I rejoice that this is the case. Surely it is in some way testimony to how Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s rich theology of the liturgy is finding its way into the Church’s life. I am also aware that there are a significant number of priests, seminarians and committed young lay faithful who credit Lifeteen and similar initiatives as powerful in their formation as Catholics. All of that is to the good. And none of that invalidates my experience, any more than it invalidates the experience of those whose history with these initiatives is entirely different than my own.

continue at Chant Café

What Happened When I Dressed Like a Priest

I was a priest, standing at the bar of the Billy Goat Tavern beneath the great concrete decks that brace up downtown Chicago. Strike that. I was not a priest. I shouldn't say that. I was me, me wearing the uniform of a priest. It was 10:30 on a Friday morning, the bar a well-lit temple of Formica. I was visiting my favorite bartender, as is my wont when I am in Chicago. Priest or no: My uniform was an old-school liturgical cassock. Twenty buttons rising to a traditional clerical collar. Part tunic, part Nehru jacket, with a big open flare at my feet. That thing really kicked up in the wind when I walked the city. The thing really had some sweep.

When I walked in, my friend immediately set me up with a no-disrespect-intended pour of bourbon, with a draft beer back. My shoulders were turned to the half-full restaurant; a small circle of recent acquaintances screened me. I'd like to say I was mindful of being the most visible man in the room—me, the priest—but who was I kidding? People had been staring at me for twenty-three blocks. One hour in the uniform and I knew this much: On a bright summer's day, in a sprawling city, a priest in a cassock is a thing to behold. People draw out their eye contact with a priest. They give nods or bow just a smidge. Or they stare. Openly. Respectfully. Distantly. When walking in pairs, men wind up their cheeriest selves to blurt out suddenly, "Good morning, Father." A habit learned in high school, revisited gladly. Twenty-three blocks and the world could not take its eyes off me. A priest, striding north.

continue at Esquire

Too cool, St. Galgano and the Sword in the Stone

via CatholicOnline

The legendary sword in the stone still stands in Italy. While connected to Arthurian legend and British history, this Sword in the Stone is associated with a Catholic saint. Visitors can see it in the Montesiepi chapel, near Saint Galgano Abbey in Chiusdino, in Tuscany.

The legend surrounds the story of brave knight Galgano Guidotti, who was born in 1148 near Chiusdino. After spending his youth as a brave knight, Galgano decided to follow the words of Jesus in 1180 and retired as a hermit near his hometown.

Galgano is said to have stuck his sword onto a rock in order to use it as a cross for his prayers. One year later Galgano died, and in 1185 Pope Lucius the 3rd declared him a saint.

After Galgano's death, according to legend, countless people have tried to steal the sword. In the chapel you can see what are said to be the mummified hands of a thief that tried to remove the sword and was then suddenly slaughtered by wild wolves.

The sword was believed to be a fake for years. However, recent studies examined the sword and the hands, and the dating results as well as metal and style of the sword all are consistent with the late 1100s, early 1200s. This lends credence that the story on which the English sword and the stone is based on originated with Guidotti in Italy.

These days the sword is protected by a Perspex screen to protect it from the attempts to remove it from the stone, one of which resulted in the sword being broken. If the true-born king of England does indeed come along he had better also be able to break through plastic, as well as remove the sword from the stone.

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Also The Guardian: Tuscany's Excalibur is the real thing, say scientists

HT Jimmy

MM: First They Came for the Confederates...

As (perhaps surprisingly) most readers of The Mad Monarchist hail from the United States, I am sure everyone knows about the recent campaign to purge all symbols of the former Confederacy on the grounds that these are symbols of hatred, racism and division. It started with the Confederate battle flag flying over a monument to Confederate soldiers in Columbia, South Carolina and very quickly expanded to banning the rebel banner from public view entirely. The campaign gained such momentum that the bodies of a dead Confederate general and his wife are now set to be dug up in Memphis and the 70's TV show "The Dukes of Hazzard" has been banished from the airwaves as the main characters drive a car with the offensive flag on the roof. What (I am sure someone is already asking) does any of this have to do with monarchy? Well, the symbol of one of the most prominent monarchies in the world may be next. It is a symbol prominently featured on flags across the United States and a symbol long identified with a kingdom near and dear to the hearts of many monarchists; the traditional Kingdom of France. Yes, I refer to the fleur-de-lis of the Bourbon monarchy.

On Thursday, at a New Orleans City Council meeting, the leader of the activist group "Remove Racist Images", one Rudy Mills, said that the fleur-de-lis is the next offensive symbol that should be removed from view. After applauding the removal of the Confederate ensign, Mr Mills said that the fleur-de-lis should go as well. "Check the history. It's also a very racist symbol" he said. Last month, this same man held a rally to demand the removal of this and any other symbol from New Orleans deemed to be offensive saying, "The rally is to start a movement to remove all the racist images that surround our city." At the same City Council meeting, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (Democrat, son of a former mayor, brother of a former senator) said that, "New Orleans is a place where the original vision of America rings authentic and true, that all men are created equal. However, make no mistake, these statues and symbols that reflect the opposite of our shared American values have no place where they are today."

continue at Mad Monarchist

In fact, let's dig up Queen Marie Antoinette and guillotine her again.

Interesting side note; did you know that because of the aid that King Louis XVI gave to the American Revolution, that there was an effort to give the royal family political asylum in Louisiana?  Alas, anti-Catholic sentiments prevailed.   

CreamCity: Exploring the "Benedict Option"

These are difficult days. We cannot ignore this. We cannot gloss over the maturation of toxic ideologies brought about by what Benedict XVI called the “dictatorship of relativism” in the West. And we read everyday about the relentless persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa which, according to Pope Francis, rival those of the earliest days of the Church. It is not simplistic, Henny Penny recklessness to warn about the dangers threatening society. Some of our nation’s most erudite legal scholars did just that in their strikingly somber dissents in last week’s Supreme Court ruling. John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each penned searing excoriations of the Court’s majority decision on gay “marriage” which, they believe, set us on a very dangerous path, politically and culturally. For their part, the United States bishops, including our own Archbishop Listecki, released a string of forceful statements sounding the alarm on the gravity of the ruling and the implications it has for the family and religious liberty. Sometimes you’ll hear people on our side say, “It’s been bad before, today’s no different.” Yes, it has been bad before. But today is different.

continue at Cream City Catholic

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