A bloody Christmas Day in Nigeria

Two Catholic churces attacked, almost forty dead, many more wounded. Militant Islamist group Boko Haram claims responsibilityl

See BBC News.

See Fox News.

The candy cane, as I have recently learned, illustrates that the Christmas feast is a prelude the shedding of His blood by Our Lord Jesus. The three thin red stripes represent the scourges inflicted upon Christ in His Sacred Passion, and the thick red stripe represents His Sacred Blood shed upon the Cross. The cane is in the shape of a shepherd's crook - the shepherds sought their Good Shepherd in the Babe in the manger.

Christian brothers and sisters of ours shed their blood and died today, as did St Stephen whose martyrdom we celebrate tomorrow and the Holy Innocents whose sacrifice we celebrate on Wednesday.

Let us pray for the security of our Christian brothers and sisters in Nigeria, and for PEACE!

Christmas - not so peaceful for the Christians of Iraq

 This was the scene in a Baghdad church October 31st last year.

At that time the US Bishops said the US has a moral obligation to help Iraq. Now the troops have come home. What will happen?

Vatican Radio: Chaldean Catholic officials have cancelled traditional Christmas Eve midnight Masses in Iraq because of security risks. They said Iraqi Christians will spend Christmas in "great fear" because of the risk of new attacks.

“We have many difficulties because of the situation that there is no peace and no security, permanent security,” said Bishop Mar Shlemon Warduni, Auxiliary Bishop of the Patriarchate of Babylon, Iraq, of the Chaldean Catholic Church. “So for these days of Christmas and the New Year, we hope to celebrate the feast, but not Midnight [Mass], because there are too many difficulties.”

Bishop Warduni said that, despite many difficulties, for Christians in Iraq, “Our duty is to pray for peace.” He spoke of his prayer during this holy season: “And so we ask the Child of Bethlehem to give us this security and peace, to give us joy and peace, and we cry with angels ‘Glory be to the Lord in the highest heaven, and peace on the earth. We ask him this only, and not only for the Iraqi people, for Christians in Iraq, but for everybody in the Middle East.”

Thanks to 9A at De La Salle College, Belfast

Thank you 9A for your kind Christmas card. Be assured of my prayers for you and for your teacher. May you have a Happy and Holy Christmas, and every blessing in the New Year.

The Wonder of Life at Christmas

This video by Youth Defence

How did the new English Mass go today?

The Regal Edition of the Roman Missal available from Midwest Theological Forum.

Here, there were a few stumbles - but by and large it went well. For me as a priest, it was like learning the Mass once again. The Missal - we have the MTF Regal Edition pictured above - is beautifully bound and illustrated. It will take a little while to become familiar with both the layout and the new words, and to discover the richness of what is on offer. Check the appendices for music for the presidential prayers and dialogues, sample prayers of the faithful, etc.

The language is uplifting and - as sacred language should - veils the mystery that we must penetrate with the eyes of faith through prayer and contemplation.

For me, the Mass will never be the same again.

Today we veiled the Tabernacle with a new purple veil made by our parishioner Bonnie Hurkmans. Bonnie is also going to make veils in the other liturgical colours: white, green and red. We are blest to have people like her - and many others in the parish - who put their talents at the service of the Lord. Rosie King has made linen cloths to go under the top altar cloth and on the credence table, and she is working on one for the shelf on which the tabernacle rests. As I mentioned in my homily this morning, the veil over the Tabernacle indicates that there is Mystery beyond the veil that we are called to meditate upon, a Mystery that the Lord will reveal to those who keep silence before it in reverence and awe.

It is a beautiful Tabernacle in itself, as you can see from this previous photograph:

The new purple vestments got their first proper outing today.

Although they look a bit blue in this picture, this is the effect of night lighting
and flash. See the tabernacle above for a better idea of the colour.

The tabernacle veil is made from the same material. The vestments were purchased from House of Hansen with money donated by parishioners and include all the five parts: chasuble, stole, maniple, chalice veil and burse (these last three are not included in the price shown at the House of Hansen website). I shall use them in the Extraordinary Form for the first time this coming Thursday evening at 7pm. Parishioners have generously funded the purchase of new rose vestments which have been purchased from Luzar Vestments and red vestments which are now on order from House of Hansen. We have also received donations towards a new white set and these are now also on order from House of Hansen. Thank you to all our generous parishioners.

During this time of Advent, we consider the Mystery concealed within Mary and await - in silent conemplation - Its revelation.

I was struck by - and preached on - the orations (Collect, Prayer of the Offerings, Prayer after Communion) of today's Mass.

Prayer after Communion:

May these mysteries, O Lord,
in which we have participated,
profit us, we pray,
for even now, as we walk amid passing things,
you teach us by them to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what endures.
Through Christ our Lord.

By what does the Lord teach us "to love the things of heaven"? By "these mysteries" or by our "walk amid passing things"? Probably the former, but the passing things of this world are also created by God and should lead us beyond them to the appreciation of the beauty of their Creator and Lord.

Indeed, the sacraments, too, are "passing things". A time will come when there is no time and no sacraments. We will no longer see Christ veiled in the Eucharistic "vestments" of the appearances of bread and wine but we shall see Him "immediately", without the mediation of sense, sign or symbol. As ecstatic as our union with the Lord in Holy Communion can be, it is a mere foretaste of the heavenly union.

The new, more sacral language, also veils a mystery. If we now find some words of the Mass a little more difficult to "get" at first, this might indicate that perhaps the previous translation was not up to the mark in showing forth the mysterious nature of the Mass. If, now, we must exert ourselves in thinking and - preferably - contemplating in prayer, this is a grace given us by the Lord. As we prayed in the Collect today:

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming...

 We are called to "run forth" out of our comfort zone, out of our worldly way of seeing things, into the realm of mystery through prayer and contemplation. There are many "righteous deeds" that we can accumulate in readiness for the coming of the Father's Christ, but perhaps prayer and contemplation are the more important.

Wishing everyone a blessed Advent.

European school diary includes Moslem and other feasts, but not Christian ones

Apparently,

Each year, the European Commission publishes a European school diary for schoolchildren throughout the European Union. Three millions copies of the 2010-2011 version of this diary, distributed to schools for free at the request of teachers, have been edited. The current version of this diary does not mention any christian feasts, but do give the dates of Islamic, Sikh, Hindu and Chinese feast days. It does not refer, for example, to Christmas, recently celebrated through all Europe.

You can sign a petition asking that

• That the school diary, in its current version, may not be distributed.
• That the future 2011-2012 diary explicitly mentions Christian holidays.

You can also read more at The European Union Times.

Twelve Days of Christmas for Large Families

Enjoy!

Christmas at St Peter Cathedral, Marquette

Shepherds Masses at Assumption Grotto: The Revival of an Ancient Custom

Diane at Te Deum Laudamus has some great photoposts of Christmas Midnight Mass and the Shepherds Masses that followed it.

On Christmas every priest is allowed to celebrate three Masses: Midnight, Dawn and Day. Apparently the custom was that, immediately after the Midnight Mass, some priests would do some of these Masses privately at different altars around the church. At Assumption Grotto in Detroit, they decided to revive this custome. It was unanounced and so not many people stayed, but Diane suspects that, next year, there will be a lot of people who will remain to observe the spectacle.

All the Masses were celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

Holy Innocents

There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society. The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times. From Bishops of developing countries I hear again and again how sexual tourism threatens an entire generation and damages its freedom and its human dignity. The Book of Revelation includes among the great sins of Babylon – the symbol of the world’s great irreligious cities – the fact that it trades with bodies and souls and treats them as commodities (cf. Rev 18:13). In this context, the problem of drugs also rears its head, and with increasing force extends its octopus tentacles around the entire world – an eloquent expression of the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.

In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focussed anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.

Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on the Occasion of Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, Sala Regia, Monday, 20 December 2010

The feast of the Holy Innocents is rightly appropriated as a day to commemorate all those innocent children killed in the wombs of their mothers. But let us also pray for all those children whose innocence is defiled by immorality in all its forms.

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Like a young man marrying a virgin, so will the one who built you wed you

The Christmas Crib in the gather area of St Peter Cathedral, Marquette

GK Chesterton was a prolific English writer and a famous convert from Anglicanism to the Catholic faith whose life spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. In his book “The Everlasting Man” he presents a whole view of world history as informed by the Incarnation. Beginning with the origin of man and the various religious attitudes throughout history, Chesterton shows how the fulfillment of all of man’s desires takes place in the person of Jesus Christ and in Christ’s Church.

Christianity, he says, is no myth, nor can it be compared with any other religion for, unlike other religions, it unites the world of the spiritual with the material, without confusing the two. It unites Creator and creature. Creator and creature are no longer separated but made one.

He speaks of the first men who, it is supposed, lived in caves. These cavemen painted images of creatures and scenes of nature on the walls of their caves. And at the dawn of the re-creation of humanity, the New Man dwelt in a cave at Bethlehem. Much is made of the stable and the manger, but tradition tells us that the nativity of Christ took place in one of the many hillside caves near Bethlehem where shepherds used to shelter. You can visit these caves today. The one where Jesus was born has a huge Church built over it and you must descend below ground, to the crypt, to visit it.

Chesterton describes how a homeless couple crept underground among animals to find a place to shelter. It was in the cellar, on the very floor of the world, where the Savior Christ was to be born. Christ was born not only on the level of the world but below the level of the world, on a dark and sunken stage rather than on a stage visible to the world.

So God becomes a caveman. But the pictures he drew of mankind made in God’s image and likeness came to life again, unlike the images painted by the original cavemen that remained lifeless on the walls on which they were painted.

In this cave we contemplate a baby, whose unknown strength sustains the stars. We contemplate the paradox of the omnipotence of God united with the impotence of a baby. We marvel at the unity of the timeless and eternal divinity with the infancy that is destined to grow and mature and to die in time. Bethlehem, says Chesterton, is a place where extremes meet.

But in that place of extremes, in a cave below the level of the earth, a few shepherds discover what they had been searching for, the fulfillment of all their hopes and desires. In the Child, the shepherds find their Shepherd.

And now the cribs or crèches or nativity scenes, or the nativity plays performed in our schools and in fields and theatres around the world present the shepherds not in the costumes of those shepherds of Bethlehem 2,000 years ago but in the diverse costumes of all the different nations of the world, with the actors speaking in their own diverse accents, manifesting the truly Catholic and universal scope of this momentous birth.

According to Dom Hugh Gilbert, Abbot of Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland, the love of God in the incarnation is “over-whelming, mind-blowing, heart-ravishing”. The prophet Isaiah says: “Like a young man marrying a virgin, so will the one who built you wed you. As the bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.” (Is 62:5) So much does God want to be one with you and with all mankind. Abbot Gilbert continues:

This is love than which no greater can be conceived. There is a being, God, who is completely, infinitely, eternally, unassailably happy, blessed, joyful, in his own Trinitarian life. This Being decides, out of love, to create other, finite beings outside itself, centrally man, in order to share its happiness with them. And when it does this, it does it to the maximum conceivable, even though or even because, the human creature has refused the love. One of the Trinity in order to connect to each and every man takes to himself an individual human nature in a marriage than which there is no closer nor more intimate. Humanity is part of the Trinity: indissolubly and forever. By taking a human nature to himself, the Son of God has united himself in a certain way to every human being. Christ is part of every human’s humanity, more me than I am. Really, a clatter of genuflections at the Et incarnatus est hardly rises to the occasion! I only mention what most immediately astonishes me: this act of Incarnation, God marrying humanity. But then there’s the child, the teacher, the suffering One, the risen One, the One who gives the Spirit, the One who breaks the bread of his Body. They all speak the same love, and they are all, in the unity of his Person, one and the same, and present already at Christmas.

The only possible knock-on effect – though heaven knows how many Christmases it takes to come to it – is (an) enlarged heart. The heart of the Trinity is large enough for all humanity… What is it, after all, that the Lord wants (of us)? ... a wider heart, a heart widened by the Christmas love. (Unfolding the Mystery, pp. 42-43)

Our celebration of Christmas must have consequences. We must know that this Child will grow up to challenge us. We are not disciples of His unless we take up our cross and follow Him. We do not love Him if we do not keep His commandments, if we do not honor him every day of our lives and keep the Sunday holy by attending Mass. Salvation will not be possible for us unless we “give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions,” seeking to be “self-restrained and live good and religious lives here in this present world, while we wait in hope for the … appearing of” the glory of our Savior Jesus Christ at the end of time. (Titus 2:11-14)

By becoming a man, the Son of God has made us children, sons of God. Contemplating the Child in the cave should move us to truly desire to be children before God, obeying His will as Jesus Christ obeyed the will of the Father in coming to earth.

However, as Chesterton writes: we cannot visit the Child without visiting the Mother. We cannot have access to the Child without going through the Mother. The holiness of the two mingle and cannot be separated. May the Virgin Mother and Holy Joseph assist us in being similarly holy and one with Christ.

I wish you all a very Happy and a very Holy Christmas.


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Something to put us in a Christmasy mood

I received this in an ecard from some friends from my previous parish. Thought it was nice.

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Digital Christmas Story

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Carol Singing in style!

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Christmas Sanctuary

Parishioner Maureen Auchterlonie took this photograph on New Years Day before the Extraordinary Form Mass at 10am. She was showing it to us on her camera after Bible Study this evening. Notice the new altar super-frontal with the Lamb of God - it really looks splendid, the work of another parishioner Catarina Beresford.

There was a very nice atmosphere at that Mass - a number of Sri Lankan families were present and all were very happy and joyful. Fewer people attended the mid-day Ordinary Form Mass than the 10am Extraordinary Form.

Attendance at New Year's Day was quite poor. In the USA it's a Holyday of Obligation.

Wintershall Nativity Play

A bit late, but on the Monday before Christmas a group of parishioners travelled to the Wintershall Estate for their famous Nativity Play. Here are some photos, generally without captions as you should be able to make out the scenes.

Some of the scene might seem out of order but dramatic licence was used to flashback etc and include many aspects of the Nativity story in a very effective manner. There were also some lovely musical items (e.g. Ave Maria).

It's a very moving production and an excellent way to prepare for Christmas. So check it out next year.

The shepherds explain to the children in the audience the scene they have witnessed.

The Annunciation

The Magi arrive.

St Michael appears and warns the Magi to return by a different way. Here the prayer to St Michael was said.

St Michael addresses Herod, who was suitably consigned to the fires of hell through the back of the stage.