Trad Cats

We Trad Cats are like children whose father has brought another woman home and told us we must now address her as our mother.

 

”But father, this is not our mother,” we say.

 

”I am your father with authority over you, and I say this is your mother. You must hug her and kiss her and tell her you love her,” the father says angrily.

 

”But father,” we say, “this woman is not our mother. We want our mother back.”

 

“You disobedient child,” the father says. “Your new mother keeps house and cooks for you and takes you to school. She does everything a mother does. She is your mother.”

 

”But father,” we say, “Our mother gave us life. She makes us home-cooked meals with love and attention. This other woman lets strangers into the home at all hours and heats up TV dinners in the microwave. She is not our mother. We want our mother back.”

 

”You have injured the harmony of this family with your complaining,” the father says. “You have defied my authority.”

 

“But father,” we say, “we know you are our father. Yet that woman is not our mother. We are broken hearted. Please give us our mother back.”

 

”You disobedient, ungrateful wretch of a child” the father says. “Because you have defied me, you are excommunicated and no longer part of this family. Depart from my sight and sleep in the coal cellar, for if you will not have this woman for your mother, then you are no child of mine and you have no part in this family.”

 

And so we continue on, quarantined to the dark cellar, yearning for our father to put his trophy bride aside and bring our mother back. In our seclusion we keep the family customs, we recall our true mother’s birthday, we sing the songs she loves. She will know we have been faithful, even though our father has forgotten himself and shamed her.

 

May our father remember his duties and restore our loving mother to her rightful place.

Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday

Today is Maundy Thursday, and this morning at church we sang Tenebrae.

Tenebrae (Latin for “darkness” or “shadows”) is a profound and deeply moving Catholic liturgical service, observed during the Sacred Triduum — specifically on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

 

In the pre-1955 Holy Week liturgy, Tenebrae was celebrated on the evening before each of these days, i.e., on Spy Wednesday (looking at you, Judas), Maundy Thursday evening, and Good Friday evening.

 

It is a time of intense mourning and reflection, as the Church commemorates the betrayal, Passion, and burial of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

The Tenebrae service lasts for about two hours and combines the Office of Matins and Lauds, the first two hours of the Divine Office. It is chanted in a darkened church, with only the light of candles to illuminate the sacred texts.

 

At the front of the sanctuary stands the Tenebrae hearse, a triangular candelabrum bearing 15 candles:

• 14 candles represent the Apostles and faithful followers of Christ.
• The 15th candle, placed at the top, symbolizes Christ Himself, the Light of the World.

After each psalm is chanted, one candle is extinguished, plunging the church ever deeper into darkness. This symbolizes the abandonment of Christ by His disciples and the growing darkness over the earth as He approaches death.

 

After the 14 candles are extinguished, the single white candle — Christ — is hidden behind the altar, symbolizing His burial in the tomb.

 

At the end of the service, a great noise (strepitus) is made — at our church one bangs on the pews; some places slam books on the choir stall. This represents the earthquake at the moment of Christ’s death and the confusion of creation in the face of the death of the Creator.

 

Then, in silence and darkness, the hidden candle is returned to its place — not extinguished.

 

The texts of Tenebrae are drawn from:

• The Book of Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, chanted in a mournful tone, lamenting the desolation of Jerusalem — foreshadowing the desolation of Christ's Passion.
• The Psalms, particularly those that prophesy the sufferings of the Messiah.
• The Responsories, which offer deeply poetic and sorrowful reflections on Our Lord’s Passion.

 

These are traditionally sung in Gregorian chant, with a haunting and meditative quality that leads the soul into contemplation of the Mystery of the Cross.

Tenebrae is a powerful act of devotion, inviting the faithful to accompany Christ in His abandonment, agony, and death. It is a moment to enter into the heart of Holy Week, to keep watch with the Lord in His darkest hour, and to meditate on the gravity of sin, the depths of divine love, and the hope of redemption.

 

The Royal Colors

Yesterday was Passion Sunday - from the old Latin word "passio," which means "suffering" or "endurance."

All the crucifixes and pictures in the church were draped in purple, the color for mourning, but also for royalty.

 

It's a salute to our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that He suffered on the cross for our sins - a royal king paying the debt owed by His people.

 

A Fool Describes God

I must try to do what seems very foolish – describe God.

God is simple, without body or distinction of parts.

He is simple, because He has nothing borrowed.

He is good without qualities, great without quantity, Creator, yet needing nothing; everywhere, yet without place; eternal, without term, and changing all things, without change Himself.

He is good with an infinite goodness, and good to all, but especially good to men.

He is infinite in the multitude of His perfections, in their intensity, and in their magnificence.

He is present everywhere, in different manners, yet nowhere contracting soil or stain.

He is immutable; His eternity defends Him from time, His immensity from change of place, and His wisdom from change of purpose.

He is eternal without beginning as well as without end, and eternal with a life which exists all at once and altogether, and with a perfect possession of it.

He subsists by the incomparable unity of His blessed nature, and it is the crowning interest of every man in the world that God should be but One.

He is sovereign purity, unspeakable sanctity, and most resplendent beauty.

He is always in adorable tranquility; no trouble can come nigh to His being.

He is known to nature, to faith, to glory, yet He is incomprehensible by all.

His name is the ineffable God.

His science is beyond all thought, and is the source of His ravishing joy.

His being is Truth itself, and His life is the inexhaustible fountain of life.

His will is worshipful, unblamable, supreme, and His liberty is without parallel and beyond words.

His love of His creatures is eternal, constant, gratuitous and singular; and His mercy is an unfathomable abyss of the most beautiful compassions and condescensions, and no less also of the most delicate judgments and the most tender retributions.

His justice is as irreproachable as His sanctity, and as benevolent as His mercy.

His power is illimitable, and full of love; and His blessedness is inaccessible.

Yet all these are not separate perfections; but He is Himself all these excellencies, and He is one: Three co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial Persons, One only God.

Such, in the dry language of the schools, is the description of Him who is our loving and indulgent Father, God over all, blessed forevermore! Amen.

 

- From "All For Jesus or The Easy Ways of Divine Love" by Frederick William Faber

Holy Name Society Pledge

IHS

Blessed be God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

I profess publicly my belief that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, made man for the salvation of mankind.

I recognize His divine authority, and believe that all power on earth, civil and religious, comes from Him.

All lawfully constituted authority I respect and promise to obey.

May the God of Justice guide the minds and uphold the hands of those vested with its power.

May the God of Might break asunder the bonds of those met together against the Lord and against His Christ.

In honor of His divine Name, I pledge myself against perjury, blasphemy, profanity, and obscene speech.

Praised be the Name of God, and blessed be the name of His divine Son, now and forever.

Sr. Lucia on America

The visionary of Fatima, Sr. Lucia, being questioned about the United States, gave this reply:

“America will be brought to its knees but will survive the great chastisement, because of the generosity and goodness of the American people.”

Transfiguration

Feast of the Transfiguration

“Do not forget to show hospitality; in doing this, men have before now entertained angels unawares.”
– Hebrews 13:2

“Who am I? I am the angel Raphael, and my place is among those seven who stand in the presence of the Lord.”
– Tobias 12:15

Part of the charm of certain fairy tales is that good and beautiful things are hidden for a while and undergo a time of testing to prove their worth. Then in the great reveal, a sudden unexpected turning, the incredible occurs: all that was secret and hidden is made clear, the truth comes out, the faithful are rewarded, the wicked are punished.

Likewise, angels walk among us, hidden from plain site but sent out by Him when the destined heirs of eternal salvation have need of them.

Even more amazing, the Light that shines in darkness and gives life to men himself became incarnate as a man and walked among them as one of them. Everyone once in a while he gave a hint through the profundity of His moral teachings or through miraculous prodigies that indicated who He really was. One time, however, he let his real self shine through – his mortal form was Transfigured – in a blaze of radiant glory.

“His countenance was altered, and his garments became white and dazzling…”
– Luke 9:29

With this event occurred on Mount Tabor, he wasn’t momentarily elevated; rather, he took off the veil and revealed himself as he already was at all times.

The proper response to God’s goodness is love, which is to will the good of another. If we accept God’s love and return our own, he will bless us by sharing some of his goodness with us. In Heaven, our resurrected bodies will be transformed, and they will take on the attributes of subtlety, impassability, agility, and clarity.

* Subtlety: perfected in its form, able to pass through solid objects with ease

* Impassibility: incapable of experiencing physical pain, sickness, suffering, corruption, or death

* Agility: swift movement without difficulty or labor, able to physically travel any distance with the quickness of thought

* Clarity: lightsome, free of deformity, filled with beauty and radiance, shining with a brilliant radiance and beauty

“Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we may grasp with purified minds this most holy mystery of the Transfiguration of Thy Son…”
– from the Postcommunion prayer for the Mass of the Transfiguration

Church of the Transfiguration
Atop Mount Tabor in the Holy Land

Justice for Society

It is not by class struggle that justice can be re-established, but by preaching the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, "The Mystery of Jesus"

Christ is our doctrine, it is He who teaches us. Christ us our master, it is from Him that we learn. Christ is our school, in Him we learn. Because Christ is the one and only messenger, the light on all questions, He has the key to all human problems. Our world must relearn how to know the one to whom it owes all that it is. It is necessary to speak to it of Our Lord Jesus Christ over and over without tiring. If the world knows Him in His doctrine and His works, it will rediscover in Him the Lord and master whom false guides and unworthy pastors have made it forget.And so helped to return to the source of all goods,it will find once again the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
- St. Louis de Montfort, "The Love of Eternal Wisdom"

Consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts at Fatima

Two dozen countries were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Fatima, Portugal on March 25 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cardinal António Marto, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima and the bishops of Portugal and Spain performed the consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. On the solemn occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation, the bishops asked for the Blessed Virgin Mary’s intercession for the “direct and indirect victims” of the pandemic that affects us, for “health professionals, tireless in their efforts to help the sick…authorities, in their efforts to find solutions," and for "all of us and our families." The rosary was also recited in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Polish. Tens of thousands of faithful watched the ceremony broadcast live on the web page for the Fatima shrine and throughout Portugal on television, radio, and many Catholic digital platforms.

The Portuguese initiative was the result of a petition begun on March 19 by a group of laymen who gathered over 5,500 signatures that they presented to the Portuguese Episcopal Conference. Among the signers were several members of the Bragança family, including Duke Duarte Pio, the great-grandson of King Miguel I of Portugal and claimant to the defunct Portuguese throne. The text of the petition stressed the urgency of the situation, highlighting not only the evils of the coronavirus but also all the miseries that are already associated with it, from isolation to unemployment "at levels never seen before."

Initially, only the Portuguese bishops intended to renew the consecration of their country to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. Then the Spanish bishops asked to take part in this consecration, followed by other bishops’ conferences the world over. The countries consecrated were Albania, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Kenya, Mexico, Moldova, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.

The Basilica of Fatima was built on the site where, just over a century ago, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared six times to three Portuguese children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The Queen of Heaven told the children to make sacrifices for sinners and pray the Rosary every day for peace. A few years later both Francisco and Jacinta died to the Spanish flu, a pandemic that killed over 25 million people. Lúcia later became a nun, and she reminded the faithful that the Rosary is “something everybody can do.”

May our Lord and Lady bless this public act of adoration and reparation.

The consecration ceremony can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU0XNlO_1QY

Incarnation and Divinization

Feast of the Annunciation

From Fr. Adam Purdy in a letter to SSPX Tertiaries in the United States:

I hope this feast day is blessed for you. We celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. God became man in order that man become God. Oh admirable exchange! In bearing Christ within us - we are divinized. All Christians accept the divinity of Christ; only Catholics embrace this "divinization." Christ's role was not simply to be an inspiration and provide longing to Christians; it was not be a wise teacher of the ways of God, or a model of Christian life; it is to put the real presence of God within our soul.

Prayer, Penance, Fasting

Ash Wednesday

From Luke 13:5 - “Unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish.”

Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God with a view to appealing to His goodness in petition for the things we need. Penance worthily done transforms our rebellious wills, giving us loving, grateful hearts and so making it possible to pray well.

By penance a sinner hates the injustice of his own personal sin against Almighty God and desires to make reparation for his defiance and ingratitude. Such penance is always required for the forgiveness of sin. To help us fulfill the requirement of reparation, Holy Mother Church, knowing our frailty, obliges us to perform works of penance at certain times. The requirement to fast during the season of Lent is one example.

Lent is the penitential season lasting from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday that serves to remind us of Christ’s fast in the desert and to prepare us for Easter. Because it is a salutary time when our Lord abundantly dispenses grace, according to ancient custom Christians perform additional acts of penance and sacrifice in Lent so that they may win deliverance from their sins and be better disposed to receive the graces that Almighty God wants to bestow upon His children.

There is a commandment laid on us to fast, for fasting helps to curb the desires of the flesh, draws us closer to Almighty God, and makes satisfaction for sins, both our own and those of others–our families, friends, neighbors, and countrymen. For this last reason our Lord and Lady also fasted, for though they were guilty of no sin, yet moved by charity they won by their fasting and acts of penance graces for poor sinners.

Our Lady told the seers of Fatima that "many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them." Likewise, St. John Vianney said that the conversion of sinners "begins with prayer and ends with penance." Let these sentiments occupy our thoughts and fill our hearts this Lent, offering this prayer when we fast and make some sacrifice: “O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

The Traditions of God

From today’s Mass (Wednesday of the third week in Lent), the gloss for the Gospel reading - Matthew 15:1-20 - says that “the Pharisees added to the Commandments human tradition, which consisted of wholly exterior formalities and to which they attached more importance than they did to the law of Moses. The Church therefore seeks to put us on our guard against the observance of merely exterior practices of worship or fasts, which are not united to acts of charity.”

In a conversation with a friend about my conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism, I said that when I was a Protestants I thought Catholics were Christians who just created a lot of unnecessary work for themselves. Protestants, you see, hold that Catholic rituals and ceremonies and customs and accretions are a continuation of the empty traditions that Christ condemned the Pharisees for. The solution, then, was to jettison all traditions and retain the Scriptures only.

Only that practice of the Protestants is contradicted by the Scriptures themselves. Here’s an explanation, with links to relevant Scripture verses.

Sacred Scripture: The Old and New Testaments. Scripture is one of the two pillars of the Christian Faith for Catholics; the other pillar is Divine Tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:14-15).

Divine Tradition: The divinely-inspired customs and the oral accounts of the early Christians that captured the history and teachings of Christ not written down in the Scriptures (John 21:25). Tradition is one of the two pillars of the Christian Faith for Catholics; the other pillar is Sacred Scripture.

Protestantism: A 16th century revolt against Catholic belief, practice, and governance. Divine Tradition was rejected; a modified form of Sacred Scripture was retained.

God uses words and traditions to convey His Gospel.

Mary, the Mother of God

Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The premier station in the epic catalog of saints named in the canon of the Mass is given to Mary most pure, ever a virgin, the seat of wisdom, the Ark of the Covenant and help of Christians, the queen of angels who was immaculately preserved from all sin and assumed body and soul into Heaven where she was “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1).

The daughter of Sts. Joachim and Ann, the Blessed Virgin Mary was of the house and family and David, and her coming was prophesied repeatedly in the Old Testament (Genesis 3:15; Isaias 7:1-17; Micheas 5:2-3; Jeremias 31:22). Because of her immaculate purity the angel Gabriel saluted her at the Annunciation with “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). So necessary is her intervention, so pervasive is her empery, that she holds dozens of patronages, and the calendar is replete with feasts in her honor. It was at her request that our Lord performed His first miracle at Cana. Just as Eve was our race’s physical mother because she is the origin of our natural life, so Mary as the new Eve became our spiritual mother because she is the origin of our supernatural life. St. Bernardine of Siena wrote, “She is the neck of Our Head by which He communicates to His mystical body all spiritual gifts.”

From Mary alone our Lord took His flesh, dwelling nine months in her womb that was a temple more splendid that Solomon’s, maturing in stature near her heart that was endowed with an unspeakable treasury of resplendent virtues. It was Mary who stood at our Lord’s feet when His own heart was pierced with a Roman lance, piercing her heart through as well with the sword of sorrow. Yet joyfully did she offer her Son with her own hands for the salvation of the world, for her sorrow was not the grief of despair, but the source of pity, of perseverance in hope, and of repentance unto salvation. To her children who remember her at her Divine Son’s sacrificial celebration she bestows strength of spirit, turns grief to wisdom, and beautifies their acts of penance so that they acquire greater merit. In Mary most holy is an example of how to unite one’s self with the perfect sacrifice offered to Almighty God upon the altar. In loving Mary, we love what God Himself loved. “Mary was the most perfect among the saints only because she was always perfectly united to the will of God” (St. Alphonsus de Ligouri).