Society of St. Oliver Plunkett: February 2012

22 February 2012

Ash Wednesday

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris

Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thous shalt return

(Gen. 3:19).

The images below are taken from an engraving in the 1595 Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. pont. max. iussu restitutum atque editum.

They form a series of three illustrating the public expulsion of penitents from the community of the church on Ash Wednesday. After listening to a sermon by the bishop on the expulsion of Adam from paradise, the exemplar for their own expulsion, the penitents wearing hair shirts, carrying candles, and weeping are ejected from the church.

"Let us fast an acceptable and very pleasing fast to the Lord. True fast is the estrangement from evil, temperance of tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, slander, falsehood, and perjury. Privation of these is true fasting" (St Basil the Great).

19 February 2012

Quinquagesima Sunday

Sung Mass at 5pm, St Patrick's Church, College Rd, Kilkenny.

Image source: Jerome Nadal SJ

"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, * and all things that are written by the Prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished for He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles,

and shall be mocked and spitted on; and they shall scourge Him,

and put Him to death, and the third day He shall rise again."

(Benedictus antiphon of Laudes taken from today's Gospel reading)

As Lent is fast approaching the Gospel of today (Luke 18:31-43) brings with it the announcement of Christ that he will undergo the Passion. The Apostles did not understand theses things, and since they dreamed of only triumphs and of occupying the first places in the kingdom, an allusion to the Passion upset and scandalized them. Are we not the same?

"To those who dream only of prosperity and earthly glory, the language of the Cross is incomprehensible. Those who have a purely material ideal of life find it very difficult to understand any spiritual significance, and especially that of suffering. St. Paul said that Christ Crucified was "unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:23)."

"To human wisdom, suffering is incomprehensible; it is disconcerting; it can lead one to murmur against Divine Providence and even to lose all trust in God. However, according to Divine Wisdom, suffering is a means of salvation and redemption. And it was necessary "for Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His Glory" (cf. Luke 24:26) So to for the Christian it is necessary to be refined in the crucible of sorrow in order to attain to sanctity, to eternal life."

The Cross is Your standard Lord Jesus Christ; I should be ashamed to ask to be delivered from it!

(Extracts from: Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magadalen O.C.D. 'Divine Intimacy'.)

O Divine Love,
conceal yourself, leap over our suffering, make us obedient!

Arouse and confuse us.

Shatter all our illusions and plans so that we lose our way and see neither path nor light

until we have found You.

(Jean-Pierre de Caussade, 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment' (L'Abandon a la Providence Divine) p.35.)

01 February 2012

Solemn Sung Mass - Candlemas

Solemn Sung Mass

7pm, Thursday 2nd of February

St. James's Parish Church, Glenmore, County Kilkenny (nr. New Ross, Wexford.)

"Lumen ad revelationem gentium,

et gloriam plebis tuae Israel"

Benedict XVI on the Litrugy

“The Church stands and falls with the Liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the faith no longer appears in its fullness in the Liturgy of the Church, when man’s words, his thoughts, his intentions are suffocating him, then faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells. For that reason, the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church whatever.”

"The Holy Mass, celebrated in the respect of the liturgical norms and with a fitting appreciation of the richness of the signs and gestures, fosters and promotes the growth of Eucharistic faith. In the Eucharistic celebration we do not invent something, but we enter into a reality that precedes us, more than that, which embraces heaven and earth and, hence, also the past, the future and the present."

"This universal openness, this encounter with all the sons and daughters of God is the grandeur of the Eucharist: we go to meet the reality of God present in the body and blood of the Risen One among us. Hence, the liturgical prescriptions dictated by the Church are not external things, but express concretely this reality of the revelation of the body and blood of Christ and thus the prayer reveals the faith according to the ancient principle 'lex orandi – lex credendi."

"And because of this we can say "the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself well celebrated" (Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis," No. 64).
"It is necessary that in the liturgy the transcendent dimension emerge with clarity, that of the mystery, of the encounter with the Divine, which also illumines and elevates the "horizontal," that is the bond of communion and of solidarity that exists between all those who belong to the Church."

"In fact, when the latter prevails, the beauty, profundity and importance of the mystery celebrated is fully understood. Dear brothers in the priesthood, to you the bishop has entrusted, on the day of your priestly Ordination, the task to preside over the Eucharist. Always have at heart the exercise of this mission: celebrate the divine mysteries with intense interior participation, so that the men and women of our City can be sanctified, put into contact with God, absolute truth and eternal love."

Society of St. Oliver Plunkett

Pope Benedict XVI