‘We are here pleading with God not on the ground of anything that we have done, or any merit or deserving of our own, but on the ground of our hearty desires, the desires which come straight from the heart. The earnest desire of a loving heart is what God regards, but we are unable through our weakness to bring these desires to their fruition.

Not only are our hearty desires to be the ground of our appeal, but they must be the desires of thy humble servants. He who is humble possesses the passport to the Heart of God. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” God refuses nothing to the meek and lowly in heart. If at any time it seems that God’s response to our cry is slow, let us ask ourselves searchingly, “Am I walking humbly before my God?” It is promised: “He shall exalt the humble and meek.”

If we recognise the call of God in the promptings of conscience, and faithfully seek to follow that call, but fail through no fault of our own, God credits us with our good intention. In no case can we achieve anything save through His help. Let us pray with St Augustine: “Give what thou commandest and command what Thou wilt.” 

This thought is a great comfort, and so wonderful is it that it scarcely seems credible, yet it must be true. Our Lord commands, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” He is never unreasonable, and this would be so if it were not that all He requires is that I do what I can, and leave the rest with Him.

So trusting in this, we ask Him: stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty to be our defence. He will protect and nourish us with a Father's loving care; He will accept our blundering efforts. The blessing of our hearty desires will be upon what we do, and, poor as may be our effort, God will direct it and it will stand for us in the great day of reckoning’.
 
Shirley Carter Hughson OHC, 1867-1949

‘In the life of Christ the baptism in the Jordan is an event of highest importance because it represents a significant phase in the work of redemption. In the course of the ecclesiastical year not only this episode but all the phases of Christ’s redemptive work are commemorated in the liturgy. In recent weeks we have celebrated quite a number of important events pertaining to our redemption, viz., the annunciation (Missa aurea of Advent), the nativity, the circumcision, Christ’s coming-of-age. The baptism at the Jordan marks the beginning of our Lord’s public life. Indeed, it seems as if His baptism effected His anointing as the Messiah by the Holy Spirit. Whatever its ultimate significance, the Greek Fathers in particular regarded the event as tremendously importance.
 
In the symbolism of His baptism, Christ displayed beforehand His redemptive death and resurrection. Himself immaculate, He assumes the sins of the world, descends into the purifying waters, and raises mankind to divine sonship. Note that Christ’s baptism was vicarious in nature. There He stands in the Jordan in our stead. Consequently, the act must find its true expression in our subjective or personal redemption. Three such occasions would be baptism, holy Mass, and death.

At my baptism I was immersed with Christ, and with Him I died and was buried. Then I emerged, and for the first time heaven opened to me as the Holy Spirit made His entrance into my soul; and my Father in heaven glanced down upon me, now “His son, His child.”
 
In each holy Mass Christ’s baptism is again operative. Through the holy Sacrifice I am immersed in His sacrificial death; heaven then opens and the Holy Spirit descends in holy Communion, while through the pledge of the sacrificial Banquet the Father assures me of renewed and enriched sonship in Himself.
 
The baptism of Christ takes place within me a third time at death, for death is indeed a sort of baptism. Death is like immersion into the dark depths, and when I emerge, it is into heaven above. Then I will see the Blessed Trinity, no longer through the darkened sun-glass of faith, but in immediate vision, face to face.
 
To sum up, today’s liturgy helps me to understand more clearly the basic structure of spiritual life. Christ’s death is the foundation. Upon this foundation the edifice rises through baptism and the Eucharist; while the Lord’s return at death spells completion to the work’.

​​​from The Church’s Year of Grace, 1959, by Pius Parsch 1884-1954

​‘The Lord made himself known to Moses by telling him his name. For a Semite, to tell another your name is to give him power over you. It is clear, of course, that the God of Israel cannot hand himself over to the power of men like a pagan god whose devotees invoke him with the idea that they can coerce him by magical practices and will therefore be heard. But the name “Yahweh” will always remind Israel of the great deeds God has done for her deliverance.
 
This antiphon puts us in the context of the paschal mystery, since the coming of the Son is directly related to his redemptive mission.
 
The last part of the antiphon contains a profound thought to which we rarely attend. The words “come… [and deliver us]” express, of course, the purpose of the incarnation and are a short statement of the theology of the incarnation that was current at the end of the sixth century. The rest of the words, however, namely [“an outstretched arm”], say something more, at least if we translate the Latin words literally: “come to redeem us with outstretched arm.” The phrase “with outstretched arm” is scriptural and occurs, for example in Exodus 6.6. The Hebrew root… means “to sow, to pour out or spread, to make fruitful.”
 
… He who is to come is the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” (Is. 11.1); he is the Messiah; he is also the one who comes in order to restore life to his people; he is power, support, and help. We must, of course, avoid pushing these juxtapositions too far, but it is at least worth noting that several times in his work Against the Heresies St Irenaeus uses the expression: “He stretched out his hand when he suffered [his Passion]”. This phrasing is rarely found elsewhere, but it does occur in the Eucharistic Prayer in St Hippolytus’s Traditio Apostolica (beginning of the third century): “He stretched out his hands when he suffered in order to deliver from suffering those who believed in him.”
 
Here, then, we call on Christ, and we expect him to continue his work of redemption in our world until the end of time’.
 
from The Liturgical Year, 1977, by Adrien Nocent OSB, 1913-1996

​‘As if to underline our longing for the coming of the Saviour, and the fact that the Feast of the Nativity is now not far away, the Church has for many centuries prescribed a series of antiphons to be recited before and after the Magnificat at the evening office. These ‘Great O’ antiphons are cries from the heart expressing an earnest yearning for Christ. In temperament they contrast with the text of the Magnificat itself but complement it. The hymn, recorded only in the Gospel of Luke, was sung by Mary at her Visitation with Elizabeth, when the birth of Jesus was still nine months away and, perhaps, the yearning ‘O’ not far from her lips.
 
Mary gave herself in love to God’s service with this response to Gabriel’s Annunciation: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to thy word.” After only a few days Mary is with Elizabeth and in joy cries out: “He who is mighty has done great things for me.” It is a hymn about God’s doing what we least expect; about how he can turn our values and certainties upside down. It is a song sung in humility, and reflects the Song of Hannah, the mother of Samuel.
 
The ‘O’ of each antiphon sums up the longing of Israel for the Messiah and for redemption, and consequently our longing that we may ourselves reveal something of the life and love of Christ’.
 
Geoffrey Rowell, 1943-2017
(Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, 2001-2013)

‘It would seem that Advent has two different and contradictory moods: penance and joyful expectation. As he goes to the altar during Advent the priest is clothed in purple vestments, and he does not say the Gloria. And yet in other respects Advent is a season of joy. The antiphons are invariably joyful and end with Alleluia. The Sunday Masses become more and more joyful in character. Last Sunday’s Mass was full of joyful texts and chants, and today, the third Sunday, is as joyful a Sunday as you will find anywhere in the Church’s. year. It is true, I think, to say that the joyful stratum is the earlier one and derives from the spirit of joy of the early Christians, whereas the penitential stratum is later and is explained by man’s consciousness of sin. Early Christianity stressed the holiness of grace and the accent is on joy. The Middle Ages was, however, obsessed by the holiness of the law, inculcating the fear of sin and the need for penance. And here we are at our theme for this year: Grace is attuned to the key of joy. But we can find yet another connection between this Sunday and grace, for if we ask what is the cause of this joy in today’s Mass, the answer is in the [Introit]: “Joy to you in the Lord at all times; once again I wish you joy… the Lord is near.” Yes, that is the reason: the Lord is near; and it is expressed even more emphatically in the Gospel [in the Extraordinary Form]: “There is one standing in your midst.” Christ is near; He is standing in our midst, and that is the reason for this Sunday’s joy. That is the reason why today the Church adorns herself with rose-coloured vestments. Christ is near; He is standing in our midst, and we cannot be rejoice.’

from Seasons of Grace, 1963, by Pius Parsch, 1884–1954

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), Divine Worship: The Missal.

‘For centuries this Ember Saturday was the only day in the Church’s year for the conferring of holy orders. Nowadays the sixth sacrament is administered also on other days, feast days and Sundays. But Mother Church has always favoured her Ember days as most appropriate for elevating her levites to the Priesthood of Christ, her Bridegroom.
 
May this Ember day awaken in us a deeper appreciation of the holiness and power of the Catholic priesthood. The sacrament of holy orders places the priest on a high mountain to bring good tidings to Sion, commissions him to lift up his voice with strength, to bring good tidings to Jerusalem. The priest assures his flock: “Behold your God! Behold the Lord God shall come with strength, and His arm shall rule! Behold His reward is with Him, and His work is before Him. He shall feed the flock like a shepherd, He shall gather go together the lambs with His arm, and take them up in His bosom, the Lord our God” (cf. 3rd lesson).

Between priests and people must exist an “admirable commercium”, a “wondrous exchange” of giving and taking. The priest as “minister of Christ and dispenser of the mysteries of God” must spend himself for his people, and so attain to eternal life together with the flock committed to his care. The flock must support him by prayer, co-operation and good will so that – as the ordination prayer says – “he may always discharge the duties of his ministry towards God in complete readiness.” Shepherd and flock must support one another and thus fulfil the law of Christ.
 
It is meet and just at all times, but especially in these days of preparation for Christmas, to pray fervently of our priests that the Holy Spirit may fill them with His seven-fold gifts, gifts so necessary for “bringing the tidings of great joy to all the people.” The Church is in need – today more than ever – of holy priests, of men full of zeal for God’s Kingdom, of shepherds with love for the flock, of fathers who will break the bread of life to their children, of “anointed Cyruses” (4th lesson) who will lead men from the Babylonian captivity of sin and misery to the promised land of liberty and peace.
 
May blessed Peter the Apostle to whom the eternal High Priest entrusted His lambs and sheep, and with whom we keep this venerable Ember day, bless priests and people. May he obtain from our Lord Jesus Christ what we ask: Holiness of life, mutual respect and charity, loyalty to the Church and the Apostolic See to both shepherds and flock.
 
“Come, Lord, and show us – priests and people – Thy face!”’.

from a meditation on the Ember Saturday in Advent in Vine and Branches, 1948, by Mgr Martin Hellriegel

‘Magnificat anima mea Dominum! Mary’s great “Fiat”. Gabriel has carried her answer to God’s throne. The Holy Spirit has overshadowed her. Mary is now Virgin and Mother, the blessed tree in the midst of the new Paradise bearing the fruit of life. “He that shall find me, shall find life and shall have salvation from the Lord.”
 
“With haste” the Virgin Mother leaves Nazareth and goes up to Judea to render service to an expectant mother. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord” (Introit). “With haste” she pursues her journey, “because the grace of the Holy Spirit knows no slow working” (St Ambrose), all the while “rejoicing in God her Saviour” whom she is carrying with inexpressible love in her chaste womb.
 
The Mother of God with the Son of God on her way to a hill country, to the home of Zachary and Elizabeth, radiating peace and joy! Mary salutes Elizabeth, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and her predestined child is sanctified, leaping for joy in his mother’s womb.
 
And now the divine Spirit descends on Mary, replenishment with such an abundance of heavenly sweetness, that from a heart overflowing with gratitude she chants that sublime canticle which henceforth shall resound throughout the age: “Magnificat, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoiced in God my Saviour... He that is mighty has done great things unto me, and holy is His name.”
 
Today Mother Church renders present this particular event of the work of redemption. Today our Holy Lord will continue in us the saving work wrought from within the sanctuary of His Mother’s bosom for Elizabeth and her herald-son, John, a truth so strikingly expressed in the postcommunion: “May the holy reception of this sacrament renew our inner life, cleanse us from our former ways and make us partakers of the mystery of salvation.”
 
In conclusion let us take to heart the words of St Ambrose addressed to a group of virgins, and read in today's divine office: ‘"You have learnt, O virgins, the modesty of Mary. Learn also her humility. She went as a relative to her relative, the younger to the elder; and not only did she go there, but she first greeted Elizabeth. For the most chaste a virgin is, the more humble should she be. She will know how to submit to her elders. She who professes chastity should be mistress of humility. For humility is the root of piety, and the very rule of its teaching. It is to be noted that the superior comes to the inferior so that the inferior may be assisted, Mary comes to Elizabeth, Christ to John.”
 
“He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the humble!”
 
Let us pray: “Stir up Thy might, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that they who trust in Thy goodness may be more speedily delivered from all adversity” (collect)

from a meditation on the Ember Friday in Advent in Vine and Branches, 1948, by Mgr Martin Hellriegel

‘The historical event by which God’s own Son became Man, called the annunciation, is commemorated twice each year in the Roman liturgy – today on Ember Wednesday and on March 25. The latter is a Marian feast, while today’s liturgy centres on our Blessed Saviour, even though the stational church is St Mary Major and much of the Mass text is devoted to the Blessed Virgin. In both cases the liturgy stresses history. March 25 commemorates the day of our Lord’s conception, nine months before Christmas; on Ember Wednesday, just before Christmas, the liturgy emphasises the Old Testament background leading to His birth. There is solemn grandeur in the mystery of today’s liturgy, a grandeur which merits it a position along with the chiefest events of Jesus’ life, His birth, and His death.
 
Today the second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity was united to a human nature, truly the beginning of mankind’s salvation. It would seem that the occasion of Christ’s assuming flesh should be as great a feast as Christmas. Such actually was the thinking during the Middle Ages. At that time March 25 marked the beginning of the civil year. Today’s Mass, the Missa Aurea or “Golden Mass,” was very highly esteemed. Prompted by the text of the formulary, the holy Abbot St Bernard delivered his famous homilies entitled Super Missus est, which occur in part in the Breviary. The fact that the Rorate Mass, still celebrated often in certain places during Advent, is derived from this Mass, indicates wide popular interest. Among the faithful there existed intense devotion toward the mystery of the annunciation. As a result the Hail Mary was developed and added to the Our Father; and three times daily the Angelus bells pealed, reminding everyone of this sublime event in his salvation. At the phrase, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” in the Angelus and in the Last Gospel, as also at the Et incarnatus est in the Credo, a genuflection was introduced to show reverence for the mystery of the incarnation.
 
All this helps us to realise the wealth of meaning inherent in today’s liturgy. Nor may we overlook the similarity between holy Mass and the incarnation itself. At Mass Christ becomes truly incarnate under the appearances of bread and wine. Therefore we do not merely commemorate the event; it actually is repeated in a sacramental manner. At the consecration we can say in all truth: “The Word is made flesh!”’

from The Church’s Year of Grace, 1959, by Pius Parsch 1884-1954

‘This is a prayer with a double petition, for the Church and for our salvation. The juxtaposition of the two is not accidental but arises out of a logical necessity. We cannot think adequately of salvation without calling to mind the Church, for in any case we cannot be saved alone and the Church is the instrument of salvation.
 
…The Church is often described as the ark of salvation, not meaning that membership of it is a mechanical guarantee of ultimate heaven, but that, as St Cyprian said seventeen centuries ago, outside it there is really no safety. We pray that God will “keep” it, knowing that so long as the vessel remains unharmed there is always the chance that the passengers, one and all, may arrive safe at their journey’s end.
 
There is always, however, the chance of accident to the individual passenger, and so we repeat the word “keep” asking that not only the Church as a whole be kept in God’s perpetual mercy, but also that each several soul may be kept from all things hurtful and led to all things profitable for its salvation.
 
Salvation is thus a double process: negatively it is a rescue from every possibility of harm, and positively it is an introduction to all that is good. By derivation the word implies perfect health. Theologically it includes not only the well-being of the individual but also of his environment, and finally the ultimate bliss of heaven’.

from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

‘The Strange Case of the Elusive Patrimony started when Anglo-Catholicism lost its distinctive identity in the 1960s and 70s. I’m not sure about other countries but in [England] it certainly lost it. From the 1960s onwards, a great multitude of Anglo-Catholics, a great multitude which no man could number, all rushed forward like so many lemmings, in imitation of something they then called ‘modern Rome’. The lemmings rushed forward and then toppled headlong over the cliffs of de-sacralisation and secularisation, most of all in worship. If only Anglo-Catholics had kept their nerve when so many others were going mental. If only Anglo-Catholics had made greater efforts to preserve that exquisite treasury of faith and worship which we know as The English Missal.
 
The finest patrimony of Anglicanism is the treasure-trove of traditional Anglo-Catholic worship. The precious core of that treasure was forged when The English Missal came to birth in 1912. It then evolved, getting better and better with each subsequent edition. Its use of Sarum and Tridentine liturgical texts in Cranmerian English fired and sustained the Anglo-Catholic movement with remarkable success. The English Missal was the bedrock of those edifying decades when, in the words of Sir John Betjeman, the faith was taught, and fanned to a golden blaze. Then came the hasty reforms of the late 1960s and 1970s. The reformers piped and the lemmings jumped. But let us be fair. It wasn’t just Anglican lemmings who jumped. Roman lemmings also jumped. On both sides of the Tiber far too few had the courage or the honesty to question the glaring discontinuity and to ask: how on earth does this new tune harmonise with what we always heard before?
 
God is very good and mercifully brings order out of confusion. One particularly bright shaft of light has now emerged to lighten our darkness. That light is the publication of Divine Worship: The Missal. This Missal is a magnificent piece of work. It preserves a large portion of that traditional Anglo-Catholic patrimony which has so much to offer the modern Church in the modern world’.

from an address, ‘Blessed John Henry Newman: Our Guide for Tomorrow’, 15 October 2018, by Fr Ignatius Harrison, Cong. Orat. The full article can be read here.

‘The joyous veneration given to the Mother of God by the contemporary Church, in light of reflection on the mystery of Christ and on his nature, cannot ignore the figure of a woman, the Virgin Mary, who is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.
 
In some ways this was already present in the mind of the Church from the premonitory words of Saint Augustine and Saint Leo the Great.  In fact the former says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.  These considerations derive from the divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer, which culminated at the hour of the cross.
 
Indeed, the Mother standing beneath the cross, accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit.  Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection.
 
As a caring guide to the emerging Church Mary had already begun her mission in the Upper Room, praying with the Apostles while awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit.  In this sense, in the course of the centuries, Christian piety has honoured Mary with various titles, in many ways equivalent, such as Mother of Disciples, of the Faithful, of Believers, of all those who are reborn in Christ; and also as “Mother of the Church” as is used in the texts of spiritual authors as well as in the Magisterium of Popes Benedict XIV and Leo XIII.
 
Thus the foundation is clearly established by which Blessed Paul VI, on 21 November 1964, at the conclusion of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as “Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother” and established that “the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles”.
 
Having attentively considered how greatly the promotion of this devotion might encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety, Pope Francis has decreed that the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, should be inscribed in the Roman Calendar... and be now celebrated every year.
 
This celebration will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God’.

from the decree by Robert, Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 11 February 2018

On this Rogation Sunday, words from the George Herbert on the usefulness of the Rogation Procession.
 
‘The Countrey Parson is a Lover of old Customes, if they be good, and harmlesse; and the rather, because Countrey people are much addicted to them, so that to favour them therein is to win their hearts, and to oppose them therin is to deject them. If there be any ill in the custome, that may be severed from the good, he pares the apple, and gives them the clean to feed on. Particularly, he loves Procession, and maintains it, because there are contained therein 4 manifest advantages. First, a blessing of God for the fruits of the field: Secondly, justice in the Preservation of bounds: Thirdly, Charity in loving walking, and neighbourly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if there be any: Fourthly, Mercy in releeving the poor by a liberall distribution and largesse, which at that time is, or ought to be used. Wherefore he exacts of all to bee present at the perambulation, and those that withdraw, and sever themselves from it, he mislikes, and reproves as uncharitable, and unneighbourly; and if they will not reforme, presents them. Nay, he is so farre from condemning such assemblies, that he rather procures them to be often, as knowing that absence breedes strangeness, but presence love’.

​from Chapter XXXV, The Parson Condescending
in A Priest to the Temple by George Herbert, ​1593-1633

‘Easter is rightly called the Queen of Feasts. Like a queen she reigns over every other event in world history. Like a queen she reigns supreme over every other feast in the Christian year. Yet, to understand her greatness, we must see how all that went before is fulfilled in her, and how she is a new beginning for all future time. Easter is the completion of a great mystery: she is the beginning of a mystery as great.
 
It would be easier for us to remember the true meaning of the feast if its name were derived directly from the Hebrew Pasch, as is the English Passover and the French Pâques. For Easter is the Christian Pasch, or Passover.
 
… The Passover feast of the Jews commemorated the events which accompanied the “passing over” of their forefathers from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of Palestine. The “passing over” had started with a meal for which a lamb without blemish had been slain without a bone of its body being broken; its blood had been sprinkled on the door-posts of their houses so that the angel of death might pass over them; and the lamb had been eaten. Then had followed many signs of God's special care for them: the safe crossing of the waters of the Red Sea which had drowned Pharaoh and the Egyptians; the light guiding them by night; the manna feeding them in the desert; until they eventually reached the land of promise.
 
So God brought forth his Chosen People from slavery to freedom. But the events which accompanied the Exodus from Egypt not only sealed the Israelites as the Chosen People of God; they were also a kind of rehearsal for the way in which God would eventually redeem mankind as a whole, and each individual as an individual. It was as if God allowed the shadow to appear centuries before, so that when the reality came it might be recognised. Christ was the reality of which these events were the shadow. He was the true Lamb, slain without a bone of his body being broken. His blood was shed and sprinkled so that the angel of death might pass over his people dying in sin. As the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea from death to life, so Christ passed through the sepulchre from death to life. As the enemies of the Israelites had been drowned in the waters of the Red Sea, so by his death Christ destroyed the enemies of mankind, sin and death. Christ is the true light, lighting man through the darkness of this world. He is the true manna, giving his body and blood to be the food of man in the wilderness of this life.

So we have a second Passover: the passing over of Jesus Christ from death to life, fulfilling the pattern of the ancient passing over of the Jews from Egypt to Palestine. So was the first Easter Day the completion of a great mystery.
 
But it was the beginning of a mystery as great. For Christ passed over from death to life so that each human soul might pass over from death in sin to eternal life. The events of the Exodus were not only a rehearsal for Christ's passing over; they were also a rehearsal for each individual soul's passing over. Born in captivity to sin, man passes through the waters, not of the Red Sea, but of Baptism, his soul cleansed by the blood of the Lamb of God. Christ is the light and the food of his soul, leading him through the wilderness of this life to the promised land of heaven’.

from Holy Week and Easter: The Services Explained, 1956, by E J Rowland

‘This paschal mystery is truly the universal mystery: meeting the needs of all men, belonging to all, uniting all. This is the truth that comes to light in a comparison of the Christian mystery with the pagan ones in which men had sought a gratification of their desires which only the Christian mystery could provide.
 
… They are as a rough draft, very pale and inadequate, of what God is preparing to give man in answer to his deepest desires and infinitely in excess of his most sanguine hopes. In these mysteries, so often inconsequential, men sought, without realising it, another mystery; just as, in their false gods, they unconsciously adored the true God. One day shadows and symbols disappeared because the reality had come. Then could Christianity satisfy all the aspirations of the human soul and even teach it to desire treasures beyond the power of its own thought or imagination to conceive. Man, already in God’s hands without realising it, suddenly perceived that his own dim imaginings were, by divine intervention, transfigured and endowed with life’.
 
from The Paschal Mystery: Meditations on the Last Three Days of Holy Week
by Fr Louis Bouyer, Cong. Orat., 1913-2004

​‘The sun is setting, and our earth will soon be mantled in darkness. The Church has provided a torch, which is to spread its light upon us... It is of an unusual size. It stands alone, and is of a pillar-like form. It is the symbol of Christ. Before being lighted, its scriptural type is the pillar of a cloud, which hid the Israelites when they went out from Egypt; under this form, it is the figure of our Lord, when lying lifeless in the tomb. When lighted, we must see in it both the pillar of fire, which guided the people of God, and the glory of our Jesus risen from his grave. Our holy Mother the Church, would have us enthusiastically love this glorious symbol, and speaks its praises to us in all the magnificence of her inspired eloquence. As early as the beginning of the 5th century, Pope St Zozimus extended to all the Churches of the City of Rome the privilege of blessing the Paschal Candle, although Baptism was administered no where but in the Baptistery of St John Lateran. The object of this grant was, that all the Faithful might share in the holy impressions which so solemn a rite is intended to produce. It was for the same intention that, later, every Church, even though it had no Baptismal Font, was permitted to have the Blessing of the Paschal Candle’.

from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger OSB, 1805-1875

‘After the Sacraments and liturgical worship I am convinced there is no practise more fruitful for our souls than the Way of the Cross made with devotion. Its supernatural efficacy is sovereign. The Passion is the “holy of holies” among the mysteries of Jesus, the preeminent work of our Supreme High Priest; it is there above all that his virtues shine forth, and when we contemplate him in his sufferings he gives us according to the measure of our faith, the grace to practise the virtues that he manifested during these holy hours… At each station Our Divine Saviour presents himself to us in this triple character: as the Mediator who saves us by his merits, the perfect Model of sublime virtues, and the efficacious Cause who can, through his Divine Omnipotence, produce in our souls the virtues of which he gives us the example’.
 
Blessed Columba Marmion OSB, 1858-1923

A busy week or so since Sexagesima, hence the lack of posts. My wife gave birth to our sixth child, a son, earlier this month, and yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Chair of Saint Peter, our Feast of Title in this Ordinariate (which displaced the pre-Lenten Quinquagesima Sunday), I had the great honour of baptising him within our Sunday Mass. The music was glorious, but it was a special delight to hear Palestrina's Sicut cervus sung as we processed back to the high altar to resume the Mass. A joyfully patrimonial feast followed in the hall.

‘Advent... draws us into a deeper and richer understanding of the fact that the Church is present everywhere, in every single action that she performs... Nowhere is this more forcefully expressed than in the famous Devotion XVII which John Donne, a seventeenth-century Dean of St Paul’s, wrote in a set of meditations during a period of serious illness in 1623, and which were published the year after. Illness - especially when it is potentially life-threatening - has a habit of underscoring what is important and identifying what is secondary. Life is never the same afterwards.

“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The Church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptises a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another”.

To watch and wait for the “Root of Jesse” is another exercise in patience - not least a patience that enlarges our sympathies and our awareness of just how deeply we are united together by our actions and our prayers, our circumstances and our struggles’.

from Watching and Waiting: A Guide to the Celebration of Advent, 2007
by Kenneth Stevenson (1949-2011), Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth, 1995-2009

‘“O Wisdom”, prays the Church late every Advent. In words inspired by the opening words of the great Hymn to Wisdom well into the Book of Ecclesiasticus, which forms the centrepiece of that late Jewish work, we find ourselves looking at the origin and nature of Wisdom... [W]e invoke Wisdom in terms of her ubiquity – she is everywhere, as the Wisdom of Solomon teaches… Whereas Ecclesiasticus on its on its own terms sees wisdom as a gift from God, the Book of Wisdom goes one stage further in viewing her as a kind of person separate from but derived from God. No wonder Wisdom came to be applied by early Christian writers to the third person of the Holy Spirit… But here she is applied to God himself: not specifically at the Christmas festival, but in the mystery of Advent. The Book of Wisdom teaches that a wise king prays for this divine attribute, not because she is everywhere, but because she comes from God and is of God; her origins explain her ubiquity, not the other way round’.
 
from Watching and Waiting: A Guide to the Celebration of Advent, 2007
by Kenneth Stevenson (1949-2011), Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth, 1995-2009

‘[St Damasus] occupied the Chair of Peter from 366 to 384. The Church had recently acquired liberty and now it was the task of the popes to develop her potentialities, especially in matters pertaining to divine worship. Damsus proved himself equal to the task. It is to his credit to have given the Church a good translation of the Sacred Scriptures. He called upon St Jerome to render the Bible into Latin, the version later called the Vulgate. This translation is still used in the liturgy. On his feast day Damsus tells us: Read the Bible zealously.
 
He was also much interested in the liturgy. He is said to have introduced the chant of the psalms into all the Roman churches; the singing was to be by alternating choirs with the “Glory be to the Father…” added at the end of each psalm. In imitation of a custom at Jerusalem he introduced the Alleluia into Sunday Masses. Pope Damsus also provided honourable burial for the bodies of many martyrs and composed inscriptions in verse for almost all of the then-known martyrs, thereby becoming their highly distinguished panegyrist. St Jerome said of him: “He was the virgin teacher of a virgin Church”. A splendid encomium for any priest’.

​from The Church’s Year of Grace, 1953, by Pius Parsch, 1884-1954

‘I believe that it is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction — Eastwards or at least towards the apse — to the Lord who comes, in those parts of the liturgical rites when we are addressing God. This practice is permitted by current liturgical legislation. It is perfectly legitimate in the modern rite. Indeed, I think it is a very important step in ensuring that in our celebrations the Lord is truly at the centre.
 
And so, dear Fathers, I ask you to implement this practice wherever possible, with prudence and with the necessary catechesis, certainly, but also with a pastor’s confidence that this is something good for the Church, something good for our people. Your own pastoral judgement will determine how and when this is possible, but perhaps beginning this on the first Sunday of Advent this year, when we attend ‘the Lord who will come’ and ‘who will not delay’ (see: Introit, Mass of Wednesday of the first week of Advent) may be a very good time to do this. Dear Fathers, we should listen again to the lament of God proclaimed by the prophet Jeremiah: “they have turned their back to me” (2.27). Let us turn again towards the Lord!
 
I would like to appeal also to my brother bishops: please lead your priests and people towards the Lord in this way, particularly at large celebrations in your dioceses and in your cathedral. Please form your seminarians in the reality that we are not called to the priesthood to be at the centre of liturgical worship ourselves, but to lead Christ’s faithful to him as fellow worshippers. Please facilitate this simple but profound reform in your dioceses, your cathedrals, your parishes and your seminaries’.

Robert, Cardinal Sarah
​Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

‘Divine Worship is more than a collection of liturgical texts and ritual gestures. It is the organic expression of the Church’s own lex orandi as it was taken up and developed in an Anglican context over the course of nearly five-hundred years of ecclesial separation, and is now reintegrated into Catholic worship as the authoritative expression of a noble patrimony to be shared with the whole Church. As such, it is to be understood as a distinct form of the Roman Rite.
 
…Understanding what patrimony is and how it “works” is a necessary first step before we are able to articulate something more about the liturgical expression of that patrimony. From the outset, the Constitution itself articulates the necessity of the approval by the Holy See for any liturgical provision. This fact itself indicates that the Church is the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not to be considered patrimony. Let’s call this the first key to unlocking the concept of patrimony. It is not what you or I, or this scholar or that community says it is, but involves discernment by the Church, which is then confirmed by the exercise of ecclesiastical authority.
 
In this age in which liturgical matters are more likely to be debated on blogs rather than in scholarly journals, the judgement of legitimate ecclesiastical authority becomes increasingly important. Indeed, the very affirmation that there is such a thing as an Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony, which enriches the whole Church as “a treasure to be shared” enters the Catholic lexicon in 1970. On October 25 of that year, Pope Paul VI canonised forty English and Welsh martyrs. In his homily, the Holy Father praised “the legitimate prestige and worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican” Communion, words that were viewed both as a crucial validation of the special relationship between Catholics and Anglicans and as a confirmation of the existence of an Anglican patrimony worthy of preservation. By his authority, Pope Paul articulated a principle: for whatever other ecclesial deficits resulting from the lack of full communion between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, the Catholic Church acknowledges the work of the Holy Spirit in this body of separated brothers and sisters so as to be able to say that the manner in which the faith was nourished, proclaimed, and celebrated in the Anglican Communion these past 500 years adds to the vitality of the Church and enriches the body Catholic. In Anglicanorum coetibus, we see Pope Paul’s insight framed in Pope Benedict’s concern “to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church” not only “as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate,” but also importantly “as a treasure to be shared.”’

from the Hildebrand Lecture ‘The Worship of God in the Beauty of Holiness’, 21 June 2017
by Bishop Steven Lopes