Sunday, March 31, 2024
Sunday, April 9, 2023
Happy Easter
What good Masses at the Missions, full of joy. That in mind, wishing you all the best, new life in the risen and triumphant Christ. The strife, liturgically, is o'er, and so to score the uplift:
Turn it up and blast it out. Satan, Hell and Death is utterly refuted. Stand firm in that and do not surrender, ever,
Christus Surrexit Alleluia,
LSP
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Listen Up Heathen
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Here's the late great Canadian, Fr. Crouse:
The mission of the Church is to call us out of darkness; by word and sacrament to set before our eyes the vision of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. That is at the heart of liturgy, and all the Christian arts; the light of pure, transcendent glory must shine through, and that is essential to all our intellectual and moral and ascetical disciplines, too. Without that vision, all else so easily falls into deceit and craftiness; or perhaps, at best, narrowness of spirit, or just pedestrian nonsense. But even pedestrian nonsense, you know, if that's all there is, is a pretty nasty form of hell (my emph, LSP).
May we, along with Matthew - rejoicing in his fellowship, and aided by his prayers - be granted grace, that in this liturgy, and in all the images of earthly life, we may glimpse the face of Jesus Christ; and then, beyond all earthly images, "beheld with open face" that everlasting glory. That is, after all, our calling.I cannot add to that,
LSP
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Easter - 8 Days After
Birds sing and fight ferociously with squirrels, Blue Terminator rests on the kitchen floor, Mex/Latino big bass pounds from the neighbor's compound and it's the second Sunday of Easter. Or the first if you're old skool lectionary.
Lectionary wars aside, here's some Farrer:
THE death and resurrection of Christ draw near to us in this sacrament. The bread is broken - there Christ dies; we receive it as Christ alive - there is his resurrection. It is the typical expression of divine power to make something from nothing. God has made the world where no world was, and God makes life out of death. Such is the God with whom we have to do. We do not come to God for a little help, a little support to our own good intentions. We come to him for resurrection. God will not be asked for a little, he will be asked for all. We reckon ourselves dead, says St. Paul, that we may ask God for a resurrection, not of ourselves, but of Christ in us.
Christ in us, crucified and risen. What can we do but with Thomas, fall down and worship at touching so great a mystery, my Lord and my God! Some call that the most magnificent confession of faith in Gospels.
Pax,
LSP
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Monday, April 5, 2021
Friday, December 18, 2020
Annunciation
Sunday, October 4, 2020
A Sunday Reflection - The Wicked Tenants
So it came to pass, and I usually take the opportunity to wax large on the siege of Jerusalem and beat on the iniquitous, apostate heretics infesting the Western Church. Watch out, you brood of vipers or the vineyard will be taken from you.
All well and good, and doubtless an appropriate sermon at, say, the Church of England's York Synod or the Episcopal Church's General Convention. But pause for a moment and consider the features of the vineyard.
It stands for Israel of course, planted by God, with a hedge, the Law, a winepress, the Altar, and a watchtower, the Temple. All of this is present in the new Israel of the Church, which is called to "render him the fruits in their seasons." What is this fruit and where is it offered?
On the wine press which sits between hedge and tower, Law and Temple, as does the Cross between the Incarnation and the Resurrection. And what is the Cross but Christ's sacrificial altar, on which the perfect fruit of the vineyard, righteousness, the Word made flesh, is offered to the Father.
The fruit then, ultimately, is Christ himself, righteousness incarnate, sacrificed on Calvary, and we enter into union with this offering and "yield it up" sacramentally at the altars of of our churches. There, we abide in Christ and he in us. "Abide in me, and I in you," says Jesus, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." (Jn. 15:4)
This, surely, is the endeavor of the Christian life; as faithful tenants of the vineyard to live ever more closely in Christ, offering up the fruit which is pleasing to the Father, Jesus himself. And as we do, by the grace of God and the working of the Spirit, become channels of his righteousness in the world.
Unless you're a wicked heretic of course, in which case the concluding words of our Lord ring true with awful effect, "And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." (Matt. 21:44)
And so we come full circle. Take note, Justsin Welby and, for that matter, everyone else.
God bless,
LSP
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Christ's Prayer In The Garden
Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity.
The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free.
This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Lepanto, Our Lady of Victories
Thursday, September 21, 2017
The Feast of St. Matthew The Apostle
O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the recipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist; Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.