Calendars in the Church

I have four possible calendars to follow on this blog. The first is the one most of us follow daily, and from where I get my daily readings for meditation for you. That is the Novus Ordo calendar. Home schoolers could buy the liturgical calendar poster I did for my son for years and have it on the home school wall.

The second calendar is that of the 1962 Missal, that of the Extraordinary Form.

The third is the Byzantine Catholic calendar, with the Eastern saints honored, and which has different holydays of obligation.

The fourth is the Benedictine calendar, which I follow daily in my breviary, which is the order of the Monastic Diurnal.

Those who read my blog know I use a mix of these, so do not get confused, go with the flow, and enjoy the riches of the liturgical heritage of our beautiful Church.

Feast Day of St. Edmund Campion Repost Two

Time for another repeat post.....

Happy Name Day to all Edmunds.....

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Campion's Brag

Posted by Supertradmum

Today is the Feast Day of St. Edmund Campion. The students at Stoneyhurst would have had a day off today. I wonder if they still do. Some of the saint's relics are there.  Here is his famous "Brag" to celebrate the day.

 Campion's Brag

To the Right Honourable, the Lords of Her Majesty's Privy Council:

Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it your reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly, truly and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

i. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of the Catholic Church, and through the great mercy of God vowed now these eight years into the religion [religious order] of the Society of Jesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity.

ii. At the voice of our General, which is to me a warrant from heaven and oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague to Rome (where our General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendom or Heatheness, had I been thereto assigned.

iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors—in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are abused.

iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, three sorts of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first, before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weal and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable—Scriptures, councils, Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons: the third, before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

vi. I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

vii. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Lady with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the second part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equity.

viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.

ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour. I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

He was 41 when he was hung, drawn and quartered for the Faith and the Church. St. Edmund, pray for us.

See also the first reading for the Mass of St, Edmund Campion below.

Isaiah 53:3-7

Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition 

3 Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted.

5 But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth

The Sanctify the Day, (start to say some of the Hours)

A  few selections from the

APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION Laudis Canticum http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19701101_laudis-canticum_sp.html  The song of praise of the Church The song of praise that echoes forever in the halls of heaven and that Jesus Christ, the High Priest, introduced in this exile has been consistently continued faithful and the Church, with a wonderful variety of ways. The Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic complement The Liturgy of the Hours gradually evolved to become the local church prayer, so that, in times and places established and chaired by the priest became a necessary complement to the perfect act of divine worship is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which extends well and spreads to every moment of the life of men.... The Divine Office is prayer of clergy, religious and laity Whenever the Office is prayer of the whole people of God, has been ready and prepared so that they can participate in it not only the clergy but also religious and laity themselves. Introducing various forms of celebration, we have tried to respond to the specific needs of people of different order and condition: prayer can adapt to the various communities that celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours, according to their status and vocation.

The Liturgy of the Hours is sanctification of the day, so the order of the sentence has been renovated so that the canonical hours can adapt more easily to the different times of day, given the conditions in which it develops human life in our time.

The laity can make the day holy by saying one or two of the Hours. 

Ave Regina Caelorum

Ave, Regína cælórum,

ave, Dómina angelórum,

salve, radix, salve, porta,

ex qua mundo lux est orta.

Gaude, Virgo gloriósa,

super omnes speciósa;

vale, o valde decóra,

et pro nobis Christum exóra.

Let us make our homes, "the pledge of a world redeemed"

From today's Morning Prayer-Lauds

Let our striving for your kingdom not fall short through selfishness or fear:

  may the universe be alive with the Spirit, and our homes be the pledge of a world redeemed.

– Father, send us your Spirit.

This prayer seems to me to be particularly timely after all the political events which have caused us all so much distress since the beginning of the year.

Let us not fall into either self-pity, self-centeredness or craven fear. Let us trust Divine Providence, at all times, daily.

Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to come to all on the earth.

Let us make our homes, "the pledge of a world redeemed".

A pledge is a promise, an oath, a commitment. A promise of redemption looks towards eternal life.

An oath of redemption is the fulfilment of our baptismal promises. A commitment is our covenant with God, made in baptism, set in confirmation and watered like a precious plant with the grace of the sacraments.

This phrase means to me that we create a space of redemption, a place of solitude and peace, a place where saints can be made and grow, in our very houses.

Forget the mad rush of commercialism and consumerism. Forget the need to be doing something all the time.

Make your homes into signs of redemption.  I repeat; a pledge is a promise, an oath, a commitment.

Make you homes a covenant of grace with the Holy Trinity. Make your homes the Kingdom of God at hand.

Let our striving for your kingdom not fall short through selfishness or fear:

  may the universe be alive with the Spirit, and our homes be the pledge of a world redeemed.

– Father, send us your Spirit.

From Lauds today-guides to the Illuminative State

 Today, the words from Lauds particularly speak to the road to perfection. Do not be so active that you miss opportunities to pray and go before the Blessed Sacrament.

It is only in the Illuminative State that we can do the works of God. All out works before that belong to our humanity and not eternal merit or good. I know that sounds harsh but until we are purified all our works are not beginning in the life of the Holy Spirit. One can sense the difference.

Look at the selections I chose from Lauds today. The first selection reminds me of the famous story of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen. He gave a retreat to bishops and opened his talk with this phrase: "I have more power than you!" Then, he proceeded to tell the bishops that Americans listened to him for one reason: he prayed one hour daily before the Blessed Sacrament. This is the meaning of the psalm pericope:

If my people had heard me,

  if only they had walked in my ways –

I would swiftly have crushed their enemies,

  stretched my hand over those who persecuted them.

If one truly allows God to purify the heart, mind, imagination and will, then one's enemies are swiftly conquered. No purification=no power.

In the second reading, Paul, who experienced the Illuminative State, reveals that righteousness, "Mutual improvement" means surrounding yourself with God's friends. 

Short reading	Romans 14:17-19 ©

The kingdom of God does not mean eating or drinking this or that, it means righteousness and peace and joy brought by the Holy Spirit. If you serve Christ in this way you will please God and be respected by men. So let us adopt any custom that leads to peace and our mutual improvement.

In the intercessory prayers, we have the sign of the Illuminative State. If one is constantly in the Presence of God, keeping God before us daily and allowing God to destroy our idols, all we do will be for his glory. If we put on the mind of Christ, giving up and letting Him do it all, we shall know and do His Will. 

We thank you, Father, for sending us your Son:

  let us keep him before our eyes throughout this day.

– Lord, hear us.

Direct our thoughts, our words, our actions today,

  so that we may know, and do, your will.

– Lord, hear us.

Thanks to Universalis

Almost a Tower of Babel-the myriad versions of the Hours

I have been doing a mini-study on all the different versions of the Liturgy of the Hours. This began when I was at Tyburn in Eire and realized all the different translations of the psalms and the readings were causing me a bit of confusion. Also, most of my friends say the NO version, either in the English, as in UK version or, the American one. I do at least two hours of the Monastic Diurnal from Farnborough, just to complicate matters. And, being in the Byzantine Church, with permission, for a while, complicated and made life very, very interesting. I love the Ukrainian and Ruthenian chant.

The upshot is, when I am visiting friends who say the Hours, we are not on the same page. Some of my  friends say the older, Tridentine form in Latin, such as the Solesmes version. All of this diversity is compounded by the Benedictines and Cistercians having permission to write their own versions, and use the Grail Translations. And, alas, there are the myriad non-approved, inclusive language Hours which many Carmelite and Benedictine nuns use in the States. It is a bit disconcerting to have so many individual versions, such as visiting three Benedictine monasteries of nuns in England with three different translations and modes of chant.

It makes me sad that we literally are not on the same page. To make matters even more interesting, in my travels, I have met this year the Irish calendar of saints, the Benedictine calendar, the Carmelite calendar, the NO and of course, the Tridentine calendars. I need a guide which would include all of these to keep memorials and feasts straight.

I have not been to a Dominican church for ages, since last year in Malta, where the Liturgy was in Maltese and the NO, but as to the Hours used, I do not know.

Of course, Baronius Press has the new, old Roman Breviary, which I know at least one person uses-it is pricey--http://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=59#tab=tab-1

Here is an excellent site showing the variations. Does this bother anyone else but me? Why cannot we all just learn the Latin version with an addendum for different countries? Sigh, at least I would like to see the Benedictines coming around to one version. Clear Creek uses the one I use, I think, unless they have switched to the Baronius set. Maybe someone can comment on that to bring me up to speed.

http://christdesert.org/Seeking_God/Opus_Dei_Resource_Page/index.html

And his Hermeneuticalist had a discussion on this a long time ago.
.http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.ie/2009/08/old-mass-and-old-breviary.html

Campion's Brag

Today is the Feast Day of St. Edmund Campion. The students at Stoneyhurst would have had a day off today. Some of the saint's relics are there. 

 Campion's Brag

To the Right Honourable, the Lords of Her Majesty's Privy Council:

Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it your reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly, truly and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

i. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of the Catholic Church, and through the great mercy of God vowed now these eight years into the religion [religious order] of the Society of Jesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity.

ii. At the voice of our General, which is to me a warrant from heaven and oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague to Rome (where our General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendom or Heatheness, had I been thereto assigned.

iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors—in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are abused.

iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, three sorts of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first, before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weal and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable—Scriptures, councils, Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons: the third, before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

vi. I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

vii. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Lady with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the second part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equity.

viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.

ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour. I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

He was 41 when he was hung, drawn and quartered for the Faith and the Church. St. Edmund, pray for us.

See also the first reading for the Mass of St, Edmund Campion below.

Isaiah 53:3-7

Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition 

³ Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.

⁴ Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted.

⁵ But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.

⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth