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| To the tune "Thaxted" by Gustav Holst (same tune as "O God Beyond All Praising")
Words by Clayton Orr
When Christ in splendor girded
Returns to claim his bride,
And shadows flee in terror,
Which mortal failings hide,
No longer meek and lowly,
He hath no cross to bear,
He brings the righteous glory,
To sinners brings despair.
Then hoping by repentance
For that most awful sight
As dawn is overshadowed
Beneath our Savior's light!
O hear the peals of angels,
Alarms to summon day,
Awake a new horizon,
O'er which our Lord holds sway.
Then flee the hounds infernal
As now by works and fast,
But then by songs triumphant
In victories that last.
"Toil on, O brothers righteous,"
The Spirit bids us hence,
Away from carnal pleasures
In holy abstinence.
I hope y'all enjoy.
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| Something for next Sunday,
Luke 18, 9-14 (NRSV)
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
Luke says in the Gospel today that Jesus spoke this parable "to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt." Luke loves to describe for us the audience of each parable and teaching, whether it's a growing crowd of disciples, a pharisee who has invited Jesus for dinner, or a lone Samaritan woman at a local well. Each of these audiences comes from a different background, but I think it is important for us to remember that Luke was not writing for Pharisees or Samaritans. He was writing for Christians. S, when Luke refers us to the audience, to the people who occasioned some particular teaching or parable, we should use it as an opportunity to take a good look in the mirror, because Luke's audience, the people he really wants Jesus' words to reach, is each one of you.
So we ask, why did Luke have to direct this parable to the early Christians, "to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous?" I think it is because every religious movement, whether it is early Christianity or perhaps, say, something like traditionalism, reaches a critical juncture in its existence where its proponents cease to view themselves as a movement, as a body of ideas meant for everyone, and instead take on what they believe is more of a social identity. In other words, they begin to "trust in themselves as being just." The ideas are no longer things to be debated, but things which define us.
In a world where many people, young and old alike, are so hungry for identity, we cannot underestimate the danger of this taking hold today. Young people who like a certain style of clothing become "emo kids" or "goth kids" or "prep kids." A person no longer defines his ideas as being "Conservative" or "Liberal" but himself as being Conservative or Liberal. We live in a world where we no longer say, "abortion is wrong" but "I am pro-life," a world where in despair, we look to a leader who says "lets bridge the gap between pro-life and pro-choice" as though different opinions were different races of people. The same kind of attitude is manifestly behind satements like, "I am traditionalist," or "I am a conservative Catholic." They are labels to shield us from actual self-examination.
Now, out of labels like those we expect certain things. A traditionalist wears funny clothes and homeschools. A liberal reads America magazine and likes Sr. Joan Chittister. And all the while, we play the part that we have set for ourselves. We go to Church and check of our list of things that the Church ought to be for us, to fit our sense of 'identity.'
Priest preached a homily on core Catholic doctrine: check.
Music was performed according to the book: check.
I wore a mantilla or an unfashionable suit: check.
Lots of incense: check.
And if any of these things are are not present, you cry scandal and emergency and run to your nearest SSPX chapel.
I'm not buying it. Scandal is a tricky thing. When whether or not we are scandalized depends on opinions which we hold ourselves and not, I might add, on a legitimate excuse of ignorance or immaturity (neither of which are desirable) scandal merely becomes a code word for scrupulosity and judgmentalism. In fact, there are few more appropriate words to describe a faithful Catholic who frequents unapproved Masses on the pretext of being scandalized by a Novus Ordo Mass, or by an "Indult" priest.
But when we attend a church which suits our scruples and self-righteousness and are aware of it, when we kneel before the birthday-cake high altar, or, if your scruples run a different way, we open our hymnal once more to our favorite strains of Marty Haugen, we come away only with this: that we have sung a Marty Haugen song, that we have smelled incense, that we have worn a mantilla, that we have sung the propers. You may recite to God a thousand times that the checklist has been completed, just as the Pharisee recited his checklist to God, "I fast, I tithe, and so forth," but you come away from that service exactly as you were.
This is because the incense, the chant, the sound doctrinal homily was not put there for you. It was put there for the old, worn-out sinner, whom God's grace just happened to inspire to come to Church. It was put there to convert him, the one who sits in the back, who doesn't quite know how to follow along, but knows the word of God is being spoken, and adores the God present on the altar. This is the one for whom these rites were composed and this is the one who will get the greatest benefit from them.
You know, I think this means the greatest danger of attending Church is that, by becoming accustomed to it, we derive less benefit from doing so. It is very unfortunate for us, even if it means showing off God's amazing, borderless love for every person. Think of so many of the parables of our Lord Jesus: how the woman who has lost a penny leaves the other nine to go looking for it, how Jesus once said, "It is not the health who need a physician but the sick." My message may sound harsh and strange, but it is most certainly Biblical.
Luckily, the Great Physician has left a prescription, or rather, a vaccination, from falling into judgmentalism or scrupulosity. The first is humility. As our Gospel today reminds us, "He who exalts himself shall be abased, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted." Humility is the cosntant reminder to ourselves that we have no right to expect anything from God, and yet that we depend so entirely on him. The more we are, through humility, shown the weakness of our flesh and the magnitude of our sins, forgiven or not, the more we benefit from the gracs which he condescends to give us in our Christian life.
The second is empowered by the first. The more we are moved through contrition to receive God's gifts, the more we desire to see others so moved, the more we love to see conversions of hearth, the more we want to tell others, the more we love to see people entirely unlike ourselves receive the gifts that we have received. Remember them both this way: contrition and commission, as in the Great Commission.
And if you think about it, what was the real difference between the Publican and the Pharisee? It was love. The Pharisee spoke to God as if he and God were mere social acquaintances, one trying to impress the other. Such an acquaintance can be called many things, it can even be called affection or sentimentality, but it cannot be called love. The publican truly loved God. He stood far away out of respect. He bowed his head. He wept aloud for where he had failed, not just because he had failed, but because he had failed God. He loved God.
This love must by nature be extended to all whom God loves, so that these two tools, contrition and commission become the means of expressing and kindling our love for God.
After all, "Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves as being righteous and regarded others with contempt."
And so where we have failed in this, let us pray to our Lord in the words of today's collect, "increase your mercy on us, O God, and, as we run to the things you have promised us, give us a share in your heavenly treasures" Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
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| "Beyond the most sacred day of our Lord's nativity, we have read that no one else's birthday is celebrated, except that of John the Baptist," begins St. Augustine in his homily for today. He continues: "For others the completed merits of their last day are celebrated: but for him (that is, John the Baptist) even his first day, even the very beginnings of the man are set apart for honor." And why is this? To summarize st. Augustine's thought, John the Baptist's coming is what does him the greatest honor, not his leaving. In his coming the new law of grace is announced to the world, while in his leaving the prophets of the Old Law pass away, for, under that testament, says the Holy Scripture, no one came better than St. John the Baptist, and no one came after. There is a bit of a theological lesson here, which is of an immediately practical value to every professing Christian. Law, that is to say, the compulsion of obedience to a rightful ruler, in the theological sense, God, no matter how rightly conceived, no matter how justly and kindly intended, is always superseded by love. This less is tauaght us by the Apostle John in his first epistle, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love." Now, I find, as a rule, that this doctrine is one of the most embarassing for Catholics. We who, as a communion, are perhaps the most litigious of churches, the most systemetized of Christian religions, often find ourselves the object of no small ridicule from other Christians, especially those such as the Evangelicals, who seem, and I can say seem, because I was one of them, to be without all the rules, all the legalistic proceedings and entanglements in which we Catholics seemed to be involved. Anyone who has sat through a Baptist business meeting, however, can tell you how false such an assumption would be. They need rules just the same as we all do. For them, those rules are enshrined in that paradigm of deliberative democracy, Robert's Rules of Order, for us, those rules are enshrined in the Code of Canon Law. Theirs were complied by a military General; ours were compiled from the teachings and decisions of Holy Church Councils, gathered from all over Christendom to hear and proclaim the Word of God, Councils at which saints, in various times, both presided and deliberated. I will leave to your judgment which source is the more likely to have been inspired by God, and which should be justly called "the traditions of men." The saints, however, had no need of these laws. Far be it, indeed, from our imagination to suggest that the chaste and unmarried bishops had any need to make laws about the proper conduct of an annulment. Nor do any of you who take the marital life as seriously as the teachings of Our Lord demand. Annulments are not the substance of our Lord's teaching about marriage, but the consequence of human sinfulness. It is such that even under the law of love handed on to us by our Saviour the Church is watchful for the rights and duties of all, and for the maintenance of good order, which is the means by which both are kept, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "God is not a God of confusion but of peace." There is a problem, however, with acting or believing only in fear of the law: it cannot save us. It cannot hope to keep us free from the temptations of the world, and it cannot help us when our need exceeds the scope and letter of the law. Think, for example, of the state of our soul after we have sinned mortally. The price for that sin has already been paid, and we have no need to do anything more than feel contrition for the commission of such a sing against righteousness and seek the healing remedy of a good confession before God and perform the little penance assigned to us by our priest. What, however, in the case of an unprepared for death, with no priest around to give us the sacrament of annointing that will forgive us our sins? We will go straight from that place to eternal damnation, and spend all ages separated from the God who loves us. Fear of punishment puts us at the mercy of God, but it does not of itself obtain the grace of God, which is the necessary criterion for salvation. But love, what does love accomplish? First of all, love obtains for us from God the grace not to sin at all in the first place. Second, if we do sin, only love can move us to full repentance for our sins, not simply that they have violated the "law" of God, but mainly because we love and desire reunion with God, whom we cherish about all the lesser desires for which we committed the sin. We call this second kind of repentence "perfect contrition" and by it we are reconciled to God, although we must still confess it to a priest with the faculties to give us absolution, so that we can be fully restored to participation in the sacraments, such as Holy Communion. In this way the Church knows with certainty that we are free from any guilt that would lead to sacrilege. The Church must, in its governance, remain in bondage to law and formality for the sake of our souls, as indeed St. Paul writes, "For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more." St. Paul was a bishop and an apostle to the whole church, and in him the Church itself is perfectly figured, for she is free "from all men" having Christ as her cornerstone and foundation, with St. Peter's successors as his representatives, yet, nevertheless, in her solicitude for the salvation of souls, she gives herself freely in bondage to the weakness of men so as to maintain good order and assure the salvation of souls. Love, however, remains supreme. By love, you have no need to fear the Law. By love, you obtain the grace which will kepp you from damnation and, what is more important, the grace which will grant you everlasting fellowship with God. In the words of St. John the Baptist, who as I said at the beginning of my sermon, is a representative of all that is great and right about the law, "he must increase and I must decrease." If you substitute the word "Love" for "He" and "the Law" for "I" you get the sense of my simple message to you. "Love must increase and the Law must decrease." St. John the Baptist died at the petty whim of a tyrant, a martyr, to be sure, but whose soul did he save by his death? Has even one man been ransomed from his state of sin by the death of the greatest of prophets? Was his death one like the martyrs, who died with the full knowledge of the Gospel, having heard about the Resurrection of our Lord? St. John the Baptist was greater than all the Prophets, but in some ways, less than all the Christian martyrs. I say this not because I want to take anything away from the honour we give St. John the Baptist today. Hardly. St. John the Baptist cannot be praised more than the words by which our Lord praised him, "Among those born of a woman, there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist." To him even Our Lord felt it necessary to be humble in the reception of Baptism. The Church rightly calls upon us to praise the man who even in the womb knew the Spirit of the Lord. Not many of us can say that for ourselves. Rather, I am saying this to show you that St. John the Baptist is nonetheless a different kind of saint, to be honoured in a different kind of way. All of us, indeed, are invited by the feasts of saints to reflect on our deeds in comparison with theirs, the better to recognize in ourselves our manifold failures in comparison to their virtues. This is only right and proper, seeing as they have had the same opportunities as they, and, whereas they have conquered, we have more often than not, failed miserably when put to the test. But with st. John the Baptist it is different. We rather see how fortunate we are to have received the message of love and the baptism given us by Jesus Christ, so that we should never receive the condemnation and baptism of St. John. This acts as an exhortation not to a stricter and more literal understanding of the law and its demands, but rather to a fulfilment and transcendence of of the law through God's grace. This honors St. John all the more, because it was to prepare for this that he lived and conducted his ministry. Let us, all of us, take the moral law, contained in the ten commandments, and the precepts of the Church in this way. We may not transgress them, to be sure, for all the moral teachings of the church, namely, what is and is not a sin, and the procedures that regulate its governance are not meant to be burdensome. Indeed they become light once you embrace loving God for who he is, once you stop following after God for fear of his punishments, or men, of your wives' punishments, or wives, of the other women's. Then,seek to do his will at every moment. Life is short and fragile. It is not worth spending it in boredom. But if you begin to love God, if you let it burn within your heart, you will start to find Church a lot less boring, and righteousness a lot more natural than before, and may our Lord help us to keep all these things, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. | | |
| Recently I was looking back over some various Gregorian Chant pieces, various masses and propers that I have sung with my scholas in Michigan and Arkansas, and realized just how much I missed being in a group like that, singing my heart out to the finest music ever known to mankind. Yeah, Gregorian Chant is that good. When I think back, especially, to my schola experience in Michigan, there is one memory in particular that sticks out. It was when we were singing a piece, I believe it was "Passer invenit," a Communion antiphon. You can look it up if you like. If you don't look it up, all you need to know is that it is a particularly hard piece, or at least it was for me, with some very interesting rhythms and intervals. If I remember correctly, the Schola (complete name: Schola of the Chair of St. Peter) worked quite a bit on this piece to get it right. Then, we were at Mass, and, amazingly, as we sang verse after verse of the psalm, repeating the Antiphon each time, the piece just came together. I looked up and realized that the rhythm and intervals had become second nature, and as I saw the heads in the front row looking up from their music and bobbing their heads with the steady ictus of the first few measures, I realized that we had moved into something special. The Chant was ours now, a simple, natural prayer from us to God. That is the power of Chant. The power to unite souls in praise to God. The power to transcend what you think is normal, the normal, simple rhythms of popular music, to the ethereal (is that the right word?) rhythms of the outer courts of God. Chant has this incredible ability to show outwardly what you are like inwardly. The fact that we were all together, and indeed, were amazingly cohesive in our general practice of Chant was not due to any virtuosity on any of our parts. It was due to the fact that we had an internal order and discipline, if you will, a hierarchy of organization that centered around the leadership by our cantor and director extraordinaire. The Chant was able to show this by the unity with which we sang. With the free rhythms of Chant, if a group is not thinking together, it shows. If a group is thinking of something else, it shows. If a group is thinking of the notes, and not of the whole life of the chant, it shows. There are some great Chant recordings that show this. Of course, the Chant as performed by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silas is a perfect example. They know what they are singing, and they think completely alike on singing it. I particularly recommend their second album and their album "Ave Maria" as examples of this. There is also a wonderful recording, I believe called, "A Treasury of Gregorian Chant" or something like it, by the Monks of St. Wandrille, which is the perfect example of chant coming out of a united and liturgy-centered lifestyle. Most of the secular artists, including my favorite Anonymous 4, simply do not come close to the organic and perfect renditions by these groups of faithful monks. What is Gregorian Chant? What is it's essential definition? This is an essential question for all would-be scholas to ask themselves. Gregorian Chant, first of all, is text. It is the text of the liturgy set to note and representing the song of the whole church, calling and responding between the leader(s) and the whole congregation. You can never forget that the power of Chant lies in the texts that are being sung, or you will miss the whole point, and it will show in the incomprehensibility of your performance. Secondly, Chant is life. It is the Christian life, lived in Music, a life that needs no earthly riches or adornment to make it beautiful, a life that consists in unity with the Head of the Church, Christ, and, consequently, with the priests and bishops of the whole Catholic Church. Chant represents through the hierarchic organization of psalmist, or cantor, and choir. It also represents charity through the passing of verses between one group of the faithful, one side of the choir, and the other. This charity is reciprocal, and consists of the display of desire for the other's ultimate good through the sharing of the Holy Scriptures with one another. CHANT IS LIFE. Remember that. How sad it is that we often choose cheap and modern music for the Mass over this wonderful exchange, this wonderful demonstration of the mystery of our tradition. Now, it is very customary for modern catechists and Catholics to point out that Gregorian Chant is merely a "small-t" tradition that can be altered or set aside without any doctrinal consequences. This is in fact wrong, per the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1124 "Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition." That is not to say that to neglect Gregorian Chant is to violate tradition, but it is to neglect a source of tradition. For this reason the Council Fathers of the Second Vatican Council gave "pride of place" to Gregorian Chant as the proper music of the Roman Rite. Rather, Gregorian Chant, by its very nature, is a way of preaching and interpreting the Word of God as it was handed on to the apostles, since its root is in the sort of chants that were adopted by the immediate successors of the apostles. Yes, it is THAT old. Not every chant is that old, mind you, but quite a bit more than you would think, and, even the new chant, participates in the methodology and expression of the old. By its very nature of call and response, of free rhythmic expression, of the centrality of text in the performance of chant, Gregorian Chant opens us up to the Mystery of the eternal liturgy of which tradition itself is the primary chant on the mouths of the faithful. So, that is so many words to say: CHANT IS LIFE. So, get out there, listen to it, learn it, demand it from your music directors, and put its teachings through the Holy Liturgy into practice in your own life. | | |
| I have said repeatedly that I did not agree with the SSPX position regarding their canonical status and authority. I still agree with that position. However, I thought I might write about a third way, between outright shunning the SSPX, something that I have never advocated, and giving them a blank check to ministry within the Church. Clearly there are doctrinal issues to be worked out. Both Bishop Fellay and His Holiness have confirmed as much in their own statements, however much they disagree in the consequences of those disagreements. There are also disagreements about the legitimacy of their prior actions. Neither of these, in my mind, merit the outright paralysis of the SSPX community. So, here are my general thoughts. First of all, why are the German bishops trying to mess up the discussions that principally concern the Holy See and the SSPX by threats to impose additional penalties? The only other possible concern this could have to the faithful is the impact of the SSPX on those who are already inclined to attend the Usus Antiquior, and I am almost certain that neither the Institute of Christ the King, nor the Fraternity of St. Peter, nor almost any group attached to the Old Mass would favor additional penalties being waged against the fraternity, nor would they be of the opinion that such penalties favored their particular ministries in the Church. Let's go with the experts here. Moreover, such penalties could cause greater resentment to the ordinary processes of the Church, a sentiment already held by many SSPX priests, and thus minimize the chances of a succesful reintegration of the SSPX into the universal ministry of the Church. (I am increasingly thinking that the term 'reintegrate' is more appropriate than 'reconcile' because, although there is little reason to think that the ministry of the SSPX is contrary to the universal ministry of the Catholic Church, there is some reason to think that the ministry of the SSPX is not being included, canonically, in the universal ministry of the Catholic Church. Think of it as a musician playing off-cue.) I feel that some sort of moratorium ought to be placed on penalties against the SSPX. Another step towards actual reconciliation (in this case, reconciliation of hearts and minds between the SSPX and the Catholic hierarchy) might be to provide some sort of relief to the hundreds of SSPX priests who are, by canon law, suspended a divinis so that they could exercise, rather, a limited ministry within the Church. My suggestion would be to limit priestly activities of the SSPX to their own chapels and to convents of nuns who would otherwise lack sacramental ministry, providing them an indult to celebrate the sacrament of confession for those who frequent their chapels, but preventing them from celebrating the sacrament of Holy Matrimony and the rites of initiation, the former positively forbidden and the latter forbidden except in situations where there is danger of death. Perhaps there could also be a certain tolerance for the ongoing priestly ordinations, but ZERO tolerance for any episcopal consecrations. It strikes me that the above restrictions would allow the talks to go on with the minimum possible animosity. But surely something could be demanded on the part of the SSPX? I would say agreement to adhere to the liturgical norms and restrictions of Summorum Pontificum, and a positive statement of their intention not to preach against the Holy See or against attending chapels/churches/oratories which have canonical good standing with the Church. In other words, reciprocity. In other words, given the atmosphere of greater understanding that has followed since the lifting of the excommunications against the bishops of the SSPX, is there not at least some justification for providing an atmosphere of tolerance while negotiations continue? This makes sense to me. | | |
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