King Richard in Hagia Sophia

In February NPR ran an audio story titled "The Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia."

You get a sense for what it was like praying in the 6th century in one of the world's largest Catholic churches.

The story is worth a listen at
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/22/808404928/listen-the-sound-of-the-hagia-sophia-more-than-500-years-ago

Listen with good speakers or headphones. You'll get chills.

Richard the Lionheart at Mass in Hagia Sophia
by Gaspare Fossati (1849)

 

Justice for Society

It is not by class struggle that justice can be re-established, but by preaching the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, "The Mystery of Jesus"

Christ is our doctrine, it is He who teaches us. Christ us our master, it is from Him that we learn. Christ is our school, in Him we learn. Because Christ is the one and only messenger, the light on all questions, He has the key to all human problems. Our world must relearn how to know the one to whom it owes all that it is. It is necessary to speak to it of Our Lord Jesus Christ over and over without tiring. If the world knows Him in His doctrine and His works, it will rediscover in Him the Lord and master whom false guides and unworthy pastors have made it forget.And so helped to return to the source of all goods,it will find once again the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
- St. Louis de Montfort, "The Love of Eternal Wisdom"

Saints and the Incarnation

The honor paid to the Saints as servants of God does not detract from the glory of their Master, Our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Members of Christ, the Saints are but the consequence and development of that which is due to Christ their Head. The Church owes it to her Spouse, Jesus, to make a protest against the narrow view of those who would deny the honor due the saints. These protests would lessen the glory of the Incarnation, because denying the Saints denies the grandest consequences of the Incarnation.

- paraphrased from The Liturgical Year by Abbot Dom Gueranger

Words from C.S. Lewis

This short essay from C.S. Lewis treated the matter of worry about the atomic bomb, but the lesson applies to any great threat.

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In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb.

“How are we to live in an atomic age?”

I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts at Fatima

Two dozen countries were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Fatima, Portugal on March 25 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cardinal António Marto, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima and the bishops of Portugal and Spain performed the consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. On the solemn occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation, the bishops asked for the Blessed Virgin Mary’s intercession for the “direct and indirect victims” of the pandemic that affects us, for “health professionals, tireless in their efforts to help the sick…authorities, in their efforts to find solutions," and for "all of us and our families." The rosary was also recited in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Polish. Tens of thousands of faithful watched the ceremony broadcast live on the web page for the Fatima shrine and throughout Portugal on television, radio, and many Catholic digital platforms.

The Portuguese initiative was the result of a petition begun on March 19 by a group of laymen who gathered over 5,500 signatures that they presented to the Portuguese Episcopal Conference. Among the signers were several members of the Bragança family, including Duke Duarte Pio, the great-grandson of King Miguel I of Portugal and claimant to the defunct Portuguese throne. The text of the petition stressed the urgency of the situation, highlighting not only the evils of the coronavirus but also all the miseries that are already associated with it, from isolation to unemployment "at levels never seen before."

Initially, only the Portuguese bishops intended to renew the consecration of their country to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. Then the Spanish bishops asked to take part in this consecration, followed by other bishops’ conferences the world over. The countries consecrated were Albania, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Kenya, Mexico, Moldova, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.

The Basilica of Fatima was built on the site where, just over a century ago, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared six times to three Portuguese children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The Queen of Heaven told the children to make sacrifices for sinners and pray the Rosary every day for peace. A few years later both Francisco and Jacinta died to the Spanish flu, a pandemic that killed over 25 million people. Lúcia later became a nun, and she reminded the faithful that the Rosary is “something everybody can do.”

May our Lord and Lady bless this public act of adoration and reparation.

The consecration ceremony can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU0XNlO_1QY

Incarnation and Divinization

Feast of the Annunciation

From Fr. Adam Purdy in a letter to SSPX Tertiaries in the United States:

I hope this feast day is blessed for you. We celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. God became man in order that man become God. Oh admirable exchange! In bearing Christ within us - we are divinized. All Christians accept the divinity of Christ; only Catholics embrace this "divinization." Christ's role was not simply to be an inspiration and provide longing to Christians; it was not be a wise teacher of the ways of God, or a model of Christian life; it is to put the real presence of God within our soul.

Prayer, Penance, Fasting

Ash Wednesday

From Luke 13:5 - “Unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish.”

Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God with a view to appealing to His goodness in petition for the things we need. Penance worthily done transforms our rebellious wills, giving us loving, grateful hearts and so making it possible to pray well.

By penance a sinner hates the injustice of his own personal sin against Almighty God and desires to make reparation for his defiance and ingratitude. Such penance is always required for the forgiveness of sin. To help us fulfill the requirement of reparation, Holy Mother Church, knowing our frailty, obliges us to perform works of penance at certain times. The requirement to fast during the season of Lent is one example.

Lent is the penitential season lasting from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday that serves to remind us of Christ’s fast in the desert and to prepare us for Easter. Because it is a salutary time when our Lord abundantly dispenses grace, according to ancient custom Christians perform additional acts of penance and sacrifice in Lent so that they may win deliverance from their sins and be better disposed to receive the graces that Almighty God wants to bestow upon His children.

There is a commandment laid on us to fast, for fasting helps to curb the desires of the flesh, draws us closer to Almighty God, and makes satisfaction for sins, both our own and those of others–our families, friends, neighbors, and countrymen. For this last reason our Lord and Lady also fasted, for though they were guilty of no sin, yet moved by charity they won by their fasting and acts of penance graces for poor sinners.

Our Lady told the seers of Fatima that "many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them." Likewise, St. John Vianney said that the conversion of sinners "begins with prayer and ends with penance." Let these sentiments occupy our thoughts and fill our hearts this Lent, offering this prayer when we fast and make some sacrifice: “O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”