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Ash Wednesday

This is Reading 1 from the Book of Joel listed on the USCCB website for Mass celebrated on Ash Wednesday . The same Readings are used if an Ash Wednesday service is held as the Liturgy of the Word is utilized in the Service ordinarily. Jl 2:12-18 Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing, Offerings and libations for the LORD, your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion! proclaim a fast, call an assembly; Gather the people, notify the congregation; Assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast; Let the bridegroom quit his room and the bride her chamber. Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep, And say, “Spare, O LORD, you

Campus Ministry Endorses Celebration of Latin Mass

In response to student requests, the TLM was initiated at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. twice each week and the number of attendees is increasing. The TLM is now being celebrated in the Crypt and the Office of Campus Ministry has agreed to regularize this arrangement: Copley Crypt was chosen over Dahlgren due to its architecture and the placement of the altar, said Fr. Stephen Fields, S.J., one of the priests who say the Tridentine Masses. The Mass is celebrated on campus according to directives outlined in Pope Benedict XVI’s letter “Summorum Pontificum” last year. “The Archdiocese of Washington is working on other norms to be followed for the celebration of this form of the Mass, and our celebration of it will fully comply with these,” Fields said. The Tridentine Mass is now celebrated in Copley Crypt on Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. and Sundays at 11:30 a.m. Fields and Fr. William Farge, S.J., currently preside over the Mass, and Fr. John Siberski, S.J., and Fr. James Duff

Pope mandates change in traditional Good Friday prayer

Catholic World News prints the revised text for the Good Friday prayer which is published officially in the February 6th edition of L'Osservatore Romano . The revised prayer, which has been expected for some time, now reads: Oremus et pro Iudaeis. Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum, ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum. Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius, ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen See the full story on Catholic World News . Update: More here on Rorate Caeli .

Thirsting and Quenching

Ignatius Insight Scoop has a link to the introduction to the book, "Prayer Primer: Igniting a Fire Within" by Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M . Here is just a portion: Men and women everywhere are hungry and thirsty, voraciously yearning and seeking: rich and poor, wise and foolish, young and old, literate and illiterate, saints and sinners, atheists and agnostics, playboys and prostitutes. Some can explain their inner emptiness in words; most cannot, but everyone experiences it. That inner ache drives all our dreams, desires, and decisions--good and bad. Even your decision to pick up this book and read was triggered by this nameless desire. Our abiding hunger for more than we presently experience does not have to be proved but only explained. Which is what we propose to do right now, before we even begin to think about what prayer is all about. Otherwise you and I cannot understand fully the splendid reality of communing deeply with our Creator and Lord and of our unspeakable

Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter--Masses Worldwide

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (F.S.S.P.) now has an interactive Google map on its website which enables you to locate their Mass locations world-wide. Simply click the link here . Notice that for those of us in Maryland, the nearest locations are in Harrisburg, PA, Scranton, PA and soon, in Chesapeake, VA. For our many world-wide visitors, this is a great resource for quickly locating a TLM!

Catholics and Politics: Papal Reminders

New Catholic of Rorate Caeli posts the three Papal reminders on Catholics and politics . The post is taken from the address of His Holiness to the Members of the European People's Party : As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today: [FIRST NON-NEGOTIABLE] - protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [SECOND NON-NEGOTIABLE] - recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceabl

Lourdes + 150--Plenary Indulgence Reminder

New Catholic of Rorate Caeli reminds us today that the apparition at Lourdes will have its 150th anniversary this week . As such, the Apostolic Penitentiary has decreed : Each and every member of the Christian faithful who, truly repentant, is purified through sacramental confession, restored through the Most Holy Eucharist and offers prayers for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, will be able to gain a Plenary Indulgence daily, which may also be applied, by way of suffrage, to the souls of the faithful in Purgatory. The conditions to attain this indulgence and other links of interest are to be found on the Rorate Caeli blogsite and the visit must occur before February 11th .

WDTPRS: Quinquagesima

We now reach the final Sunday before Lent begins with Ash Wednesday only days away. It is Quinquagesima Sunday --50 days before Easter (in a figurative sense). Father Z. on WDTPRS has the complete story and some interesting sidelights . In these WDTPRS articles we are this year focusing on the prayer of the 1962 Missale Romanum rather than those of the Novus Ordo as we have done for the last seven years: in the wake of the monumental Summorum Pontificum, in keeping with Pope Benedict’s plan and a “hermeneutic of continuity”, we are drilling into the traditional prayers to understand what in them may be different and similar to how we pray in the Novus Ordo. Thus, if we ask the question “What Does The Prayer Really Say?” of prayers for individual Masses, we must also ask that question of the very way that the prayer is physically oriented. What does it mean to pray ad orientem or versus populum? Why is this important to every Catholic and every priest in every parish? The great

Where Bach was jailed, Asians pay homage

Michael E. Lawrence, writing for the New Liturgical Movement , has discovered this gem. Uwe Siemon-Netto, in residence at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis has a beautiful piece from the January, 2008 issue of the Asian Times . It is on the throng of Asians who will visit Weimar, Germany to see where Bach composed most of his organ works and was jailed. Here is a snippet from this marvelous essay: The influx of Asians to Bach sites in Germany has been perplexing musicologists and theologians alike for decades now. They come in droves not only as tourists but also as serious students of music. Of the 850 students at Germany’s oldest state conservatory, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in Leipzig, 148 are Asians, chiefly South Koreans and Japanese, according to Ute Fries, dean of students. Bach was musical director of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche for the last 27 years of his life and wrote most of his cantatas there. Leipzig’s late “superintendent” (regiona

FSSP's St. Gregory's Academy

Gerald Augustinus, author of the Cafeteria is Closed, writes a nice note on St. Gregory's Academy, a boarding school for boys run by the FSSP . The Academy's website has this to say about the institution : St. Gregory’s Academy is a Catholic boarding school for boys in northeastern Pennsylvania . We offer a unique, classical, liberal arts education to high school students from all over North America . In order to engage the imagination as the foundation for higher intellectual activity, St. Gregory’s students read some of the world’s best literature and history, memorize poetry and songs, and participate in a wide variety of cultural activities. The Academy boys have themselves given vocal and theatrical performances throughout the area and at the school. Reasoning skills are cultivated by means of such courses as Euclidean geometry, physics, and classical logic. Academic and cultural activities are balanced by soccer, rugby, hiking, ca

Communion in hand should be revised, Vatican official says

A story appearing on Catholic News Agency states that a high Vatican official believes that Holy Communion in the hand should be re-examined . Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith, Secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Cult and Discipline of the Sacraments has said that the policy of giving Communion in the hand should be revised. Receiving Holy Communion in the hand "produces a growing weakening of a devout attitude toward the Most Holy Sacrament," wrote Archbishop Ranjith in the preface of a book from the Auxiliary Bishop of Kazakhstan, Bishop Athanasius Schneider. The book's title, printed by the Vatican Editing house, is “Dominus Est: Meditations of a Bishop from Central Asia on the Sacred Eucharist." Read Archbishop Ranjith's comments here .

Please Look Behind the Bishops' Potemkin Village

Ignatius Insight Scoop has a link to a thought-provoking essay written by Russell Shaw in the February, 2008 edition of "The Catholic World Report ." The essay is in the form of a letter to those planning the visit of Pope Benedict XVI within the United States in April, 2008. The essay is directed mostly to the U.S. Bishops. Here are two snippets from this essay: You might, for example, tell the Holy Father something like this: There are two radically different versions of how things are now in the Catholic Church in America. Call them "We're doing okay" and "We're in desperate trouble." Professor James D. Davidson of Purdue University is a well-informed, urbane spokesman for we're-doing-okay. Davidson, a sociologist, has studied religion in America for many years, and much of his work has focused on the Catholic Church. According to news reports, he said in a recent talk that media coverage that emphasizes Catholics ignoran