Four Levels of Liturgy

This week, the monks of St. John’s are having our week-long retreat, which is led by Abbot Matthew Leavy, former abbot of St. Anselm’s in Rhode Island. I share an interesting observation he made concerning liturgy.  He sees liturgy as having four levels. The first level is the heavenly liturgy: all the angels and saints…

Corpus Christi and California

A blessed anniversary to all the people of Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church in southern California on this solemnity of Corpus Christi. It was five years ago today (29 May, 2011), that Fr. Andrew Bartus and members of Blessed Sacrament Episcopal Church, Placentia, California, held its first Evensong with, I gather, the intent to…

Ember Days

[From a Facebook post by Fr. Christopher Phillips, Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio, Texas] With our Divine Worship Missal we have a restoration of many of the traditional days in the liturgical calendar which had been lost. The Ember Days are an example of this, and today is one of those ember days….

Archbishop Hebda Quotes Newman

Archbishop Hebda, installed yesterday (May 13, 2016) as the Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, ended his homily at the installation Mass with a quote from a prayer of Blessed John Henry “Patrimony” Cardinal Newman. “The commemorative card that you have received today bears a portion of a prayer composed by Blessed John Henry Newman,…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 9

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro Saviour Christ, we ask you in our humility to hear the cry of the captives, your suppliants, O saving God – how we are distressed by our own desires. Accursed spirits, hostile hell-foes have hard beset the exiles, bound them with baleful ropes. Remedy belongs all to you alone, eternal Lord. Help those in…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 8

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro O! Mankinde Have in thee minde My passion smert And thou shall finde Me full kinde Lo! Here my heart (O! Mankind Keep in mind My intense love And you shall find Me more than generous in return Lo! Here is my heart) English, early 15th century  Collect: Eternal Light, shine into our hearts;…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 7

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro I don’t know and can’t imagine what the disciples understood our Lord to mean when, His body still unbroken and His blood unshed, He handed them the bread and wine, saying they were His body and blood… Yet I find no difficulty in believing that the veil between the worlds, nowhere else (for me)…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 6

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro Here we need to consider yet another aspect: this sacramental “mysticism” is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”…

Liturgy Doesn’t “Mean” Anything

On the feast of the holy abbots of Cluny, a monastery known for taking liturgy seriously, here is a link to an interesting article, written from a High Church Anglican perspective, on liturgy.  The article is also helpful in that it offers observations on how those from Protestant-Evangelical traditions tend to view liturgy. I sense…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 5

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro [Tolkien was Catholic, not Anglican. So the extent to which his works are part of the “treasure to be shared,” referenced in Anglicanorum coetibus is debatable. Tolkien was, however, so deeply read in English literature and spirituality that he certainly represents the deepest roots of English spirituality in general (which is, I think, part…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 4

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro [A performance of Vaughan Williams’s setting of the following text] Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked any thing. A guest, I answered, worthy to be…

Ascensiontide Novena: Day 3

http://www.calledtobe.org.uk/ctbc-novena.html#Intro Then said our good Lord Jesus Christ: Art thou well pleased that I suffered for thee? I said: Yea, good Lord, I thank Thee; Yea, good Lord, blessed mayst Thou be. Then said Jesus, our kind Lord: If thou art pleased, I am pleased: it is a joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to…