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13th Sunday After Pentecost

Dear friends of the Charlotte Latin Mass Community (CLMC),

Laudetur Iesus Christus! Sunday August 22 is not only the 13th Sunday After Pentecost but is the octave day of Our Lady’s Assumption and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  This week, we provide meditations on Sunday’s propers by the great Benedictine liturgist, Dom Prosper Gueranger OSB, in The Liturgical Year: https://sensusfidelium.us/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/august/august-22-the-octave-of-the-assumption/

First we wanted to express our thanks to Fr. Reid for kindly blessing herbs and fruit last Sunday and for those CLMC families who brought fruit and herbs for our potluck. We were also graced with the presence of Fr. John Perricone, one of the pioneer Latin Mass priests in the New York City area who offered Solemn Mass last Sunday. Some of you may recall Fr. Perricone’s Lenten Mission at St. Ann in 2018. You can read some of his past writings here https://www.fatherperricone.com/  and here: https://www.crisismagazine.com/author/fr-john-perricone

Feast of St. Louis IX – August 25

As Americans watch the “great experiment”, known as its representative republic go into meltdown through corruption, immorality, and all sorts of nefarious deeds and poor leadership, the Church this week presents the faithful with an example of what a virtuous leader and truly Catholic government can look like. Such a government can truly benefit all people and create the most ideal civic and temporal conditions to help facilitate the salvation of many souls. This example is St. Louis IX, the great 13th century king of France, a king of justice, peace, and sanctity – mirroring the True Monarch, Christ the King. He was a devout man who reigned over a just government that helped all peoples, promoted and lived the virtues of the faith, and honorably served in two crusades against the Saracens (Muslims) who seized the Holy Land and near east from the Church and her flock. His coronation, like Blessed Karl (the last Catholic monarch of Europe) was done according to the official Coronation Mass, where the king is wedded to his land and people in a special Mass.

https://sensusfidelium.us/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/august/august-25-st-louis-king-of-france-confessor/

While Catholic monarchies are often seen today as backwards and antiquated, only foolish moderns would look at today’s “advanced” world of democracy and its embodied masonic “values” of abortion, sodomy, usury, poverty, godlessness, religious freedom for erroneous sects, free speech for heresy and the profane, and endless revolutionary wars on terror (or viruses), as examples of “progress” for God and mankind.   As Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas, the 1925 encyclical which established the feast of Christ the King:

“With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”

As Fr. Christian noted in his 2016 Christ the King talk, quoting historian Charles Coulombe, more people died for wars of “democracies” since the bloody French Revolution, than all who died in wars between Catholic monarchs:

https://charlottelatinmass.org/resources/latin-mass-classes/christtheking/

Additionally, we should keep in mind that this age of republics and democracies, like life itself, is merely fleeting, and will eventually pass away – perhaps sooner than we think.  In fact, many venerable, blessed and saints –  including St. John Vianney and St. Louis de Montfort, have predicted that during the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart, there would be a restoration of the Catholic monarchy, especially in France, with a Holy King who would restore Christendom and work with a Holy Pope, who would refute all the errors of these modern times. Taylor Marshall explains further in this informative video:

How fitting that a city in the cradle of America is named not after a democratic “free-thinker”, but one of the greatest Catholic monarchs in history.  St. Louis IX, pray for America and her conversion to the Church!  

To commemorate this feast, St. Ann will be offering its regular 6pm Low Mass on August 25. 

Latin Mass & Traditional News

  • Continued Prayers for Cardinal Burke: Please continue to pray for Cardinal Burke who remains in serious condition due to COVID.  Michael Matt at the Remnant writes a brief but inspirational observation about the Cardinal’s suffering – unlike many Church leaders who sadly follow pop culture, Cardinal Burke has declined to get the immoral COVID inoculation due to its connections to abortion and is showing the Church how a Christian should be willing to suffer in defending the rights of the unborn who were horrifically maimed to generate the cell lines used to test or develop these vaccines: https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/5544-cardinal-virtue-burke-suffers-for-the-unborn
  • Immaculate Heart of Mary: Unlike the Novus Ordo calendar, the Traditional Rite maintains the feast of the Immaculate Heart on August 22nd the octave day of the Assumption.  Although it is suppressed this year due it falling on the 13th Sunday After Pentecost, this is an important feast day for our times, as Our Lady of Fatima has warned that unless Russia is consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, great tribulations will occur.  Although much can be written about this feast day today, Dom Prosper Gueranger’s meditation is helpful (even though written decades before Our Lady of Fatima’s appearance in 1917):  https://sensusfidelium.us/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/august/august-22-the-octave-of-the-assumption/
  • 3 Year Anniversary of Archbishop Viganò: This feast day is also the 3 year anniversary of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s first letter exposing the corruption in the Church, and providing a light to the weary faithful starved for truth and honestly among many of today’s Church leaders. We link to a copy of his landmark and inaugural letter. It’s hard to believe where the world and Church have turned in 3 short years: https://online.wsj.com/media/Viganos-letter.pdf
  • Octave of the Assumption – August 22nd: As noted in prior e-mails, in the Traditional Rite (prior to 1955), many important feast days were followed eight days of celebration, otherwise known as octaves, to highlight the spiritual treasures contained in these feasts. These include, the octave of Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and of course the Assumption. This explains why certain saints and commemorations are included in a certain octave – to highlight a certain aspect of the main feast day.  Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has penned an excellent article explaining why certain saints were placed on the calendar between August 15 – 22 for the Assumption octave – to highlight the “friends of Mary”: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/08/the-comites-mariae-of-assumption.html#.YSB3nt8pCHs

Are you attending the Mass of Ages this Sunday?