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Second Sunday After Epiphany (Wedding at Cana)

Laudetur Iesus Christus! Sunday is the second Sunday after Epiphany, which commemorates the third manifestation of Christ during Christmastide, which focuses on his first public miracle at the wedding at Cana.  As custom we provide commentary on the prayers of the Mass by Dr. Mike Foley: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/01/the-orations-of-second-sunday-after.html#.YeNrlvhOmHt  (please also see our “Christmas Continues” section below for additional articles)

Epiphany Blessing Thanks: We thank everyone’s patience as St. Ann parish rescheduled the Epiphany blessing of water, chalk and salt. We were also blessed to have two priests, Frs. Jones and Reid and members of the St. Ann schola involved with the blessing that evening. We thank Frs. Reid, Jones, and St. Ann parish for offering this important blessing and please offer a few prayers for them this weekend. The Epiphany water will be in the narthex while quantities last, please bring your empty water bottles (St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Mark parishes also have quantities available as well)

Latin Masses This Week

  • Wednesday January 18, 6pm – St. Ann, Feria (no feast day commemorated today)
  • Thursday January 19, 7pm – St. Thomas Aquinas, Feria (no feast day) – This will be a Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of Pope Benedict XVI
  • Friday January 20, 7am (St. Ann) & 12:30pm (St. Mark), Ss. Fabian & Sebastian

Requiem Mass for Pope Benedict XVI – Thursday January 19, 7pm (St. Thomas Aquinas): As noted above, St. Thomas Aquinas parish will be offering this Thursday’s 7pm Latin Mass as a requiem for the repose of the soul of Pope Benedict XVI.

Save the Date: Sunday January 29 – Annual End of Christmas Potluck Celebration, 12:30pm St. Ann parish: Please save the date for Sunday January 29, the fourth Sunday of Epiphany and the final Sunday of the Christmas season. As we do each year the CLMC will be organizing a potluck after the 12:30pm St. Ann Latin Mass in the plaza with festive food, and a Christmas carol.  We will share more details in the weeks ahead.

Blessing of Candles – Thursday February 2nd: The official close of the Christmas season occurs on Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (February 2nd), and as custom St. Ann parish will bless candles. Since there is no Latin Mass at St. Ann on Thursdays, parishioners will need to bring their candles before the 7am Novus Ordo Mass. Additionally, St. Thomas Aquinas will have a Latin Mass this evening. We will share more details as they become available.

Community News

Holy Face Devotions

  • St Mark – Mondays 5-5:45pm (NEW TIME for JANUARY)
  • St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesdays 6am in the main church
  • St. Ann – Tuesdays 7:30am in the chapel after the Novus Ordo Mass (uses the booklet/chaplet which takes 15-20 minutes)
  • St Michael the Archangel, Gastonia – Tuesdays, 9am, Main Church
  • Holy Spirit, Denver – Tuesdays 10-11am after the Novus Ordo Mass
  • Don’t see your parish? Why not organize one?

Latin Mass & Traditional News

  • Fr. Chad Ripperger on the state of evil in 2023: Last week we shared an interview with traditional exorcist and theologian, Fr. Chad Ripperger (who will be visiting St. Thomas Aquinas parish on March 10 & 11) on the state of the Church. This week, we are pleased share his full talk given at a parish in Wisconsin which goes into greater detail on his opinion of what lies ahead: https://stmarypinebluff.com/sermons/fr-chad-ripperger-on-the-state-of-evil-in-2023/

CLMC comment: It appears, for the time being, that Latin Mass restrictions are being focused on diocesan priests and diocesan parishes.

  • Gerhard Ludwig Müller: “Pope Francis’ clampdown on the Latin Mass was an imprudence”: Recently Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, for former head of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith under Pope Benedict has becoming increasingly vocal with his concerns regarding decisions coming from Rome, and has recently called the Latin Mass restrictions, imprudent: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/01/gerhard-ludwig-muller-pope-francis.html
  • Midnight Mass from St. Thomas Aquinas: One of our readers shared an beautiful video by one of the attendees of the Christmas Midnight Latin Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas this past Christmas: https://youtu.be/a7Wp8bjP9uY
  • Vatican II and the American Deep State: Once upon a time, when the Catholic Church was more fervent and orthodox, a powerful secular state decided that the Catholic Church threatened its hegemony and so it directed its intelligence agencies and corporate media organizations to wage a propaganda war against the Church to undermine her, and encourage her to abandon her teachings, specifically on Church and state. This traditional doctrine would instead be replaced with secularist ideals such as religious indifferentism, relativism, or freedom of religion, where the Church and her teaching were equal to heretical or pagan religious teachings. This government then found influential Catholic priests and intellectuals to be the mouthpiece for this new “teaching” and to advocate for these ideas at a recently planned Church council.

    Sadly, the above sentences were not fables, but according to this OnePeterFive article, this agenda appears to have happened in the mid-20th century: https://onepeterfive.com/vatican-ii-american-deep-state/

CLMC comment: If this indeed occurred, what else could governments, intelligence agencies, and corporate media have done to influence or harm the Church, especially in the last 50 years? 

The Epiphany Afterglow – Don’t Stop Celebrating: After Christmas Day, Christmas Continues

Epiphanytide now continues into its second week. While the secular world has long forgotten the decorations, “songs”, and feasts of Christmas, and is going through a desolate, self-imposed winter fast (until the solemn “feast” of Superbowl Sunday), the Church, through the Traditional Latin Mass, is still in the midst of its Christmas season, which runs from December 25 – February 2nd.  As noted above, today is the second Sunday in Epiphanytide, the extended Christmas season and this article from Dr. Peter Kwasniewski describes Sunday’s commemoration:

“The three great theophanies or divine manifestations honored in this season—namely, the visit of the Magi, the baptism in the Jordan, and the wedding of Cana—are given their full individual due, without haste, without unseemly compression or alternation. Indeed, there is a leisurely feel to this Epiphany season, a sense of time suspended. It is as if Holy Mother Church, like a mother watching her children grow up too fast, cannot quite resign herself to parting from the young Christ.

Epiphanytide is the afterglow of the revelation of Christ to the world, Christ who is the true Enlightenment against which the devil vainly (although at times with considerable temporary success) attempts to establish his substitutes—most especially the rationalist and liberal worldview under which Catholics have been living, and which they have slowly adopted, over the past several centuries, to the near extinction of their liturgical life.”

The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ/Octave Day of Epiphany

This past Friday January 13, was one of the major feasts of Christmastide – the Baptism Of Our Lord Jesus Christ, traditionally called the Octave Day of Epiphany (Prior to 1955, Epiphany had its own Octave or eight days of celebration) and we share a reflection by Dom Prosper Gueranger, the great Benedictine liturgist and author of The Liturgical Year, for the Baptism of Jesus/Octave of Epiphany: https://fsspatl.com/liturgical-year/447-temporal-cycle/season-of-christmas/epiphanytide/3426-january-13-the-octave-of-the-epiphany

When Does the Christmas Season End?

Additionally, there appears to be debate among some about whether Christmas season ends on January 13 or February 2. Thankfully, Greg DiPippo helped to clear this up a few years ago (spoiler alert: it ends on February 2nd): https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2018/01/when-does-christmas-season-end.html#.YeNtVvhOmHs

St. Hilary, Confessor and Bishop – January 14

As we move further into Christmastide, the Church introduces more feast days of saints in mid to late January who at first glance may seem to have no connection to Christmas. But as Dom Prosper Gueranger, the great Benedictine liturgist and author of The Liturgical Year, notes in his entry about the fourth century bishop St. Hilary of Poitiers, it has everything to do with Christmas, including his connection to St. Thomas Beckett’s feast (December 29) which occurs in the Christmas Octave:

“AFTER having consecrated the joyous Octave of the Epiphany to the glory of the Emmanuel who was manifested to the earth, the Church—incessantly occupied with the Divine Child and his august Mother, during the whole time from Christmas Day to that whereon Mary will bring Jesus to the Temple, there to be offered to God, as the law prescribes—the Church, we say, has on her Calendar of this portion of the year the names of many glorious Saints, who shine like so many stars on the path which leads us, from the joys of the Nativity of our Lord, to the sacred mystery of our Lady’s Purification.

And firstly there comes before us, on the very morrow of the day consecrated to the Baptism of Jesus, the faithful and courageous Hilary—the pride of the Churches of Gaul, and the worthy associate of Athanasius and Eusebius of Vercelli in the battle fought for the Divinity of our Emmanuel.

…A few days ago we were celebrating the Feast of our holy Martyr, St Thomas of Canterbury; today, we have the Feast of the glorious Confessor, whose example enlightened and encouraged him in the great struggle. Both Hilary and Thomas a Becket were obedient to the teaching left to the Pastors of the Church by the Apostles; who, when they were arraigned the first time before the authorities of this world, uttered this great maxim: We ought to obey God rather than men.[Acts 5:29]

The Apostles and the Saints were strong in the battle against flesh and blood, only because they were detached from earthly goods, and were convinced that the true riches of a Christian and a Bishop consist in the humility and poverty of the Crib, and that the only victorious power is in the imitation of the simplicity and the weakness of the Child that is born unto us. They relished the lessons of the School of Bethlehem; hence no promise of honours, of riches, or even of peace, could make them swerve from the principles of the Gospel.”

In the Traditional Latin Mass, the Christmas season continues in the afterglow of Epiphanytide. What Mass are you attending Sunday?