Laudetur Iesus Christus! Sunday is the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and the readings, and particularly the Divine Office this week focuses on Solomon’s building of the Temple (whose destruction will be told next Sunday). As custom we provide commentary on the Collect for Sunday’s Mass: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2020/07/what-the-eighth-sunday-after-pentecost.html
Latin Masses This Week
- Wednesday July 26, 6pm – St. Ann (Feast of St. Ann, patronal feast for St. Ann parish)
- Thursday July 27, 7pm – St. Thomas Aquinas (Feria, e.g. no feast day)
- Friday July 28, 7am – St. Ann (Feast of Ss. Nazarius & Celsus, Martyrs; Victor I, Pope and Martyr; and St. Innocent I, Pope and Confessor)
Day of Prayer for Bishop Jugis – Sunday July 23
The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Wisconsin, (the site of the only Marian apparition in the U.S.), is organizing The Shepherd Project, where all faithful Catholics in America are invited to pray for a bishop each day. This coming Sunday July 23 is assigned to Bishop Jugis. Please consider saying an extra prayer this day (or your Mass intention) for His Excellency. [For those readers nearby in the Raleigh diocese, Bishop Zarama’s day of prayer is the day after, July 24] To learn more visit: https://championshrine.org/shepherd-project/
Scholarship Help for FSSP Seminarians
Last month we sent out a call to our readers for scholarship help for two FSSP seminarians (one who used to attend St. Ann parish) who wanted to attend the Veterum Sapientia Institute’s summer Latin workshop this month here in Charlotte. We are pleased to share that thanks to the generosity of CLMC readers, the necessary funds have been raised. We thank everyone who generously contributed, allowing them to attend. As our readers may recall, the Institute was founded and is operated by Fr. Barone and several others in our diocese.
1st Sunday Latin Mass in Salisbury, August 6, 4pm
Looking ahead, there will be a Latin Mass at Sacred Heart parish in Salisbury on Sunday August 6th at 4pm. Mass will be offered by Fr. Joseph Wasswa, with Confession starting at 2:45pm. Seminarians from St. Joseph College Seminary will graciously provide sacred music. A potluck will be held in Brincefield Hall afterwards Please bring a favorite dish, hors d’oeuvres or dessert to share. For more information contact the Salisbury Latin Mass Community: www.salisburylmc.org
Community News
‘Sacred and Great‘: booklet introducing the TLM by Joseph Shaw
Thanks to some generous benefactors, the CLMC will be distributing copies of Dr. Joseph Shaw’s book, Sacred and Great, which serves as a great introduction to the Traditional Latin Mass. This should be at our tables at St. Ann and St. Thomas Aquinas either this weekend or next (while supplies last). Dr. Shaw is president of the Latin Mass Society of the U.K. To learn more visit: http://www.lmschairman.org/2023/07/sacred-and-great-booklet-introducing.html
Learn the Divine Office – Thursday August 3, 5-6:30pm (St. Thomas Aquinas parish)
St. Thomas Aquinas parish made the following announcement, which we pass along: It’s been said that the Divine Office is an extension of the Mass throughout the day, meant to sanctify the hours of the day by way of the Psalms. On Thursday, August 3 from 5-6:30 in Room D in the parish building, before the evening Latin Mass, Deacon Kevin Martinez and seminarian Emanuel Martinez will give a brief introduction to any families interested in praying either the Divine Office (according to the traditional form) or the Little Office of Baltimore. The event is open to all and no sign up is necessary.
Holy Face Devotions
- St. James, Concord– Mondays 10-10:30am in the cry room in the church
- St Mark – Mondays 5pm in the church
- St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesdays 6am in the church
- St. Ann – Tuesdays 7:30am in the main church after the Novus Ordo Mass (uses the booklet/chaplet which takes 15-20 minutes)
- St Michael the Archangel, Gastonia – Tuesdays, 9am, in the church
- Holy Spirit, Denver – Tuesdays 10-11am after the Novus Ordo Mass
- Don’t see your parish listed? Why not organize one?
Latin Mass & Traditional News
- The French Revolution and the Carmelites of Compiègne: This past week was the 229th anniversary of the beatified Carmelite martyrs of Compiègne, France, who offered their lives as a sacrifice to end the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror in 1794. National Catholic Register published a fascinating article of the martyrdom of these 16 Carmelites (mostly nuns and a few lay), and how they met some English Benedictines (exiled to France in the 16th century), which had ties to St. Thomas More’s decedents. https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-french-revolution-and-the-carmelites-of-compiegne
- In Defense of Latin in the Mass: The Case for the Church’s Timeless Liturgical Language: Local publisher TAN Books has just released a defense of the use of Latin in the liturgy by Pope Benedict XIV who reigned in the 18th century. We share a description of this brief book here: In these pages, Pope Benedict XIV (1675–1758) offers a convincing defense for the use of Latin as the normative liturgical language in the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the attacks over the use of Latin in Pope Benedict XIV’s time stemmed primarily from the Protestant schism, the objections today are very similar. With charity and reason, the Holy Father seeks to bring clarity to this most important topic by relying on tradition and Church history. https://tanbooks.com/products/books/in-defense-of-latin-in-the-mass-the-case-for-the-churchs-timeless-liturgical-language/
- St. Thomas on the Doctrine of Music: This past week was the 700th anniversary of the canonization of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1323 A.D. and OnePeterFive posted a column examining his writings on sacred music: https://onepeterfive.com/thomas-doctrine-music/
- The Feast of the Thunderous Heel-Grabber: Tuesday July 25 is the feast of St. James the Apostle who first evangelized Spain before returning to Jerusalem for his martyrdom, and Dr. Mike Foley penned an excellent article last year on the connection of St. James and the famous traditions associated with him, including the famous Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage that many over the centuries have undertaken: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2022/07/the-feast-of-thunderous-heel-grabber.html#.YtuP2ITMKHs
- Cardinal Burke to offer a Pontifical Latin Mass on July 25 in Connecticut for the Church in China: His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke will offer a Solemn High Pontifical Mass in Stamford, Connecticut, in honor of Our Lady of SheShan (a Marian apparition in China), all for the intentions of the persecuted Catholics in China. This is being done in conjunction with the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which supports the underground Church in China, and is named after the white martyr and longtime Bishop of Shanghai, Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pinmei, who spent 30 years in prison for the faith and died in exile in the U.S. in 2000 (and who offered the Traditional Latin Mass several times during his exile). The Mass will be Tuesday July 25 at 6pm St John’s Basilica in Stamford, Connecticut, and can be live streamed here: https://stjohnbasilica.org/livestream To see the flyer for the event visit: http://www.cardinalkungfoundation.org/fd/pdf/Solemn-TLM-Masses-2023.pdf
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost: Reflections on the Building of Solomon’s Temple
As noted at the beginning of this update, next Sunday marks the Church’s “commemoration”, in the Traditional Rite, of Our Lord’s prophecy of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Roman legions. This Sunday, as Dom Prosper Gueranger notes, the Church focuses on the period immediately preceding that dreadful day, when the city looked invincible, indestructible, and replete with glory and splendor. Gueranger picks up the description in his entry for the Eight Sunday after Pentecost in his book, The Liturgical Year:
The Church is now going through that month which immediately preceded the events so momentous to Jerusalem; she would do honour to-day to the glorious and divine past which prepared her own present. Let us, like her, enter into the feelings of the first Christians, who were Juda’s own children; they had been told of the impending destruction foretold by the prophets, and an order from God bade them depart from Jerusalem. What a solemn moment that was, when the little flock of the elect,—the only ones in whom was kept up the faith of Abraham and the knowledge of the destinies of the Hebrew people—had just begun their emigration, and looked back on the city of their fathers, to take a last farewell! They took the road to the east; it led towards the Jordan, beyond which God had provided a refuge for the remnant of Israel.[1] They halted on the incline of Mount Olivet, whence they had a full view of Jerusalem; in a few moments that hill would be between them and the city. Not quite forty years before the Man-God had sat down on that same spot,[2] taking His own last look at the city and her temple. Jerusalem was seen in all her magnificence from this portion of the mount, which afterwards would be visited and venerated by our Christian pilgrims. The city had long since recovered from its ruins, and had, at the time we are speaking of, been enlarged by the princes of the Herodian family, so favourably looked on by the Romans.
Never in any previous period of her history had Jerusalem been so perfect and so beautiful as she then was, when our fugitives were gazing upon her. There was not, as yet, the slightest outward indication that she was the city accursed of God. There, as a queen in her strength and power, she was throned amidst the mountains of which the psalmist had sung;[3] her towers[4] and palaces seemed as though they were her crown. Within the triple enclosure of the walls built by her latest kings, she embraced those three hills, the grandest, not only of Judea, but of the whole world: first, there was Sion, with its unparalleled memories; then, Golgotha, which had not yet been honoured on account of the holy sepulchre, and which, nevertheless, was even then attracting to itself the Roman legions, who were to wreak vengeance on this guilty land; and, lastly, Moriah, the sacred mount of the old world, on whose summit was raised that unrivalled temple, which gave Jerusalem to be the queen of all the cities of the east, for as such even the Gentiles acknowledged her.[5]
There was something even beyond all this: it was that their dear Jerusalem had been the scene of the grandest mysteries of the law of grace. Was it not in yonder temple that, as the prophets expressed it, God had manifested the Angel of the Testament,[18]and given peace? The honour of that temple is no longer the exclusive right of an isolated people; for the Desired of all nations, by His going into it, has brought it a grander glory than all the ages of expectation and prophecy have imparted.[19]
Gueranger then concludes his description of the Temple of its symbolic relevance for each follower of Christ:
O Christian soul! thou that, by the grace of God, art become a temple[30] more magnificent, more beloved in His eyes, than that of Jerusalem, take a lesson from these divine chastisements; and reflect on the words of the Most High, as recorded by Ezechiel: ‘The justice of the just shall not deliver him, in what day soever he shall sin…. Yea, if I shall say to the just, that he shall surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commit iniquity —all his justices shall be forgotten, and, in his iniquity, which he hath committed, in the same shall he die.'[31]
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: https://fsspatl.com/liturgical-year/478-temporal-cycle/time-after-pentecost/the-eighth-week-after-pentecost/3590-the-eighth-sunday-after-pentecost
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