Fr. Z's Blog

Today is the true Feast of Corpus Christi.  In many places the Feast of Corpus Christi gets an “external celebration” on Sunday.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as it gives more people a change to participate.  It is wonderful to see the multiplication of Eucharistic processions.  This happened especially with the explosive growth of the Traditional Latin Mass before the oppressors started to oppress the people who love it.

In 2008 Pope Benedict taught about processions, a message we could all use today.  The full text is HERE.

“The Corpus Christi procession teaches us that the Eucharist seeks to free us from every kind of despondency and discouragement, wants to raise us, so that we can set out on the journey with the strength God gives us through Jesus Christ … Each one can find his own way if he encounters the One who is the Word and the Bread of Life and lets himself be guided by his friendly presence. Without the God-with-us, the God who is close, how can we stand up to the pilgrimage through life, either on our own or as society and the family of peoples? The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the God who does not leave us alone on the journey but stays at our side and shows us the way. Indeed, it is not enough to move onwards, one must also see where one is going! “Progress” does not suffice, if there are no criteria as reference points. On the contrary, if one loses the way one risks coming to a precipice, or at any rate more rapidly distancing oneself from the goal. God created us free but he did not leave us alone: he made himself the “way” and came to walk together with us so that in our freedom we should also have the criterion we need to discern the right way and to take it.”

This is a key point for our times in the Church right now….

“[I]f one loses the way one risks coming to a precipice, or at any rate more rapidly distancing oneself from the goal.”

We’ve gone down the wrong road for too long and we are paying the price.

As in geometry, the farther two rays extend from a point, the farther apart they get.  As in making a journey, if you want to get from, say, Chicago to Texas and, after driving for a long time, discover you are at the Canadian border, you would do well to turn around, retrace your MISTAKE, and start again on the right road.  As a matter of fact, you would be stupid to keep driving north.

Bashing Tradition to promote the Second Vatican Council is like driving north from Chicago in order to get to Texas.  

No new initiative we undertake in the Church is going to succeed unless we revitalize our sacred liturgical worship and seek to fulfill the virtue of Religion, to give God what is His due.  Everything we do must flow from the Eucharist – by which we must understand both the sacred Eucharistic species and also its celebration which is Holy Mass.  Everything we do must then be brought back to the Eucharist.

Among the things that we can do relatively quickly are reinstitute many of our devotional practices: recitation of the Rosary (perhaps while a priest is in the confessional), exposition (perhaps while a priest is in the confessional) followed by benediction, novenas on weeknights (perhaps with a priest in the confessional), processions… litanies… vespers… Forty Hours Devotion.

PROCESSIONS!  More processions!  Less chatter!

FORTY HOURS!   If there was ever a time in the life of the Church when we needed to recover the practice of FORTY HOURS DEVOTION… not pretend Forty Hours… not dumbed-down Forty Hours … but REAL Forty Hours, it’s now.

Undiluted… unblended… undaunted… unmodified… unapologetic… traditional Forty Hours Devotion.

Thus endeth the rant.

We are our rites.

God, Our Father, with Your mighty steering hand guide Your priests and bishops out of the fog of worldly notions and onto a course of true renewal.

God, Our Savior and High Priest, chart onto the minds and hearts of Your sons a destination of a traditional priestly identity for our turbulent context here and now.

God, Holy Spirit, fill Your sons with zeal and with the courage to persevere when stormy resistance will rise from the agents of the Enemy.

Mary, Queen of the Clergy, put your protecting mantle over your sons who will be persecuted by their brethren and superiors when they implement traditional worship.

St. Joseph, Protector of Christ, Protector of the Church, guide the efforts of your sons to build up the Temple of God for worthy worship according to the virtue of Religion.

Holy Angels, guard us from evil and prompt us to do good.

And an old initiative which is especially relevant with a new Pope!

ACTION ITEM! Be a “Custos Traditionis”! Join an association of prayer for the reversal of “Traditionis custodes”.