S Andrew and the British Ordinariate

A very happy and holy Name Day to all those splendid people whose Patron Saint is S Andrew!

You don't need to be a Scotsman to have a devotion to S Andrew. His cultus is embedded also in the history of English Christianity in a way which goes back to the Roman origins of our Liturgy even before S Augustine had arrived off the shores of Kent. And it is most happily bound up with those heady days when England, after the Henrician schism, was reconciled to the See of S Andrew's brother.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, gives, for the most part, the same Sunday Collects, Epistles, and Gospels as the Missal of S Pius V. But the Reading and Gospel for the Sunday Next Before Advent (taken, like most such Prayer Book material, from the medieval Sarum Rite) were, unlike the other Epistles and Gospels After Trinity, quite different from those in S Pius V's edition of the Roman Rite. Not because of some sort of Protestant jiggery-pokery; they are thoroughly respectable lections offered to us by our ancient Western Catholic Tradition; they go back to the earliest Roman lectionaries, the Comes of Wuerzburg and Murbach.

The old Gregorian Roman ... and the Prayer Book ... Gospel thus provided contains the John 6 account of the Miraculous Feeding, which is not only suitable as an eschatological meditation on the Messianic Banquet, but also gives prominence to S Andrew. I wonder if this is one reason why that pericope got selected; it was chosen at the time when the Sunday readings in the 'Green' seasons often reflected the themes of adjacent great festivals.  And S Andrew is, in the authentic ancient Roman Tradition, a very major solemnity indeed; an all-night vigil was held and the 'Leonine Sacramentary' offered three Masses in addition to the Vigil Mass; possibly because of S Andrew's closeness to S Peter?

The English Church, so laudably permeated by Romanita in its early days, perpetuated this superb  'Andreian' bias. The 'Leofric Missal', before it made its way to eleventh century Exeter and then, at the Reformation, to the Bodleian Library in this University, started its life as the working book of the Archbishops of Canterbury and has been thought by its (immensely painstaking) most recent editor (Henry Bradshaw Society 1999-2002) probably to have been copied from books brought from Rome to Canterbury by the Augustinian Mission. In its provision for the Consecration of Churches, this book appears to reflect a situation in which S Andrew is having a great many churches dedicated in his honour (i.e. it incorporates a Consecration prayer specifically relating to just this one Saint). And in fact, the percentage of 'Andreian' churches in England is well above statistical expectation. After all, S Gregory the Great named his great monastery on the Caelian Hill (from which S Augustine and his fellows came) after S Andrew, and it was pretty certainly he who added S Andrew to the Libera nos [the Saint is absent from its pre-Gregorian form found in Stowe].

What a shame that the Novus Ordo has so very little respect for this 'Andreian' tradition: It actually makes it impossible to celebrate an External Solemnity on an adjacent Sunday ('Christ the King' does a pincer movement with Advent Sunday to put paid to any such possibility). 

Yet his Feast was the splendiferous, coruscating day in 1554 on which Parliament begged Good King Philip and Good Queen Mary to intercede with her kinsman, the Legate, and Cardinal Pole reconciled this Kingdom to the Unity of S Peter. Salve festa dies: it was also the day, in 1569, when Frs Peirson and Plumtree reconciled the diocese of Durham to Catholic Unity and sang High Mass in that amazing Cathedral.

Unity Day!! A day, surely, to gather ones right-thinking friends, at least in spirit; to stoke up the fire and to line the bottles up; nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.

Your Christmass List

 You could do worse than to put this book onto your Christmass list ... whether of Things you wish to receive or Things you wish to give.

APOLOGIA a Memoir, by Fr Aidan nichols, is precisely what it says on the tin. And it is precisely the book to read if you have been wondering what has happened to Fr Aidan during these dark days in which the agents of a questionable regime have been trying to destroy Catholicism.

Here, for a taster, is Father's account of how he himself discovered God when

" ... on a day trip from Interlaken to Geneva, in my thirteenth year, I went into the Russian church (a triumph--I later learned--of the revived Muskovite style, built by the Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna, the sister-in-law of Alexander I) and gazed at the iconostasis. With the speed of a moment I took in the implications of the icons of Christ and his Mother and their veneration by a member of the faithful, who made a profound bow, then planted a kiss and by way of continued homage lit a taper. This was the incarnate Lord, the personal God made human in the Blessed Virgin--a notion that no account of compulsory church attendance at school had managed to instill."

I think I recall Chesterton ... can any verify or find this? ... suggesting that religious education in schools should be taken off the curriculum and replaced by the presence in each classroom of a statue, 'the Virgin and Child', to which each pupil should be taught to make a profound bow.

Moi, I remember how moved I was, aged about eleven, by the little rococo village churches in the Austrian Tyrol .

Dubia addressed to Cardinal Roche

Dear Eminence

I would be grateful if you could some resolve some Dubia relating to the legislative document Traditionis Custodes.They concern the requirement that the lections be in the vernacular.

(1) When the congregation is linguistically very mixed, how is a celebrant to establish which vernacular he is to use?

(2) When a congregation is mixed and divided by political or cultural antipathies (for example, part Russin and part Ukrainan), how is a celebrant to proceed?

(3) When a congregation is predominantly of a vernacular which a celebrant does not himself even know well enough to read uncomprehendingly (ex. gr., Polish, Malayalam), how is that celebrant to proceed?

(4) It can be difficult to switch between languages differently structured. Latin, for example establishes its meaning through syntactical aggregations; English requires a speaker to group words ad sensum and at his own discretion. Your dicastery will have considered this problem scientifically by calling for vota on the problems concerned. Would it be possible for your dicastery to publish a representative selection of these vota, preferably in Latin?

Your Eminence's obedient Child and Servant

John Hunwicke

Tudor Pietas

From time to time, I remind readers of the dual directions in sense in liturgical texts of the words Pius  and Pietas: each may indicate God's duty, his faithfulness, to us ('loving-kindness') or ours towards him ('true religion'). In the secular politics of the New Testament period, in Augustan Rome, a further game was often played out.

Pius referred to one who fulfilled his duties (Country, Family, Gods,etc.); there was an opposite, Scelestus (derived from Scelus, Sceleris), which meant not simply one who failed to be pius but someone who behaved in the deliberately, categorically, opposite sort of way. 

Vergil's Aeneid is the quintessential literary example of this. Students who have been dumped into a few hundred or so lines of the Aeneid may think that Dido and Lerve are its themes. They are not; it is the last page that offers and resolves the theme. Aeneas has Turnus at his mercy; Turnus is the hubristic killer of the Boy Pallas. Despite everything, Aeneas suddenly has a temptation to clementia. But then he sees the baldric, balteus, which Turnus had ripped from the Boy ... and so,with renewed fury, Aeneas kills Turnus, claiming that it is Pallas who truly is killing Turnus: "Pallas immolat et poenas scelerato ex sanguine sumit". (Beautiful Esses!!)

Vengeance, ultio, is the great Augustan virtue ... the Temple of Mars Ultor is the 'plastic' symbol of this. 'Avenging my Father Caesar' was Octavian's central claim. But killing the killer of ... a boy ... goes even further, yet more resolutely, into virtuous vengeance.  

And this is what made the ideology of Aeneid XII so immensely useful to the Tudors: because Richard III had murdered the two princes , and thus deserved ... etc. ...

If he really had ... I hold no views on this and am expressing no bias.

There are two delightful little books in the British Library, from bang at the start of the Tudor period. The first has beautifully executed greyhounds ... a Tudor symbol. The book must date from between 1486 and 1487, and uses Royal colours blue and red (as well as the white and green Tudor livery colours). All this is to dignify prose and verse by the Italian humanist Giovanni Gigli, 1434-1498, later Bishop of Worcester (I don't thnk he was the sort of bishop you phoned up if you had a leak in the vestry roof), but at that moment a seller of indulgences and ... a revealing combination ... a writer of the purest classicisng Latin verse. He makes it clear that he expects Richard Fox, bishop-designate of Exeter and one of Henry VII's closest buddies, to show his verses to the King. 

The second little book, dating from1485/6, was designed to be be presented to another of Henry's innermost circle, the future Cardinal Morton, and contains a treatise on Canonisation ... which must derive its relevance from the Cause of Henry VI.

Henry VII's position had been less secure than hindsight might assume; it was but months since he himself had invaded the realm and, with very slight title, seized the crown. Gigli, in his epithalamium celebrating Henry's marriage, could find little better with which to buttress this royal coup than the claim that the realm was "owed" to Tudor from his uncle Henry VI and that, in any case, placating the manes of murdered boys entitled the Ultor of such scelera to the kingdom of the tyrannus ... a neatly Gordian way through a knot ... provided, of course, that Richard really was the killer ...

Gigli's verses suggested that the young prince Arthur was destined to be the first monarch of a great new Arthurian dynasty.

A clutch of Marian Hymns

 There is are features in the Votive Office of the Miraculous Medal which I find intriguing.

The rubrics indicated that, unless otherwise ordered, the Office should be the same as that of the Votive Office of the Immaculate Conception ... about which I wrote quite recently. That Office is what you will find in your Breviary, if you use a twentieth century edition. Here is the first stanza of the Mattins hymn.

Praeclara custos Virginum,/ Intacta Mater Numinis,/ Caelestis aulae ianua,/ Spes nostra, caeli gaudium.//

This is recorded as having been composed in the seventeenth century by an unknown author, for the feast of the Purity of Mary, which used to be observed on the Third Sunday in October (these Sunday, October, Votives of our Lady are something else I wrote about recenly).

But there is another similar hymn, composed for the Office of our Lady of Lourdes, said to have been written by Pope Leo XIII himself in 1891. It has the line Intacta Mater Numinis ... one presumes that the Admirable Pontiff enjoyed the sound and rhythm! The 1960s 'reformers' ... you know what I'm going to say ... disliked it so much that they cut it out!.

However, in the hymn provided for the Votive Office of the Immaculate Conception, we find this stanza: Tutela praesens omnium,/ Salveto Mater Numinis;/ Intacta in Hevae filiis, /Tu foeda mundes pectora.//

The style of this stanza resembles closely the style of the hymn said to have been composed by Leo XIII. I have wondered who might be its author.

Another interesting feature: its 'doxology' is not really a doxology at all. "Jesu, tuam qui finiens/ Matrem dedisti servulis,/ Precante Matre, filiis/ Largire coeli gaudia. Amen." 

What should one make of this bold break with Tradition?

The Miraculous medal, S John Henry Newman, and the Anglican Patrimony

My excuse for reprinting, yet again, this piece from 2010, is that the Feast of the Miraculous Medal (this year, Monday November 27) is happily close, and, in accordance with the CDF legislation of March 2000, this Mass, from the pro aliquibus locis appendix in the 1962 Missal, together with the accompanying Divine Office, is available for optional use. 

Given the connections with our beloved Patron S John Henry Newman, I venture to suggest its suitability to all my brethren in the presbyterate of the Ordinariate.

On Saturday 27 November 1830, a young French nun, (S) Catherine Laboure, beheld her second and third visions of the Mother of God in the Sanctuary of her Convent Chapel in the Rue du Bac in Paris. Our Lady appeared to her, radiant, standing on a globe, and with her arms stretched out in a compassionate gesture. From her fingers rays of light fell upon the globe at her feet. An oval frame then formed around her with gold lettering that read: O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Our Lady promised great graces to those who wore this design with confidence; she showed the Saint the design which now appears on the back of the Miraculous Medal: a large M surmounted by a bar and cross, with two hearts beneath it, one crowned with thorns, the other pierced with a sword, all encircled by twelve stars.

In 1836, Abbe Desgenettes, who had taken over the Church of Our Lady of Victories (a church degraded and desecrated during the Revolution and with a minute congregation), dedicated his parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and founded a Confraternity of Prayer, which had the Miraculous Medal as its badge. In the days before S John Henry Newman's conversion, intense prayer was offered for him in this Church by the members of that very same Fraternity. Back in Blighty, it was on the Octave Day of the Assumption in 1845 (a very patrimonial day: it was also the birthday of blessed Edward Bouverie Pusey!) that our great Saint first began to wear the Miraculous Medal.

Yes! The greatest intellect of the nineteenth century! Like the sort of simple peasant whom a snooty English protestant might despise, he wore a miraculous medal! Is there a sobering message here for our supercilious North European cultural pride? With his customary sweet irony, blessed Benedict XVI once observed that the devotion to our Lady's Immaculate Heart can be "surprising" "for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world"!  

Should we each be a little more thorough in rooting out of our own minds the sordid dregs of Enlightenment superstitions? 

I stand by my mixed metaphor!!

Now, please, we go back two or three years, to January 20, 1842. On this day, a wealthy Jewish banker called Alphonse Ratisbonne had, in the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, a vision of our Lady just as she appeared on the Miraculous Medal. Shunt forward ... please ... to 1847: S John Henry and St John (who, after their reception, had visited the shrine in Notre Dame des Victoires in thanksgiving for the prayers offered for him there) found themselves now awaiting admission to the presbyterate of the Latin Church, lodged in the Collegio di Propaganda in Rome. Newman makes clear in a number of letters that their windows looked down on the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte; it clearly made some considerable impression upon him.  

On June 9 1847, his long-time intimate woman friend, Maria Giberne, painted a picture of Newman and his friend St John in a room at Propaganda, with our Lady, as she appears on the Miraculous Medal, between the two of them.

In the 1962 Missal, in the Appendix pro aliquibus locis, November 27 is the feast of Our Lady Immaculate of the the Miraculous Medal. 

Let us hope that this commemoration, already lawful as an option in the Extraordinary Form, will one day make its way into the Calendar of the Patrimony!

Divine Warfare (2)

 In the Mattins hymn for the Feast of the Miraculous Medal on 27 November, we find the stanza Numisma quos ornat tuum/ Fove benigno lumine;/ Virtus sit inter proelia/ Aegis in hostes praepotens. (Those whom thy Medal adorns,/ Foster with kindly Light;/ May they have strength among their battles/ And may the Aegis be mightily powerful against their enemies.) Yes ... the second of those two lines might get you thinking ... but I want to concentrate on the Aegis: a regular piece of kit when Greek Gods open hostilities. Here is a modified version of a note on the Aegis by Professor Christian Fordyce of the University of Glasgow (founded by Pope Nicolas V in 1451 long before people learned to read or write in Edinburgh).

"Two different conceptions of the divine aigis appear in Homer--the result, probably, of the concurrence in the word of two homonyms, the one meaning 'hurricane', the other 'goat-skin'--and Virgil has taken over both. In Homer the aegis of Zeus is something which he takes up and brandishes in his hand to dismay mankind: it is dark, like the storm-clouds, and it was made for him by Hephaestus (Vulcan) the bronze-smith: so Apollo, when he has it, takes it in his hand to shake. The hurricane is represented as a weapon wielded by the god. That is clearly Virgil's picture of Jupiter's aegis at Aeneid VIII 354, where nigrantem and concuteret translate Homer. But elsewhere the aigis of Zeus is not dark but radiant and it is fringed, and that picture is elaborated when Athena (Minerva) has it: it seems to be conceived as something worn, with a tasselled fringe and with the Gorgon's head on it: she throws it about her shoulders and Ares (Mars) strikes her on it: so in Aeschylus the words suggest a garment hanging from the shoulders and filling with the wind. This is the form taken by representations of the aegis in art, where it is a sort of breast-armour bearing the Gorgon's head in the centre, surrounded by wreathed snakes (so it was in the Parthenon statue) and this is the aegis which Virgil describes as being made for Pallas by the Cyclopes."

The dominant imagery is of our Enemies being thoroughly terrified ... it will make their hair stand on end (horrifica). Remember that Papa Pecci was a Classicist!

The Liturgy of the Miraculous Medal ... (1)

 I tried, in mid-November, to give readers a feel for how the Mass and Office of the Latin Churches were before the pontificate of S Pius X and his consequent changes. I rather feel that we should appreciate the instincts of priests and peoples during that period when the Newmans and the Mannings, Wisemans, Fabers were worshipping ... like the Pope in Rome and Latin clergy throughout the world. The changes made in the first decade or so of the twentieth century were really fairly radical in how they set aside the previous liturgical culture.

Today, a bit more on that part of the story ... focussing now on a Feast which was instituted to take place on November 27. So think yourself back, please, to the pontificate of Leo XIII ... intellectual, statesman, Classicist, fervent devotee of our Lady (Pope 1878-1903).

Leo XIII granted the Feast of the Manifestation of the Immaculate Virgin Mary Of the Sacred Medal; what we call the Miraculous Medal. S John Henry Newman began to wear the Medal on August 22 1845 ... even before his formal reception into the One Fold of the Redeemer. And I invite you to consider how the Feast came about.

The Clergy had previously been granted Votive Offices which they could say instead of the Breviary offices, so as to lighten their heavy load of liturgical prayer. One of these Votive Offices was of the Immaculate Conception of our blessed Lady. And the Office granted for November 27, Feast of the Miraculous Medal, begins with the rubrical direction "Everything as in the Votive office of the Immaculate Conception the BVM except for what follows". In other words, the 'Votive Offices' system had settled structurally (and comfortably) into the regular liturgical function of the Divine Office.

One of the 'exceptions' was that the Mattins hymn for the new Office was new. I have one or two things I would like to sayabout it.

But, for now, I propose to offer a few words about the Aegis (Aigis).  

Tomorrow.

 

The Usurping Orange (part 2; see yesterday's post)

PREFACE

The Eucharistick Sacrifice being the most efficacious Means for Pardon and Grace, ought to be perform'd with proportionable Care and Solemnity. And since the New Testament has given no Form for this Principal part of the Christian Worship, the safest way is to be govern'd by the Practice of the Ancient Church: Those early Times were best Judges of Apostolical Precedent and Tradition, most exemplary in their Lives, and most remarkably bless'd with the Effusions of the Holy Spirit.

By this Direction, as to Substance and Order, the following Communion-Office is drawn.

Thus at the placing the Elements on the Altar, there is a Prayer for Acceptance, abridg'd out of S Basil's Liturgy.

The most signal Instances of the Divine Providence and Bounty are likewise briefly recounted, as introductive to the Words of Institution. This Recital is Paraphrastically taken from S. James's Liturgy.

After the Words of Institution, the Prayer of Oblation and Invocation is subjoin'd from the Apostolical Constitutions: These Prayers are address'd for completing the Sacrifice, and giving it the highest degree of of Consecration. 

The Prayer for the whole State of Christ's Church is much the same with that in the First Reformed English Liturgy. But the Order is changed, by putting it after the Prayer for Consecration. For when the Sacrifice  commemorative of that upon the Cross, is finished, and God the Father propitiiated by this Memorial: 'tis then the most proper Time to declare the Ends of the Oblation, and recommend the Church to the Divine Protection.

The Introits or Psalms, which begin the Office, stand as they did in our first Reform'd Liturgy.

The Priest's pronouncing the Ten Commandments, with the People's Answer to each, are omitted for the Reasons following: 

First, The putting the Ten Commandments in the Communion-Office was not done by our First English Reformers, and is altogether Modern and Unprecedented.

Secondly, our Duty to God and our neighbour, comprised in the Ten Commandments, is comprehensively explain'd  in the Church-Catechism: The People therefore need only apply to this Instruction; thus they will have a fuller Notion for Practice, than can be gain'd by a bare Repetition of the Decalogue.

Thirdly, the keeping the Sabbath-Day holy is Part of the Mosaick Institution, points upon Saturday, and is peculiar to the Jewish Dispensation: Since therefore the Fourth Commandment looks somewhat foreign to the Christian Religion, since it could not well have been simply omitted, 'tis thought fit to wave repeating the rest: And, instead of this particular Rehearsal to give the Sum and Substance of the whole in our Blessed Saviour's Words, together with the People's Answer at the End of the Tenth.

The rest of the Office is the same with the English Liturgies, excepting that the Rubricks, for more Direction and Solemnity, are somewhar alter'd.

The Cross and the Chrism are restored in the Confirmation-Office. The Sign of the Cross is no less significant here, than In Baptism: It was so used in our First Reform'd Liturgy, and therefore there is no need of saying more about it. And as for the Chrism, it is an Emblem of Spritual Unction, of Grace conferr'd by the Holy Ghost; and with this Reference and Allusion it has been practised by the Primitive and Universal Churtch.

The Anointing with Oil in the Office for the Sick is not only supported by Primitive Practice, but commanded by the Apostle S. James. It is not here administered by way of Extreme Unction, but in order ro Recovery.

Upon the whole, here is nothing introduced without unexceptionable Warrant; nothing of Late Beginning; Here is no Application to Saints or Angels, no Worship of Images, no Praying the Dead out of Purgatory, no Adoration of the Consecrated Elements; nothing that supposes a Corporal Presence, either by Trans- or Con-substantiation; In short, nothing but what is Primitive and agreeable to Scripture, and practis'd by the best recommended and enlighten'd Ages.

The Usurping Orange (1)

When I was in teaching, I sometimes sprang a sudden General Knowlege Test. Into this test, I inserted the question "When was this kingdom of England last successfully invaded from abroad?". The fun here was watching as the dimmer students confidently scribbled down "1066" and then lounged lazily. The brighter students realised that Father H must be Up To Something, and fiddled uneasily.

I deemed the correct answer to be 1688". Because that was the year of the Dutch Invasion, the Orange Usurpation, which led to the current "Royal Family" (Sir Max Beerbohm used the entertaining phrase 'Smug Herrenhausen') being in situ.

All Office Holders ... including Clergy ... were required to swear allegiance to the New Usurping Orange. Clergy who declined to do so ... on the grounds that that they were already bound by their oaths to James VII and II ... were called Non-Jurors (Non-swearers). They were deprived; but they and their supporters regarded themselves as still the true Office Holders. And since several bishops were of this group, they were able to regard themselves and their group (though small) as the lawful, valid, Church of England. 

After some years, the group split. There were those who believed that they should maintain their legal claimed position by being strictly liturgically legal; but there were those who could not resist the temptation afforded by their position to make liturgical changes, This second group came to be called the 'Usagers'. The 'Usager' Eucharistic Liturgy of 1718 is to be found in Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, XL of the Alcuin Club Collections, London S.P.C.K. 1958, by W Jardine Grisbrooke, pp71 sqq..

But in the Library of Sion College, there is a Book of Common Prayer, which includes provision for every Anglican liturgical need. The 1718 liturgy is bound into it; but with alterations ... some of moment, others less so ... throughout. Its cataogue number, when I was last there, was ARC A35 16 N73 ... as long as I copied that correctly. I do not think the book was ever put into print.

In my next post, I plan to transcribe "THE PREFACE", which I consider to be of interest. Meanwhile, here is a 'Statement of Authority'. 

We Jeremy Collier and Thomas Brett Bishops of the Catholick Church in England do hereby with the unanimous consent of our Brethren the Priests then present receive and appoint this Book (with the Several insertions and deletions) to be our Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments & other rites and Ceremonies of the Church. Given under our hands this eleventh day of March in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and nineteen. Sign'd Jer; Collier Tho: Brett. Witness A Campbell  Geo Brown  Roger Laurence  Thos Deacon  John Rutter  Tho: Wagstaffe

November 21: Our Lady of Light, 1924, and Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964

Ninety nine years ago tomorrow, on the Feast of the Presentation of our Lady, November 21 1924, in the little Anglo-Catholic mining village of S Hilary in Cornwall, where Fr Bernard Walke so heroically worked and suffered to establish the Faith, one of his collaborators had a remarkable vision. Mother Theresa, Foundress of the Franciscan Servants of Jesus and Mary, describes it:
"We were preparing to go to church as usual just before 9 p.m.. It was a dark misty night, there was no moon and the stars were not showing at all. As I came down the stairs from my bedroom, I saw through a long window on the landing that there was a great glow of light shining all round the house and lighting up the fields beyond the house. My first thought was that there must be a fire somewhere, though the light was not red but white, and I called to Emma to come out with me to see from where it was coming. We went out of the front door, which opened straight on to a lane, and stood in the middle of the lane to see better.
"At the side of the house there was a gigantic figure, veiled and crowned in a dazzling, perfectly still light. The figure seemed to reach from the sky down to the ground. It was the figure of a woman but we saw no features, the face, as well as the rest of the figure, was veiled in the pure light. We could see the other's faces and the hedges in the lane, and the fields beyond the lane, quite clearly in this light. The figure did not move at all, though we stood silently watching it for nearly ten minutes, It was still there when we left and walked up to the church, but there was no sign of it when we returned in about three quarters of an hour. We did not speak, either that night or for a long time after, to one another about what we had seen.
"I think, while I was looking at the figure, I did not reflect at all on what I saw. I hardly even wondered at it, I watched with a great sense of quietness within myself and with no surprise. Afterwards, while we were praying in church, there came into my mind and soul a certainty that what we had seen concerned our Lady and must have been an apparition of her ... "

I think the most remarkable thing about this is that our Lady said nothing. There is Light: but there is nothing here of all the daily chatter and bustle reported from Medjugorje; instead, there is Silence! I am powerfully reminded of the Byzantine liturgical texts for our Lady's Presentation, with their incessant emphasis on the theme of Light. And we recall  another Byzantine perception, which links the sojourn of the Mother of God in the Temple with the hesychast ('silent') tradition of prayer. Yet I think it unlikely that the Cornish experience was a product of subconscious memories because I know of no evidence that Mother Foundress was a student of things Byzantine. Surely, it truly was Mary, Queen of Athos, the exemplar of hesychia, the prayer of Silence, who came to that Cornish lane in a great veil of Light, on this her Feast of Light and of Silence, and said nothing, and stood in silent prayer, and gave her Son's gift of Silence ('... perfectly still Light ... the figure did not move ... we stood silently ... I watched with a sense of great quietness ...'). The messages the Mother of God brings when her Son sends her among us do not always have to be verbal.

Oh dear ... I suppose this account raises the possibly contentious question of Appearances of our Lady to those not in full canonical communion with the See of Peter. The Catholic Church has never taught that such appearances are to be denied. Unitatis Redintegratio (3) teaches ...ex elementis seu bonis, quibus simul sumptis ipsa Ecclesia aedificatur et vivificatur, quaedam immo plura et eximia exstare possunt extra visibilia Ecclesiae catholicae saepta ... haec omnia, quae a Christo proveniunt et ad Ipsum conducunt, ad unicam Christi Ecclesiam iure pertinent (many of the good things by which the Church is built up can exist outside her visible boundaries, and they by right belong to her). This was far from an innovation in teaching; it expresses what had for centuries been Catholic praxis. And I can cite the fact that Eastern Catholic calendars today include liturgical commemorations of graces bestowed through the hands of the Mediatrix of All Graces extra visibilia Ecclesiae catholicae saepta. Subject to correction, I see no reason not to accept, as a private opinion, the probable authenticity of such reported visions. The Church, of course, reserves to herself the authoritative judgement about all such matters ... both within her visibilia saepta and outside them. Readers will remember the Apparitions in a Coptic context at Zeitun; and the appearances of our Lady of the Atonement to Anglicans not yet in Full Communion with the Holy See.

I will dare to go further. It seems to me that the powerful converging arguments for the authenticity of such an Apparition as this, on a day such as this, afford support to the teaching of Vatican II, about the authenticity of the Lord's gifts outside the visible boundaries of His Church; gifts which are graces truly belonging to the Church herself.

I have left parts of the original thread.

Barberini (2)

"Imploret, clementissime Domine, nostris opportunam necessitatem opem devote a nobis prolata meditatio, qua sanctus olim Joannes Chrysostomus, in hac basilica conditus, te cum beatissimis Apostolis Petro et Paulo repraesentavit sic colloquentem: Circumdate hanc novam Sion, et circumvallate eam: hoc est, custodite, munite, precibus firmate; ut quando irascor in tempore, et orbem terrae concutio, aspiciens sepulcrum vestrum nunquam desiturum, et quae libenter propter me geritis stigmata, iram misericordia vincam, et ob hanc percipiam vestram intercessionem. Etenim quando Sacerdotium et Regnum video  lacrymari, statim quasi compatiens ad commiserationem flector, et illius meae vocis reminiscor: Protegam urbem hanc propter David servum meum, et Aaron, sanctum meum. Domine, fiat, fiat, Amen, Amen."

That is the text of the prayer of which I yesterday provided a translation. It follows penitential prayers and versicles and responses imploring Apostolic intercessions. Then comes the exquisite and ancient prayer which serves as the Collect of the Vigil Mass of SS Peter and Paul ... and, finally, Imploret. 

Somebody out there will be able to explain it all. To me, its oddities include the combination of SS Peter and Paul, who are not buried in the same basilica ... was the prayer to be said at the sepulcre of each of them? Is the prayer connected with Pope Urban's Consecration of the [new] Basilica of S Peter? It surely can't have been part of the actual service of Dedication, because the Dedication of even quite a modestly sized church is a lengthy business, and no sane Pope (or MC) would want to add stuff. 

Does 'Regnum' simply nod politely to Ancien regime  polity, or does it mean the Papal States?

Most interesting to me is the theological implication that Urbs Roma is an ancient and venerable Sacramental in which the City represents and carries the symbolic weight of the city of YHWH, the Sion of God. That idea, of course, certainly goes back to the composition of the Mass of Laetare  Sunday and probably to the Empress Helena.