What a splendid Magazine the "Friends of the Ordinariate" produce! Accessible and literate articles appear about Ordinariate matters, and often about what I think of as "the prehistory of the Ordinariate". The latter might contain fascinating information about Anglicans of earlier generations who became Catholics; and the current Winter 2023 number has a fine piece by Nicolas [note the correct spelling of this name] Ollivant about Hartwell de la Garde Grissell ... who founded this University's Newman Society and became a personal friend of Pius IX. He lived at number 60 in the High ... now, I gather, a forgotten victim of Road Widening.
Grissell amassed a magnificent collection of relics for his private Oratory in the High; and arranged for their preservation after his own death. His collection also included a painted picture of our Lady of Mercy.
On January 3, 1869, Pope Pius IX had blessed and indulgenced this picture of Our Lady of Mercy, to be the focus in a shrine of Our Lady of Oxford. On June 10, in the same year, the pontiff granted another indulgence ... were Grissell and Pio Nono both Jacobites? Most of Grissell's relics were burned or otherwise destroyed during the ruthless Gestapo occupation of the Catholic Chaplaincy, but happily the picture remains ... in a smart new Relics Chapel in Saint Alyogger's church ... but I will write no more about this because it would be best for you to acquire a copy of Friends of the Ordinariate. It contains a photograph of a painting of Grissell. (Indeed, why not become a member of that admirable organisation?)
Pio Nono marked his appreciation of his own friendship with Grissell by making him, in 1869, a Chaplain of Honour to the Roman Pontiff. The image of our Lady of Oxford survived the Jesuits. Sadly, S Paul VI suppressed all those dear old ''partial indulgences" with periods of time attached to them, and this affected S Aloysius' Church as much as it did the rest of the suffering world. But the old Oxford indulgences have now been regranted, albeit in the misarithmic modern style: Salve Regina, (in the old days, this had merited 100 days); the Litany of Loreto (got you 300 days).
The Saturday before the 4th Sunday in July is the liturgical commemoration of Our Lady of Oxford, piggybacking on Our Lady of Mercy. The Mass is the Common of the BVM with a proper collect; it is in some editions of the Appendix pro aliquibus locis but I can find no example of it on any of the old British diocesan calendars. Here is the Collect:
Deus, cuius misericordiae non est numerus: concede nobis, sanctissima unigeniti tui Matre intercedente; ut hanc misericordiam largiter in terris, et gloriam consequi mereamur in caelis. Per.
A bit odd, fixing the celebration for a time when the University is mostly Down?
Subject to your approval, this seems like an appropriate opportunity to share my mother’s conversion story. It is not first and foremost an intellectual journey like Newman’s, but it does bear witness to the powerful intercession of Our Lady.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was brought up as a middle-of-the-road Anglican. She came from a respectable working class English family, fairly typical of the ‘inter-war’ years of the last century.
While studying to be a nurse, she became close friends with a fellow student who was a prayerful, practicing Catholic. One day, her friend gave my mother a rosary and offered to teach her how to use it. My mother accepted the gift but declined the offer of deeper explanation. She put the rosary in a coat pocket and promptly forgot about it.
A little while later, another nurse, also a Catholic, invited my mother to attend a séance. My mother said she was instinctively suspicious of such things and refused at first, but under intense pressure from the other girl together with a couple of like-minded students, she eventually gave in and went along.
The séance apparently didn’t work as expected and after several attempts to ‘contact the spirits’ the medium became very agitated, ordering everyone present to turn out their pockets. When my mother pulled out the rosary, the medium angrily accused her of being the problem.
My mother told me that she instantly thought, “Well, if this (the rosary) is the opposite of what they’re trying to do, I want to know more about it”. She shortly went off to the local Catholic parish church with her good friend and asked for instruction in The Faith. She later married her friend’s brother who therefore became my father. He was a good man who gave great witness to the corporal works of mercy, but it is to my mother that I owe my primary doctrinal and spiritual formation.
ReplyDeleteSo much agree with you about the Ordinariate magazine. A year ago my Winter 22 copy got swept up with other documents and "filed". It resurfaced this week and I so enjoyed reading about Abbot Sir David Hunter- Blair. What a period piece. The more recent and delightful Mgr Gilbey seems cut from the same cloth with a similar drawing-room and country house apostolate . A priest friend, accused of a similar focus, tartly replied " the rich have souls, too" and the gospels indicate they may need their priests at least as much as we all do.