Traditional Catholic Latin Mass

To learn about the Traditional Latin Mass go to www.sanctamissa.org this site will be very helpful to all (priest, seminarians, servers, sacristans and the lay)

PRAYER REQUESTS

For some reasons this blog will be transformed into a Traditional Latin Mass Blog... Articles and news will soon be posted. Those who would like to know the reasons for the change may email fatimadevotion@yahoo.com, please give a little introduction of yourself. Tahnk you.

In as much as I would like you to update about the LDB many reasons hindered me to do so. Thank you and please continue to pray.

Friday, January 30, 2009

FR. BRNAKIN'S HOMILY IV

Permission to publish the homilies of Fr. Anthony Brankin was obtained via email: Below is the permission reply:
dear brother Joseph, you certainly have my permission to reprint any homilies you like-- and translate them as well. I am sure your translation will be fine. I must search for pictures of our Mass-- we have had some beautiful Solemn High requiem masses at which photographs were taken- but I am not sure where the photos went. of course we have a High Mass (cantata) every sunday.
Prayerfully in Him'
FrBrankin


Latin Mass Homily IV
Latin Mass - St Odilo - 2007
You will forgive me if I dwell one more Sunday on the new permission the Pope has given for the celebration of the old Latin Mass—which he names the Mass of John XXIII. I just cannot relegate it to last week’s news.

Along with teaching ever more clearly that the Catholic Church is the One True Church of Christ—this permission for the Latin Mass will define for all time—the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

It is also my fondest hope that we at St. Odilo in the near future might be able to bring this Mass back with some regularity and all of its beauty.
I think it would be wonderful for the life of this parish and for the spiritual life of all this area. We could be a center of the best of Catholic tradition, the best of Catholic worship—the best of Catholic music and art. And all of that would become a magnet to draw people to Christ. For is that not why we are here? For us to draw closer to Jesus ourselves and then draw others.

And truly that is one of the hopes of His Holiness, Benedict XVI—that if the Old Latin Mass is freed up, and people and priests become more familiar with it— it will have a wonderful effect on the way we celebrate and understand the English mass.

Now some people might say—how could that ever happen—how could people pray in a Mass that is not only in Latin but where the priest for almost the whole Mass is turned away from the people—he has his back to them. First he is mumbling in Latin and then for all practical purposes it looks as if he is ignoring them—avoiding them—hiding from them.

But that is not what he is doing. He is actually facing God. Since the priest addresses the prayers to God the Father, it makes sense for the priest to face God rather than the people while saying those prayers.

The word used by the Church to explain why he is facing that way is “Orientation”. He is symbolically facing the East—the Orient—the direction of the Dawn—the city of Jerusalem—the moment of Easter – Jesus’ Final coming in Glory.

Orthodox churches are very strict about this—and they would never even build a church unless it was literally facing East. We Latins we Romans were always more relaxed about that—we were satisfied as long as we considered the priest to be facing the symbolic east.

I know we are so accustomed to the priest looking at us when he says the Mass, but what can accidentally happen is that we begin to feel as if the priest is talking to us.

I sometimes wonder when I am standing there facing the congregation if the impression I am giving is not that I am addressing God but that I am discussing wonderful things about God.

I remember years ago in Cicero at Our Lady of Charity—it was bitterly cold out one morning—10-15 below— and at the 6:30 Mass that day there was just the altar boy and I. And he asked me, “Father, if nobody shows up, who you will say the Mass to?”
I answered, of course, “…to God.”

But it dawned on me that this little boy and maybe a few others—kind of thought the Mass was about the priest giving a sort of lesson to the people regarding God and holy things—rather than the Mass being an objective act of sacrificial worship.

We must realize that the priest is not turning his back to us as if he were preventing us from taking part in something that is his private personal possession. Ironically that can happen when he does face the people, because there is the temptations to believe that in order for his congregation to get all they can out of the Mass they need his endless explanations and exhortations. That it is somehow all up to him—and that he better make it peppy and snappy or it won’t work.
If facing the same way tell us anything it tells us this ritual, this ceremony is not about the priest or his personality or his flip quips or his leadership style-- that he is not the Bob Barker of Roman Catholicism-- but rather that he is the humble unworthy representative of God’s people—and he stands with them and before them as the one who leads us to the mystic Calvary of Christ— all of us marching together to the New Jerusalem.

This is not a different understanding of the Mass. It is what we believe about every mass—and what we have always believed whether the Mass was in English or Latin—whether the priest faced the people or facing God. What always takes place is the invisible unbloody Sacrifice of Christ.

What the Pope’s new permission about the Mass means is that we will more clearly understand what we believe. We will see something in the celebration of either Mass that will teach us something about every mass

FR. BRANKIN'S HOMILY III

Permission to publish the homilies of Fr. Anthony Brankin was obtained via email: Below is the permission reply:

dear brother Joseph, you certainly have my permission to reprint any homilies you like-- and translate them as well. I am sure your translation will be fine. I must search for pictures of our Mass-- we have had some beautiful Solemn High requiem masses at which photographs were taken- but I am not sure where the photos went. of course we have a High Mass (cantata) every sunday.
Prayerfully in Him'
FrBrankin


Latin Mass Homily III
Latin Mass - St Odilo 2007
You will forgive me for continuing with what has basically become a little series on the Pope’s recent ruling that any group or priest can now say the old Latin Mass—which he calls the Mass of Pope John XXIII.

But I have to keep talking about it. I think of this as such a huge thing—because it has something incredibly important to do with our prayer life as Catholics—and with the most important and powerful prayer we can say—the Mass.

There is not one of us who was alive during the 60’s who would have ever predicted that the Mass as we knew from our youth would ever return. We all thought it was dead.

The whole world thought it was dead. Even the Pope when he was a Cardinal said he thought it was incredible that the older way of celebrating Mass was now actually despised by some people—and the Cardinal asked how could that have ever occurred—that the thing we considered our holiest prayer—the liturgy that defined us was now outlawed; and if you liked the old Mass you were somehow disobedient and disloyal to the Church of Christ?

And it is true that the Pope contended for months with the American and French Bishops who were absolutely opposed to allowing freedom for Catholics to go to that mass.

Everyone was wondering- how would the Bishops finally respond to what the Pope was planning?

Well I think this Document is the Pope’s response to the Bishops—to their failures over the past 40 years— in passing on the faith— in maintaining a Catholic culture of life and family—in fostering vocations and devotion to the Mass. The Pope more or less said, “You have had forty years to make it all work—well here is my response to you.”

And I am sure the Pope is confident that many good things will come to us from the Old Mass being celebrated more openly and freely. Many graces will come into our lives and into the life of the Church.

First of all there will be a good influence on the way we priests and people celebrate the New mass—the Mass of Paul VI. By occasionally celebrating the old Mass we will understand more clearly that there is something so special about all masses—that it is not worship service consisting of songs and homilies and prayers—strung together in some order.

We will learn very subtly that the Mass is not about the sermon—though it better be good. It is not about the music—though that must be good as well. When from time to time we celebrate the old Mass in Latin with everyone facing in the same direction- with a hundred more genuflections and signs of the cross and blessings and altar- kissings, we will learn that the Mass is an objective act of worship—beyond the priest—beyond the people—a set ceremony at which the Son of God comes down upon our altars and makes present for us --from 2000 years ago-- His own Sacrifice.

Now I can imagine there are a lot of people who might say, “Mass in Latin? You have got to be kidding! No one knows Latin anymore. Maybe no one even knew it in the old days. Why on earth would anyone want to do a worship service in a language they do not understand? That they can’t have the faintest idea of what is going on.”

Well that’s a good point except that it fails to acknowledge that we understand many things in our world without our spoken language being involved. Do we need a brochure to understand Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? Would a Chopin piano concerto be better if there were words?

Why doesn’t the Sistine Chapel have cartoon bubbles over the saints’ heads to tell us what is going on?

Because we do not always need our language to understand something. We need light and dark, sound and silence, motion and stillness. We don’t need a line by line translation of the Mass—all we need to know is that somehow Christ has given himself up for us as our Sacrifice and then given Himself to us as our Food. It is the gestures and movement, the sounds and sights that tell us that—and maybe more surely than words by themselves.

Latin, English, Spanish, Bohemian—it doesn’t make a difference—the words act as a vehicle for the real movement in the Mass which is our hearts being carried-- in a sense-- wordlessly, through the heart of the priest to the very heart of God. Heart speaks to heart-

And the proof that the Mass is deeper than words is that that way of saying Mass nourished a whole Catholic society for centuries and centuries. My parents went to that Mass—as did my grandparents and great grandparents-- on and on for millennia. My people spoke Irish and Italian before they spoke English—and the last time anyone in my family spoke Latin was around the Fall of the Roman Empire: but they had no problems understanding so deeply what was going on in the Mass. It was about Jesus and them.

I have no doubt that my vocation came while serving that Mass at St. Rita’s—And I didn’t know Latin any better than the 6th grader next to me -- but I loved the Mass—and wanted to be a priest.

We know that the vocations of millions of young men to the priesthood and women to the sisterhood was nourished at that Mass—and this despite the fact they did not really know Latin.

In the final analysis no one needs to hear or understand the literal meaning of every word or any word. It is enough to know that somehow Christ is being offered in an unbloody manner for the sake of our souls.

And if you know that—you know what the Mass is all about.

FR. BRANKIN'S HOMILY II

Permission to publish the homilies of Fr. Anthony Brankin was obtained via email: Below is the permission reply:
dear brother Joseph, you certainly have my permission to reprint any homilies you like-- and translate them as well. I am sure your translation will be fine. I must search for pictures of our Mass-- we have had some beautiful Solemn High requiem masses at which photographs were taken- but I am not sure where the photos went. of course we have a High Mass (cantata) every sunday.
Prayerfully in Him'
FrBrankin



Latin Mass Homily II
LATIN MASS - St. Odilo - 2007
This evening I thought I would talk about the new permission that Pope Benedict XVI has given for the celebration of the “old Latin Mass”. It is such an extraordinary thing in the life of the Church—to bring back that way of saying Mass— that I just don’t think it is proper to ignore or simply relegate to last week’s news what the Pope has actually done.

There is not a soul in this church today who thirty years ago would not have believed that the old Latin Mass was dead. Dead and lost to the Ages. But His Holiness has said that that older form of worship cannot die—because it is so beautiful, so rich in history and human experience and supernatural value that it must not be withheld from the world any longer—it must not be lost to the world that so badly needs it. And so he has freed it.

Of course, there is a whole crew out there—including bishops— who are beside themselves with outrage charging that the Pope is rolling back the reforms of Vatican II. That he is returning us to the Dark Ages where it was priest vs. people. Well he is not doing any of the sort.

The Pope does note in his instruction to the Bishops that he is rolling back what he terms the mistakes of the Church leaders for the past 40 years and he is decreeing simply that those people who wish to go to the older form of Mass now have complete and total freedom to do so.

What could be less threatening?

He could have said, “Time out, the noble experiment of the 60’s is over. It didn’t work.” He could have looked at the lack of vocations—the empty seminaries and convents, he could have looked at the ever-lowering number of people who go to Mass—the ever-increasing number of Catholic people for whom the Church and her teaching means nothing—he could have said, “Well whatever we changed about the Mass in the 60’s—thinking it was going to help—well… it didn’t—so everybody back to the old ways.”

But he didn’t say that because he knew in his heart of hearts that huge immediate changes are problematic—at least when it comes to the Mass. He has long taught that the Mass grows and changes—organically—slowly—little by little over the course of centuries. Many centuries. That you cannot say to a committee—“Give me a way of saying Mass that will be peppy and modern and get everybody praying.” It would be nice if it were that easy.

But it doesn’t work that way. Offering worship to God is the most sacred thing people can do, and there is an instinct on the part of people—that you really ought not change things too drastically—or that will unbalance the people—tip them over the wrong edge—and make them lose whatever successful path to God they may have had.

That is one of Pope Benedict’s points: that when we changed the Mass back in the 60’s – it was done too harshly. It was imposed from above and came from academics instead of from the people.

The Pope has taught many times over the last few years—and even before he was the Pope-- that the only way the Mass can ever be changed is to let it naturally and slowly adjust itself to whatever is going on around it—that the Mass ideally is to be left to itself to develop over time— to grow from natural changes that bubble up from the people themselves—not from committees of scholars. And little by little those changes, subtle and delicate, take hold, and, over the centuries, and spread from country to country- culture to culture.

The Mass that Peter and the Apostles said—and at which the earliest Christians assisted—used songs and readings from the Bible and an early version of the Eucharistic Prayer and in some similar order to what we have always seen. The first few years it was probably a bit loose, but within a few decades the Mass began to take a definite shape and pattern. It started to lock in. The priest and the people faced the Cross together—there is a genuflection here, a sign of the cross there-- and pretty soon each province of the Empire had its own set manner of doing the Mass.

And in that way, over the slow march of centuries, in a world of cataclysms and invasions and turmoil and strife, the Mass becomes the only constant. The way in which the Mass is celebrated, the music that is sung, the language which is used—all of it becomes a great comfort to the people.

Yes, the Mass always changed and always developed—but so slowly, that it could link generations to each other—I am linked to my father and to my grandfather and then we even to Charlemagne—pretty much the same mass. And that is kind of amazing.

So what the Pope is saying is that many of the changes in the Mass after the Vatican council were a little too artificial and superficial and gave some of us the impression that the Mass was more about creativity and entertainment than about the sacrifice of Christ.

More than that he is saying that if we had ever been given the impression that that old way of saying Mass was forbidden and terrible and to be thrown away—well that impression was wrong.

He wants us to be confident that the older way of Mass has its own special genius and beauty and grace—which we in this modern world cannot afford to dismiss or lose. And that we can learn how better to worship God from the old Mass being celebrated alongside the New Mass.

I am convinced that His Holiness has a vision that in a hundred years the good elements from the Mass of John XXIII and the good elements from the Mass of Paul VI will coalesce-- organically and naturally-- into a most fruitful and beautiful Mass of some future Pope.

But for now he says that those who find that they can pray better at one Mass or another, well, as a wise loving father, the Pope has said, “Please do so.”

FR. BRANKIN'S HOMILY 1 (Latin Mass)

Permission to publish the homilies of Fr. Anthony Brankin was obtained via email: Below is the permission reply:
dear brother Joseph, you certainly have my permission to reprint any homilies you like-- and translate them as well. I am sure your translation will be fine. I must search for pictures of our Mass-- we have had some beautiful Solemn High requiem masses at which photographs were taken- but I am not sure where the photos went. of course we have a High Mass (cantata) every sunday.
Prayerfully in Him'
FrBrankin


Homily 1
LATIN MASS – St. Odilo-- 2007
You may have noticed in the papers recently that Pope Benedict XVI has just issued a document about the Old Latin Mass. In a nutshell, the Pope is decreeing that this Mass will be available again for priests and people and parishes who desire it. He is not demanding that we all have to go back to the old Mass. He is just saying that this Mass is so beautiful; its riches should be available for the whole world and not lost any longer.

I was privileged to be able to say that Mass almost every week for about ten years in my last assignment. And truth to tell I learned a lot—including how to celebrate the regular English Mass more properly.

I learned that it actually has very little to do with Latin—because most of it is whispered or sung. It has very little to do with the age of the congregation—I found that half of the congregation that went to that Mass were too young to have ever even seen it before. I remember one young woman who went to it the first time and her reaction was “Awesome.’

Anyway I remember when we were first asked by Cardinal Bernardin to begin providing the Old Latin Mass for the Southside. It took at least three months of preparation. I remember hunting down and obtaining the old altar cards, the appropriate candlesticks, the right vestments, the correct books, training the altar boys and preparing them for a ritual they had never even seen before.

And that wasn’t all, because I had to learn to say Mass all over again—only this time in the Latin style. I practiced it three or four times a day- a dry practice Mass- I even practiced on the dining room table. I had to learn, study, and memorize every new sign of the cross and genuflection- and there are dozens more of them than in the English Mass.

I had to learn New chants, new notation—new language. There are turns and steps that you must do—this way and not that way. Your arms are to be held thus far and no farther. There are three voices—spoken, soft, and whispered. Nothing is left to chance nothing is left to the design or creativity of the celebrant because if anything is clear by the way you have to say the Mass in exactly this way and no other—is that the Mass is not about the priest and his ever-bubbly personality or even the people. This is about Jesus. And all the little personalisms that we priests tend to do only distract from Him. If you learned anything learning how to say the Latin Mass—you learned that this was one serious prayer.

And as nervous as I ever get- which is not that nervous- I was concerned that everything be done properly- that we dot our i’s and cross our t’s, that this incredible departure from everything to which we had grown so accustomed over the previous three decades would be successful- or at least that we would not be lynched by irate parishioners..

By the time I was finished celebrating my first Latin Mass, I was startled. I don’t know what I was expecting but I said to myself, “That was truly beautiful! What a wonderful prayer! What beautiful texts! What dignified prayers and gestures and movements.”

What startled me was that the impression that the liturgical establishment had made for all the years since the 60’s- was that even the gentlest yearning to see the old mass again- the faintest curiosity about it--was dark and sick and spiritually corrupt.

If I had ever breathed a word in my seminary that I was curious about the Old Mass, I really think they would have tossed me—because that Latin Mass stuff was outlaw religion. When you think of how difficult it was to get permission to say that Mass, you might have thought you were asking to slaughter chickens on the altar.

That is why it is so marvelous to read this document because His Holiness is telling us this Latin Mass has its place in the Church—right alongside the new—that each way of saying mass will inform and improve the other and we—the members of the Church will be all the richer for it.
Stay tuned.

Monday, January 26, 2009

PERPETUAL PROFESSION


Ang mga larawan sa ibaba ay kuha nuong Perpetual Profession nina Br. Jose at Br. Arvin. Matagumpay naman na naidaos ang gawain at ang Lingkod ng Dambana ng Barnabite ang naglingkod sa pagdiriwang. CONGRATULATIONS PO!













Ave Maria (Cello)