The Church Year: Mar. 31, 2012

Today is Saturday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 31, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

Tomorrow we begin Holy Week. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

Holy Week

138. “In Holy Week, the Church celebrates the mysteries of salvation accomplished by Christ in the last days of the earthly life, beginning with his messianic entry into Jerusalem.”

The people are notably involved in the rites of Holy Week. Many of them still bear the traces of their origins in popular piety. It has come about, however, that in the course of the centauries, a form of celebrative parallelism has arisen in the Rites of Holy Week, resulting in two cycles each with its own specific character: one is strictly liturgical, the other is marked by particular pious exercise, especially processions.

This divergence should be oriented towards a correct harmonization of the liturgical celebrations and pious exercises. Indeed, the attention and interest in manifestations of popular piety, traditionally observed among the people, should lead to a correct appreciation of the liturgical actions, which are supported by popular piety.

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I Am *So* Glad I Don’t Live Before This

Did You Know? Young American physician Crawford W. Long noticed that his friends felt no pain when they injured themselves while staggering around under the influence of ether (for fun). He realized its potential as a painkiller during surgery, and surgical anesthesia was used for the first time March 30, 1842. LEARN MORE.

The Church Year: Mar. 30, 2012

Today is Friday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 30, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

The Church: Worshipping Community

81. The Church, “gathered in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, is a worshipping community. By command of her Lord and Founder, the Church effects many acts of worship whose object is the glory God and the sanctification of man. In different ways and in different measure, these are all celebrations of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, and aimed at realizing the divine will to gather the scattered children [of the Father] into the unity of a single nation.

In her ritual actions, the Church proclaims the Gospel of salvation and announces the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and actualizes the work of his salvation in sacred signs. In the Eucharist she celebrates the memorial of his blessed Passion, his glorious Resurrection, and Ascension. In the celebration of the other sacraments she draws from the gifts of the Holy Spirit which flow from the Cross of our Savior. The Church glorifies the Father in psalms and hymns for the wonders that He has accomplished in the death and exaltation of Christ His Son, and supplicates that the saving mystery of Easter might reach all mankind. With the sacramentals which have been instituted to assist the faithful at various times and in various situations, she prays that their activity might be directed and enlightened by the Spirit of Easter.

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New! Self-Guided Bullets!

Did You Know? A newly developed 4″ bullet has the uber-cool ability to use its tiny fins to adjust its course during flight, making it easier to hit a moving target. Unfortunately, you still have to “paint the target” with a laser so the bullet knows what to hit. It isn’t yet at the ultra-uber-cool stage of being able to “lock on” to an unpainted target and pursue it. LEARN MORE.

The Church Year: Mar. 29, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

On March 29, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

80. Reference to the Most Blessed Trinity, while seminally present in popular piety, is an element requiring further emphasis. The following points offer an outline of how that might be done:

  • The faithful require instruction on the character of Christian prayer, which is directed to the Father, through the mediation of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • The formulae used in popular piety should give greater emphasis to the person and action of the Holy Spirit. The lack of a “name” for the Spirit of God and the custom of not representing him anthropomorphically have contributed to a certain absence of the Holy Spirit in the texts and formulae of popular piety, while not overlooking the role of music and gestures in expressing our relationship with the Holy Spirit. This lacuna, however, can be overcome by the evangelization of popular piety, as the Magisterium has already recommended on several occasions.
  • It is also necessary for popular piety to emphasize the primary and basic importance of the Resurrection of Christ. The loving devotion for the suffering of Christ, often demonstrated by popular piety, should also be completed by setting it in the context his glorification so as to give integral expression to the salvific plan of God as revealed in Christ, and allow for its inextricable link with his Paschal mystery. Only in this manner can the authentic face of Christianity be seen with its victory over death and its celebration of him who is “God of the living and not of the dead” (Mt 22, 32), of Christ, the living one, who was dead but now lives forever (cf. Ap 1, 28) and of the Spirit “who is Lord and giver of life.”
  • Finally, devotion to the Passion of Christ should lead the faithful to a full and conscious participation in the Eucharist, in which the Body of Christ, sacrificed for our sake (cf. 1 Cor 11, 24) is given as food; and in which the Blood of Christ, shed on the cross in the new and eternal Covenant and for the remission of sin, is given to drink. Such participation has its highest and most significant moment in the celebration of the Paschal Triduum, apex of the liturgical year, and in the Sunday celebration of the Sacred Mysteries.

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If You Say It Loud Enough, You’ll Always Sound Precocious

A friend was asking me about the Church’s teaching regarding narcotics, and so I pulled up this passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2291 The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law.

The term “drugs” in this passage has to be understood properly. Obviously, the Catechism isn’t meaning to say that the use of any drugs inflicts grave harm on human health and life. I mean, surely it isn’t thinking of aspirin–a drug so useful that, for many of their patients, many doctors recommend they take a low dose of it every day.

The Catechism is referring to the drugs commonly made illegal in many countries–i.e., narcotics.

But the use of the bare term “drugs” made me wonder: What’s in the original on this passage?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church was originally composed in French, because that was the language that the principal drafters had in common. It was later translated into Latin to produce the authoritative root edition (known in ecclesiastical language as the “typical” edition or editio typica).

This makes it useful, when one is trying to check the precise meaning of a Catechism passage, to check both the French original and the Latin typical.

According to the French version:

2291 L’usage de la drogue inflige de très graves destructions à la santé et à la vie humaine. En dehors d’indications strictement thérapeutiques, c’est une faute grave. La production clandestine et le trafic de drogues sont des pratiques scandaleuses ; ils constituent une coopération directe, puisqu’ils y incitent, à des pratiques gravement contraires à la loi morale.

Okay, the usage “de la drogue” inflicts grave harm on human life and health. Not much additional clarity there. “La drogue” is a fairly straightforward (and obvious) cognate for “of drugs.”

It’s easy to see that, in the process of writing the Catechism, they grabbed a common, modern, imprecise term for a modern social phenomenon. But when they put it into Latin, would that force any additional clarity?

Here’s the Latin version:

2291 Stupefactivorum medicamentorum usus gravissimas infligit valetudini et vitae humanae destructiones. Extra indicationes stricte therapeuticas, gravis est culpa. Clandestina stupefactivorum medicamentorum productio et mercatura operationes sunt scandalosae; cooperationem constituunt directam, quoniam ad usus legi morali incitant graviter contrarios.

Wow!

Stupefactivorum medicamentorum!

There’s a couple of $10 words! And right in a row!

They do, however, provide additional clarification (at least for Latinists) on what kind of drugs are meant and why we aren’t talking about aspirin.

Medicamentum means “drug, remedy, medicine,” and stupefactivum means “stupefying,” so stupefactivorum medicamentorum usus means “the use of stupefying drugs.”

In other words: drugs taken precisely in order to produce a stupefying effect (i.e., without an adequate alternative reason like needing anesthesia so that a therapeutic operation can be performed; it’s okay to stupefy people for those purposes).

Still . . . gotta love the way they say it.

It’s positively precocious.

Incidentally, judging from what’s on screen, the people who wrote the song in this video may have been engaged in the use stupefactivorum medicamentorum (a phrase which, coincidentally, fits quite well into the meter of the song).

I, For One, Welcome Our New Robotic Car Overlords

Did You Know? The long-promised self-driving cars are now a reality. They’re not quite commercially available yet, but they’re out there on the roads, driving right beside you, without you even knowing it. (Maybe.) Personally, I’m looking forward to these. I’m not anxious to get in one right not, but eventually, when the tech is mature, they will drive more safely than we do, and they will be a big boon for people with poor night vision. They are still controversial, though. LEARN MORE.

The Church Year: Mar. 28, 2012

Today is Wednesday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 28, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. John Capistran, Franciscan, confessor, who died in A.D. 1456. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John Capistran, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

79. From the principles already outlines above, popular piety should always be formed as a moment of the dialogue between God and man, through Christ in the Holy Spirit. Despite some deficiencies – such as confusion between God the Father and Jesus Christ – popular piety does bare a Trinitarian mark.

Popular piety, indeed, is especially susceptible to the mystery of God’s paternity and arouses a sense of awe for His goodness, power and wisdom. It rejoices in the beauty of creation and gives thanks to God for it. Popular piety can express an awareness of the justice and mercy of God the Father, and of His care for the poor and lowly, and it can proclaim that He commends the good and rewards those who live properly and honestly, while abhorring evil and casting away from Himself those who obstinately follow the path of hatred, violence, injustice and deceit.

Popular piety can easily concentrate on the person of Christ, Son of God and Savior of mankind. It can movingly recount the birth of Christ and intuit the immense love released by the child Jesus, true God and true man, a true brother in poverty and persecution from the moment of his birth. Innumerable scenes from the public life of Christ, the Good Shepherd who reaches out to sinners and publicans, the Miracle-worker healing the sick and helping the poor, or the Teacher proclaiming the truth, can be represented in popular piety. Above all it has the capacity to contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s Passion because in them it can perceive Christ’s boundless love and the extent of his solidarity with human suffering: Jesus betrayed and abandoned, scourged and crowned with thorns, crucified between thieves, taken down from the cross and buried in the earth, and mourned by his friends and disciples.

Popular piety is also consciously aware of the person of the Holy Spirit in the mystery of God. It professes that “through the Holy Spirit” the Son of God “became incarnate of Virgin Mary and was made man” and that the Spirit was poured out to the Apostles at the beginning of the Church (cf. Acts 2, 1-13). Popular piety is especially conscious that the power of the Spirit of God, whose seal is placed on all Christians in the Sacrament of Confirmation, is alive in all of the Church’s sacraments; that baptism is conferred, sins forgiven, and the Holy Eucharist begun “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; and that all prayer in the Christian community, and the invocation of divine blessing on mankind and all creatures, is done in the name of the three Divine Persons.

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Papal Coats of Arms

Did You Know? For the last 800 years the popes have had coats of arms devised for them according to the rules of herarldry. Each coat of arms has symbols that are meaningful to the particular pope who commissioned it. The Vatican web site has a very informative explanation of Pope Benedict’s coat of arms, as well as information about the history of this practice. LEARN MORE.

The Church Year: Mar. 27, 2012

Today is Tuesday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 27, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. John Damascene, confessor and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 754. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John Damascene, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

78. In the life of communion with the Father, the faithful are guided by the Spirit (cf. Rm 8, 14) who has been given progressively to transform them in Christ. He pours out to them “the spirit of adopted sons”, by which they assimilate the filial disposition of Christ (cf. Rm 8, 15-17), and his sentiments (cf. Phil 2,5). He makes present the teaching of Christ to the faithful (cf. John 14,26; 16, 13-25) so that they may interpret the events of life in its light. He brings them to a knowledge of the depths of God (cf. 1 Cor 2, 10) and enables them to transform their lives into a “holy sacrifice” (Rm 12, 1). He sustains them in rejection and in the trials that must be faced during the process of transforming themselves in Christ. The Spirit is given to sustain, nourish and direct their prayer: “The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God” (Rm 8, 26-27).

Christian worship originates in, and draws impetus from the Spirit. That same worship begins, and is brought to completion, in the Spirit. It can therefore be concluded that without the Spirit of Christ there can be neither authentic liturgical worship, nor genuine expressions of popular piety.

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