The Liturgical Year

The second of the Office of Readings (ordinary form) for the Saturday before Pentecost Sunday gives a good explanation for the tongues (I'm sure we can add nationalism though).
I saw a banner at a large event several years ago which depicted a crown on a cushion, which at the time I assumed was imagery of Christ the King. I happened to read later that it symbolised Pentecost for the Portuguese, commemorating the event of Elizabeth of Portugal once offering her crown to the Holy Ghost by putting it on an altar for the feast, or it's octave. Artificial crowns (no doubt sometimes costly nevertheless)are sometimes processed to altars on the day.

I mentioned it to someone of Portuguese background yesterday. She thanked me for telling her about her heritage and handed me one of their native custard cakes.

To a more obscure feast- I was at a blessing last Friday of a relic of Andrew Bobola, who had his liturgical fingers cut off by Cossacks before martyrdom. Good intercessor of any priests who have felt the covid restrictions badly. Or for clergy in general.
One thing that comes to mind- there's no doubt that the Irish race has had global influence throughout history,usually as in a mustard-seed or footsoldier way as immigrants, often by climbing the ladder of British imperialism or, in modern times, other organisations;even one of Papua New Guinea's recent prime ministers had the surname O'Neill. Involvement as a senior nation with current unrest in Belarus, through connection with an opposition leader and, now, an incident with a Ryanair flight,is perhaps rarer...it just happens that St Andrew died in what is now Belarusian territory and worked largely in Lithuania, where the Belarusian journalist had been living.

This history is also a reminder of how significant Poland's temporal power had been once. Their current President mentioned in an interview late last year that his Christian name comes from this Jesuit martyr. While no nation will claim 100% attendance any more, nobody can question the moral power that Poland has undoubtedly held since the first cracks in the Iron Curtain, which in many ways continues to increase.

Veni Sancte Spiritus
Riga quod est ardium

The Charismatic movement was once big in Ireland and was seen as the great hope for the church. The gift of speaking in tongues was a feature but no one seems to have been able to work out what languages were being spoken. I was told it was "praise". I don't understand why God shouldn't be praised in an actual real language.

]The return to green probably suits the Monday following Trinity Sunday more so. That feast has a more silent, tranquil feel about it.
I find that the prayer of Elizabeth of the Trinity,quoted in #260 of the '92 Catechism sums this up well.
My mother's memory of the Whitsunday weekend is,strangely, of swimmers drowning, something that she claims always seemed to happen in the Dublin she grew up in. [/quote]











The fact that a naturally Conservative institution like the church instituted so much radical change so suddenly in the liturgy was a mistake. A small group of "experts" imposed a certain vision of worship too that is problematic. The idea that the mass was focused on us, the gathered community almost entirely took root. When you read the actual approved text of Vatican ii on the liturgy and compare it to the lived reality nowadays there really is a considerable chasm.




Going beyond the liturgy the impression was created that the church could potentially do anything she liked and was not restricted in any way. This then caused resentment when for example Pope Paul refused to approve of artificial contraception or abolish clerical celibacy.

My own parents were married in Cabra West parish,in the recently-built church dedicated to the Precious Blood. A few years later (St)John XXIII would approve what is still the most recent of the great litanies of the church in honour of this devotion and write a encyclical to promote devotion to the Precious Blood.
Barely a decade later the July 1st feast would be abolished in the ordinary form of the liturgy, making even what had become a recent tradition of dedicating July to the devotion,seem almost legless. Indeed,moving Thomas to (and retaining Mary Magdalene in) July makes it almost seem liturgically like a 'Resurrection-month'.

Granted,the feast hadn't been an ancient one,most of it's form dating to Pius IX,but it's omission might be seen almost as evidence that the final liturgical reform which followed the Council was far from the original spirit of the Pontiff who originally called it. Two of the Litany's invocations are poignant.

Blood of Christ, giving endurance to confessors (save us).
Plenty of brave peoples showed evidence of being strengthened by Christ's Passion in the years that followed,whether under communist governments, bloody dictators or the rise of extremist Islam, but, in the context of the post-Council era (whether connected with the actual event or not), the flood of clergy and theologians who no longer cared to stand against the extremisms of the western world stand as a ironic memory.

Blood of Christ,from which virginity flowers (save us).
Even more ironic. Pope John presided over an era where religious orders had record numbers. Micheal O'Hehir once recalled broadcasting Irish sport in Africa, picked up almost exclusively by missionary countrymen/women;of course by this time (the '70s) the demise had begun. We could cite scandals,such as those currently making headlines in Canada of course,but the whole picture goes well beyond this.

John is oftentimes labelled as a prophetic voice- maybe in ways that are often not picked up?
Blood of Christ,which overcame the powers of darkness,(save us)

I do have a 300+ page book called A Dictionary of Devotions (Michael Walsh, Burns&Oates 1993) but the entries only give a short overview, sometimes with a dryness one would expect from an often-left-leaning ex-Jesuit.
And historical/theological analysis has no doubt changed since the 1990s,as they do through the ages also.
I was a bit confused recently when reading some passages from Jaques Bossuet (1627-1704) before realising that critical thinking of his time had obviously suggested that the entire Old Testament had been forged by Ezra after the resettlement of Jerusalem. So starkly different to today's critical-historical experts who rarely attribute two chapters of any book of the Bible to one author.

Something I was reading through last night kept reminding me of how possible it is to superimpose the past situations to those of Christianity's present challenges:

-"the commissioner reminded (St Joan Antida Thouret) that the oath would wipe out the stain of emigration -it was against the law to leave France- ,a crime of which she stood accused -she had gone across to Switzerland for a while-
and that there was a special military commission charged with the duty of shooting emigres"
Not that I'm expecting WHO's advisory bodies to come to this.

-"(Joan) instructed the sisters to fall in with every civil law that they could honourably obey, provided that it was not against religion,the Church or conscience...all that remained possible was for very small groups to go secretly to mass in houses...she frequently carried the mass vestments, by wearing them under her dress,to the priests"
This was post-Revolutionary France;same monkey puzzle of opinion- what restrictions are fair to obey.

-"authorities of Tuscany had heard of the dread yellow fever in New York and therefore kept the Seton family for a month in a cold,damp quarantine building at the port. Will survived only to die eight days later of tuberculosis"
Says much for Will's widow that she embraced Tuscany's faith and became America's first official Saint.
(cf modern saintsII Anne Ball)

Not strictly related to the liturgical year but this did impact on the celebration of mass every where; Covid led to the abandoning/ banning of singing in church. I have seen few comments lamenting this but there is something grimly appropriate that Covid also drove out most of the spontaneous joy that was part of our every day existence like meeting up casually, dancing and singing in public.

Last Sunday in St Kevin's in Dublin we had the first sung mass in almost 19 months. I was quite moved singing the Credo again . Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam.

I celebrated Christ the King and had a vigil party for All Saints day.