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For news of all Masses in Ireland in the Extraordinary Form, please see the website of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland here.

This is a truly festive month on the eighth day of which the Church celebrates the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin.  St Augustine in a sermon read on that day sets the joyful welcome, saying: “The hoped for day of the Blessed and venerable Mary ever a Virgin has now come; therefore let our earth rejoice with great gladness, illuminated by the birth of so great a Virgin.  For she is the flower of the field from which came forth the priceless lily of the valley; by her childbearing the nature inherited from our first parents is changed, their fault wiped out. In her the sentence passed on Eve was remitted which said: “In sorrow shall you bring forth children,” for Mary brought forth the Lord in joy. ”

Four days later we rejoice in The Most Holy Name of Mary; the honoured name of the Virgin Mary which is said to mean “star of the sea.” Pope Innocent X1 ordered the feast of this most holy name to be celebrated each year by the universal Church as a perpetual memorial of the great blessing of that signal victory won at Vienna in Austria over the cruel Turkish tyrant who had been grinding down the Christian people.

The 14th of the month brings the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrating the occasion when the Cross of Christ was recovered from the Persians and placed again on Calvary with great rejoicing. A day on which we are reminded: “This sign of the Cross will be in the heavens when the Lord comes for the judgement.  Then will the hidden things of our hearts be made manifest.   When the Son of Man will sit on the throne of His majesty and begins to judge the world by fire.”  St Pope Leo in his homily on this day reminds us of the words of Our Lord: “And I if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” And he goes on: “O wonderful power of the Cross! O unutterable glory of the Passion, in which is to be found the judgement-seat of the Lord, and the judgement of the world and the power of the Crucified!  For you drew all things to Yourself, Lord; when You stretched out Your hands all day to an unbelieving and contradicting people, the whole world knew that this gesture signified its obligation to confess Your majesty…. You drew all things to Yourself, Lord, when the veil of the Temple was torn and the Holy of holies was taken away from the unworthy priests that the figure might be changed to the reality, the prophecy to the manifestation, and the law into the Gospel. ”

Immediately following, on September 15th, the Church recalls Mary the Mother of Jesus standing at the foot of the Cross: commemorating the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and remember the number seven denotes the totality of her sufferings; and so emphasises her great and courageous love, which caused her to be so closely associated with the work of our Redemption.  “She it was in very truth who, like Judith, faced with the distress and tribulations of her people, spared nothing to save us from ruin” (Epistle). “By offering her Son for us, she became our Mother, and we became her children.” (Gospel)

Finally Michaelmas:  Dedication of St Michael the Archangel.  The great prophetic vision of the Apocalypse proclaims:  “There was a battle in heaven; Michael and his Angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels.   And they did not prevail, neither was their place found any more in heaven.” “O most glorious prince, Michael, be ever mindful of us, both here and everywhere entreating the Son of God for us.”     In days gone by, in our Universities we always had the Michaelmas term; In the court of sessions there was also the “Michaelmas sessions” but with the coming of the “secular State” all that referred to God or the sacred in these and other matters disappeared from the vocabulary.   It is up to faithful Christians to keep the memory of such things alive by an increase in fervour as we celebrate those feasts.

In Thaddeus J  Kozinski’s review of a recent book, Citizens of the Heavenly City by Arthur Hippler, we read:  “In a normal society, that is, the Catholic confessional state, the supernatural truths taught by the Catholic Church would be found not only in intellectual form, in catechisms, compilations of doctrine, and treatises of theology, but also in practice, imbedded in the warp and woof of everyday life.   Abstract intellectual comprehension of the Faith is not enough, for it is only a skeleton.   Social and carnal men need socialised and incarnated truth.   Pius X1 writes:  “The Church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feast affects both mind and heart, and has a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature.  Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.”

It should be the aim of every one of us to restore the living and vibrant Church of the past; to do this means that we must truly be “living stones building up the Body of Christ”; we must live with the mind of the Church as it teaches us through the liturgical celebrations especially of the important feasts and victories that are commemorated year by year. Then we must be aware of the dangers that abound in these modern times when so many enemies are working with Satan’s legions for the ruin of souls.

“Hail Mary, Pearl of grace,
Pure flower of Adam’s race,
And vessel rare of God’s election;
Unstained as virgin snow, Serene as sunset glow,
We sinners crave thy sure protection.

Thou Queen of high estate,
Conceived Immaculate
To form Incarnate Love’s pure dwelling;
The Spirit found His rest
Within thy sinless breast,
And thence flow joys beyond all telling.

A fairer, purer Eve,
Didst thou her fall retrieve,
For man’s debt giving God in payment:
Thy spotless feet are pressed
Upon the serpent’s crest –
God’s stars thy crown, His sun thy raiment.

Through His dear Blood who died,
By sinners crucified,
Art thou preserved, and we forgiven;
Help us to conquer sin,
That we may enter in,
Through thee, the Golden Gate to Heaven.

[Dom Bede Camm OSB]

Words of Wisdom

The late Fr Martin C D’Arcy SJ  writing in 1954:
“But the eminence and saving power of Christianity are becoming evident in another way.  After the First World War even Catholics were too easily carried away by a hope of a new world, and all have been taken aback by the calamities of the last twenty years and the dark prospects of the future. It is, however, of the very essence of the Catholic religion to be face to face with defeat and death and to know that this is the royal road to victory.  This is the motif of the Gospel story and of the preaching of St.  Paul.   For unto you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him: having the same conflict as that which you have seen in me and now have heard of me.  In the Christian teaching there is no easy future, no rosy dawn when man will cease from “mental strife”.   Every one has to meet his challenge and each generation has to slay a dragon.  The Church, therefore, offers the only true form of optimism, now that the superficial prophets of inevitable progress and perfection have failed us....  The loss of religion in so many countries and the hosts of apparently unavailing martyrs shock us and are a mystery which man cannot comprehend, but it would be wrong to see in such tragedies the defeat of Christ.”

To Save Europe’s Soul

At a recent meeting held in Vienna at which Rome and the Russian Orthodox Church sought a way to reunion; there was also on the Agenda:  “What can we do to save the soul of Europe? From an article by James Benis, “Europe’s only Constructive Force” from The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, I quote: “Europe’s odd lack of desire for a future stems from a spiritual sickness, one that is the natural consequence of alienation from the institution that gave it birth.   From Europe’s creation … into modern times, the Catholic Church has been the sole constructive force in Europe and remains the only foundation upon which anything lasting can be built.  The only way for Europe to regain its balance and stability is for it to recover the spiritual foundation that stirred its greatness in the first place.  The remedies … lay in a return to the bosom of the Catholic Church and her time-tested teachings.”

The above can most certainly apply to present day Ireland whose glorious Christian heritage appear to have been deliberately jettisoned by the secularism entrenched in the minds of those who govern us and who have no place for God. Consequently the future sees the decline of liberty, the continual assumption of power by the state; the growing demand by it that the citizen should belong to it not only in material matters but in moral and religious too. There follows the breakdown of family life by the abandonment of the divine institution of marriage; the increase of instability of character, the weakening of justice and the spreading of selfishness.

Called to be Saints

Blessed Columba Marmion in his book Christ in His Mysteries:
“Never let us forget that all Christian life, all holiness, is being by grace what Jesus is by nature: the Son of God.  It is this that makes the sublimity of our religion.  The source of all the greatness of Jesus, the source of the value of all His states, of the fruitfulness of all His mysteries, is His divine generation and His quality of Son of God.   In the same way, the saint who is the highest in heaven is the one who here below was most perfectly a child of God, who made the grace of supernatural adoption in Jesus Christ fructify the most.   That is why all our spiritual life ought to be based upon this fundamental truth, all the work of perfection ought to consist in faithfully safeguarding our participation in the Divine Sonship of Jesus and in developing it in the greatest possible measure.

The Vocation of the Lay Faithful

From the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read:
“The lay faithful have their own vocation to seek the Kingdom of God by illuminating and ordering temporal affairs according to the plan of God.  They carry out in this way their call to holiness and the apostolate, a call given to all the baptised.

How do the lay faithful participate in the priestly office of Christ?
They participate in it especially in the Eucharist by offering as a spiritual sacrifice  “acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5) their own lives with all their works, their prayers, their apostolic undertakings, their family life, their daily work and hardships borne with patience and even their consolations of spirit and body.   In this way, even the laity, dedicated to Christ and consecrated by the Holy Spirit, offer to God the world itself.”

Good News from the East

Christopher Howse, in his Saturday article  “Sacred Mysteries” (Daily Telegraph, September 23rd)  writes: “By an irony, in the same week that the ‘Passage’ found itself unable to cope with Polish migrant requests for help, figures came out for the remarkable expansion in numbers of young Polish men back home who are training for the priesthood.  Whereas in England and Wales 31 men began their training last year, in Poland the number was 1,351. The total numbers in Polish seminaries are 6,563.

“This cheering trend is not an immediate result of the pontificate of John Paul II.  Numbers did double after his election, but they peaked in 1985.  This is a new revival, growing since 2000.   Poland now provides a third of new priests in Europe.”

Pope Benedict XVI concludes his encyclical God is Love with this appeal to our heavenly Mother:

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, Thou hast given the world its true Light, Jesus, thy Son – the Son of God.  Thou didst abandon thyself completely to God’s call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from Him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to Him.  Teach us to know and love Him, so that we too can become capable of true love and be fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.”