Alma Redemptoris Mater

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli porta manes, Et stella maris, succurre cadenti, súrgere qui curat populo: Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem: Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

O loving Mother of our Redeemer, gate of heaven, star of the sea,
Hasten to aid thy fallen people who strive to rise once more.
Thou who brought forth thy holy Creator, all creation wond'ring,
Yet remainest ever Virgin, taking from Gabriel's lips
that joyful "Hail!": be merciful to us sinners.

“Alma” - this is not just a greeting, but already a description of the one whom we will be addressing - loving, dear, kind, nourishing, one who nurtured her Son and who nurtures us! Mary is the “gate of heaven” – because it is through her becoming the Mother of our Redeemer that we have been given the opportunity of gaining heaven. Mary is also given the title of Star of the Sea here - stella maris - an important reminder to us that, she is our guide, one who will, like a star spotted from a storm-tossed ship with no other means of navigation, be the hope which we glimpse and by which we realise that we now have a way of finding our way to a safe haven - the safe haven, of course, of heaven itself.

Our Latin Anthem immediately throws in petitions to Our Lady - as if we are indeed the storm-tossed sailors, suddenly spotting this star of hope - “aid thy fallen people who strive to rise once more”. Mary’s nurturing, caring, is here seen as extending to helping and curing - a bringing back, not only towards our true home. Then we meditate on one of the amazing paradoxes of our faith: “Thou who brought forth thy holy Creator”. Mary, a created being, bears in her womb the uncreated Word - the Eternal Son of the Father - why? For us, as we heard in the first line - she is Mother of Our Redeemer - she bore Christ for that one reason - so that we might be redeemed and reconciled to God the Father, our Creator and her Creator.

St Bernard has a lovely reflection on the moment of the Angel’s Annunciation - imagining all of creation to be holding its breath, waiting for Mary’s yes. Mary did give her yes, her fiat, to God’s will and so bore our Redeemer, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. All creation is, as our anthem says, “wond’ring” in amazement! Gabriel’s message, his “Ave” - “Hail” given to Mary is a joyful message for Mary says yes to it, she accepts it, welcomes it, and opens up the whole of God’s redemption of us through her Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Mary chooses for God. And in line with this, respecting her purity, her absolute dedication to him, God willed that Mary “remainest ever Virgin,” before the Angel’s message and after, before the birth of her Son and after. With one so blessed, so much a part of God’s plan for salvation for us, one so much our guide, we can and should turn to her in our needs. Hence we say, “be merciful to us sinners”: we ask her for her loving help, she whom we first addressed as loving - we know Our Mother will indeed help us with her prayers.

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli porta manes, Et stella maris, succurre cadenti, súrgere qui curat populo: Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem: Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.
 

Ave Regina caelorum

Many thanks for all your prayers. We had about thirty people attend the last Extraordinary Form Mass for the Chair of St Peter: although down on the attendance at the first one, it was still very encouraging to see such a good mix of young and old.

Between Candlemas and Easter traditionally the Ave Regina caelorum is said or sung as the Marian Anthem:

Ave Regina caelorum! Ave Domina Angelorum! Salve radix, salve porta, ex qua mundo lux est orta. Gaude Virgo, gloriosa, super omnes speciosa. Vale, o valde decora, et pro nobis Christum exora.

Ave Regina caelorum! Ave Domina Angelorum! : our song begins with wonder - wonder and joy in addressing the Blessed Virgin Mary - Hail, Queen of Heaven. Hail, Lady of the Angels... These greetings address Mary, visualizing the glory into which she was assumed after her earthly life had run its course.

Next, her pivotal role in salvation history is emphasised: Salve radix, salve porta - Hail, the root, hail, the gateway! It is through Mary’s humble acceptance of God’s will that he could take our flesh in her womb and be born as man. And so it continues: ...ex qua mundo lux est orta... - from whom comes forth the Light into the world.

What possible response could there be to such a great privilege - to be the Theotokos, the God-Bearer? Gaude Virgo, gloriosa, super omnes speciosa - Rejoice, O Glorious Virgin, splendid above all else! Joy! Mary’s joy - and our joy at the wonder of this!

With one so glorious, so splendid, already seated as Queen among the Saints in heaven, it is then natural to turn to her for her powerful intercession: Vale, o valde decora - Do thou prevail, O thou who art of great virtue - et pro nobis Christum exora - and intercede for us with Christ.

This beautiful Anthem exults in Mary’s reversal of our fallen condition: it begins with two “Ave”s - Hail - but Ave is Eva - Eve - backwards - Mary is the New Eve, the one who reversed the disobedience of the First Eve. Mary is the one who will make possible the fulfilment of the Proto-evangelium of Genesis 3:15, when God addresses the Serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” By her obedience to God’s will, God could take flesh, and come among us as man, Jesus Christ - true God and true man - who would crush the ancient Serpent’s head. The First Eve (and the entire human race) fell through disobedience at the foot of a tree; through the New Eve’s obedience, he who would lift us up again could come into this world and destroy death, through dying himself on a Tree.

Mary is thus seen as the root of and the gateway by which our salvation has been made possible - by her gentle, obedient, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word” [Lk.1:38]. Because of her importance in God’s plan of salvation this Anthem turns to her with such wonder, such honour, and, playing twice more with the word, Eva, with Vale and valde - prevail and great - recognises that the New Eve’s influence and position in heaven in praying for us is surely greatly effective.

This beautiful Anthem to Our Lady is ideal for Lent with its subtle references to her role in letting God’s salvation come into our fallen world and the recognition of our continual need of help: a help we know that will be all the more forthcoming thanks to her prayers to Christ our Saviour.

Extraordinary Developments

I am fortunate that I am an Assistant priest - a Curate - in a busy city centre parish. I have been celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass here on my days off since I arrived here - initially in private - but, since I was convinced that there are people from the parish who would like to attend the “Traditional” or “Old” Mass, I have arranged that I can now celebrate Masses in the EF here, open to all on my days off. My first one attracted about fifty people. This was something quite unexpected! I anticipated maybe fifteen. Praise be to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to his Blessed Mother that so many people attended Holy Mass then.

Please pray for me as I prepare to celebrate another EF Mass this Tuesday for the Chair of St Peter. The Tract for that Mass, Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petrum aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, encapsulates the Church’s dependence on Peter and his Successors - “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”. Please pray for Pope Benedict and all the bishops that they may be strengthened in the task assigned to them of being Good Shepherds of Christ's flock. Also, please pray especially for those people who have separated themselves/or have been separated from Christ’s Church - for whatever reason - that they might be reconciled to Holy Mother Church.

Michaelmas Day

Greetings on Michaelmas Day! - when we celebrate the feast of the Archangels Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. The prayer asking for St Michael's assistance in the struggle to live the Christian life is a particularly powerful one. Pope Leo XIII added it to the Leonine prayers to be said after Mass:

Sancte Míchael Archángele,
defénde nos in proelio,
contra nequítiam et insídias diáboli
esto praesídium.
Imperet illi Deus,
súpplices deprecámur:
tuque,
Princeps milítiae coeléstis,
Sátanam aliósque
spíritus malígnos,
qui ad perditiónem animárum
pervagántur in mundo,
divína virtúte,
in inférnum detrúde. Amen

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in the day of battle;
be our safeguard
against the wickedness
and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him,
we humbly pray:
and do thou,
Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust down to hell
Satan and all
wicked spirits,
who wander through the world
for the ruin of souls. Amen.

This is the shorter version of a prayer that Leo XIII composed following a vision on October 13th 1884.

John Paul II urged us to carry on saying this prayer:

"Possa la preghiera fortificarci per quella battaglia spirituale di cui parla la Lettera agli Efesini - May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle of which the Letter to the Ephesians speaks: 'Attingete forza nel Signore e nel vigore della sua potenza' - 'Draw strength from the Lord and from the vigour of His power' (Eph 6:10). E’ a questa stessa battaglia che si riferisce il Libro dell'Apocalisse, richiamando davanti ai nostri occhi l'immagine di san Michele Arcangelo. - It is this same battle to which The Book of Apocalypse refers, recalling before our eyes the image of Saint Michael the Archangel (cf. Ap 12:7). Aveva di sicuro ben presente questa scena il Papa Leone XIII, quando, alla fine del secolo scorso, introdusse in tutta la Chiesa una speciale preghiera a San Michele - Pope Leo XIII certainly had this scene very much in mind when, at the end of the last century, he introduced a special prayer to Saint Michael throughout the Church: San Michele Arcangelo difendici nella battaglia contro i mali e le insidie del maligno; sii nostro riparo . . . - St Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle; be our safeguard against the wickednesses and snares of the devil...

Anche se oggi questa preghiera non viene più recitata al termine della celebrazione eucaristica, invito tutti a non dimenticarla, ma a recitarla per ottenere di essere aiutati nella battaglia contro le forze delle tenebre e contro lo spirito di questo mondo - Even if this prayer is no longer recited at the end of every Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it, but to recite it so as to obtain help in the battle against forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world." [From John Paul II's address during the Regina Coeli, 24.04.1994]

The Smoke of Satan

"From some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God." There seems to be quite a little confusion over this quote of Pope Paul VI, indeed, doubt is currently being cast as to whether he ever actually said anything of the kind. He did say exactly that on 29th June 1972. Here is a paragraph from his homily that day - SS Peter and Paul - as presented on the Vatican website [it seems itself to be a commentary on the homily and not the pure text itself] with a line by line translation:

Riferendosi alla situazione della Chiesa di oggi, il Santo Padre afferma di avere la sensazione che «da qualche fessura sia entrato il fumo di Satana nel tempio di Dio». Regarding the present day situation of the Church, the Holy Father affirms the feeling that, "from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God."
C’è il dubbio, l’incertezza, la problematica, l’inquietudine, l’insoddisfazione, il confronto. There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, uneasiness, dissatisfaction, confrontation.
Non ci si fida più della Chiesa; ci si fida del primo profeta profano che viene a parlarci da qualche giornale o da qualche moto sociale per rincorrerlo e chiedere a lui se ha la formula della vera vita. There is not trust in the Church any more; there is trust in the first profane prophet that speaks to us from some newspaper or from some social movement, to run after him and ask him if he has some formula of true life.
E non avvertiamo di esserne invece già noi padroni e maestri. And instead we are unaware that we are already masters and teachers of it.
È entrato il dubbio nelle nostre coscienze, ed è entrato per finestre che invece dovevano essere aperte alla luce. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it has entered via the windows which instead should have been open to the light.
Dalla scienza, che è fatta per darci delle verità che non distaccano da Dio ma ce lo fanno cercare ancora di più e celebrare con maggiore intensità, è venuta invece la critica, è venuto il dubbio. From science, pursued [literally, which is done] in order to give us truths which do not detach us from God but make us search for him even more and acknowledge him with greater intensity, [from this] has come, instead, criticism, [from this] has come doubt.
Gli scienziati sono coloro che più pensosamente e più dolorosamente curvano la fronte. Scientists are those who most thoughtfully and most sorrowfully frown...
E finiscono per insegnare: «Non so, non sappiamo, non possiamo sapere». ...and they end up teaching, “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.”
La scuola diventa palestra di confusione e di contraddizioni talvolta assurde. School becomes the training ground of confusion and often absurd contradictions.
Si celebra il progresso per poterlo poi demolire con le rivoluzioni più strane e più radicali, per negare tutto ciò che si è conquistato, per ritornare primitivi dopo aver tanto esaltato i progressi del mondo moderno. Progress is celebrated in order that it might then be demolished with ever more strange and radical revolutions, to negate everything that has been won, in order to return as primitives after having exalted the progresses of the modern world.

This certainly leaves some food for thought. Notable is the opening sentence in which Paul VI admits that this applies to the Church, not just the world. This was just seven years after the end of Vatican II. Paul VI was at the centre of the storm, he saw the "doubt, uncertainty, problems, uneasiness, dissatisfaction, confrontation" as they presented themselves. For me, this chimes very strongly with the present Holy Father's comments about two hermeneutics: one of rupture and one of continuity. Out of these doubts, problems, etc. emerged two interpretations of the last Council. Only one is valid: that which is in continuity with the past. The smoke of Satan obscures the past and confuses the present and makes for a hermeneutic of rupture. There can only ever be one response to this: to reject it.

Benedict XVI and latest media comments

Is the Holy Father anti-gay, homophobic? Reading the newspapers and listening to the TV news reports, it would seem so… but what did he actually say on 22nd December 2008 to the Roman Curia? And why?

What follows is my translation of some of his speech together with an interpretation.

Pope Benedict’s argument centred around the four dimensions that surround the theme of the Holy Spirit. The first dimension is that of the Holy Spirit as creator – and this is the section which has led to the latest round of criticisms of Pope Benedict. In discussing the creator Spirit, he says that the opening of the creation account talks of “the creator Spirit that hovers over the waters, creates the world and continuously renews it. Faith in the creator Spirit is an essential part of the christian creed”. This, then is the first step in his argument: the Spirit is understood by the christian as the creator Spirit.

What follows is a proof of this based on the inherent structure found in the universe and an extension of this to the mind of man which is capable of discerning it:

“Given that matter bears in itself a mathematical structure, it is full of spirit, it is the foundation on which modern science rests. It is only because matter is structured in an intelligent manner that our spirit is able to interpret it and actively remodel it.”

But, discerning and knowing this, we cannot remain indifferent. We have to accept that as intelligent created beings in a created universe we have certain responsibilities:

“The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same creator Spirit that has also given us spirit, brings with it a task and a responsibility. The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth lies in our faith concerning creation. It is not simply our property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is, rather, the gift of the Creator who has designed its intrinsic orderings and with which he has given us pointers that we listen to as stewards of his creation. The fact that the earth, the universe, reflect the creator Spirit means also that their rational structures, which besides the mathematical order become almost palpable in experiment, have in themselves an ethical orientation. The Spirit that formed them is more than mathematics – it is Good in person that, via the language of creation, shows us the right way.”

The Church has to proclaim this and cannot keep silent on these issues which concern creation and the Creator. It’s not just a case of protecting the earth from being polluted and ruined but also of protecting the chief protagonist in all this, mankind, from destroying itself:

“Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit itself in transmitting the message of salvation to only the faithful. It has a responsibility for the created and must also assert this responsibility publically. And in so doing it must defend not only the earth, water, air, as gifts of creation, obvious to all. It must also protect man from destroying himself. What is needed is something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense.”

I believe this phrase, “an ecology of man” is absolutely essential to understanding the Pope’s argument here. Ecology is the study of organisms in relation to their environments. An “ecology of man” can be understood as “human ecology”, that looks at the relationships between human groups and their physical and social environments but it can also be understood as an anthropology that includes the situation which the human being is in, that is, the human “condition”. The human condition is the state into which we are born, with all we inherit as biological beings that are human: our genetic patrimony, our animal state, our rational ability. Benedict continues:

“If the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and calls that this order in creation be respected, it is not a metaphysics that has been surpassed.”

In other words, one cannot dismiss this as something irrelevant, confined to a metaphysical worldview that many believe to have passed: it is still real, factual. Our bodies are either male or female: it is part of what we physically inherit as “higher animals” and even if we alter the physical appearance of our external genitalia sufficiently to seem other than they were originally, chromosome-wise we are whatever we were born as: either XX female or XY male – that is part of the normal order of the human condition. This human condition is “written” like a language in our make up by God and although we may choose to ignore it, we cannot cancel it out.
Benedict goes further here and sees in the deliberate effort to ignore this “language of creation” a path that will lead to man’s self-destruction:

“This is about, in fact, faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, disregard for which would be the auto-destruction of man and therefore destruction of God’s own work.”

Why? Sterile relationships are an ecological cul de sac. In simple terms, if human beings cease to procreate, we will die out. Now, I do not think that the Holy Father is naïve enough to believe that the human race is going to die out in the immediate future; the opposite is more likely. Nevertheless the path of ignoring the reality of our nature is an ecologically perilous one.
These questions are related to “gender issues” which set aside the physical nature of the human condition and adopt a subjective approach. But often these issues are really nothing other than an attempt to declare UDI from the “language of creation” and its originator, God. We want to feel we can decide for ourselves, we want to feel that we hold our own destiny in our hands:

“That which is frequently expressed and understood with the term, gender, is definitively turned into the auto-emancipation of man from the created and from the Creator. Man wants to form himself on his own and to arrange what concerns him always and exclusively on his own. But in this way he lives against the truth, he lives against the creator Spirit.”

This is about how we are created, not what we feel about things or what turns us on. I believe this part of the argument of the Holy Father centres on man’s desire to be his own master, particularly visible in the area of genetic engineering and what is becoming a widespread practice – eugenics: the deliberate selection of particular characteristics in an offspring. In the case of present day practice, the screening of foetuses for conditions like Down’s Syndrome and the abortion of those that do not make the grade. Because we have separated ourselves from the hidden language of the Creator we can begin to believe that we have it in our power to manipulate life itself as we should wish, whether this means combining genetic material from human and animal species or creating designer babies.

How does this relate to gender? The gender question is important because it has led to us ignoring the reality of our human condition. If I ignore my objective physical nature, my maleness in my case, I can apply a subjective label instead. I am straight, or I am gay or I am bisexual, or I am really a female inhabiting a male body and try to change sex, I am transsexual. All these labels may express how I might feel and how I might behave, but they do not say anything about my nature, which still remains male, whatever I feel and whatever I do. To reduce the human condition to one of subjectivity means that I can choose whatever I wish – in all areas of my life, in fact. What we have lost sight of is our “creatureliness”, the fact that we are not completely self-determining beings but are contingent beings. Our human condition, our situation which we are born into, is decided as the two gametes fuse at our conception. From then on, several factors, from hormones that affect our development, to environment to upbringing and culture will influence how we respond to this situation, but the essential elements of “the language of creation” have already been specifically written into our very being.
This simple fact now needs protection:

“Yes, the rain forests deserve our protection, but no less than man as creature, in whom is written a message that does not mean the contradiction of our freedom, but its condition. Great scholastic theologians have seen marriage, that is the lifelong bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation which the same Creator instituted and that Christ – without changing the message of creation – then welcomed in the history of his covenant with men. It is part of the proclamation that the Church must bear witness to the creator Spirit present in nature as a whole and in a special way in man’s nature, created in God’s image. Coming from this perspective, it would be necessary to re-read the encyclical, Humanae vitae: Pope Paul VI’s intention was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer commodity, the future from the exclusive claim of the present and man’s nature against its manipulation.”

Is this gay bashing? I do not think so! It is an attempt to show the naturalness of the complementarity of the sexes which finds its greatest expression in marriage which is open to life. This does not deny that a certain percentage of men and women will find themselves attracted to people of their own sex: homosexuality is a reality. The Church has looked at its attitude to gay people and practices in the CDF document, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. Neither does this mean that some men and women will not choose to live together without a marriage commitment. What the Church tells us is that it is because we are created beings that we bear the Creator’s imprint and that we can become pro-creators with his Spirit in creating, and the privileged place where this can happen is marriage.
To see the Italian text of the Pope’s speech, go to: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081222_curia-romana_it.html

Ascension in Rome and England

Ascension Day is being celebrated in Vatican City today (1st May) but in the rest of Rome and Italy it is St. Joseph the Worker (and a public holiday because of Mayday) - the Ascension will be celebrated on Sunday. The debate in England over Extraordinary Form masses needing to conform to the English bishops' decision to transfer Holy Days of Obligation to Sundays has received sturdy criticism on the Holy Smoke blog site.

The decision in the first place to transfer Holy Days to Sundays was a legitimate one according to current Church law, though disappointing. It sends out a message to the secular world that religion is something reserved for Sundays and nothing to do with normal life - it looks like an optional extra for those who feel like doing something different when relaxing on their day off. However, the decision to transfer them has been made and there is very little practising Catholics can do about it except pray that it might change.

Whether it was pastorally sensitive to seek clarification more recently on these celebrations according to the Extraordinary Form is another matter. Since there is already a substantial difference between the calendars for the two Forms, it might have seemed prudent to have ignored it. As I pointed out in a post to Holy Smoke, attending two celebrations of the same feast on different days because of the discrepancies in the calendars is not uncommon if you do not exclusively attend either the Extraordinary Form or the Ordinary. No moves currently seem to be being made by the Vatican to address this problem by reforming both calendars to bring them in line with each other, so the practice of this double celebration cannot be viewed as being too serious, as indeed is evidenced by the ongoing duality in Rome itself.

The question needs to be asked what the motivation was for raising the dubium in the first place. Was it out of pastoral care for the faithful or was it more of a "political" move? Since a duality exists already in the celebrations according to the two Forms it seems reasonable to leave it to the faithful to choose which celebration in which Form to attend.

The whole debate demonstrates just how poor we are at loving each other in practice. The Liturgy should inspire us in love, to love: it should not be a source of contention. "In the Church's Liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us." [Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 17.]