Please join us. If you hear about it later than those dates, please join anyway. This novena petitions Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, that it may be safe to re-open Churches and restore public Masses as soon as possible.
The Litany of the Sacred Heart
For the Intention that it may be safe to re-open the Churches and restore public Masses as soon as possible, we pray:
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of Heaven,
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit,
Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Formed by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mother,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Substantially united to the Word of God,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Of Infinite Majesty,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Holy Temple of God,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Tabernacle of the Most High,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, House of God and Gate of Heaven,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Burning Furnace of charity,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Vessel of Justice and love,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Full of goodness and love,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Abyss of all virtues,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Most worthy of all praises,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, King and centre of all hearts,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, In Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, In Whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Divinity,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, in Whom the Father is well pleased,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Of Whose fullness we have all received,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Desire of the everlasting hills,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Patient and abounding in mercy,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Rich unto all who call upon Thee,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Fountain of life and holiness,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Atonement for our sins,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Filled with reproaches,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Bruised for our offenses,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Made obedient unto death,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Pierced with a lance,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Source of all consolation,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Our Life and Resurrection,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Our Peace and Reconciliation,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Victim for our sins,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Salvation of those who hope in Thee,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Hope of those who die in Thee,
Have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Delight of all the Saints,
Have mercy on us.
Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,
Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,
Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Make our hearts like unto Thine.
Let us pray.
Almighty and eternal God, look upon the Heart of Thine most-beloved Son, and upon the praises and satisfaction He offers Thee in the name of sinners; and appeased by worthy homage, pardon those who implore Thy mercy, in Thy Great Goodness in the name of the same Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.
Thanks to our dedicated LiveMass team, we can now watch online permanently the entire Maundy Thursday liturgy 2020 filmed at St Mary’s Shrine, with Fr Alex Stewart, FSSP as celebrant and homilist.
(The last hour or so is adoration at the Altar of Repose.)
Our FSSP Warrington weekly Men’s Group will meet via LiveMass this evening, Wednesday 22nd April, at 8:00pm (Warrington UK time), for a meditation by Fr Henry Whisenant followed by choral singing of Compline. 😇 https://www.livemass.net/
Presentation given on the National Consecration of England to the Blessed Virgin – March 29th 2020, by Fr Henry Whisenant, Assistant Priest at St Mary’s Shrine, Warrington, England
What a blessing that because of the LiveMass facilities in this church, those of you watching at home can join us in these devotions for the national consecration of England to Our Lady, even if we cannot be united in person.
This
consecration, taking place across our country today, is to renew the offering
of England to the Blessed Virgin under its privileged title of Dos Mariae, the Dowry of Mary.
It’s difficult
to know when such a title was first in use – perhaps by the time of St Edward
the Confessor – but there are at least clear, indisputable references to it by
the 14th century. Already in 1350, one preacher was able to state: “it is
commonly said that the land of England is the Virgin’s Dowry”. And on the eve
of the Battle of Agincourt, priests in England prayed to Our Lady under the title,
“Protectress of her dower”.
What does the
term mean: Our Lady’s Dowry or Our Lady’s Dower? It refers to the custom in
marriages of old, that when a woman was married, the bride’s family provided
certain possessions or property to be given with her to her husband. This
property, this “dowry”, could not simply be liquidated by the husband – rather
it was a conditional gift that was still in some way attached to the bride, so
that if the husband were to die, the widow would have some financial security
for herself and her children. It was also customary in certain cultures for the
husband himself to provide a “dower”, a gift of wealth of property to his bride
upon their wedding, for this same purpose.
England then
was seen to be Our Lady’s Dowry, or Our Lady’s Dower, in this sense: that the
Lord God, the Divine Spouse of her immaculate soul, entrusted to her this small
island country to be her portion, to be under her custody and at her disposal.
Throughout the centuries, from its evangelisation until the wanton destruction
of the country’s faith under the Protestant revolution, the people of this land
felt a great affection for the Mother of Christ as their mistress and
protector, and they had a devotion to her that was famed in Europe.
At the height
of this devotion, in 1381, around the Feast of Corpus Christi, King Richard II
took the step of formally consecrating the country to Our Lady, in front of her
image in Westminster Abbey, an event which is famously commemorated in the
Wilton Diptych, which you can go see (but not right now, alas!) in the National
Gallery in London.
On this
Passion Sunday, in 2020, we gather, if not in body then in spirit, to renew
this same consecration to Our Lady once again.
We might be
forgiven for regretting the timing of
this renewal, with all this happening around us. We might be forgiven for
hankering after the solemn ceremony of 1381, and for thinking that – with the
current virus doing the rounds, and everything cancelled and everyone in
lockdown – we are, by contrast, in the very worst
possible circumstances – the most dispiriting, the most underwhelming – for
a renewal of that national consecration today!
But I suggest
we look again at that first consecration of 1381… For we will find that, in
reality, even more than ours today, that historic event took place in the midst
of terrible pestilence and disease, social disruption and national anxiety.
To see this,
we must go back 33 years before that
consecration to the Black Death. The Black Death, the Plague, was a disease
that also began in China, and was carried to Europe in 1348 by infected rats
along prominent trade routes from East to West.
Between 1348
to 1349, the Black Death swept through England, and wiped out as much as 40-60%
of the population. To get a sense of the magnitude of this, compare it to the
coronavirus today. To this date, roughly 20,000 people in the UK are said to
have tested positive with the virus: that’s 0.3% of the population. And just
over 1,000 deaths have been attributed to the virus: that’s less than 0.002% of
the current population… And now imagine a disease that claimed 40-60% of the
populace! Not only this, but the plague returned every dozen years or so until the end of the century… For
example, from autumn 1379 to 1380, it carried off up to another20% of England’s population!
The country,
in terror, came to a standstill. Parliament was postponed. The King’s court was
dismissed from Easter until midsummer. The London Guildhall was closed.
Keep in mind
that this was less than a year before
King Richard’s consecration of the country to Our Lady. The consecration took
place in a country that was struggling to function normally after such a great
atrocity – a plague significantly more crippling than anything we are yet
facing today.
And not only
this…
Because of the
dramatic and sudden loss of life, England under Richard II was also
experiencing profound social unrest. With the drastic shortage of labourers, those
who were left to do the work demanded a greater salary for the increased work
that was left to them. But the landowners, the employers, were reluctant to do
this, and the ongoing tension led finally to the Peasants’ Revolt in June of
1381, when thousands of workers marched on London, killed anyone they found
connected to the Royal Court (including the chancellor and the treasurer), and
forced King Richard to meet with them and accede to their demands. It wasn’t
until the end of June that this riot was largely quelled, and the rebels killed
or dispersed.
Now bear in
mind that this was the very same month
when the Dowry Consecration took place. In other words, the King was not
consecrating England to Our Lady simply as a nice and pleasant thing to do…!
He was consecrating it to her, as her Dowry, as a way of saying: “Help! I don’t
know what to do about all this! I don’t know how to manage all this chaos in my
country! Come and be the mistress and protector and ruler of this land, your
possession.” The consecration of 1381 was a plea to Our Lady in a time of great
confusion and need.
It is in that
same spirit that we present England to Our Lady on this day. “Mary, come to the
aid of this country! Protect us from calamity, but protect us also from fear!”
Let us not be paralysed by the daily media updates of new cases and
hypothetical outcomes calculated to keep us in constant suspense and anxiety.
Let us not have that fickle spirit of the world, that one day appears so
confident and secure, even invincible, in its emancipation from God and in its
freedom to sin, and then when the first threat comes along is paralysed by a
terror mixed with morbid fascination. Such is not the spirit of the followers
of Jesus Christ, who are called, rather, to live by the words of the Psalmist:
“Those who put their trust in the Lord are like Mount Sion – they shall never
be moved”.
We ask Mary,
the mistress of her Dowry, to protect us also in these times from a spirit of
bitterness and frustration…
Perhaps many
of you watching these ceremonies today are frustrated that you cannot be here
in the church. You might think, “What kind of consecration is it if I have to
do it in the obscurity of my own home?” You may have had plans to be here, to
be in your local cathedral, to be in the national shrine in Walsingham, before
the lockdown made that impossible.
But let’s
remember what the message of that particular shrine is about. Let’s move our
focus for the last part of this reflection from the Richard II’s consecration in
Westminster Abbey in 1381, to the vision of Richeldis de Faverche in Walsingham
in 1061. When Our Lady appeared to Richeldis, what did she ask? She asked for a
copy of the Holy House of Nazareth to be built in that place – the house where
the angel announced to Our Lady herself the Incarnation of the Lord, and her
vocation as the Virginal Mother of God.
Recall that
event as it happened in the Scriptures. Recall that in the first chapter of St
Luke’s Gospel that mystery of the Annunciation is paralleled with another
announcement: to Zechariah, the father of St John the Baptist. Zechariah, a
priest of Israel, was in the sanctuary of the Temple, offering incense to the
Lord, and the Angel Gabriel appeared to him to tell him that his wife Elisabeth
would, in her old age, conceive a son. Zechariah doubted the angel’s message,
and as punishment for his doubt was struck dumb, until the birth of the
Baptist…
Notice this…
Zechariah is a priest… he is in the Temple… but he is not by virtue of these things alone at one
with God. Rather, he is found wanting.
Then St Luke
recounts the angel’s announcement to Mary. She is called full of grace, she is
told that the Lord is with her, and that she will conceive the Son of the Most
High by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost! And all this took place, where?
Not the Temple in Jerusalem, where Our Lady had spent her girlhood, but in the
obscurity of her parents’ home, in the unremarkable, unimportant town of
Nazareth. It was in the isolation of her own home that Our Lady, by her Fiat,
consecrated herself to the service of Jesus Christ as His mother.
At the same
time, it was in in her womb, under the roof of that ordinary house, and not in
a great stone temple, that Christ was consecrated High Priest of the Human
Race. For at His conception in the womb, the Eternal Son of God took to Himself
a human soul, and flesh and blood, and thereby the priestly power to offer
sacrifice.
Again, it was
not in a Temple, but on a hill of execution, outside the city walls, that the
Lord offered that most sublime priestly sacrifice of Himself to save us from
our sins – not on a richly carved altar, but on a rough wooden cross – a wonder
that we are preparing in this Passiontide soon to commemorate.
And you too,
in whatever place you are, are not hindered from acting under the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost, and performing a supernatural and meritorious act, in
consecrating England to Our Lady today. Because, by virtue of our Baptism, each
one of us has become a Temple of the Holy Ghost. Whatever we do, whatever
action we perform and wherever we are, if we are in a state of grace, and
perform our actions for the love of God… then everything we do has a
supernatural character, and becomes a pleasing offering in God’s sight. St Paul
says, “Whether you eat of drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of
God”. So within the walls of your home today you can offer to God a prayer for
this country that will pierce through to the sanctuary of Heaven itself, and
that will increase, in a sense, the glory of God in this land.
So let’s be
undaunted and encouraged as we make this collective consecration of our nation
today. Let’s put England squarely in the hands of Our Lady, and ask her in the
midst of these trying times to be the protectress of her Dowry…
May she
protect England’s people from fear and anxiety, by leading them to place their
security not in temporal prosperity and health, but in the saving sacrifice of
her Son Jesus Christ, and in the eternal life He won for us.
And may she,
the Virgin of the Annunciation, speak to us the words that echo still in her
heart from the announcement of the angel: …the words, “Do not be afraid!”…
and the angel’s greeting: Kaire!
Which we translate as Ave, “Hail”,
but which means – more than this – Rejoice!
Be happy! Rejoice… for we are giving England back to her who is the Cause
of our Joy, and whose Son ever harries and destroys the sadness of the Fall.
Announcements: Thank you
for your support through prayer and gifts over the past weeks of lockdown.
Lockdown continues. It is
painful for us clergy and servers to celebrate the sacred mysteries with no one
in the pews, since only those residing at St Mary’s Shrine can take part in our
liturgical celebrations.
Please support this Shrine financially: bank transfer to WARRINGTON and PayPal on https://fssp.co.uk/donate/ .
Easter Sunday Homily, by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP
Dear friends,
How do you explain Easter
to modern man? How do you bear witness of the resurrection when asked by men
whose souls have been allowed to thirst and so far never tasted the true water
of life? They simply don’t know what Easter is about.
I will venture a
comparison for their sakes. Do you have special hobbies, skills? When you learn
to drive, learn to play the piano, learn watercolour painting; learn to swim;
learn mountain climbing… It takes a coach; it takes someone who knows; someone
who’s done it before and who knows the technique perfectly. At first, when our
coach tells us that he can make us proficient within six months, or six years,
we think we will never make it. We fear that we won’t have what it takes; or
that our coach could get fed up with us and might let us down.
So, what are we Christians
doing this morning? What are we training for? Oil painting? Scuba diving? Wine
tasting? None of that. Better than that. This morning we train for eternity. We listen to the One –
Jesus Christ – Who is much more than a coach. He is our guide into eternity. He is truly a man, like we
are human beings. We will die; and Jesus died. Jesus rose from the dead and we…
Well, this is what it is all about it. We can rise from the dead – if… We can
enter blissful eternity – if …. If what? We can enter blissful eternity if we
follow the only One who walked through death successfully. Really, is Jesus the only One who can take us through
death and beyond, to blissful eternity? Did not other people die and rise
again? Like, Lazarus, the friend of Jesus. Or the young man, the only son of
the widow, outside the town of Nain. Or the young daughter of Jairus? Yes,
those were dead, and yes, they came back to life. But no, they did not rise by
themselves. They were raised by another one, mightier than them. The Lord Jesus
raised these dead people and brought them back to life. Furthermore, after
these miracles, they died again some years later. Not so with the Lord Jesus.
He rose from the dead of his own power, because He is not only man, but God
incarnate. Also, He will never die again. The Lord Jesus is alive forever. No
one else every achieved this. Jesus is the only one.
But we need a witness, don’t we? We
need clues.
A significant clue is the sacred
relic of the Holy Shroud of Turin. What does the Holy Shroud look like? It is a
depiction of Our Lord’s tortured Body (both back and front), spread across a
14.5-feet-long by 1.4-foot-wide linen cloth, with such accuracy that this
sacred relic has been termed ‘The Fifth Gospel’. The Holy Shroud – presently
kept in Turin, Italy – is the most tested object in the world. The scientific
findings, due to their number and complexity, now constitute a distinct branch
of science called sindonology, after the word ‘sindon’, the Greek word for
‘shroud’.
Let us recall a few sindonological
discoveries. It took nineteen centuries to realise that the Shroud is a
photographic negative: inversing paler and darker areas reveals the actual
picture. Further analysis established that the depiction results from
irradiation, not from the application of pigments upon the linen material.
Later on, the image was found to be three-dimensional, allowing the shaping of
a resin model of Our Lord’s Body as when it was lying wrapped in the Shroud.
Anomalies such as the absence of thumbs on either hand were explained, while
microscopic examination found diverse pollens from the Middle-East stuck in the
fibres of the cloth. The Holy Shroud is a very powerful incentive for our faith
in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And yet, the Shroud is not necessary for us to believe. We
have billions of witnesses: these countless men, women and children who
professed their faith in Christ, who followed his teaching, imitated his
virtues, and often died for his love. They bear witness to the historical reality of the resurrection
of Christ.
If you need witnesses, read the lives
of the saints. If you need witnesses, start with St Paul’s letter to the
Corinthians. St Paul never met Christ until after his resurrection. But he met
the Lord once risen, as he affirms: “if
Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain: for you are yet in your sins. Then
they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, the
firstfruits of them that sleep” (1 Co 15: 17-20).
If you need witnesses, look around
you for those Catholics in whose lives the virtues of Christ shine with utmost
fidelity, truth, gentleness, firmness, compassion, purity, piety. Look
carefully, because the souls closest to Christ might not know it themselves,
and surely they would not boast of it, so that the world would normally take no
notice of them.
But dear friends, if you need witnesses, perhaps other people need them even more
urgently than you do. So, why not becoming a witness yourself? Why not bearing witness of the resurrection of the Lord?
I know, we think ourselves too lazy, too selfish, too incredulous, too heavy,
too tired… But witnessing Christ is not about our own capacity. It is all about
His divine power performing wonders through our emptiness. Becoming a witness
of the resurrection takes a while. It does not happen in one instant. It is
like unfolding the Holy Shroud. We know the full picture of Christ is impressed
upon the cloth, but it takes our entire lives to unfold it in our mind and in
our souls.
Let us fly back to Jerusalem. This
Easter morning, St Peter, St John and St Mary Magdalene found the empty linens
wrapped together in the empty tomb. Some time on that day, they took with them
the precious relic. Back home in the Upper Room, with what emotion they slowly
unfolded the linens, gradually displaying the Master’s silhouette: first his
shoulder, then his elbow, now his foot and then his Head… Everywhere, their
eyes would meet so many wounds, all endured for their redemption. For my redemption.
For your redemption. For the redemption of all men.
I imagine St Peter alone at last in
the Upper Room. Simon had unfolded the long strip of cloth, nowhere more
fittingly than across the trestles of the Last Supper table. Three nights
earlier, upon another cloth, the Lord had made Himself truly present under the
Eucharistic species at the first holy Mass. The apostles had walked with the
Lord to Gethsemane. Before cockcrow, Simon had thrice denied his Lord. Since
then Jesus had died and was risen.
Back in the Upper Room on Easter day,
today, Simon was on his knees at the far end of the long narrow linen
rectangle. His eyes slightly higher than the level of the cloth swollen in
successive waves upon the trestles, the fisherman would look at the maculated
Shroud as a seaman looks at a vast archipelago spread across a limitless map.
Wide or tiny, each bloodstain was an island, mystically bearing the name of
each and every sinner, redeemed through the wounds of the Lamb.
Which stain bore Simon’s name? It
could not be less than three, one for each denial – and so many more… Dear
friends, which stain bears my name, your name? In St Peter’s soul, contrition
connected the reddish shapes of various sizes like the stars under which he was
reborn, as in a new constellation named Absolution.
It was probably no surprise to Simon then, when he became aware of Christ’s
bodily presence, standing at the other end of his unfolded Shroud. The contrite
Vicar had opened his soul to the Saviour already. Christ confirmed his pardon
and left, until they met again by the Sea of Galilee.
His Vicar remained on his knees
looking across the bloodied sheet, while on either side of the table of
redemption, hundreds of men, of women, of children materialised, imitating his
posture. Billions of them. Billions of us. All the way down to us, my friends,
and beyond, and further. All those who would believe in this extraordinary
event are gathered in faith around this sacred cloth and bear witness to the
One who lay in it no more, because
He is risen, forever alive! Such is our glorious training for eternity.
May the Immaculate Mother of the Risen One, the Blessed Virgin Mary whose Sorrowful heart begot us to grace in union with Our Lord on Calvary two days ago, may she lead us to Jesus, our Resurrection and our Life, into bliss eternal.
The altar set for the Mass of the Lord’s Resurrection – a private Mass.
A monk of my acquaintance once drily remarked, as he looked
across at the banks of gloomy faces in the choir stalls opposite, that he
sometimes doubted the Resurrection had really happened.
The point is well made. It can be easier in a way, for us
Catholics, to identify with Lent and Passiontide than with Easter. Even if we
haven’t kept our Lenten resolutions as well as we would have liked, we still
relate more readily to the themes of penance and punishment, sacrifice,
suffering, and death, than we do to joy and peace and new life.
And there is good reason for this. Suffering and anguish is
ever present in our world – no one is spared it, to one degree or another, just
as all will certainly undergo the sentence of death. But joy, when it comes,
tends to be more fleeting, rapidly overshadowed by some difficulty. There is a
risk that Easter, for us, becomes little more than a natural consolation, a merely
temporary respite from gloom, when we are allowed to break the fast, put out
flowers, and eat chocolate – with little sense of something life-transforming.
Perhaps this seems all the more the case now of all times,
when the present pandemic continues to overwhelm just about the whole globe;
and does not appear to be ceasing for the commemoration of Our Lord’s
Resurrection. Indeed, we are denied even the consolation of celebrating Easter
by attending the sacred rites.
And yet Our Lord has truly risen – and we must, we must,
allow this glorious truth somehow to penetrate our lives.
There can be little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic is a
divine chastisement. This really ought to be an uncontroversial statement, but
it seems there is no shortage of people, even senior churchmen, to deny it. No
doubt this ultimately springs from a loss of the sense of the supernatural, the
recognition that God is the cause of all things whatsoever; but perhaps in part
it is motivated by a false understanding of God’s love and mercy (“a loving God
would never do that…”). And perhaps even more there is the anxiety that if we
say God is punishing for sin, then we must ask, ‘which sin?’; and then it
amounts to saying that those who die from the virus are the most guilty of that
sin, that they apparently ‘deserved it’.
But that’s not really the case. Firstly, to us Catholics, it should come as no surprise if chastisement is visited upon a whole people collectively, or if the innocent are asked to suffer on behalf of the guilty. After all, both these aspects are precisely the themes of Holy Week. Your clergy have been reciting, in the Divine Office, the prophecies of Jeremiah, warning of the wrath upon Israel, the exile into Babylon, and the destruction of the temple – culminating in his haunting lamentations that are sung in the Office of Tenebrae during the Triduum. And then on Good Friday, we looked at Our Saviour upon the cross, He who was without sin accepting the terrible price for the redemption of sinners.
As to which sin God is chastising us for – well, there will always be the temptation to name our ‘favourite’, whichever of the innumerable manifold vices and perversions of fallen human nature pique our interest. There is more than enough to choose from in the secular society: abortion, euthanasia, same-sex “marriage”, gender ideology, human trafficking… the list goes on and on. Or there is the spread of false religions or militant atheistic ideologies. And then within the Church we can make another catalogue: clerical sexual abuse, rampant heresy, disobedience, and schism, disregard of Sundays and holy days, liturgical abuses, widespread impurity, indifference and faithlessness, sacrilegious Communions, badly made confessions (if made at all), and so on. It seems foolish to try and identify just one that is the cause of all our ills. But all of these things eventually boil down to one – the rejection of and failure to worship the One True God. And for this, our collective punishment is long overdue.
And in reality, all of these faults put together pale into insignificance
next to but a single act of sacrilege or idolatry. We do not tend to feel it is
so – but God’s view is not our view. God tends to punish precisely by
abandoning the people to what they have craved. So in a world that elevates
individualism over communal responsibility, perhaps it is fitting that there
should be enforced ‘social distancing’; and if,
as I suggest, everything is ultimately about our failure to give God
right worship, then we should not be surprised if we Catholics have to bear our
brunt of the chastisement in our very particular way – the cessation of public
Masses (and even, in some places – horribile dictu – of all the sacraments).
In fact, in a sense, this is the worst of the curses. To say
this may seem to be incredibly cold and indifferent given the very real pain,
suffering, and loss that many are going through at this time because of the
virus, not to mention the horrific economic fallout. I do not mean in any way
to diminish this. But we should recognise that man’s purpose and fulfilment lies
precisely in the worship of God. We are more than the body only, and there is
more than this life only.
This is felt all the more keenly precisely by those who are
the most devout, who we would think least ‘deserve’ it, since they want to
offer God fitting worship and are struck by its loss the most acutely. But it
was ever thus. The prophets warned Jerusalem of what was coming and wept for
it, while the hierarchy repeated complacent, empty mantras: “peace, peace, but there
is no peace” (Jer. 6:14; cf Ez. 13:10), or “we have the temple” – then even
this consolation was taken away from them (Jer. 7:4).
Israel had gone after false gods; and then the True God withdrew from them.
Probably this Easter many will feel much like Psalm 136: “by
the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered Sion…how shall
we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?”
And yet, the Babylonian exile was not forever. Israel was
restored – at least in part – and the temple was rebuilt. And all this was for
a sign of the death and Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord. Ecce, omnia nova
facio (Rev. 21:5). Death is not the final word; Christ has claimed victory,
and it is decisive.
Thus there can be joy, even in the midst of distress and
bewilderment. It is not a transient sentiment, but a deep conviction that stems
from faith of the love that God has for us, a love proved dramatically on
Calvary. This joy does not simply happen on its own: it can and must be
cultivated, through acts of faith and above all charity.
This present moment too shall pass. But will our lessons have been learned? Divine chastisement is never a matter of an angry God fulfilling a lust for vengeance. It is a correction; and as a correction, it is a loving act of mercy, a means by which God draws us back to Him. For our part, we should not be longing for things to ‘return to normal’, but rather seeing where we need a true conversion of heart.
Is this not the message of St Paul? “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer” (Rom. 6:5-6); and: “Therefore if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead: and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory” (Col.3:1-3).
May we never again take the Holy Mass for granted! May we come to treasure anew the beautiful gift of the Sacraments. Let us prepare well to make good, humble confessions, and approach the Holy Eucharist with awe. Let us resolve above all to pray always, with thanks in our hearts, and to take every opportunity to give to Almighty God the adoration that is owed to Him.
And if we do this, the mystery of Easter will have truly
penetrated our lives, and the joy of the Risen Christ will be in us – and no
one can take this away.
May God bless you, and Our Lady keep you.
Regina Coeli, laetare, Alleluia! Our Lady’s statue in St William of York newly restored and gilded by a talented parishioner.
To download the full liturgical texts for Tenebrae, three booklets are available by clicking on the link right under each image below.
Please note, all these prayers, without the chant notation, are also available in the Baronius Hand Missal [for sale at St Mary’s Shrine] on pages 1778, 1811 & 1842 for the respective days of the Triduum.
Follow the choral singing of Tenebrae from St Mary’s Warrington via LiveMass.net on 9th, 10th and 11th April 2020, from 10am to 12noon.
