Sunday, November 6, 2022

The Quest to Claim the Pearl of Great Price

 


    If you didn't see the video of my homily for the Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross for the Pontifical celebrated at the Sacred Liturgy Conference last September in Billings, Montana, (here) I would encourage you. I hope you can find it encouraging and clarifying. We need to break once and for all with the pinch-faced crowd which shudders at the Cross of Christ and condemns good Irish priests (among others) for reminding folk of the Last Things and of every Christian's need for sincere and thoroughgoing repentance for sins committed after Baptism. Don't let November get away from you without doing your best to ransom Holy Souls from Purgatory and lining up friends to help you on your day of need!

    Much of the reasoning and wrong-headed zeal which may be behind renewal talk in the Church these days could benefit from a change of vocabulary, a change of metaphor. To repeat for the umpteenth time one of my talking points: Make no mistake, the future of Catholicism lies with the unconditional embrace of the tradition presently so maligned by modernists, iconoclasts, and old hierarchs who just don't understand or who won't get out of the way of our return to Christ. Hold steady, little flock! In waiting and in calm our strength lies.

    A case in point, the annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage just completed in Rome was reported in stunning fashion and presented itself as nobly detached by comparison to the weeping, cursing and gnashing of teeth by some of the denizens of Sant 'Anselmo's supposed liturgy faculty with links to the Bologna school of heterodoxy (see Fr. Z). Here I will simply decry the ambivalence of our "captains" in the Roman Curia and local hierarchy who shrink from rallying to the standard of the Cross Vexilla Regis! Would that they could find it in their hearts to nurture the little flock which has found the pearl of great price in the embrace of the Usus Antiquior.

    The politicking which continues in vain to capture the rhetorical high ground serves only to insult God's little ones, showing no love whatsoever for the flock and the mission proper to those entrusted with shepherding in Christ's stead (cf. Rorate Caeli).

    As I say, quoting Isaiah 30:15: For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Which is not to say that we have time on our sides, but that also in this trial does the Lord demand constancy of us. We live in hope!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI 

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