Advent is coming: it's time to prepareA review of "The Jesse Box"

Once in a while, Rorate reviews books, calendars and other items for our readers we believe will be beneficial to them or their families, helping them grow in the Faith. We have no agreements with any publisher and receive no compensation whatsoever.

For today's review, we think back to the Advent seasons of the past, and trying to figure out how to instill the beauty of Advent in our children by teaching the ancestry of Jesus. For our family, it means going out to the yard, finding an awkwardly-shaped branch, then trying to figure out how to stand it upright for our children to create their Jesse Tree. Then, how to keep it low enough for the older children to adorn it, yet high enough for the little ones not to destroy it!

Now, Angelus Press has sent us a much-needed solution: The Jesse Box.

Our Christmas gift: Little Collection of Devout Meditations on the Mysteries of the Rosary, by John XXIII

Fifty years ago, on September 29, 1961, Pope Blessed John XXIII signed the Apostolic Letter "Il Religioso Convegno", on the recitation of the Most Holy Rosary. As a complement to this Apostolic Letter, John XXIII published his own personal devotions on each of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary - available on the Vatican website in Italian and in Spanish.

All English translations currently available on the web are very incomplete, and filled with mistranslations. We used this version as our draft for a correct and complete translation of this beautiful devotional exercise of the Pope.

This Sunday marks the exact fiftieth anniversary of the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, by the Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis - which explains the prayers asked for the Council in the meditation of the third Glorious Mystery. Our readers surely know our skepticism regarding the last Ecumenical Council - many of its problems were the result of a naïve enthusiasm which, events would soon make clear, was unjustified.

But the time is long past for us to reclaim Pope John XXIII: in the Sacred Liturgy, in liturgical practices, in traditional devotion, few recent Popes were as traditional as the Good Pope. This can be readily noticed in this Collection, in which the Missale Romanum and the Breviarium Romanum are quoted several times. We can easily see how the documents of the Council would have turned out if he had been able to lead it with all his intellectual faculties by the beautiful decisions of the Roman Synod of 1960 and the very traditional original schemata (drafts) of the Conciliar documents. As his predecessors in the 20th century, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, he was a good Pope. But he was our Good Pope. He was also a man of his age, marked by the optimism and regrets of the post-war generation, but always a son of Our Lady.

We now make our translation available to you in this special PDF booklet format as our own Christmas gift - if you wish to, you may open it only tomorrow...


NOTE: the host website will ask you for an encryption password: ignore it, just click on the FILE tab and then on DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL and download the file.

May you all have a very happy and blessed Christmastide!

The Immortal Temple

Raphael
Visitation
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Fr. Juan de Anchieta
Doncella Madre de Dios

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All things rising, all things sizing          Mary sees, sympathising     With that world of good,     Nature’s motherhood. Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind              How she did in her stored     Magnify the Lord. ... This ecstasy all through mothering earth

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins

Tu es spes mea, portio mea in terra viventium

J.S.Bach

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme [Kantate - BWV 140]

Arie: Wann kommst du, mein Heil?

The census is calling... - 2

Raffaello Sanzio

Visitation (detail)

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Ottorino Respighi

Antiche arie e danze per liuto (prima suite), 2. Gagliarda, di Vincenzo Galilei (Piano arrangement)

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The census is calling... - 1

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Census in Bethlehem (De volkstelling te Bethlehem - 1566) (detail)

Ottorino Respighi

Antiche arie e danze per liuto (terza suite), 1. Italiana (Piano arrangement)