Led by the Star of Beauty to the Love of Beauty Unseen: The Epiphany of Christ in the Ancient Roman Liturgy

Photo by John Aron: LMS Pilgrimage to Chideock, England, with the ICKSP

In Plato’s famous dialogue on love, the Symposium, Socrates relates the “tale” he learned from his teacher Diotima of Mantineia. She tells him that love is caused by the beautiful, and that the ultimate goal of our love is absolute Beauty itself:

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others… but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things….

Fontgombault Sermon for the Epiphany - "The Church is necessary for Salvation: The storms rocking Peter’s ship invite us to get closer to Christ."

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

Fontgombault, January 6, 2020

Vidimus stellam eius.

We have seen His star in the East.

(Mt 2:2)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
My dearly beloved Sons,

During Advent, we appropriated the expectation of the men and women of the Old Testament, and we yearned for the coming of the promised Messiah. This found an echo in the liturgy, with its many repetitions of the call, “Veni, Come”.

This expectation for a Comforter is not something proper to Christians exclusively. Every man who wonders, even just a little, what the meaning of his life may be, yearns for a light, for a pointer on the path towards happiness, for an answer to the painful questions included in each human life. Unfortunately, many go astray, following stars leading to dead-ends, to unfulfillable hopes. The multiplication of sects, the revival of mystery religions, the development of Masonic lodges, bear witness to that fact. Man is often an anonymous person, lost in a crowd of anonymous persons. Everyone follows his own path, towards manifold directions, without a guide, on his own.

You suggest: Solemn High Mass for Epiphany in California

Event: Dominican Rite Mass in Lafayette, Indiana, January 5th

Una Voce Lafayette invites you to the last Mass celebrated in the historic Saint Elizabeth chapel before the commencement of renovation of the Franciscan Central Health hospital complex. Celebrated by Fr. Timothy Combs, OP, the music featured will be Dominican chant and a Mass setting by Hildegard of Bingen, along with baroque organ music by Miss Jessica Earle, organist of St. Joseph's, Chelsea (Australia). For those wanting to do so, please bring water for blessing by Father.

Basking in the glow of Epiphany: The wedding feast at Cana

In the giant new lectionary, poster-child of the liturgical reform, we find very strange things if we take pains to scratch beneath the surface. One of the most surprising, to me, was the discovery that the passage from the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John about the wedding feast at Cana—among the most picturesque, moving, and theologically profound passages in all the Gospels—is read only once every three years in the Novus Ordo (in “Year C”). In contrast, it is read every year in the old Mass, on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, where it has appeared for centuries without interruption.

Guest Op-Ed: Epiphany reflections on the Christian vocation

By Veronica A. Arntz

The Gospels tell us very little about the wise men, or the Magi, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, who came from the East to worship the newborn Christ Child. While tradition says that there were three of them, named Balthasar, Melchior, and Jaspar, we do not even have knowledge of that from the Scriptures.[1] What we do know is that these wise men, who were Gentiles, followed a star in the heavens so that they could come to Bethlehem to worship Christ, the King of Israel. In reflecting on the event of the Magi, we can learn something about our own vocation, namely, that God calls us out of our comfort to pursue him in a radical way, following the royal road of the Cross. 

OUR LADY AND THE WINE OF CANA Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

St. Mary's Norwalk

January 17, 2016

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
The Wedding Feast of Cana

“At a certain point the wine ran out, and Jesus’ mother told him, ‘They have no more wine.’ Jesus replied, ‘Woman, how does this concern of yours involve me?  My hour has not yet come’.  His mother instructed those waiting on table, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’” (John 2: 3-5)

Their cups overfloweth!

There's something in the water at St. Anne Church, a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) parish in San Diego (visit them here).

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany 2016

by Father Richard G. Cipolla

St. Mary's

Norwalk, Connecticut

“And behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.”

Adoration of the Kings
Velazquez
Museo del Prado, Madrid

So you light your window candles, plug in the lights on the Christmas tree, pause to look at the crèche with the Magi now come to worship the baby Jesus. You do so because you know what time it is. It is the twelfth day of Christmas, not the eighth, not the tenth, but the twelfth day of Christmas, that day whose observation is older than the first day of Christmas, the day with the strange sounding Greek name, Epiphany, strange but no matter, this is the time, this is the twelfth day of Christmas. And you look out and you notice the Christmas trees on your neighbors’ lawns, belly up, needles falling off, ready for the garbage man to pick up. Christmas disposed of before its time, its time of twelve days, on the first day of Christmas my true love gave me to me.

The Manifestation of the King of Kings

The doctrine of the Kingship of Christ has been relegated almost entirely to a claim about the private commitment of individual believers to live according to the Gospel, and surely, while this is where our Lord's kingship must always begin, it cannot be where it ends. As Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mortalium Animos warns against a relativistic conception of ecumenism, so does the same Pope's encyclical Quas Primas warn against a narrow subjective conception of the reign of Jesus Christ, who is, in fact, whether we acknowledge it or not, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Judge of the living and the dead, the One who can and should reign in the social, cultural, political and economic spheres. He has reigned thus before; and if He does not now reign, that is not to our credit, but to our shame.

All this has been on my mind as I ponder the magnificent Gregorian propers for the feast of the Epiphany -- chants that bring the exceptionlessly comprehensive Kingship of Christ very much to the fore, to be pondered, loved, and longed for. Of course, most Catholics no longer hear these or any songs that convey the traditional doctrine, but -- blessed be God! -- Catholics who attend the usus antiquior Mass today, the Twelfth Day of Christmas, will hear these propers spoken or sung. They are always used in the classical Roman Rite because the Church of Rome always believes and professes one and the same doctrine.

Blessing of Epiphany water

The photo above comes from the great St. Anne Church, a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) parish in San Diego (they have a new website here).