On the 60th Anniversary of the Opening of Vatican II... let's talk about more pleasant things (with beautiful pictures)

The "prophets of doom" mocked by John XXIII in his opening speech were right. Of course they were. Those who warn of the disastrous results of revolutionary projects are always right. They were right when they warned Louis XVI against calling the Estates-General. They were right when they warned Franz Joseph not to declare war on Serbia after the ultimatum had been basically all accepted or when they warned Nicholas II not to decree "partial mobilization" in 1914. 

Anyway, many good things are still going on despite the noxious fumes coming from the Vatican still now with the nonsensical Satan Synod ("Synod on Synodality") as this completely bankrupt pontificate unravels.

This past Saturday, for instance, hundreds of faithful, mostly young people, attended the Pontifical Mass celebrated at the Church of Saint Roch, Paris, for the 40th Anniversary of the association that promotes the yearly Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage (Notre-Dame de Chrétienté). The Mass was celebrated by the Abbot of St. Madeleine of Le Barroux. 

The Mystery of Suffering: Why do innocent little children suffer? - Editorial by the Abbot of St. Mary Magdalene of Le Barroux

This editorial opens the monastery letter for December 2018, but it seems to appropriate now, when infanticide is celebrated by so many in public life.

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Suffering and its mystery

December 8, 2018
Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin

On September 27, Father Robert of our foundation Sainte-Marie de la Garde defended his doctoral thesis in theology at the Dominican convent in Toulouse. A strenuous two and a half hour exercise during which he presented the product of three years’ work on “Suffering in Saint Thomas Aquinas”. A very delicate subject! Saint John Paul II wrote in his apostolic letter Salvifici doloris that “Man, in suffering, remains an inaccessible mystery”. Nevertheless, theology can explore this great mystery, provided one looks at the divine purpose. For God has a plan, and suffering is one of them, but according to a line that remains to be clarified. Suffering, whether experienced or perceived, seems absurd, and it can be the cause of revolt against God, loss of faith or indulging in answers that are simplistic, and sometimes downright incompatible with faith and reason. Some theologians have spoken of God’s suffering in his divinity in order to maintain a bond of solidarity between the Creator and the creature. However, this is not the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor of the Church.

Thank God for Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux

On this Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, Penitent, we thank God for her patronage of the great work accomplished by Dom Gérard Calvet and his followers in the Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Le Barroux, France, in the same Provence where it is believed that she spent the last years of her life and where her relics have been venerated since immemorial times.

If you wish to listen to the chants of the office on their great feastday, just visit their website (also available recorded at the wonderful Barrouxchant.com)

The Gospel in a Nutshell

 Dom Gérard Calvet OSB*

ONE DAY, as we were asking a Carmelite sister to tell us how she made her prayer, her heart to heart with the Lord, she responded that, for thirty-five years, one phrase of the Gospel was enough for her, and she returned to it without ceasing. It seemed to her that drawing on another source would be to be unfaithful to her particular vocation, or at least to the attraction which the Lord had given to her for her time of mental prayer. It is very true that the interior life, more than a response to passing impulses, is chiefly an effort to persevere in the direction of a continuous line flowing form the first grace.

The phrase that our Carmelite was taking in this way was drawn from the Gospel of John: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). The whole doctrine of salvation is contained in these few words: the divine paternity, the redemptive Incarnation, the role of faith, the drama of reprobation and the perspective of eternal happiness. The ancients gave a name to this verse of the Gospel of Saint John: they called it Evangelium in nuce, the Gospel in a nutshell. Let’s read it slowly and lets pause over each word so that we draw out the sap. This is perhaps the surest way to approach the great mystery of the Incarnation, this essential mystery, source of all the others, by which God touches the world. Lets try!

God so loved the world… Everything flows from the Trinity. Everything that is divine, everything that comes down from God and leads man to God can only be an outflowing of the love of the Trinity: God so loved the world... There is a great consolation and sweetness in this profession of faith in divine charity. It is something that makes the fear and the news of the worst catastrophes [1] lose their strength, like smoke that is blown away by the wind. So is there bad news? Can it be as bad as renouncing Love?

One can say that the race of saints has for two thousand years been working and plowing this field and have only been drawing the consequences of this essential good news, invoked so often: Deus caritas est. God is love. But according to a logic which made the ancient Greeks mock, it was necessary, so that this love express itself, so that it pour itself out on man, that God send His Son. This is the second part of our phrase.

... that he gave His only Son...

Video: Full Documentary "Watchmen of the Night" on the traditional Le Barroux Abbey (with English subtitles)

Sights and sounds of the Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalen of Le Barroux, near Avignon, in the Provence region of France:

September 5, 1914: Péguy at 100 - II - Modernity, Eternity, and the Traditional Liturgical Year (a text by Dom Gérard Calvet)

"As the Christian prepares himself for death, the modern man prepares himself for retirement." 

Already in 1902, years still before his own admission that he had returned to the Catholic faith of his roots and childhood, Charles Péguy was already deeply aware of the failures of Modernity, as shown above. It is indeed the ultimate obsession of modernity: a long life, a safe retirement, security above everything else... But ultimately, death will come to us all, should not we rather prepare for Eternity above all?

In his final years, as someone who finally began to understand the Catholic faith abandoned at youth, Péguy could not but be immersed in the beauty of the liturgical year, which is eternity brought to the present life. And the liturgical year in its traditional understanding, adapted to the real, tangible, circumstances of man -- circumstances which, as seasons and birthdays, are naturally annual, not biennial or triennial.

In 2010, our contributor Fr. Demets posted the translation of a deep text by the founder of the Abbey of Saint Madeleine of Le Barroux, Dom Gérard Calvet (a great expert on the writings of the poet), on Péguy and his discovery of the Liturgical Year.

[cf. also Péguy at 100 - Part I, War and Death]

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The Prayer of the Day

by Dom Gérard Calvet, O.S.B.

From our Mailbox You Report: When Cardinal Zen visited our Parish You Suggest: Le Barroux Abbot to celebrate Solemn Mass in the Netherlands

1. You Report, from a reader in Hong Kong:

Last Sunday (4/5), a Solemn High Mass was celebrated in the Rosary Church, Hong Kong.

Cardinal Zen was also present and gave sermon during the mass. He preached the importance of Hermeneutic of Continunity and reminded the faithful not to see the Second Vatican Council and the Council of Trent as two rivalling extremes.

He also reminded the faithful to always keep the Catholics in Mainland China in our daily prayers. Mainland Chinese Catholics are also at the heart of the Cardinal. He talks about them nearly every time as he comes to celebrate the Traditional Mass.

One interesting thing to notice is that, besides Cardinal Zen himself, there were also two Salesians present at the mass: the deacon, Fr Albert Ho, SDB and subdeacon Bro Carlos Cheung, SDB - worth noticing that the Tridentine Liturgy Community has mass every Sunday in the Salesian Parish.

________________________________

2. From a reader in the Netherlands:

Coming Saturday, May 10, at 11 AM, the Abbot of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, Dom Louis-Marie de Geyer d'Orth, will celebrate a Solemn Mass in the beautiful and immense Basilica of Sts. Agatha and Barbara in Oudenbosch, Netherlands, organised by the Dutch Latin Liturgy Society (Vereniging voor Latijnse Liturgie) which, until 2007, focused only on the Novus Ordo in Latin.

This is the first time this Society is organising a Holy Mass according the extraordinary form during their General Assembly.

Pope Francis: "Priests, do you weep? In the Ancient Missal..."

“Tell me: do you weep? Or have we lost tears? I remember that in the Ancient Missals, those of another time, there was a very beautiful prayer to ask for the gift of tears. It began thus, the prayer: 'Lord, You, who gave to Moses the mandate of striking the stone so that water would come of it, strike the stone of my heart, so that tears...': it went like this, more or less, the prayer. It was very beautiful. But how many of us weep before the suffering of a child, before the destruction of a family, before so many people who do not find the way? The weeping of priests... Do you weep?"

Franciscus

Meeting with the priests of the diocese of Rome (in Italian)

March 6, 2014

It is the collect ad petendam compunctionem cordis, in the traditional Roman Missal (Orationes diversae):

Oratio: Omnípotens et mitíssime Deus, qui sitiénti pópulo fontem vivéntis aquae de petra produxísti: educ de cordis nostri durítia lácrimas compunctiónis; ut peccáta nostra plángere valeámus, remissionémque eórum, te miseránte, mereámur accípere. Per Dóminum nostrum.... [“Almighty and most merciful God, Who, to quench the thirst of Thy people, didst draw a fountain of living water out of a rock, draw from our stony hearts tears of compunction, that we may be able to weep for our sins and win forgiveness for them by Thy mercy. Through Our Lord ... .”]

Cantuale Antonianum (in Italian) says that in the 2002 typical edition of the Paul VI Missal a similar prayer was included. But it was obviously the Ancient Missal that in its poetic beauty and own personal experience (as an altar boy... as a seminarian), became ingrained in the Pope's memory forever.

Note: in 2010, we posted this translation of a text dedicated to traditional collects, including the collect pro petitione lacrymarum, by Dom Gérard Calvet, of most venerable memory, founder and first abbot of Saint Mary Magdalen of Le Barroux, the great Traditional Abbey in southern France.