Notre Dame de Rouen. The façade of the Gothic Church in France. Photographer: Hippo1947. Licence: SHUTTERSTOCK.

Monday, 17 March 2025

Zephyrinus Spends Time In The Highlands Of Scotland. Travels Overnight From King’s Cross Railway Station On “The Night Scotsman”.



“The Night Scotsman”.
Artist: Robert Bartlett.
Illustration and Text: 

One of the most visually beautiful of the Railway Posters, this Poster from 1932 emphasises the speed and comfort by which one can board a Train in London and arrive in Scotland the following morning, after a good night’s sleep.

The Locomotive powers into the night landscape, while the bright lights in the footplate area illuminate the skill of the driver and fireman.

Saint Patrick. Bishop And Confessor. Whose Feast Day It Is, Today, 17 March. White Vestments.


Text from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless stated otherwise.

Saint Patrick.
   Bishop And Confessor.
   Feast Day 17 March.

Double.

White Vestments.


Stained-Glass Window depicting Saint Patrick.
Saint Patrick Catholic Church, Junction City,
Ohio, United States of America.
Photo: 21 March 2015.
Source: Own work.
Author: Nheyob
(Wikimedia Commons)



Saint Patrick.
The Irish Legend.
Available on YouTube

Whilst in the 5th-Century A.D., The Franks, Germans, and other Northern peoples had not yet received The Light of The Gospel, God raised up “the Confessor and Bishop, Saint Patrick, to announce His Glory to the pagans” of Ireland (Collect).

This Holy Bishop (Introit) put to such profit the talents he had received from God (Gospel) that he became the father of all this people (Communion), and that Ireland has preserved for him, after thirteen Centuries, an ardent and tender Devotion which nothing has been able to weaken.


Saint Patrick’s Cathedral,
Dublin, Ireland.
Photo: 21 July 2015.
Source: Own work.
Attribution: Photo by DAVID ILIFF.
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Author: Diliff
(Wikimedia Commons)


“Hail, Glorious Saint Patrick”.
Available on YouTube

Strengthened by help from above (Offertory), he was great before Kings and Princes (Epistle). At first hostile, they ended by listening to him and helped him, during his thirty-three years' Apostleship, to cover, with Churches, Monasteries, and Schools, the island which was soon to deserve the appellation of Isle of The Saints.

Saint Patrick died in 461 A.D.

17 March is a National Day and a Day of Obligation in Ireland.

Through the merits of this Saint, whose austerities have remained celebrated, let us ask of God the Grace to accomplish the Penances commanded by Him (Collect).

Mass: Státuit.
Commemoration: Of The Feria.
Last Gospel: Of The Feria.


The Way Of The Cross. The Thirteenth Station. The Perfect Undertaking For Lent.



“O, Beloved Wood”.
“O, Blessed Nails”. 
“O, Sweet Burden”.
Illustration: PINTEREST


Text is from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless stated otherwise.

Indulgences: One Plenary Indulgence each time; another Plenary Indulgence if Holy Communion is received on the same day, or ten times within the month following that exercise.

If it remained unfinished, Ten Years and Ten Quarantines for each Station visited.

(20 October 1931).


Conditions:

1. To visit each Station, unless it is impossible owing to the crowd.

[Pictures of the fourteen several Mysteries are very useful, but are not indispensable. Wooden Crosses, indicating the fourteen Stations of The Cross, are sufficient and are absolutely required.]

2. To meditate, as best one can, on The Passion of The Saviour.

No vocal Prayers are required. The Popes recommend the recitation of a Pater, an Ave, and an Act of Contrition, at each Station (April 1731).

When The Way of The Cross is made in public, a Verse of “The Stabat Mater” may be sung between each Station.


The Thirteenth Station.

Jesus Is Laid In The Arms Of His Blessed Mother.

Versicle: We adore Thee, O, Christ, and we bless Thee.

Response: Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

Priest.

The multitude have left the heights of Calvary, and none remain save the beloved disciple and the holy women, who, at the foot of the Cross, are striving to stem the grief of Christ’s inconsolable Mother.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take down the body of her Divine Son from the Cross and deposit It in her arms.

Prayer.

O, thou, whose grief was boundless as an ocean that hath no limits, Mary Mother of God, give us a share in thy most holy sorrow in the sufferings of thy Son, and have compassion on our infirmities.

Accept us as thy children with the beloved disciple. Show thyself a mother unto us; and may He, through thee, receive our Prayer, Who, for us, vouchsafed to be thy Son.



An Act of Contrition.

O, God, we love Thee with our whole hearts, and above all things, and are heartily sorry that we have offended Thee.

May we never offend Thee any more. O, may we love Thee without ceasing, and make it our delight to do in all things Thy Most Holy Will.

Our Father . . .

Hail Mary . . .

Glory Be To The Father . . .

Have mercy on us, O, Lord. Have mercy on us.

Versicle: May the Souls of the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Response: Amen.

This Act of Contrition is to be repeated after each Station.



While passing from one Station to another, a Verse of the “Stabat Mater” is sung or said.

Versicle:

Fac me tecum pie flere,
Crucifíxo condolére,
Donec ego víxero.

Response:

Sancta Mater, istud agas,
Crucifíxi fige plagas,
Cordi meo válide.

Proceed to The Fourteenth Station.

Wells Cathedral (Part Nineteen).



The Great West Front,
Wells Cathedral.
Photo: 30 April 2014.
Source: Own work.
Attribution:
Photo by DAVID ILIFF.
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Author: Diliff
(Wikimedia Commons)


Text from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia,
unless stated otherwise.

The Bracing Arches are known as “Saint Andrew’s Cross Arches”, in a reference to the Patron Saint of the Cathedral. They have been described by Wim Swaan – rightly or wrongly – as “brutally massive” and intrusive in an otherwise restrained Interior.[6]

Lady Chapel and Retro-Choir.

Wells Cathedral has a square East End to the Choir, as is usual, and, like several other Cathedrals, including Salisbury and Lichfield, has a lower Lady Chapel projecting at the Eastern End, begun by Thomas Witney about 1310, possibly before the Chapter House was completed.

The Lady Chapel seems to have begun as a free-standing structure in the form of an elongated octagon, but the Plan changed and it was linked to the Eastern End by extension of the Choir and construction of a second Transept, or Retro-Choir, East of the Choir, probably by William Joy.[116]

The Lady Chapel has a Vault of complex and somewhat irregular pattern, as the Chapel is not symmetrical about both axes. The main Ribs are intersected by additional non-supporting, Lierne Ribs, which in this case form a star-shaped pattern at the apex of the Vault. It is one of the earliest Lierne Vaults in England.[116]



The view through William Joy’s Retro-Choir into the Lady Chapel has been described as “one of the most subtle and entrancing architectural prospects in Europe”.[116]
Photo: 9 December 2008.
Source: Own work.
Author: Mattana
(Wikimedia Commons)

There are five large windows, of which four are filled with fragments of Mediæval Glass.[116] The tracery of the windows is in the style known as Reticulated Gothic, having a pattern of a single repeated shape, in this case a Trefoil, giving a “reticulate” or net-like appearance.[116]

The Retro-Choir extends across the East End of the Choir and into the East Transepts. At its centre, the Vault is supported by a remarkable structure of angled Piers.

Two of these are placed as to complete the octagonal shape of the Lady Chapel, a solution described by Francis Bond as “an intuition of Genius”.[117]



The Eastern Bays of the Choir (1329 – 1345) showing the Reticular Vault and the Gallery of Saints beneath
the Great East Window[113]
Photo: 11 February 2008.
Attribution:
This file is licensed under the
Author: IDS.photos from Tiverton, UK
(Wikimedia Commons)

The windows of the Retro-Choir are in the Reticulated Style, like those of the Lady Chapel, but are fully Flowing Decorated in that the tracery Mouldings form Ogival curves.[116]

The Chapter House was begun in the Late-13th-Century and built in two stages, completed about 1310. It is a two-storeyed structure with the main Chamber raised on an Undercroft.

PART TWENTY FOLLOWS.

Monday Of The Second Week In Lent. Lenten Station At The Basilica Of Saint Clement. Violet Vestments.



Peterborough Cathedral.
© Chel@SweetbriarDreams
www.sweetbriardreams.blogspot.co.uk


Text from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless stated otherwise.

Monday of The Second Week in Lent.

Station at Saint Clement's.

Indulgence of 10 Years and 10 Quarantines.

Violet Vestments.



English: Basilica of Saint Clement, Rome.
Italiano: Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano.
Photo: May 2007.
Source: Own work.
(Wikimedia Commons)




The Station is at the Church of Saint Clement, built above the very house of the third successor of Saint Peter, whose name is found in The Canon of The Mass. This Sanctuary, a Parish of Rome in the 5th-Century A.D., is a most faithful example of an old Roman Basilica, although it was rebuilt in the 11th-Century. There are found, under the Altar, the remains of the Holy Martyr and of Saint Ignatius of Antioch.

Our Lord foretells in the Gospel that the Jews will lift Him up on The Cross, and thrice He asserts that they will die in their sin, because they have not believed in Him and done His works.

The wrath of God, which fell a first time on Jerusalem at the time of the Captivity of Babylon (Epistle), was renewed against Israel at the burning of the Temple. Like guilty Christians, they would only be able to return to The Lord by Penance, while the heathen are called, instead, to believe in Jesus, to become part of His people by Baptism.

“Let us mortify our flesh by Abstinence from food and let us Fast from sin by following Justice” (Collect).

Mass: Rédime me.
Preface: Of Lent.


Basilica of Saint Clement, Rome.
Available on YouTube


Basilica di San Clemente, Rome.
Photo: March 2006.
Source: Own work.
Author: Sixtus
Permission: GFDL
(Wikimedia Commons)




The following Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia,
unless otherwise stated.


The Basilica of Saint Clement (Italian: Basilica di San Clemente-al-Laterano) is a Roman Catholic Minor Basilica, Dedicated to Pope Clement I, in Rome. Archæologically-speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings:

(1) The present Basilica, built just before the year 1100, during the height of The Middle Ages;

(2) Beneath the present Basilica, is a 4th-Century A.D. Basilica that had been converted out of the home of a Roman nobleman, part of which had, in the 1st-Century A.D., briefly served as an early Church, and the basement of which had, in the 2nd-Century A.D., briefly served as a mithraeum;

(3) The home of the Roman nobleman had been built on the foundations of a Republican-era building that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 64 A.D.


Ceiling of the Basilica of Saint Clement, Rome.
Photo: May 2007.
Source: Own work.
(Wikimedia Commons)




This ancient Church was transformed over the Centuries from a private home, that was the site of clandestine Christian worship in the 1st-Century A.D., to a grand public Basilica by the time of the 6th-Century A.D, reflecting the emerging Catholic Church’s growing legitimacy and power.

The archaeological traces of the Basilica’s history were discovered in the 1860s by Joseph Mullooly, Lector in Sacred Theology, beginning in 1849 at the College of Saint Thomas in Rome, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.

The lowest levels of the present Basilica are remnants of the Foundation of a Republican-era building that was destroyed in the Great Fire of 64 A.D. An industrial building, possibly the Imperial Mint of Rome, was built on the site during the “Flavian” Period and, shortly thereafter, a “domus”, or multi-level house, alongside it, separated form the industrial building by a narrow alleyway.

About a hundred years later (circa 200 A.D.), the central room of the domus was re-modelled for use as part of a mithraeum, that is, as part of a sanctuary of the cult of Mithras. The main cult room (the speleum, “cave”, which is about 9.6 m long and 6 m wide, was discovered in 1867, but could not be investigated until 1914, due to lack of drainage. The “exedra”, the shallow Apse at the far end of the low vaulted space, was trimmed with pumice to render it more cave-like.


English: Mithraeum, under the Basilica of Saint Clement.
Italiano: Mitreo sottostante la basilica di San Clemente.
Русский: Митреум под базиликой святого Климента.
Date: 17 December 2006.
Source: Uploaded on Flickr as 
(Wikimedia Commons)




Central to the main room of the sanctuary, was found an altar, in the shape of a sarcophagus, and with the main cult relief of the tauroctony, Mithras slaying a bull, on its front face. The torch-bearers, Cautes and Cautopates, appear on the Left and Right faces of the same monument.

A dedicatory inscription identifies the donor as one Pater Cnaeus Arrius Claudianus, perhaps of the same clan as Titus Arrius Antoninus’ mother. Other monuments discovered in the sanctuary include a bust of Sol, kept in the sanctuary in a niche near the entrance, and a figure of “Mithras petra generix”, i.e. “Mithras, born of the rock”.


bring the body of Saint Clement to Rome.
11th-Century fresco in the Basilica di San Clemente.
Source/Photographer: Unknown.
(Wikimedia Commons)




All three monuments, mentioned above, are still on display in the Mithraeum. A fourth monument, – a statue of Saint Peter found in the Speleum’s Vestibule, and still on display there – is not of the mysteries.



Cathedral of Our Lady Of The Atonement,
Baguio, Philippines.
Photo: 29 March 2024.
Source: Own work.
This file is made available under the
Author: Galaxiaria
(Wikimedia Commons)


Wells Cathedral.
Photo: August 2006.
Source: Own work.
This file is licensed under the
Author: Steinsky
(Wikimedia Commons)

Sunday, 16 March 2025

Fr. Wilfrid (Wilf) Elkin (R.I.P.).



Fr. Wilfrid (Wilf) Elkin (R.I.P.).

Please remember in your Prayers
Fr. Wilfrid (Wilf) Elkin,
who died on Saturday, 13 March 2021.

Please Pray for the repose of his Soul.

May He Rest In Peace.

The Web-Site of The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle
can be found HERE


 Fr. Wilfrid (Wilf) Elkin (R.I.P.).

Zephyrinus had the privilege and pleasure of meeting Fr. Elkin at The Latin Mass Society’s Training Week for Priests and Servers at Ushaw College, Durham, in 2011.

Fr. Elkin told Zephyrinus how, in the Early-1960s, ON A DAILY BASIS, there were FOUR HUNDRED Priests and Seminarians attending The Divine Holy Mass in Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel, Ushaw College.


Mass in Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel,
Ushaw College, Durham, England,
during a Latin Mass Society Training Week 
for Priests and Servers, April 2011.
Fr. Elkin was one of the Priests
on the Right-Hand Side in the Choir Stalls.
Photo: Latin Mass Society 
http://www.lms.org.uk/

When Fr. Elkin told the above to Zephyrinus in 2011, there were only FOUR Priests and Seminarians at Ushaw College. In 2011, they would attend the Modern Novus Ordo Mass in one of the Offices of the College, cluttered with hoovers, dust-pans and brushes, plastic dustbins, etc, because they thought “the Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel was too large”.

Such is the success of The Modern Novus Ordo Mass and the outstanding success of “. . . the breath of fresh air through the windows of The Catholic Church”, as regaled in Vatican II.

Fr. Elkin was, for many years, the Author of a well-regarded Catholic Blog, entitled “Let The Welkin Ring”. His Blog can be found HERE

Fr. Elkin, whose nickname was “The Welkin” (there is a long and convoluted explanation of this epithet), was Ordained at Ushaw College, Durham, in 1959.

He Served in Pennywell, Sunderland; North Kenton, Newcastle; Consett; Ryhope, Sunderland; then, finally, in Barnard Castle.
Requiescat In Pace.
May He Rest In Peace.

The Way Of The Cross. The Twelfth Station. The Perfect Undertaking For Lent.



“O, Beloved Wood”.
“O, Blessed Nails”. 
“O, Sweet Burden”.
Illustration: PINTEREST


Text is from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless stated otherwise.

Indulgences: One Plenary Indulgence each time; another Plenary Indulgence if Holy Communion is received on the same day, or ten times within the month following that exercise.

If it remained unfinished, Ten Years and Ten Quarantines for each Station visited.

(20 October 1931).


Conditions:

1. To visit each Station, unless it is impossible owing to the crowd.

[Pictures of the fourteen several Mysteries are very useful, but are not indispensable. Wooden Crosses, indicating the fourteen Stations of The Cross, are sufficient and are absolutely required.]

2. To meditate, as best one can, on The Passion of The Saviour.

No vocal Prayers are required. The Popes recommend the recitation of a Pater, an Ave, and an Act of Contrition, at each Station (April 1731).

When The Way of The Cross is made in public, a Verse of “The Stabat Mater” may be sung between each Station.


The Twelfth Station.

Jesus Dies Upon The Cross.

Versicle: We adore Thee, O, Christ, and we bless Thee.

Response: Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

Priest.

For three hours has Jesus hung upon His transfixed hands; His blood has run in streams down His body, and bedewed the ground.

And, in the midst of excruciating sufferings, He has pardoned His murderers, promised the bliss of Paradise to the good thief, and committed His Blessed Mother and beloved disciple to each other's care.

All is now consummated.

And, meekly bowing down His head, He gives up the ghost.

Prayer.

O, Jesus ! We devoutly embrace that honoured Cross where Thou didst love us even unto death. In that death, we place all our confidence.

Henceforth, let us live only for Thee; and, in dying for Thee, let us die loving Thee, and in Thy sacred arms.



An Act of Contrition.

O, God, we love Thee with our whole hearts, and above all things, and are heartily sorry that we have offended Thee.

May we never offend Thee any more. O, may we love Thee without ceasing, and make it our delight to do in all things Thy Most Holy Will.

Our Father . . .

Hail Mary . . .

Glory Be To The Father . . .

Have mercy on us, O, Lord. Have mercy on us.

Versicle: May the Souls of the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Response: Amen.

This Act of Contrition is to be repeated after each Station.



While passing from one Station to another, a Verse of the “Stabat Mater” is sung or said.

Versicle:

Tui nati vulneráti,
Tam dignáti pro me pati,
Poenas mecum dívide.

Response:

Sancta Mater, istud agas,
Crucifíxi fige plagas,
Cordi meo válide.

Proceed to The Thirteenth Station.
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