The Reverend Fr. Timothy Finigan has Posted an apposite Article on Our Lady Immaculate and Praying The Rosary at THE HERMENEUTIC OF CONTINUITY
Fr. Finigan included the following Text in his excellent Article:
“The Daughter of Sion, The Morning Star, The Gate of Heaven, herself, was able to welcome The Messiah into the World and to gaze lovingly upon His Holy Face with delight, and Prayerful adoration.
“Pope Saint John Paul spoke of The Rosary as: “Contemplating, with Mary, The Face of Christ.”
“It would be hard to find a better, more concise, summary of that Prayer, which I encourage you to say daily. During Advent, we would do well to renew our love of The Rosary while thinking of the first occasion, there in the stable at Bethlehem, when Our Blessed Mother contemplated The Face of her Divine Son.”
Taken from the Sermon, given at Saint Bede’s, Clapham Park, 8 December 2019.
A beautiful handmade Red Wood Rosary, with
Saint Benedict's Cross, available from Saint Michæl's
Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire, England.
Zephyrinus has already purchased his precious Rosary.
By purchasing such a beautiful item, you are, of course, supporting Saint Michæl's Abbey. The Rosary is available
The Church announces to us, today, in her Office of Lauds, these Solemn words:
Nolite timere: Quinta enim die veniet ad vos Dominus noster.
Fear not: For on the fifth day, Our Lord will come unto you.
SAINT THOMAS.
APOSTLE.
This is the last Feast that The Church keeps before the Great Feast of The Nativity of her Lord and Spouse. She interrupts the Greater Ferias in order to pay her tribute of honour to Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, whose glorious Martyrdom has consecrated this twenty-first day of December, and has procured for the Christian people a powerful patron, who will introduce them to The Divine Babe of Bethlehem.
To none of the Apostles could this day have been so fittingly assigned as to Saint Thomas. It was Saint Thomas whom we needed; Saint Thomas, whose Festal patronage would aid us to believe and hope in that God Whom we see not, and Who comes to us in silence and humility in order to try our Faith.
Saint Thomas was once guilty of doubting, when he ought to have believed, and learnt the necessity of Faith only by the sad experience of incredulity: He comes then most appropriately to defend us, by the power of his example and Prayers, against the temptations which proud human reason might excite within us.
Let us Pray to him with confidence. In that Heaven of light and vision, where his repentance and love have placed him, he will intercede for us, and gain for us that docility of mind and heart, which will enable us to see and recognise Him, Who is The Expected of Nations, and Who, though The King of The World, will give no other signs of His Majesty, than the swaddling-clothes and tears of a Babe.
But let us first read the acts of our Holy Apostle. The Church has deemed it prudent to give us them in an exceedingly abridged form, which contains only the most reliable facts, gathered from authentic sources; and thus she excludes all those details, which have no historic authority.
There follows The Great Antiphon of Saint Thomas.
O Thoma Didyme ! Qui Christum meruisti cernere; te precibus rogamus altisonis, succurre nobis miseris; ne damnemur cum impiis, in adventu Judicis.
O Thomas Didymus ! Who didst merit to see Christ;
we beseech thee, by most earnest supplication, help us miserable sinners, lest we be condemned with the ungodly,
at the coming of the Judge.
Oremus.
Da nobis, quæsumus, Domine, beati apostoli tui Thomæ solemnitatibus gloriari; ut ejus semper et patrociniis sublevemur, et fidem congrua devotione sectemur.
Per Dominum . . .
Amen.
Let Us Pray.
Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that we may rejoice on the Solemnity of Thy Blessed Apostle, Thomas; to the end that we may always have the assistance of his Prayers, and zealously profess our Faith he taught.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
There follows a Prayer from Matins of the Gothic, or Mozarabic, Breviary.
The Greek Church Celebrates, with her usual Solemnity, The Feast of Saint Thomas; but she keeps it on 6 October.
On the same day is The Fifth Great O Antiphon.
O Oriens, splendour lucis æternæ, et sol justitiæ; veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
O Orient ! Splendour of eternal light, and Sun of justice !
Broken legs, a shattered elbow, multiple breaks to the pelvis, a broken sternum, arm, jaw, cheek bone and eye socket, and internal damage to the spleen, kidneys and heart.
Despite these horrific injuries sustained from a Head-On Crash, caused by a Drink Driver, Chloe Dean from Ashford, Kent, does not let what was an almost life ending experience define her.
She’s learning to live again, to walk, and be able to play
with her young children – striving to be the person she was before the accident.
And while others would feel anger, her wishes for the man
who is now serving time for causing her ordeal, are that of learning, rehabilitation and positivity.
The remarkable 29-year-old mother of three continues
to rebuild her life 18-months on, and is now sharing her story
in the hope of preventing further accidents caused by Drink Drivers - providing a wake-up call to anyone who’s considering Drinking and Driving this Christmas.
In the Mass of Saint Thomas, the Liturgy reminds us that the Apostles were the Foundation of The Church, of which Christ is the Chief Corner-Stone (Epistle); that is why their Feasts were formerly kept like Sundays.
The Gospel relates the famous scene which occurred in the Upper Room after the Lord’s Resurrection. Saint Thomas doubted; and it was only when Jesus made him put his finger into His wounds that, passing suddenly from incredulity to ardent Faith, he exclaimed: “My Lord and my God.”
That finger, says a Father of The Church, has become the master of the World because it showed him the reality of the flesh of Jesus Christ. Let us therefore believe in the great Mystery of an Incarnate Word, which will soon be manifested to the World. The name of Saint Thomas figures in the Canon of The Mass (First List).
The Elevation having been instituted as a reply to the Heresy of Berengarius, who denied The Real Presence, let us contemplate in a Spirit of Faith the Sacred Elements when they are raised, and say, with Saint Thomas: “My Lord and my God,” a practice enriched by Pope Saint Pius X with an Indulgence of Seven Years and Seven Quarantines, and a Plenary Indulgence once a week on the ordinary conditions.
The Double Elevation recalls the real separation of Our Lord’s Body and Blood on The Cross.
Every Parish Priest Celebrates Mass for the people of his Parish.
Mass: Mihi autem.
Commemoration: Of the Feria. Creed: Is Said or Sung.
Preface: Of the Apostles.
Last Gospel of the Feria: On Ember Days.
“The Mass Of The Foundation Of The Trinitarian Order”.
Text from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal, unless stated otherwise.
Saturday in Ember Week Of Advent.
Station at Saint Peter’s.
Indulgence of 10 Years and 10 Quarantines.
Violet Vestments.
Saturday is the most solemn of the Ember Days, because that was the day on which The Church Ordained her Priests in the great Basilica of Saint Peter. This Ordination in the tenth month of the Roman year (called, for that reason, December) was the only one formerly known in Rome. Hence, it was an important date.
Everything in The Mass, moreover, bears the character of a very ancient Liturgy. It calls to mind, with its numerous Lessons, intermingled with Responses and Prayers, the earliest form of the introductory part of The Mass.
The Soul that is penetrated with it finds itself filled with a Holy Impatience, and, with The Church, it aspires to the New Birth of The Only Begotten Son of God, Who comes to deliver us from the yoke of sin (Second Collect).
“While, with confidence, she awaits The Lord Jesus, Who shall deliver us from our enemies, destroying Anti-Christ with the brightness of His Coming” (Epistle).
The Gospel brings before us the image of Saint John the Baptist, The Precursor, who prepares our Souls each year for The Coming of The Saviour. The same Gospel is again found in The Mass of the following day, because, formerly, the Ordination, taking place in the evening, lasted well into the night, thus encroaching on the Sunday, provided it with its Liturgy.
Mass: Veni, et osténde.
After the Kyrie eleison, the Bishop confers the Tonsure.
After the First Lesson, the Bishop Ordains the Door-Keepers.
After the Second Lesson, the Bishop Ordains the Readers.
After the Third Lesson, the Bishop Ordains the Exorcists.
After the Fourth Lesson, the Bishop Ordains the Acolytes.
After the Fifth Lesson, the Bishop Ordains the Sub-Deacons.
After the Epistle, the Bishop Ordains the Deacons.
After the Tract, the Bishop Ordains the Priests.
The Four Seasons of the Year begin with the Liturgical periods known as Ember Weeks. They are known since the 5th-Century A.D., but they were fixed to their present dates by Pope Saint Gregory VII in the 12th-Century.
The Ember Days are Three Fast Days, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, intended to Consecrate to God the various Seasons in Nature, and to prepare those who are about to be Ordained.
The Gospel recalls Gabriel’s mission to Mary to inform her that she was about to become The Mother of God.
No human voice, but an Angel’s, must make known the Mystery of such message. Today, for the first time, are heard the words: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee.” They are heard and believed. “Behold,” says Mary, “the handmaid of The Lord, be it done to me according to thy word” (Third Lesson). During seven Centuries, now, Isaias had foretold this Virgin Motherhood (Epistle, Communion).
Circa 1950: The Vicar and Sunday School Children
go out into the fields to Bless the crops. The little boy is carrying a symbolic Tree of Plenty.
Rogation Days, like their distant cousins, the Ember Days, are days set aside to observe a change in the Seasons. Rogation Days are tied to the Spring planting. There are Four Rogation Days: The Major Rogation, which falls on 25 April, and Three Minor Rogations, which are Celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, immediately before Ascension Thursday.
For An Abundant Harvest.
As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, Rogation Days are “Days of Prayer, and formerly, also of Fasting, instituted by The Church to appease God’s anger at man’s transgressions, to ask protection in calamities, and to obtain a good and bountiful harvest.”
Rogation is simply an English form of the Latin “Rogatio”, which comes from the verb “Rogare”, which means “to ask.” The primary purpose of the Rogation Days is to ask God to Bless the fields and the Parish (the geographic area) that they fall in.
The Major Rogation likely replaced the Roman feast of “Robigalia”, on which (the Catholic Encyclopædia notes) “the heathens held processions and supplications to their gods.”
While the Romans directed their prayers for good weather and an abundant harvest to a variety of gods, the Christians made the Tradition their own, by replacing Roman polytheism with monotheism, and directing their Prayers to God.
By the time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great (540 A.D. - 604 A.D.), the Christianised Rogation Days were already considered an ancient custom.
The Litany, Procession, And Mass.
The Rogation Days were marked by the recitation of the Litany of The Saints, which would normally begin in, or at, a Church. After Saint Mary was invoked, the Congregation would proceed to walk the boundaries of the Parish, while reciting the rest of the Litany (and repeating it as necessary or supplementing it with some of the Penitential or Gradual Psalms).
Thus, the entire Parish would be Blessed, and the boundaries of the Parish would be marked. The procession would end with a Rogation Mass, in which all in the Parish were expected to take part.
Sunday School Children Celebrate Rogation Day in 1953. A photo at Market Lavington Museum, Wiltshire, England.
Like the Ember Days, Rogation Days were removed from the Liturgical Calendar when it was revised in 1969, coinciding with the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI (the Novus Ordo).
Parishes can still Celebrate them, though very few in The United States do; but, in portions of Europe, The Major Rogation is still Celebrated with a Procession. As the Western World has become more industrialised, Rogation Days and Ember Days, focused as they are on agriculture and the changes of the Seasons, have seemed less “relevant.”
Still, they are good ways to keep us in touch with nature and to remind us that The Church’s Liturgical Calendar is tied to the changing Seasons.
Celebrating The Rogation Days.
If your Parish does not celebrate the Rogation Days, there’s nothing to stop you from Celebrating them yourself. You can mark the Days by reciting the Litany of The Saints. And, while many modern Parishes, especially in The United States, have boundaries that are too extensive to walk, you could learn where those boundaries are and walk a portion of them, getting to know your surroundings, and maybe your neighbours, in the process.
Finish it all off by attending daily Mass and Praying for good weather and a fruitful harvest.
Saint Michael’s Church, Bunwell, Norfolk, England, has always been the centre of Village Life. In this picture, taken on Rogation Sunday, April 1967, the Rector, Rev. Samuel Collins, followed by the Choir, Parishioners, and The New Buckenham Silver Band, walk The Parish and Bless the stream.
References in the Liturgy, connecting The Annunciation with Advent, date back to very early times. Many Churches observed this Feast on 18 December, in preference to 25 March, the latter date often falling in Lent.
Furthermore, this First Joyful Mystery of The Blessed Virgin is in keeping with the spirit of joy, which is so characteristic of the second half of the Season of Advent, when The Lord, Who is nigh, is so eagerly awaited (Second Gradual). Who, having appeared in the humility of His First Coming to save us (Collect), will come again like a King, full of glory (First Gradual), to take vengeance on His enemies and to deliver us forever (Offertory).
The following Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia.
In the Liturgical Calendar of the WesternChristian Churches, Ember Days are four separate Sets of Three Days within the same Week — specifically, the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday — roughly equidistant in the circuit of the Year, that are set aside for Fasting and Prayer.
These Days set apart for Special Prayer and Fasting were considered especially suitable for the Ordination of Clergy. The Ember Days are known in Latin as the “Quattuor Anni Tempora” (the “Four Seasons of The Year”), or, formerly, as the “Jejunia Quattuor Temporum” (“Fasts of The Four Seasons”).
The Four Quarterly Periods, during which the Ember Days fall, are called the Embertides.
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