Why The World Cannot Receive Him
The great solemnity of the Holy Spirit is upon us, and we ask the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity to deign to come into our hearts, bringing His Light, His Peace, His Fortitude, His Consolation. But before this can happen, we must first receive the grace of conversion which brings with it the grace […]
Patience Obtains All Things
I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. With these words of today’s Gospel, Our Blessed Lord wishes to help us understand the ways of God. God is not like man. Man is weak, and because he is weak, he seeks feverishly to amass knowledge and wealth. God […]
Just A Little While
Just a little while, and I will see you again. These words are without a doubt some of the most consoling in the Holy Gospel, designed as they are to ward off that most deadly of temptations: give up and turn back. Our human frailty is such that we all too often listen to those […]
St Joseph’s Magnum Opus
Today the Church honours St Joseph under the title of “Worker”. In the face of the Communist ideology of human work as a means to temporal prosperity and conquest, reducing human work to just another cog in the great wheel of evolutionary “progress”, the Church through Pope Pius XII wanted to remind us that the […]
Lest We Forget
To mark ANZAC day, the 25th of April, the monks chanted the Subvenite, a responsory usually sung upon receiving the news of the death of a Benedictine monk or friend of the monastery. May Our Lord grant eternal rest to all those who have given their lives for our country. Requiescant in pace. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/592e0a7a1e5b6ce22af1e69c/t/5cc2834beef1a11a2be652f6/1556251544886/Subvenite+ANZAC+Day.mp3/original/Subvenite+ANZAC+Day.mp3 “Subveníte […]
Quasimodo Geniti Infantes
Today’s oration has us ask the Lord that, having celebrated the paschal solemnities, we may keep them in our way of living, moribus et vita. Yesterday, a similar oration asked that having celebrated the paschal solemnities, we might attain to eternal joys, gaudia aeterna. Easter is truly the celebration of eternity, eternal life. This it […]
Everything Can Change At Easter
The wicked had just achieved the most devastating victory in history. The Son of God had been defeated. He was dead. He was gone. And with him all hope of anything good ever happening again. There was nothing to do but despair. No wonder the two disciples go off to Emmaus to try and drown […]
Notre Dame And Holy Saturday
Here in Australia it is already Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday is Our Lady’s day par excellence. She alone kept the faith in that dark night when everyone else, including all the apostles, had lost it. This is the origin of Saturday as Our Lady’s day. Yesterday just before the Mass of the Presanctified, a couple […]
Triangular Candlestick Donated
For the first time this year we have been blessed with an actual triangular candlestick for the office of Tenebrae. This long early morning office on the last three days of Holy Week is chanted in the dark in the presence of a large wooden candlestick containing 15 candles. 14 of them are extinguished after […]