At my Latin Mass today the priest asked how many of us had read Deus Caritas est. He counted off five or six. Then he noted that when he had asked the same question at the last two Novus Masses he had celebrated nobody had read it. He turned excitedly to another elderly priest who was in choir and said excitedly something like, “wow Father, these old Mass Catholics are really on the cutting edge with the Pope, aren’t they?!” The other priest did not respond, but the celebrant assured us that he would have to tell the bishop about this. I like that, those Old Mass Catholics on the cutting edge with the Pope!
Cor Iesu Sacratissimum,
miserere nobis
miserere nobis
Ephemeris
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Saintly Souls whom We Love
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Pius XI
John Henry Cardinal Newman
Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val
At my Latin Mass this morning, the priest gave detailed instructions to those in attendance on how to obtain the encyclical from the Vatican website. I wonder how many at NOs this morning received similar instructions. Then again, we can’t place all the responsibility on priests; the faithful must be more proactive.
Good story, Doctor
We had an encyclical discussion group after we got back from Scranton this afternoon. It was a good time.
Not to mention that this Sunday’s Epistle was ALL RELATED TO THE ENCYCLICAL’s subject matter.
Indeed, it was. In Scranton this morning, Fr. Longua, FSSP gave a homily all about love and mentioned not once Deus Caritas Est, a somewhat curious thing, we thought.
anonymous…, at the NO Mass I attend (Syracuse Diocese), yesterday morning, our priest/pastor also gave detailed instructions on how to obtain the Holy Father’s encyclical from the Vatican website. He also discussed the contents of Deus Caritas Est. I was delighted, because I had read it on Saturday. You were wondering about that, so I thought I would volunteer the info.
By the way, can someone tell me why the Encyclical has hyperlinks to the New American Bible in the English version? I went to the Vatican website to see what Bible might be used in other translations and viewed the Portugese version, for example, and there were no links to biblical verses. The Italian translation cited something called Bibbia CEI and the French version, once again, had no hyperlinks. This seems like a strange inconsistancy, n’est-ce pas?
Who’s Pope Benedict?
Roseanne, that’s a joy for me to hear. Thanks for sharing (and for your charity in subtly rebuking my bias). [Thank you, Lord, for teaching us humility.] I also confess to you that I have not yet read the enclyclical, but it is on my “to do” list.
anonymous, may God bless you for your humility, but I did not mean to rebuke you. I am just another Catholic who is trying to sort it all out…By the way, I would be very interested to know what the people who contribute to your blog think of a recent 2-part homily series about the Catholic Mass, published on his site by Fr. James Farfaglia, a very good, holy priest of my acquaintance, pastor of St. Helena of the True Cross Parish in Corpus Christi, Texas. The link to the first homily is
http://www.goccn.org/diocese/spcl/RefArcB2/03OTB.asp
and the second homily can be found at
http://www.goccn.org/diocese/spcl/reflect.asp
I preached three homilies in succession, on January 25, 25, and 26, focusing on Deus Caritas Est. The nuns and layfolk in the congregation responded eagerly to the invitation to take and read the encyclical. Here is the text of the three homilies:
JANUARY 24
SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
Ephesians 3:8-12
Psalm 36: 3-4, 5-6, 30-31
John 15:9-17
January 24, 2006
Monastery of the Glorious Cross, O.S.B.
Branford, Connecticut
I find it fascinating on this feast of Saint Francis de Sales to compare his Treatise on the Love of God with what Pope Benedict XVI has been saying about his forthcoming encyclical. Yesterday the Holy Father addressed the participants in a meeting of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum on the theme “But the Greatest of These is Love” (1 Cor 13:13). “Today the word love is so tarnished,” he said, “so spoiled and so abused, that one is almost afraid to pronounce it with one’s lips. And yet it is a primordial word, expression of the primordial reality; we cannot simply abandon it, we must take it up again, purify it and give back to it its original splendor so that it might illuminate our life and lead it on the right path. This awareness led me to choose love as the theme of my first encyclical” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
The Holy Father has been making us ready for this his first encyclical. He has used several opportunities over the past few weeks to speak of it, to prepare our minds and hearts to receive it. The proper Gospel given us in the lectionary today for the feast of Saint Francis de Sales engages us directly with the core message of the encyclical: a love that is at once desire (eros) and sacrificial self-gift (agápe), a love that is at once attraction, union, and fruition.
Many will be astonished to discover that the Holy Father finds some of the inspiration for his encyclical in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Poetry, and indeed all the arts, are rightly valued and used as the handmaids of theology. Such has always been the Catholic attitude toward the arts. Saint Francis de Sales knew well the distance separating the sensibility of Rome from that of Geneva. The Church of Dante, and Francis de Sales, and Benedict XVI knows nothing of Calvinism’s cold disdain for the beauty that engages the senses. In the Catholic world-view, that which engages the senses with “the bands of love” (Hos 11:4) and draws the heart “with cords of compassion” (Hos 11:4) leads to the faith-vision of “the God who has assumed a human face and a human heart” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
In the Treatise on the Love of God Saint Francis de Sales speaks of the effect of what is loved on the one who loves. He calls it complaisance, meaning the pleasure or delight taken in something or someone. “Delight,” says the gentle bishop, “is the awakener of the heart, but love is its action; delight makes it get up, but love makes it walk. The heart spreads its wings by delight but love is its flight. Love then, to speak distinctly and precisely, is no other thing than the movement,