All Souls' Day

(I Class)

The practice of recommending to God the souls in purgatory that we may mitigate the great pains which they suffer, and that He may soon bring them to His glory, is most pleasing to God and most profitable to us. For those blessed souls are His eternal spouses, and they are most grateful to those who obtain their deliverance from prison, or even a mitigation of their torments. Hence, when they shall enter into heaven, they will certainly not forget those who prayed for them. It is a pious belief that God manifests to them our prayers for them, that they also may pray for us. Let us recommend to Jesus Christ, and to His holy Mother, all the souls in purgatory, but especially those of our relatives, benefactors, friends, and enemies, and, still more particularly, the souls of those for whom we are bound to pray; and let us consider the great pains which these holy spouses of Jesus Christ endure, and offer to God for their relief the Masses of this day.

This evening was full of more paper writing. I'm about 2/3 of the way through my paper on faith (due tomorrow), and then it's immediately on to a paper on happiness (due Friday).

Update: initially I had marked Nov. 2 as All Souls' Day, as it was in the Novus Ordo calendar, because we had actually attended a Novus Ordo Mass on that day. The traditional calendar, however, has the good sense to move this feast to Monday whenever Nov. 2 falls upon a Sunday.

25th Sunday after Pentecost

We and a friend spent the day pleasantly in Vienna. By a combination of car and train, we made it to Vienna by 10:00 this morning in plenty of time to walk the half an hour or so to the Peterskirche in the city center to hear a Latin (Novus Ordo) Missa pro defunctis at 11:15. The Peterskirche is a beautiful, relatively small baroque Church that has been given into the care of Opus Dei.

After Mass we walked to the Naschmarkt hoping to find some fun food to eat, only to find it all closed up for Sunday. So we found a kebop stand and sat down next to the Opera House to eat a quick picnic lunch. After which Maria amused herself, as usual, by chasing the pigeons.

Then we crossed the street and went into the Sacher Cafe, so that Katie could have her first Sacher Torte in its original home. Since Lisa and I ate a Sacher Torte last year, we restricted ourselves to having hot drinks. I had a coffee (Viennese Melange) better than any I've had before anywhere. No kidding. Lisa had hot chocolate so that she could share something with Maria. Even the bathrooms in this Cafe are classy. Afterwards, we went back towards the Stephansdom to find a gelato stand that we like, and then just wandered about a bit: into a church of the Knights of Malta, which we had never noticed before, past the Hofburg Palace, into the church of St. Michael near the Hofburg (which holds the original relics of St. Blase, which are actually used in the blessings given on his feast day) and eventually back to the train station by 5:00 to head for home.

The Feast of All Saints

(I Class)

We can pay no greater honor to the Saints than by offering up to God in their name the Blood of Jesus. The efficacy of their past merits and present prayers is greatly increased when offered to God in close association with the merits and prayers of our Lord. Therefore the Church commemorates on this day all the Saints in heaven without exception, and thus honors also those who are unknown and who have no public recognition in the Liturgy.

Don't forget that a plenary indulgence, applicable only to the poor souls in purgatory, is available each day from November 1st to 8th inclusive. To gain these indulgences for the holy souls, the usual three conditions apply:

1. Sacramental confession within a week or so of performing the indulgenced work (one confession suffices for the obtaining of many indulgences).

2. The reception of Holy Communion, preferably on the same day as the prescribed work (one Communion is necessary for each indulgence).

3. Prayers for the intentions of the Holy Father (suggested: Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Gloria Patri), must be done each time on the day the indulgence is sought.

The prescribed work in this case is to visit a cemetery and to pray there for the holy souls in purgatory. My suggestion: Psalm 129 De profundis, and the prayer:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Requiescant in pace.

Amen.

Happy Halloween!

Actually, it's not supposed to be a happy day. Because the souls in heaven are honored tomorrow, and the souls in purgatory are remembered the next day, it has long been a Catholic custom to dwell today upon the souls in hell. It would not be amiss to offer prayers today for the conversion of all who are on the road to perdition.

Lisa gets the credit for noting the interesting fact that today is quite unusual in that secularists have paganized a Christian holiday, whereas for the most part Christianity "baptized" pagan feast days. The theme of the day was centered upon hell and damnation in its Catholic origins, but with the purpose of helping us to avoid them rather than glorifying in them.

Additions from Katie

Thought I'd throw in my thoughts:

Lourdes was a great trip, despite the long bus ride, etc. I think we were blessed with the opportunity to go. One of my favorite stops along the way was the castle in Carcassonne. That was my first castle! Lots of fun "storming it, scaling the walls..." with John, Lisa, and Maria. Once in Lourdes, I think the best part for me was just sitting quietly at the Grotto and praying, contemplating the apparition of Mary and her words to Bernadette.

After a couple days of sleeping in, I've recovered from the trip and am almost done with my homework for next week. Like John, I also have a paper to work on-my first one! However, mine isn't due until the end of November. It's 10 pages on Platonic dialogues. Should be fun...we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully we'll make it to Vienna this weekend, just to hang out for the day, but if not, I'll probably be going next weekend to pick up a friend, Cecilia, who's coming to visit Gaming.

I'll drop in again later!

Paper writing

Now that we're back in Gaming, and have had a day to recover from our pilgrimage, it's paper writing time for me. I have two papers due by the end of next week. One is for my fundamental theology class Fides et Ratio and is on St. Thomas's definition of the virtue of faith. The other is for my moral theology class Human Acts and the Final End and is on St. Thomas's treatise on happiness as the final end of human life.

We're Back!

We pulled into our beloved Gaming at 2:15 this morning. It's been a long week (and a good one) and we're happy to be home. A photo album is now linked on the sidebar.

Ss. Simon and Jude

Apostles (II Class)

The holy Apostles Simon, a Cananean, called Zelotes (the Zealot) and Jude Thaddeus, a brother of St. James the Less, a cousin to Jesus, called Lebbeus (the Courageous), preached the Gospel, the first in Egypt, the second in Mesopotamia. They both suffered martyrdom in Persia in the first century. St. Jude wrote a short Epistle in which he exhorts the faithful to beware of heretics.

Tuesday was a looooooooong day. We began with Mass at 7:30, and then ate breakfast, packed our things, and got on the bus. We began driving at 9:30 and arrived at Gaming the next morning at 2:15, almost 17 hours later. The highlight of the day was definately the quick bathroom stop we made around 6:30 in Germany. There was a Burger King! Did that ever taste good after subsisting mostly on snack foods all day.

Ss. Bernadette and Margaret Mary

From this point on pictures are scarce since we were all so exhausted after spending the night on the bus. It also was raining much of the day on Monday. We pulled into Nevers, pretty much right in the center of France, at 7:00 in the morning to spend half an hour or so in prayer before the body of St. Bernadette. Then it was back onto the bus to head for Paray-le-Monial and the Visitation chapel wherein our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and revealed to her His Sacred Heart.

The chapel itself was very plain, with a modern day mosaic in the apse depicting the apparition of our Lord to St. Margaret Mary. Her body was also visible in a side chapel there. We had reserved the time slot from 10:00-10:45 for Mass to be said in the chapel by our priests, but since we didn't arrive until 10:30 we had to settle for participating in the Mass scheduled for another group at 10:45, complete with guitar and a very bouncy music leader. Let's just say it was quite a contrast to the Mass we were blessed to hear the previous day in Lourdes.

The basilica in Paray-le-Monial looked quite nice, but we didn't have time to go inside. I think the architectural style is Romanesque, but I could be mistaken about that.

By the time Mass was finished it was noon and we still had hardly eaten a bite all day. We set off through town looking for food only to discover the strange French custom of closing all the shops on Monday, I suppose in order to recover from the weekend. After a fair bit of looking we did manage to find a coney-island style restaurant that was open. We devoured our coffee and food and made it back onto the bus by 1:00 ready for another drive, this time to Saint-Jodard, about 80 kms North-West of Lyon, where there is a novitiate house for the Community of St. John. We have some connections to this community, since one of the students at the ITI, who was traveling with us, is a member of the community, as is one of our professors. The community is of quite recent origin (1975). We arrived sometime in the mid-afternoon, had some dinner and went to bed early. Some of the students, Katie included, went for a long walk to the Lorraine River where we are told there is a great little fortress.

The Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ

(I Class)

The royalty of Christ rests upon a twofold basis. He is our King by right of birth and by right of conquest. The first refers us to the personality of the Son of God, whereby, in His divine nature as God and by virtue of the hypostatic union, He is the sovereign Lord and Master. The second places before us the God-Man coming down on earth to rescue fallen man from the slavery of Satan, and by the labors and sufferings of His life, and passion, and death, to win a glorious victory for us over sin and hell.

Commemoration of St. Evaristus, Pope, Martyr

St. Evaristus, successor of St. Anacletus I, governed the Church for nine years; he was condemned to death under Trajan in 109.

Sunday in Lourdes was a great day. Having determined not to hear Mass again in the bare boards closet chapel, we looked for an opportunity to hear Mass in one of the basilicas. Not only was there a 9:30 Mass offered in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, but it said also that it would be offered in Latin! We arrived early and found a seat where we could park Maria's stroller. Then much to my delight I noticed altar cards arranged on the altar. We had unknowingly come to a traditional Latin Mass, and not just any Mass, but that for the Feast of Christ the King, which on the traditional calendar is always celebrated on the last Sunday of October. What a gift from our Lady, to be able to hear such a Mass!

Regarding the Feast of Christ the King, by the way, Pope Pius XI's very brief 1925 Encyclical Letter Quas Primas, by which he instituted the feast day, is an excellent read. His intention was that this feast day would be a reminder to nations that they also "are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ" (32).

After Mass, we set out to try to obtain another plenary indulgence by visiting the same four holy sites as before. When we returned to the basilicas we were pleased to encounter a long and beautiful eucharistic procession.

Later that evening we watched the sun go down behind the basilicas before setting out for dinner.

At 9:00 pm we were all back on the bus for another overnight drive, this time heading North-East through France toward Nevers, where the body of St. Bernadette lies incorrupt.

Commemoration of Ss. Chrysanthus and Daria

Martyrs

St. Chrysanthus was converted by his wife, St. Daria. They came from the East to Rome. After many torments under the prefect Celerinus, they were buried alive in a sandpit in 284.

We awoke Saturday morning relatively refreshed and ready to follow the Jubilee path marked out by the Pope in hopes of gaining a plenary indulgence. We began the morning with another visit to the grotto of the apparitions and then to the basilicas which are built directly over the grotto. The Basilica of the Rosary is the lower shrine with the mosaics covering the facade; the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception is the higher shrine with the towers.

After Divine Liturgy with most of our group at the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lourdes we started out on the Jubilee path. First, we went to the parish church in Lourdes where St. Bernadette was baptized to pray before the baptismal font. Then, we visited the Cachot, which is a former prison into which St. Bernadette's family moved for want of money in 1857 when her father lost his job. It was from there that St. Bernadette set out on February 11, 1858 to gather firewood. Next, we came to the grotto itself wherein our Lady appeared that day to St. Bernadette. It was quite crowded then because of a procession of French "cowboys" on horseback that were coming to say the Rosary in front of the grotto. From a distance, though, we were able to say our prayers, and then we headed off to our final destination: the hospice chapel where St. Bernadette made her first Holy Communion.

Later that evening we returned to the grotto (now much less crowded), and remained until the sun began to set over the basilicas at which point we set off to find some dinner.

St. Raphael

Archangel (III Class)

Benedict XV extended to the Universal Church the feast of the holy Archangel St. Raphael, who is known to us from the inspired words of the Book of Tobias as the angelical physician of soul and body.

We arrived in Carcassonne around 3:00 Friday morning and crashed into bed. We were up at 7:00 for breakfast, and then headed into the old city to explore. With its 3 km of walls Carcassonne is the largest walled town in Europe. It was an impressive city to say the least (click this link to see an amazing panoramic shot of the city at night). We spent the whole morning wandering about and playing on the walls. One of the city's chief claims to fame is that it was a stronghold of the catharist heretics in the 13th century. Impressive though the fortifications are, the city did fall to the Catholic crusaders in 1209. See if you can find Lisa, Maria, and Katie in the picture below.

We piled back onto the bus at noon and headed off to Toulouse to visit the tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the patron saints of our Institute. The Church in which his tomb lies has unfortunately been turned into a museum, but the reliquary of the Angelic Doctor has been preserved under the altar.

We had a picnic lunch in Toulouse and then headed off toward Lourdes on the final leg of our journey. We arrived around 6:00 in the evening, got settled into our lodgings, and had just a few minutes to pray at the grotto before hearing Mass in a little closet chapel at 7:30. Then it was off to a strange dinner of cafeteria beef tongue and squid, by the end of which we were so tired that we went right to bed.