Liturgy is fleshy, concrete, material; it is the prayer of smoking resin, sloughing wax, swirling wine and water; it is the remembrance of God made man gutted on a Cross; it is the celebration of a grilled Lawrence, a gouged-eye Lucy, a Fr. … [Read more...]
Can White Vestments Be Worn at All Times?
April 26, 2024 by Fr. Timothy Eck
Go up to an average American Roman Catholic priest and ask them, “When can white vestments be worn?” and you will probably receive the answer, “Always.” It is commonly thought that white is the default color for vestments; however, a natural … [Read more...]
Keep Easter in Eastertide
April 28, 2022 by S. E. Greydanus
Happy Easter! Christ is risen, alleluia! Does this time still feel like Easter? Hopefully Sunday Mass, at least, still does. Yet outside of that weekly hour, how often do we remember what season we are in? Many Catholics have prepared … [Read more...]
The Year of Joseph
February 26, 2022 by Mark Drogin
I hear Joseph silently confessing his sinfulness to the Angel of the Lord (see Matthew 1:18–25): “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.” We have critical memory los … [Read more...]
Boredom, Ordinary Time, and God’s Gift of Himself
December 28, 2019 by Deacon James Keating
It is routine to hear people good-heartedly mock the reasonableness of the Church’s liturgical calendar “celebrating” “Ordinary Time.” To celebrate ordinariness is a true curiosity within Western culture, because its members routinely seek e … [Read more...]
A Spirituality of Advent
November 30, 2018 by David Vincent Meconi
Advent is a time of preparation. It has many parallels to Lent: we don the purple, we suppress the Gloria (awaiting the angels to sing it again for the first time at Midnight Mass), and we are given weeks to allow the Holy Spirit to prepare … [Read more...]
Late Winter Book Reviews
February 24, 2018 by Book Reviews
The Cardinal Müller Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church. By Gerhard Ludwig Müller with Carlos Granados. Translated by Richard Goodyear. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017. pp. 221+xi. $17.95 pb. ISBN 9 … [Read more...]
At That First Fish Fry: A Message for Ordinary Time
May 14, 2016 by Alan L. Anderson
So we now pass from the great liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter to “ordinary time.” Since mid-February, the Church has traveled the spiritual desert of Lent, has reveled in the joyous celebration of Easter, and has witnessed the final cu … [Read more...]
The Church’s Year of Grace: History, Traditions, Beauty
August 1, 2012 by Sister Joan L Roccasalvo, CSJ
Christian discipleship is fundamentally a dynamic movement from self to the beauty of Christ. In the absence of this dynamic movement, faith remains woefully incomplete. ...The essential characteristic of beauty then is to be transported … [Read more...]
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