7th Day of Christmas

 On the Seventh Day of Christmas:

Seven Swans A-Swimming

Traditional Catechetical Remembrance: The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and/or the seven sacraments

Today is December 31st - New Year's Eve - And the Feast of the Holy Family

Today we remember the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and pray for our families and the unity of our families. Say a prayer to the Holy Family and ask them to pray for and with you for a blessed new year.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel -  (O Emmanuel) - O Antiphon for December 23

English:

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver,

desire of the nations, Savior of all people: Come and set us free, Lord our God.

(December 23)

Latin:

O Emmanuel,

Rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium, et Salvator earum:veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

The Acrostic

The first letters of the titles, from last to first, appear to form a Latin acrostic, 'Ero cras', meaning 'Tomorrow, I will be [there]', mirroring the theme of the antiphons. This is formed from the first letter of each title – Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia.

And the Song You All Know!

The song, O Come, O Come Emmanuel is also based in the O Antiphons!

OK, one more version:

Pope Francis Resigning

Will Pope Francis follow in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI?

Photo credit: Vatican News

He has stated that he would. He has already picked a retirement house in Buenos Aires for where he would like to live and plans to work as a priest. He said this is what he was planning on doing before he became pope and wishes to return to that plan as pope emeritus (Akin, 2014). Some speculate this could be as early as after Christmas of 2020 (FR News, 2020). An article from Keep the Faith in February 2020, states that there is "no doubt he will resign in 2020" (Hoare, 2020). Another, who cites a comment from Pope Francis, more clearly states - "the question is not if Francis will resign, but more likely when will he actually do so" (Mickens, 2019).

The bottom line is, Pope Francis has not definitively declared he will resign after Christmas, 2020. What we have here is speculation from news agencies and others who are basing their speculation on implied statements that Pope Francis has made. Could it be after Christmas and still within 2020? Well, as of the writing of this article, we have a little over a week to find out! Based upon what is out there, it is the opinion of this writer that he likely will follow in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI. Whether that will happen in 2020, or at some future date, this writer cannot and will not say.

References

Akin, J. (2014). Pope Francis announces he may renounce the papacy one day: 6 things to know and share [blog]. National Catholic Register. https://www.ncregister.com/blog/pope-francis-announces-he-may-renounce-the-papacy-one-day-6-things-to-know-and-share

FR24 News (2020). Pope: "Without a doubt" the Pope will resign after Christmas when Francis has pledged to "follow Benedict". FR24 News. https://www.fr24news.com/a/2020/12/pope-without-a-doubt-the-pope-will-resign-after-christmas-when-francis-has-pledged-to-follow-benedict-world-new.html 

Hoare, C. (2020). Pope Francis: 'No doubt will resign in 2020' claim revealed amid slap video row. Keep the Faith. https://www.keepthefaith.co.uk/2020/01/18/pope-francis-no-doubt-he-will-resign-in-2020-claim-revealed-amid-slap-video-row/ 

Mickens, R. (2019). The resignation of Pope Francis. LaCroix International. https://international.la-croix.com/news/letter-from-rome/the-resignation-of-pope-francis/9416 

O Rex Gentium

 O Rex Gentium - O King of Nations - O Antiphon for December 22

English:

O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart;

O Keystone of the mighty arch of man:Come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.

Latin:

O Rex Gentium,

et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

And the sixth "O" ornament on our Jesse Tree:

O Oriens

 O Oriens - O Radiant Dawn - O Antiphon for December 21

English:

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:

Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Latin:

O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illuminasedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

And our fifth "O" ornament on the Jesse Tree:

Fourth Sunday in Advent

 It is the FOURTH and LAST Sunday in Advent!

The start of the Christ Mass Season is right around the corner! 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

As you light the fourth and last candle of the Advent wreath, pray these prayers:

INTROIT Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just (Is. 45). Let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Savior. The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands (Ps. 18:2). Glory be to the Father.

COLLECT Raise up, O Lord, we pray Thee, Thy power, and come, and with great might succor us: that, by the help of Thy grace, that which our sins impede may be hastened by Thy merciful forgiveness. Through our Lord.

(Readings from the Extraordinary Rite)

Remember, the BEST way to keep Christ in Christmas is to keep the Mass in Christmas.

O Clavis David

 O Clavis David - O Key of David - O Antiphon - December 20

English:

O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel,

controlling at your will the gate of heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.

Latin:

O Clavis David,

et sceptrum domus Israël, qui aperis, et nemo claudit, claudis, et nemo aperuit: veni, et educ vinctumde domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

And the fourth "O" ornament is added to our Jesse Tree:

O Radix Jesse

 O Radix Jesse - O Root of Jesse - December 19th Antiphon

English:

O Root of Jesse,

you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.

Latin:

O Radix Jesse,

qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

And today, the third "O" ornament on our Jesse Tree:

O Adonai

 December 18 - O Adonai - O Lord

Veni, Veni, Adonai, qui populo in Sinai
legem dedisti vertice in maiestate gloriae.

O Come, O Come, Thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times didst give the law,
in cloud, and majesty, and awe.

And so today, December 18, we add the second "O" ornament to our Jesse Tree:

O Sapientia

 December 17 - The first day of the O Antiphons!

O Sapientia - or O Wisdom marks today.

In our house we setup a "Jesse Tree" and hang an "O" ornament each night.

With the hanging of each ornament - we recite or sing the related verse from "O Come, O Come Emanuel" 

From Wikipedia:

The first letters of the titles, from last to first, appear to form a Latin acrostic which translates to "Tomorrow, I will be [there]", mirroring the theme of the antiphons. Father Saunders wrote, "According to Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons with a definite purpose. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one - Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia - the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, "Tomorrow, I will come". Therefore, the Lord Jesus, whose coming we have prepared for in Advent and whom we have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, now speaks to us, Tomorrow, I will come. So the O Antiphons not only bring intensity to our Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion.

Sing with your family:
O come, o come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.

CHORUS: 
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!


O come, O Wisdom from on high,
who orders all things mightily,
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.

CHORUS: 
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

Time vs Eternity

 

Time Vs Eternity

By

Arthur C. Custance and

Robin A. Dionne

Does time have a beginning? What was God doing before He created the universe? St.Thomas Aquinas answered: Since time did not exist, God did not have time to do anything.

St. Thomas believed that time began when the universe was made into existence. There are those who believe that there is such a thing as an absolute time where there is no point where time began, where time is infinitely long (where there is no beginning and no end).

I respectfully disagree. Time as we know it can only be found in our universe because it can only be experienced in a specific manner in this universe. Although we, as individuals, feel time pass in the same manner, its speed can be perceived differently. If you’re preoccupied with something, time may pass more quickly than if you were bored. This effect of the stretching or compression of time is manifested in the psychological world (in your mind). Another, more counter-intuitive, phenomenon of stretching, and compression of time can be actually seen and measured in relativistic effects. These time fluctuations occur in the physical world. But what happens in the spiritual world? How does God perceive time? Or is He outside of time as we know it?

Whether we look at how time is relative in our perceptions as well as our measurements, we are still dealing with time, and not with eternity. To use a more familiar idea would be to talk about any number and infinity. The basic mistake that most people do is to conceptualize infinity to a very large number. If you take away 1 from a very large number (no matter how large it is), you end up with a very large number less one. But if you take away one from infinity, you still get infinity. As far as a large number is from infinity, so is time from eternity. These 2, time and eternity, are two different realms of experience. What we need to remember here is that when we step out of time, we step into eternity, and we cannot be in them both at once. But God can.

God exists in these two realms. I can say this because since time only began after the universe was brought forth we know God was there before time existed. How can God be bound by something He created out of nothing? And since we experience God through miracles and through Jesus, we know that God exists inside of time. Therefore God exists inside and outside of time. In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus testified to this capacity. The most striking example showing that God lives outside of time is the following statement from John 8:58: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Let’s look at this statement closely.

What we might have expected to find would have been the words, “Before Abraham was, I was” – which would have satisfied our normal sense of time. But this is not what the Lord said. What He did say is much more significant and is evidence of His living outside of time. The subject of the conversation was Abraham. The Lord took Abraham’s time as the point of reference and spoke of the ages that preceded Abraham, and all that followed (including the present). Jesus referred to the distant period before Abraham in the present tense even though it was centuries ago. To Christ, it was “now”. Why? Because Jesus is God, and to God, there is no passage of time, but all is “present”.

Another illustration of this apparent inversion of time is found in Isaiah 65:24, “Before they call, I will answer.” Most people have taken this to mean simply that God knows ahead of time what we are going to pray for and then can anticipate our needs. But this is not really what it says in Isaiah. What God says is that the fulfillment of the request will have been completed before the request is made, which would seem to render prayer unnecessary in the first place because if God has already answered, why pray? – From God’s point of view the prayer is already answered because from God’s point of view it is already prayed. Therefore, prayer is still useful and necessary in our timeframe.

Still another example comes from Revelation 13:8, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Again, the ordinary way to interpret this verse is to think of it as God’s foreknowledge. But it doesn’t say that the Lamb was foreordained to be slain. But in the text it is the Lord who is slain, from the foundation of the world – slain in fact, out of time. This was the sacrifice of God, an event that was timeless in and of itself. This is a truth that is by no means essential that a man should understand in order to be saved, but it is a wonderful thing to enter into God’s revelation and think His thoughts after Him. The Lord Jesus Christ continually lived in time for our sakes, and in eternity by His very nature. It is in this sense that He could speak of Himself while on earth as “the Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13).

This next section needs some careful attention. It's here that we’ll apply what we just learned about the two categories of experience, time and eternity. This way of thinking will clear up quite a few mysteries in a wonderful way. When a Christian dies, he passes from this realm of time and space into another realm of pure spirit, that is to say, out of time as we experience it into a state of timelessness, the ever-present of God. As he makes this passage, every event in God’s scheduled program for the future which, as revealed in Scripture must come to pass before the Lord’s return, must crowd instantly upon him. He does not “wait” for the Lord’s return: it is immediate. But the Lord’s return is an event, which, in the framework of historical time, cannot take place until the church is complete and the end of the age has come. It must happen for him, therefore, that these events are completed instantaneously, though the living who survive him await these events in the future.

Yet, for him, those who survive him must in his consciousness also have completed their journey home, and therefore he will not even experience any departing from them, but they with him rise to meet the Lord on His way for His second triumph with all the saints. Within the framework of time, this general resurrection is future, but to the “dying” Christian, it is a present event. This is the meaning of the Lord’s words “The hour is coming – and now is…” (John 5:25).

Now, this can be carried a little further. The experience of each saint is shared by all other saints, by those who have preceded and those who are to follow. For them all, all history, all intervening time between death and the Lord's return, is suddenly annihilated so that each one finds to his amazement that Adam, too, is just dying and joining him on his way to meet the Lord: and Abraham and David, Isaiah and the Beloved John, Paul and Augustine, and you and all in one wonderful experience meeting the Lord in a single instant together, without precedence and without the slightest consciousness of delay, none being late and none too early (this could be the meaning of I Thessalonians 4:13-17.

For us who remain, this event is still future, an event greatly longed for: for those who have gone on, it has already happened but not without us.It is in this sense that Scripture twice affirms, observing events from our point of view, that no man hath yet ascended into heaven (John 3:13), not even David (Acts 2:34). David is not there yet, nor any others, because we are not there! As we have said, in one body, in one single experience, all pass together to be with the Lord and all intervening time being eclipsed, the Lord is at that moment on His way back.

[I welcome any doctrinal questions or corrections]

Nathan

Gaudete - Third Sunday in Advent

Gaudete, or Joyful, Sunday is upon us! Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice! 

INTROIT (And EPISTLE) Philippians 4:4-6
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! Let your moderation be known to all men. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety; but in every prayer let your petitions be made known to God.

Ps. 84:2. O Lord, You have blessed Your land; You have restored Jacob from captivity.

V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The vestments color today is rose to symbolize the joyfulness of the coming soon of our Lord, similar to Laetare Sunday in Lent. During our days of penance - which is a main theme of the Advent season - we take time to be mindful and joyful of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, not only the celebration of His birth on the day of the Christ Mass (Christmas) but also in joyful eagerness for His Second Coming.

Also, a reminder - THIS IS NOT THE CHRISTMAS SEASON! Christmas starts with the first Mass of Christmas - or the Christ Mass. Traditionally that is "Midnight Mass" on Christmas morning. Wish your friends and fellow parishioners a Blessed Advent during this season - then celebrate the Christ Mass from December 25th through January 2nd, which is Candlemas - and the last time of the liturgical year that the nativity is directly referenced. 

This coming Thursday begins the traditional practice of reciting the O Antiphons:

The “O Antiphons” are prayed as part of the prayer of the Church from December 17 until the 23rd. Each of the O Antiphons is a name for Christ, and expresses the longing for the Messiah.

The names of Jesus in the O Antiphons are:

O Wisdom of our God Most High

O Adonai, ruler of the house of Israel

O Root of Jesse’s stem

O Key of David

O Radiant Dawn

O King of all nations

O Emmanuel

As these days progress - here at Qui Locutus we will post the traditional prayers, readings and invite your comments. Do you have a tradition you practice for the O Antiphons? 

Second Sunday of Advent

On this Second Sunday of Advent we are reminded to "stir up our hearts." What does this mean to you? How are you "stirring up your heart" for the Lord this Advent season?