Novena to the Holy Name, day III

Day Three: The Salutary Operation of the Name of Jesus

Consider, devout soul, that the name Jesus signifies nothing else than Savior; and St. Peter (Acts 4:12) assures us that the Eternal Father has not given to men any other name by which they may be saved amidst the snares of this deceitful world, than the adorable name of Jesus. It is this name that makes the truth of faith shine everywhere, and that calls all men from the depths of darkness to the adorable light of the Gospel. It is by virtue of this adorable name that the Apostle gave light to the blind, made the lame walk, healed the sick, raised the dead to life, and filled the whole world with astonishment. And if the Angel at first announced that Jesus would bring life into the world by delivering it from the cruel slavery into which Adam had plunged it, this good Savior confirmed this promise himself when he declared (Jn 10:10) that he had come so that his sheep might have life, and might have it more abundantly. By virtue of his name we see idolatry overthrown, to the great confusion of the pagan princes and priests, who did all in their power to maintain it. We see the Synagogue vanquished,... who with threats of punishments had forbidden the Apostles (Acts 4:17) to preach and invoke this powerful name. Ah since in this world there is no good that is not due to the efficiency of the name of Jesus, let us acknowledge with humility and with love the source of all these riches; and if in the past we have been unfaithful, let us once for all put an end to our ingratitude, and let us endeavor to repair all the wrong that we have done, and say: O amiable and holy name of Jesus! may the seraphim of heaven give to You for me suitable thanks, and never cease to praise You by forever repeating that You do merit all glory, all honor, and all power. My sweet Savior, I hope to obtain, by virtue of Your name, the salvation of my body and soul ; I hope that with this glorious name in my heart and on my lips, victorious over the world and the flesh, I shall have the happiness to sing Your praises and to bless the august Trinity for ever and ever.

Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory be to the Father, etc., in honor of the salutary operation of the name of Jesus.
Versicle and prayer:

V.Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

R.From henceforth and for evermore!

Let us pray.

God, who did appoint Your only-begotten Son Savor of mankind, and did command that he should be called Jesus, mercifully grant that we may enjoy the vision of him in heaven, whose holy Name we venerate on earth. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Novena to the Holy Name, day I

I almost forgot that January is the month dedicated to the Holy name of Jesus. Had January 3rd not been a Sunday (And I hadn't been sick) It would've been the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, and I would've made my novea then. But I'll make it now,and say a votive office tomorrow or some other ferial day. This is from St.Alphonsus Liguori's book, "The Incarnation, Birth, and Infancy of Jesus Christ."

Day One

The Giving of the Glorious Name of Jesus.

Consider, devout soul, that the holy name of Jesus is not a name invented by man, but it comes from God, who wished it to be made known by the archangel Gabriel, as St. Luke testifies: His name was ca/led Jesus... by the angel.(Lk 2:21) St. Bernard also says that this name is not a simple figure of things, a shadow without reality, but it is a palpable truth. Jesus is a name that expresses perfectly the hypostatic union of the divine nature and of the human nature. The world could not have been saved by a pure God, because God is impassible, nor by a pure man, because man is limited and finite. This is the reason why the holy name Jesus, which signifies the same as Savior, as the angel declares, (Mt 1:21) has been given to the Son of God, made man through Mary, in order to show that both as God and man he accomplished the redemption of mankind by delivering them from the slavery of sin at the same time. In short, Jesus is a name that comprises infinity, eternity, immensity, wisdom, justice, mercy, and all the adorable perfections of God. What happiness for us to be reconciled with the eternal Father through the merits of this divine Mediator who has had the goodness to pay our debt at the cost of his precious blood.

Adorable Jesus if You have sacrificed Yourself to deliver Your people from the hands of their enemies in order to acquire an eternal name, it would be but fair that this name should surpass and eclipse every other name, even that of the seraphim, as St. Paul says: Being made so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they. (Heb 1:4) And if the eternal Father has wished that this name should be that of his Son, may You grant that, having experienced on earth its happy effects, we may arrive at the complete happiness in heaven to praise You and to bless You for all eternity.

Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory be to the Father, etc., nine times, in honor of the giving of the glorious name of Jesus. We finish with the following versicle and prayer:

Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

From henceforth and for evermore!

Let us pray.

God, who did appoint Your only-begotten Son Savor of mankind, and did command that he should be called Jesus, mercifully grant that we may enjoy the vision of him in heaven, whose holy Name we venerate on earth. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Rant On Copyrights.]

They're destructive. Copyrights are effectively a destructive medium. In a perfect society, copyrights would work only to protect the unfair use of another person's intellectual property.They would keep person 'A' from wrongfully claiming the credit for the work of person 'B'. Unfortunately, this is not how copyrights work. We have all seen in recent years of the extremes to which people will go to protect their copyrighted material.
In Catholic America, they are used to limit the use and distribution of the very divine Liturgy itself.
Thanks to copyright, only the Big Guys with lots of money and legal protection are able to produce mass settings and liturgical music. ICEL copyrighted the missal, the breviary, and the bible, and anyone wishing to set these texts to music must pay ICEL's royalties and abide by their rules.
What if you're like me and you can't afford that?
Too bad. You should belong to a corporation supported* by your Bishop's Conference.
Said Corporation routinely publishes music of dubious orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and also demands royalties of you for including your music in their collections. These sort of laws restrict the publishing of sacred music only to the fat cats who can afford it, and creates a system where Catholics will hear and be able to use only the same music year after year after year.
No one benefits from this except the publishers.

The same applies to just about everything.
Bands are begining to copyright their music by the measure, so God forbid that you come up with a rift based on something you heard on a CD. You can play it, but don't record it any way.You'll be sued, and you'll possibly lose your song. So the musician and his band are at a disadvantage.
Some popular authors are restricting their works so that any derivitive work may not be published without their consent and the appropriate fee. Not even so much as quoting, but even simply referencing the work requires permission first, and cash later.
Let's say you're an artist, and you want to use a photograph you found on a website as a model for a painting or sculpture. Well, that's all fine and good, but you can't publish or sell your work.
Why?
Because it's a derivitive work, and those are unacceptable, even to so-called royalty free stock photo sites. So the artist and the appreciator of art are at a disadvantage.

Despite the claims, these restrictive regulations do not protect the integrity of the texts. Indeed, the most over-used mass setting in the U.S. has a plethora of removed, substituted, and added words, made in order to get around ICEL's restrictions. Rather than prevent the bastardisation of texts, retsrictive copyright policies encourgae them. Why go through the trouble of of finding a publisher, getting permission, and paying royalties over, and over, and over again in a book where you quote an author, when you can just re-word or re-write the entire text and quote freely without the trouble? Hence, most psalm settings here do not use the official text, rather, the composers amended the texts themselves (and then copyrighted them) so that the hassle of copyrights could be avoided.

In the effort to protect one's own intellectual property, the rights of others to the use of that which they legally own is often infringed on. OCP states that the use of their musical material is legal only for the calendar year. After that, they must be destroyed. Any and all use of the materials after that date is illegal, and punishable by law. A book is bought for by you, and you may not use it as long as you would like. You are the legal owner, but thanks to copyrights, you get no say in how you may use it.

Copyrighters even go so far as to limit the use of materials which they did not write. The company that publishes the sheet music that I often use has copyrighted the typeface of the notes and staves, as well as the page numbers and titles. So while they cannot claim rights to the music. (Because it was written by Bach,Buxtehude, Vierne and Dupre:Composers dead for centuries) They find another way to claim rights to the notes. Thus, it is not legal to scan and distribute the music of these composers because other people have found a way to claim the rights to the music. So music students and those unable to afford sheet music are at a disadvantage.

And this doe'snt apply only to music. It seems that people often are finding any way to copyright otherwise public domain material. Hence, books written long ago have minor corrections made, and are newly copyrighted. Poems and essays written before the advent of copyright laws are copyrighted, because a period is put where there used to be none, and a semi-colon is replaced with a colon.

Those who make money from copyrights certainly do benefit, but most others do not. The free spread of ideas is prevented, artistic creativity hampered, education made imposible or done without license, all in the name of Intellectual Property.

[/rant on copyrights.]

This is the Future.

"I purposefully used the word continuity, a word very dear to our present Holy Father. He has made it the only authoritative criterion whereby one can correctly interpret the life of the Church, and more specifically, the conciliar documents, including all the proposed reforms contained in them. How could it be any different? Can one truly speak of a Church of the past and a Church of the future as if some historical break in the body of the Church had occurred?"

-Msrg. Guido Marini, Pontifical Master of Ceremonies.


Hopefully!

I'm hoping for the day when people will stop thinking of the church as if there were two churches. As if, there were a church before 1969 whose faith and practices hold no meaning for us, a church to be ignored or looked at only from a distance. Meanwhile, we have a new church totally different from the former. This is wrong in my opinion. We shouldn't build a wall between our faith and that of those who came before us, discounting what they did is 'primitive', of 'pious', or 'sentamentalist'. We hear so often of those who speak of a 'pre-Vatican II spirituality', who throw the thousands of years of prayer and teaching that nourished the doctors and holy fathers into a chest, not to be touched. They 'renewed' their churches, having thrown out the thelogy of the fathers, they throw out their altars, their images, their music as well. but for what reason?

In the quest for moderninity, they forget that the church transcends time. They forget that she was already present in the Father's heart at the beginning of the world, and that she will continue until her glorious completion at the end of the world. It would only be right and proper that nothing of the church's faith and devotion be consigned to the dustbin. If we really beleive that the church was foreshadowed at the creation of the world, called forth long before before our life and that long after our death, she will continue, (As the Catechism and documents of the Second Vatican Council do say) why set up arbitrary walls?
The church of today really is continuous with the church of yesterday. Rather, there is no church of yesterday. The faith does'nt become outdated because truth is eternal.

And if we believe that, we should be nothing but proud to revel in those practices that remain from the past, because it's a statement of our beleif in the church's catholicity, her unity of faith and continuity with the past. If we beleive that, we should rejoice to hear the chants that our fathers prayerful wrote to accompany and teach in the liturgy.Priests should be honoured to use the same vestments, the same prayers, and even as occassion calls for, the same form of mass and office that nourished those who founded out parishes, dioceses, and religious orders. We who are laity should be glad to take part in those same songs, prayers, and devotions that built the communities that we inherited.

Sadly, it is'nt so. People still want to "Sing a new church into being", and the vast majority of Catholics go around with a historical disconnect with the past, having no knowledge of the spiritual practices that we should have inherited, but were stolen as it were, from us. So children grow up without having prayed the rosay, or seen a scapular, and the lives of the saints go untaught, Eucharistic processions do not take place, confessions are not heard, even the pious traditions of the liturgical year go unpracticed. Pray for the day when the full expression of the church's identity will be allowed! Pray for the day when clergy (especially bishops) will be truly Liberal, in the good sense, and allow even those things which they worked actively to suppress, because the good of the community may call for them.

Happy Epiphany!

I just got back from the missa cantata. It wasn't what I expected. I figured it'd be low key: a cantor, three servers, M.C and celebrant, and that's it. There were four servers, some priests in choro, and the choir sang the Missa Secunda by Hassler in it's entirety again. Victoria's O Magnum Mysterium at the offertory and his Ave Maria as the communion anthem. The proper communion antiphon was sung with psalm verses again. I forget which publication it is that has the psalm verses for the introit and communion antiphons. I don't think it's the Graduale Triplex. I was conscripted into helping take up the collection, and missed most of the offertory. After mass, the recessional/postlude was the Gravement from BWV 572. Veneration of the bambino at the altar rail after mass. Same vestments as in the picture I posted for the announcement.

One qualm: I really wish that the booklets would print the directions for the postures at high mass. I did the low mass ones, because that's what we use and it's our default, but others don't know that.

One more qualm:
Is Christmas really technically over? We're only halfay through the octave in the new calendar, so we've got till the octave day on Sunday, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord to celebrate Christmas. Or, you could wait till the purification.

This is a post about the Cat.

My cat Ginger, specifically. I know cats are supposed to lack the use of a will like humans,and that's what makes them animals, but she comes really, really close to making me think she has intellect and will. She's figured out that there are ways to get what she wants from people, and the best way is annoyance.

When she's hungry and I won't give her a snack between meals, she ruffles papers, knocks things over, and sits on books I'm reading and snaps at me if I try to move her. And she does'nt just ruffle any papers: she purpousely uses her paws to ruffle my drawing on manga paper, which wrinkles and creases them and makes a loud slapping sound.

She also tries pity. She'll go find a fake plant and wait for someone to come past and 'let us catch her' eating the flowers. Of course, the family falls for it and gives her a treat because they think she's starving. I only feed her to keep her from eating the flowers and hacking up hairballs on my rug.(She only does it in my room. If she's anywhere else and feels a hairball coming, she runs to my room.)
She's a very nice cat though..to us at least. She avoids strangers, but she's extremely friendly and affectionate with us (As long as she's had her meals and naps, and no one's removed the towel from the radiator where she likes to sleep.) even though my brother still thinks I should've gotten either the fat orange tabby or the little grey and white kitten that was happily running into the walls of his cage like a schizo. Right now she's halfway asleep under the covers on my bed, staring at me because I kicked her off my desk chair.

And she'll be ten years old come March 10.

Vigil of the Epiphany.

A homily of S.Augustine:

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, dearest brethren, who in eternity is the Creator of all things, was as at this time born of a mother and became our Saviour. It was as at this time that he willed to be born for us in earthly time, so as to lead us to the Father's eternity. God is made man, that man may be made as God. That man may eat Angels' food, the Lord of Angels was as on this day made man.

Now is fulfilled that prophecy : Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness : let the earth open, and bring forth a Saviour. He who made all things is therefore himself made, that those who are lost may be found. It is even as man is made to testify of himself in the Psalms : Before I was humbled, I went wrong. Man sinned and became guilty. God is born man, that the guilty may be delivered. Man fell, but God descended. Man fell miserably, God descended mercifully. Man fell by pride, God descended with grace.

O my brethren, what a miracle! what a wonder! The laws of nature are changed concerning man : God is born, a Virgin conceiveth without an husband ; the Word of God is wedded to one who knoweth no man ; she is at once Mother and Virgin. A Mother, yet ínviolate : a Virgin having a Son ; knowing no man, ever sealed, yet not unfruitful. For he alone was born without sin. He alone was born without human embrace, begotten not of the will of the flesh, but of the obedience of the mind."

"In praesepio iacebat, et in caelis fulgebat; ad nos veniebat, et apud Patrem manebat."
"In the manger did he lay, and in the height shone bright as day: He did come to us, and yea, with the Father did he stay."

-Benedictus antiphon, Lauds.

Collect:
"Grant, to thy people, we beseech thee O Lord, an inviolable firmness of faith: That, as they confess thine Only-begotten Son with thee eternally in thy glory, and truly born of our flesh of the Virgin Mary, they may be delivered from present adversities, and so attain the joys which remain."

Late, I know, but I had some bad congestion today and didn't feel well. The good news is that I don't have to watch my five obnoxious,rambunctious little anklebiters five lovely, well-behaved nieces and nephews tomorrow like I thought. The bad news is that I'll probably be so congested and coughing so much, I'll have to stay home. The cough medicine I used today worked well enough, but I'm out and the only store that sells it is halfway across the city in University City.

...Wha now....?

Mr.2 "Bon Clay" is officially the weirdest character I've ever come across in a manga. I mean, he was always weird, what with thinking he was a swan, the makeup, crazy outfit, and the strange affection for pirates. Now, I'm reading One Piece 530 in this month's issue of Shonen Jump and I come across the following lines sung by him as Luffy, Mr.3, and Buggy the Clown are racing through Impel Down to get Luffy's older brother, Ace:

"This world is made for men and women..But if you're me, you're both a man and a woman! That's why...I'm the Strongest! The strongest! The strongest! Strongest! The strongest! "(Repeated ad nauseam..)

And If you don't believe me, It's been scanlated here at One Manga. ( The scanlators at One Manga have to use alternate translations and transliterations to get around copyright restrictions, unfortunately, so the dialogue and translations are different)

Oh, but it gets better!

See, we finally find out that Mr.2 like drag queens. In the near-to-last page of chapter 532, Luffy asks him who he's trying to see. He says that it's a man called Iva, the queen of the Kamabakka queendom, and that all the queens of the world look up to him as the World's Greatest Drag Queen.
And if you don't believe That, it's here are One Manga. (An okama is a drag queen. Like I said, the scanlators at One Manga have to use alternate translations and transliterations to get around copyright restrictions, so the dialogue and translations are different.)

I keep forgetting that Shonen Jump is supossed to be a manga collection for children. I think this might be why.

Fine weather here lately.

Yes, indeed. Today it was 19 degrees with a wind chill of only minus 2 degrees below. (-2)

You guys know that petition?

That online petition against the forthcoming translation of the revised Roman Missal?

It's a Fake.

It must be. For the first time since I heard of it, I decided to click the link and scroll past the names, and some of them are fakes. How do I know this? Well, I see the Blackwells of Philadelphia have signed it for one. Yes, the non-Catholic family of Democratic politicians from Philly have all signed it. The founder of the famous Moeller organ company (who has also been deceased for quite a while) has also 'signed the list'. Dead popes, saints, politicians, doctors, and fictional characters have signed it as well. There are the names of people who would most certainly NOT sign the list .(Eg., Bishop Martino, a staunch supporter of the new translations.)I'm surprised that a certain Dr. John-Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt, PhD.* Has'nt yet signed it.

On another note, I'm rather sad (but not at all surprised) that most of the signees** from Philadelphia are women from a certain nameless order. Sad, but it is what it is.

*Or should that be rather Msr. J.J. Jingleheimer-Schmidt?

**Or should I say, "alleged".

Apparently....

There's going to be a missa Cantata HERE at 7:30 on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.

Allergies,Part II.

Part I, with the itchy,watery eyes,the sneezing, and the Nose Fountain is done. I missed all the offices from vespers on Dec.31 to first vespers last night, and Missed all the masses too. I think I can make it to mass for Epiphany,but I Might have to go to an incense-free mass since incense make my nose burn when my allergies flare up.

I'm noticing a strange pattern that whenever these big feasts come around, I get an allergy attack (Last year, I got one on Jan.1,the first Sunday of Lent, Good Shepherd Sunday, and S. John the Baptist.)

*EDIT*
Darn. I'm scheduled for the 10:30.

Well, it's well intentioned at least.

JP II restoring the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus to the kalendar.
I'm happy it's there again, but it's wrong. It's all wrong. Because he classes it as a 'memorial', when the best you can do with the texts given is have a commemoration. According to the rubrics, at lauds and vespers for memorials, you use the ferial psalmody, and take the hymn, reading, responsory,Benedictus/Magnificat antiphon, and the intercessions (preces) from the appropriate Common, unless a proper text is provided.
There's no common of feasts of the Lord. There is'nt. So you'd expect that they would provide this stuff as propers, right?

WRONG.

They don't provide anything but Ben./Mag.ants and a collect. That's it. There's no hymn,no reading, no responsory, and no Preces provided. So where do you get them from?
Hey, your guess is as good as mine.
It's a bit silly. They could've taken this stuff from other sources. They could've even given proper antiphons and psalms (It's not like there's a dearth of offices of the holy name in existence. There are several from several uses of the Roman rite, and some dioceses had their own office for this feast way back before Pius V got rid of all the cool variations.)
So I'll do something slightly illegal and use the portions of the hymn 'Iesu, dulcis Memoria' given for the feast of the transfiguration, since whoever did this could'nt bear to actually restore the feast when they were restoring it.
They only half restored it.

And in other vital news, I have an allergy attack today, just like I did on this date last year. Whoop-de-doo.

Mary, the Holy Mother of God.

"Rubum, quem víderat Móyses incombústum, conservátam agnóvimus tuam laudábilem virginitátem. Dei Génetrix, intercéde pro nobis."
"As the bush, which Moses saw unconsumed, even thus preserved we know is thy glorious virginity:O mother of God, intercede for us."
Third antiphon, Vespers.

"For by the singular gift of Him who is our Lord and God, and withal, her own son, she is to be confessed most truly and most blessedly--The mother of God 'Theotocos,' but not in the sense in which it is imagined by a certain impious heresy which maintains, that she is to be called the Mother of God for no other reason than because she gave birth to that man who afterwards became God, just as we speak of a woman as the mother of a priest, or the mother of a bishop, meaning that she was such, not by giving birth to one already a priest or a bishop, but by giving birth to one who afterwards became a priest or a bishop. Not thus, I say, was the holy Mary 'Theotocos,' the mother of God, but rather, as was said before, because in her sacred womb was wrought that most sacred mystery whereby, on account of the singular and unique unity of Person, as the Word in flesh is flesh, so Man in God is God."

-Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith, 15

"And so you say, O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be called Theotocos, i.e., Mother of God, but Christotocos, i.e., only the Mother of Christ, not of God. For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time. And of this utterly foolish argument whereby you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of His Majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning, we will, if God permits, say something later on. In the meanwhile we will now prove by Divine testimonies that Christ is God, and that Mary is the Mother of God."

-John Cassian, The Incarnation of Christ, II:2

Here's a medieval hymn, the mirror image of the popular "Stabat Mater Dolorosa":
Stabat Mater Speciosa.
And it's really hard to pick one section of today's office to quote, the whole thing is so beautiful So, If you're good for it, Here's the whole office according to the typical version.

Te Deum......

...Laudamus.