Friday, April 10, 2020

"in their hour of need your mercy was at hand."

Good Friday 2020:
A very strange year indeed.
"Almighty ever-living God, comfort of mourners, strength of all who toil, may the prayers of those who cry out in any tribulation come before you, that all may rejoice, because in their hour of need your mercy was at hand.  Through Christ our Lord."

"Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, maestorum consolatio, laborantium fortitudo, perveniant ad te preces de quacumque tribulatione clamantium, ut omnes sibi in necessitatibus suis misericordiam tuam gaudeant affuisse.  Per Christum Dominum nostrum."

     Concluding prayer of the Solemn intercessions, Friday of the Passion of the Lord, Missale Romanum.  According to Bruylants, vol. 2, p. 217, no. 766, this was (indeed the Solemn intercessions were) present in the mid 8th-century Gelasian sacramentary.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

"desire for the Eucharist, i.e. spiritual communion, is totally different from the union by faith in Christ [(alternatively, union by faith with Christ)] taught by [some] Protestants".

 "le désir de l'eucharistie ou la communion spirituelle est totalement different de l'union par la foi au Christ, enseignée par les protestants.…"

     Louis de Bazelaire, "Communion spirituelle," Dictionnaire de spiritualité 2.2 (1953), col. 1298 (cols. 1294-1300).  Whether de Bazelaire gets his sole-case-in-point-Luther right is another matter.  Nor is there, I think, anything wrong with the doctrine of union with Christ by faith.  It's just that it's not to be identified with this "Catholic extra," i.e. the properly Catholic doctrine of "spiritual communion," which is an intense desire for specifically the very "body, blood, soul, and divinity" of Christ that the bread and wine have in substance become.