The 2SPetrvs website has been posting some good videos. This one below is with Archbishop Sample (who happens to be my bishop) on the place of Catholic Tradition, especially when it come to the Liturgy, and how he has seen the positive responses from Catholic youth.
I believe Archbishop Sample is doing a good job of carefully, but steadfastly, promoting Catholic Tradition(s), such as the TLM and more reverence in the NO Mass, in the least “churched” region of the United States. The northwest region is the land of the “nones,” that is the land where when people are asked what religion they are, they select the “none” checkbox. So I truly appreciate that he is gently, but steadily, calling Catholics back to their heritage.
I have been rereading Cardinal Robert Sarah’s book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. It is such a profound and enriching book. I find this true even more so on a second reading. I feel someday the Church will call him Saint Robert.
This beautiful video gives some sense of who Cardinal Sarah is, and his insights on silence in the life of Christian faith:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
The crucifix on my desk where I kneel and pray.
Each morning, after my Bible and Catechism reading, I try to pray the rosary. The rosary played an important part in my coming into the Catholic Church. I wrote about it here. I have come to love the rosary. Praying the rosary every morning helps me get through the day. When I go to bed at night, I look forward to praying the next morning — that and my coffee. (Before you read further, know that I am not at all pious. The life of faith is a struggle for me.)
Here’s the basic form I follow:
First, if I can, I pray kneeling. I have set up a crucifix, a tryptic of Mary, and a candle on my desk. These things help me focus and get my mind and heart into a more devotional mode. I don’t need them, but I like having them.
The icon on my desk where I kneel and pray.
Typically I’m the first one awake in the morning in my house, so it is quiet. I usually up at 4 AM. I have tended to be very self-conscious in the past, so it was hard to pray if I knew others knew I was praying. Now it’s easier for me. Sometimes my son (now 8 yrs old) walks in on me. I invite him to pray with me. Sometimes he says yes… for a while at least. I need to do a better job of having my family pray together. This is a big area of failure for me.
Second, I tend to follow the standard rosary structure, with a couple of common additions. Note: I am praying the Rosary more and more in Latin. The Devil hates Latin, so I’ve been told on good authority. Here’s my morning prayer:
I cross myself
then I recite the Apostles Creed
then I pray the Our Father
then I say “For an increase in the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity,” then pray three Hail Marys
then I pray the Glory Be (I always cross myself each time I pray this)
then I read the first mystery (I sometimes use the Laudate app on my phone to provide these texts, and to remind me of the prayers if I forget the words)
then I pray the Our Father
then, just before I begin the decade, I ask Mary for her prayers. I have a little notebook that I keep a list of my prayer intentions. They have basic headings: Family, Church, Work, etc. Each heading has below it a number of specific things that I pray for, such as my wife, each of my three children, holiness, the Pope, our parish priests, etc, etc. Each heading group gets one decade of the rosary. For example, the first decade is for my family, the second for the Church and the world, etc.
after each decade I pray the Glory Be prayer, and then the Oh My Jesus prayer (as asked by Our Lady of Fatima — this I feel is very important)
after praying all five decades, I follow with praying the Hail Holy Queen
then I sometimes pray the Our Lady of All Nations prayer (which is linked to Fatima), though I pray this less these days. Perhaps I should more
then I cross myself
then I pray the intercessory prayer to St. Pio of Pietrelcina. I do this for the restoration of my parishes original high altar to be moved back to the sanctuary, for a TLM institute or society to be established in my parish, for a TLM religious order to be established in my hometown, and that my parish would become an inspiration for our diocese in terms of worship, TLM, and passion.
then I finish with the St. Michael the Archangel Intercessory Prayer
I then cross myself and blow out the candle
The whole thing takes about thirty to forty five minutes, depending on how much time I devote to my list of individuals to pray for.
By the fourth decade my knees are usually killing me. It’s a struggle to keep going. This will sound funny to contemporary ears, but I want to pray like a Medieval–that is, accepting my suffering as a reminder of the efforts we all have to make towards holiness. So I shift my weight from knee to knee, but I try to stay kneeling. Maybe it will get easier eventually.
As an aside: I have written before on the physicality of faith, the life of prayer, confronting the holiness of God, and what that requires of our bodies. We live in a neo-gnostic or neo-dualistic age where we have lost touch with the fact that the human person is body and soul together forever. We separate “ourselves” from our bodies: we are spirits and our bodies are things. I believe the Medievals, however, knew better the physicality of spirituality and true worship of God. They sought divinization. Most Christians today probably have not even heard of divinization. I think the “spiritual but not religious” thing is driven mostly by this neo-gnosticism/dualism and those ignorant they are neo-gnostics/dualists — where spiritual is equated with the self and thus good, and religion is equated with the body and thus bad or less-than.
My family and I live in a wooden area. If it is light enough outside I will open the curtain and look out at the trees. Sometimes there are deer and wild turkeys making the way through the neighborhood. There was even a bear sighting recently not far from our neighborhood. Rather than a distraction, however, I find their presence reminds me of God the Creator.
Dr. Denis McNamara gave two lectures on Church architecture, sweeping quickly through many aspects of Church design, classical architecture, the meaning of many details that easily get overlooked, and why it matters. The amount of interesting information in these talks is amazing and, I believe, a lot more important than most Christians realize or probably would care to know but should. Denis is also one of the three voices on one of the best Catholic podcasts anywhere, The Liturgy Guys.
SatelliteSaint 