The library will be closed...
for the holiday- so no blogging until Tuesday.

The Catholic Educator's Resource Center...
has an article on a parish in my diocese.

The Feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great, O.S.B., Doctor of the Church
is today. There is information on him here.
Prayers for the Holy Father and for the more extensive use of Gregorian chant in the liturgy would be welcome.

On this date in 1973...
The Professor went to his eternal reward. Here is the Oratio of the Tridentine Mass for the Dead.

Inclina, Domine, aurem tuam ad preces nostras, quibus misericordiam tuam supplices deprecamur: ut animam famuli tui, John Ronald Reuel , quam de hoc saeculo migrare jussisti; in pacis ac lucis regione constituas, et Sanctorum tuorum jubeas esse consortem. Per Dominum Nostrum Jesum Christum Filium Tuum, Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus
C: Per omnia saecula saeculorum.
R: Amen.

And a translation of the same....

Incline Thy ear, O Lord, to the prayers with which we suppliantly entreat Thy mercy, and do Thou, in a place of peace and rest, establish the soul of Thy servant, John Ronald Reuel, whom Thou hast called out of this world; and cause him to be joined to the fellowship of Thy saints. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who being God, lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost
C: For ever and ever.
R: Amen.

Eru gala, Professor. Uireb sed.

The feast of St. Justus of Lyons, Bishop
is today. There is information on him here.

From Parochial and Plain Sermons
by Venerable John Henry Newman

"I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." John x. 11.

Our Lord here appropriates to Himself the title under which He had been foretold by the Prophets. "David My servant shall be king over them," says Almighty God by the mouth of Ezekiel: "and they all shall have one Shepherd." And in the book of Zechariah, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." And in like manner St. Peter speaks of our returning "to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls." [Ezek. xxxvii. 24. Zech. xiii. 7. 1 Pet. ii. 25.]

"The good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." In those countries of the East where our Lord appeared, the office of a shepherd is not only a lowly and simple office, and an office of trust, as it is with us, but, moreover, an office of great hardship and of peril. Our flocks are exposed to no enemies, such as our Lord describes. The Shepherd here has no need to prove his fidelity to the sheep by encounters with fierce beasts of prey. The hireling shepherd is not tried. But where our Lord dwelt in the days of His flesh it was otherwise. There it was true that the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep—"but he that is an hireling, and whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep."

Our Lord found the sheep scattered; or, as He had said shortly before, "All that ever came before Me are thieves and robbers;" and in consequence the sheep had no guide. Such were the priests and rulers of the Jews when Christ came; so that "when He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd." [Matt. ix. 36.] Such, in like manner, were the rulers and prophets of Israel in the days of Ahab, when Micaiah, the Lord's Prophet, "saw all Israel scattered on the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd, and the Lord said, These have no Master, let them return every man to his house in peace." [1 Kings xxii. 17.] Such, too, were the shepherds in the time of Ezekiel, of whom the Prophet says, "Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherd feed the flocks? ... They were scattered, because {232} there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered:" [Ezek. xxxiv. 2, 5.] and in the time of the Prophet Zechariah, who says, "Woe to the idle shepherd that leaveth the flock!" [Zech. xi. 17.]

So was it all over the world when Christ came in His infinite mercy "to gather in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." And though for a moment, when in the conflict with the enemy the good Shepherd had to lay down His life for the sheep, they were left without a guide (according to the prophecy already quoted, "Smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall he scattered"), yet He soon rose from death to live for ever, according to that other prophecy which said, "He that scattered Israel will gather him, as a shepherd doth his flock." [Jer. xxxi. 10.] And as He says Himself in the parable before us, "He calleth His own sheep by name and leadeth them out, and goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice," so, on His resurrection, while Mary wept, He did call her by her name [Note], and she turned herself and knew Him by the ear whom she had not known by the eye. So, too, He said, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?" [John xxi. 15.] And He added, "Follow Me." And so again He and His Angel told the women, "Behold He goeth before you into Galilee ... go tell My brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see Me."

From that time the good Shepherd who took the place of the sheep, and died that they might live for ever, has gone before them: and "they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth;" [Rev. xiv. 4.] going their way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feeding their kids beside the shepherds' tents [Cant. i. 8.].

The Catholic Carnival
is up.

The Feast of Blessed Juvenal Ancina, C.O.
is today. There is information on him here. Prayers for his canonization, and that of the other Oratorian beati, would be most welcome.

The Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, Prophet, Martyr, and Forerunner of Our Lord
is today. There is information on him here.

The Prophets were ever ungratefully treated by the Israelites; they were resisted, their warnings neglected, their good services forgotten. But there was this difference between the earlier and the later Prophets; the earlier lived and died in honour among their people,—in outward honour; though hated and thwarted by the wicked, they were exalted to high places, and ruled in the congregation. Moses, for instance, was in trouble from his people all his life long, but to the end he was their lawgiver and judge. Samuel, too, even though rejected, was still held in reverence; and when he died, "all the Israelites were gathered together and lamented him, and buried him in his house at Ramah." [1 Sam. xxv. 1.] David died on a royal throne. But in the latter times, the prophets were not only feared and hated by the enemies of God, but cast out of the vineyard. As the time approached for the coming of the true Prophet of the Church, the Son of God, they resembled Him in their earthly fortunes more and more; and as He was to suffer, so did they. Moses was a ruler, Jeremiah was an outcast: Samuel was buried in peace, John the Baptist was beheaded.

Venerable John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

If it were not Sunday...
today would be the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. A blessed feast day to any Augustianians out there !

A quote from the writings of this saint was important in helping the Venerable on his difficult journey into the Catholic Church.

The "Dublin Review" ...was put into my hands, by friends who were more favourable to the cause of Rome than I was myself. There was an Article in it on "the Anglican Claim" by Dr. Wiseman. This was about the middle of September. It was on the Donatists, with an application to Anglicanism. I read it, and did not see much in it. The Donatist controversy was known to me for some years ... the case was not parallel to that of the Anglican Church. St. Augustine in Africa wrote against the Donatists in Africa. They were a furious party who made a schism within the African Church, and not beyond its limits. It was a case of Altar against Altar, of two occupants of the same see, as that between the Non-jurors in England and the Established Church; not the case of one Church against another, as Rome against the Oriental Monophysites. But my friend, an anxiously religious man, now, as then, very dear to me, a Protestant still, pointed out the palmary words of St. Augustine, which were contained in one of the extracts made in the "Review," and which had escaped my observation. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." (ed. "the secure judgement of the whole world ") He repeated these words again and again, and, when he was gone, they kept ringing in my ears. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum;" they were words which went beyond the occasion of the Donatists, they applied to that of the Monophysites. They gave a cogency to the Article which had escaped me at first. They decided ecclesiastical questions on a simpler rule than that of Antiquity. Nay St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity; here then Antiquity was deciding against itself. What a light was hereby thrown upon every controversy in the Church! not that, for the moment, the multitude may not falter in their judgment,—not that, in the Arian hurricane, Sees more than can be numbered did not bend before its fury, and fall off from St. Athanasius,—not that the crowd of Oriental Bishops did not need to be sustained during the contest by the voice and the eye of St. Leo; but that the deliberate judgment, in which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible prescription, and a final sentence, against such portions of it as protest and secede. Who can account for the impressions which are made on him? For a mere sentence, the words of St. Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had felt from any words before. To take a familiar instance, they were like the "Turn again Whittington" of the chime; or, to take a more serious one, they were like the "Tolle, lege,—Tolle, lege," (ed. "Take, read") of the child, which converted St. Augustine himself. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum!" By those great words of the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history, the theory of the Via Media was absolutely pulverized.

Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., Apologia Pro Vita Sua


It would also be the feast of St. Edmund Arrowsmith, S.J., Priest and Martyr.