What is Culture, And How Do We Transform It? Part 2

This is the second of three articles exploring the Catholic understanding of culture. Last week, in the first instalment, I defined culture as the emergent pattern of activity in a society that manifests and sustains its core beliefs and values, showing how it both reflects and shapes worldviews – making it a vital battleground for Christians to transform toward beauty, love, and faith, especially in issues like the fight against abortion. This time, I will examine how freedom, as the capacity to act in accordance with the common good, underpins a truly beautiful Christian culture, allowing nations to express love in their unique ways while drawing from shared eternal principles.

Princeton University Graduate College, designed by Ralph Adams Cram (American), 1913; image from Wikimedia Commons by Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0

Freedom, love, and the culture of nations

Love is by nature freely given (the moment we are compelled to love, it is no longer love!). Therefore, freedom - the freedom to love God and neighbor - is a necessary condition for a beautiful culture.

What is freedom? Many feel that freedom is simply the absence of constraint and compulsion. That is part of it, but the traditional approach has a deeper understanding. In the traditional understanding, freedom is best understood as the capacity to choose the practicable best. ‘Practicable’ here means what can be put into practice.

Therefore, three components must be present for us to be fully free and to choose the best course.

The first component is the absence of constraint or compulsion; the second is a full knowledge of what is best for us; and the third is the power to act in accordance with what is best.

The good that is best for each of us in the context of a society is known as the ‘common good’. When we act in accordance with the common good, we also do what is best for ourselves. In the proper order of things, the personal and common good are never in conflict. The most obvious guides to seeking the common good are the moral law and the principles of justice prescribed by Christ’s Church. All authentic and beautiful Christian cultures emerge from the freely taken actions of the members of society toward the common good.

It is in the interest of a Christian society, therefore, to promote freedom by a system of laws that are just, and so give security to the individual to act in accordance with the freedom to be moral and good. Such a system of laws would, in part, be designed to prevent interference with others' freedom. The state also encourages the formation of its citizens or subjects through an education that will help them to know the common good. The state fulfils its role by enabling effective teachers, especially parents, to teach well. If these conditions are satisfied, a culture of beauty will emerge naturally and organically from the bottom up.

Analogously, and regarding supporting the fine arts, I believe it is better to strive to create the conditions that promote the freedom to pursue art as a career than to impose the elitist vision of what art ought to look like onto people from the top down. In this context, the freedom afforded to an artist is understood as imparting knowledge of what forms of art might benefit society, as well as the skills, means, and inclination to create it. As a general rule, a top-down rigid imposition of artistic standards almost always restricts freedom and undermines the chance of creating an authentically beautiful culture. 

Willard Straight Hall, Cornell Univeristy, designed by William Adams Delano,1925

A society’s pattern of positive law (those laws created by human government) will inevitably be different from one nation to another, even for nations seeking to create laws for all the right reasons. The truths of the natural law, which inform positive law, are eternal and universal principles. Still, this universality of the principles does not mean that human society immediately and uniformly comes to know and apply them in exactly the same way everywhere. Human knowledge must progress slowly, in stages, step by step, and organically, or else it is not a true “human society” at all. It does so through trial and error, gradually seeing what works best. Therefore, until the end times, each society will take a different path towards this knowledge.

The good Christian society recognizes the difficulty of knowing fully and applying well the universal principles of the natural law, and thus, the good Christian society seeks the aid of revealed truth, which is Tradition (that is, Christian Revelation), and the experience of past laws to help guide reason. God revealed truths for two reasons, St Thomas Aquinas tells us, first because some truths are beyond the grasp of reason (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of the body); and second, God also revealed moral truths that, although part of the natural law and accessible to natural reason, would “only be discovered by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of errors” (ST Ia Q1,1 co.). Arising from this, there are two important reasons why the pattern of exercising freedom will differ from one Christian nation to another. First, principles that are well understood can still be applied in different ways across societies without contravening them; second, knowledge or understanding of a principle is unlikely to be perfect or complete and will vary from nation to nation, each believing it knows best.

Accordingly, different Christian nations are free to observe the experience of other nations, imitate what is best in them, and adopt what is beautiful and good from them. This way, in the proper order of things, each nation is part of a family of distinct and autonomous nations, each helping the other to find what is best.

Keble College, Oxford, England, designed by William Butterfield, 1870. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Diliff, CC BY 2.5

As already stated, a culture is a sign of the society’s core values that produce it, and is beautiful to the degree that it is Christian. We should be aware that this is true even in societies or countries that would not think of themselves as Christian. An Islamic nation, for example, has a beautiful culture to the degree that its culture is consistent with an expression of Christian truths, even when those truths are communicated to them by the Koran or through the discernment of natural law.

Furthermore, the Christian characteristics of different cultures connect them to one another, and the national expressions of that Christian faith, manifested in characteristic patterns of loving interaction and free behavior, distinguish these cultures.

So, for example, the United States began as a nation that adopted and then adapted a system of law from the English constitutional tradition. The English constitutional tradition is a system of laws, rooted in Christian values yet expressed in a characteristically English way that is quite different from that of its neighbor, France. Over time, the American legal system developed its own national characteristics, while still owing much to its English origins, but now expressed in a characteristically American way. If American culture is to be transformed so that it may be once more one of beauty, it will assert the importance of America as a distinct nation with characteristic values that are simultaneously Christian and of a particular American-English expression. As such, one would expect similarities between English and American cultures, and a natural tendency for developments in one nation to inform those in the other. We see, for example, that in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, American churches and universities were modelled on the English Neo-Gothic style. They even hired English architects to build them, but an American character quickly emerged in their neo-Gothic architecture. While Princeton and Oxford share similarities, they also differ. One reflects America, while the other reflects England.

In citing the above example, I should clarify that I am referring to the Princeton and Oxford buildings constructed before the widespread rejection of Christian values in American and British culture, which took hold strongly after the Second World War. In both nations, many institutions, especially universities, lost a sense of the importance of the Christian faith and rejected traditional forms and Christian culture generally. Many of the newer buildings on the campuses, reflecting this anti-Christian worldview, are ugly in my opinion.

Mitchell Tower (1901-8), University of Chicago, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, architects. Modeled after the Magdalen Tower (1492–1508), Oxford University. Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Oh dear… here is the Princeton University Art Museum, which opened in November 2025.

Princeton University Art Museum, 2025, already known locally as ‘the concrete air conditioning unit’; Image from Wikimedia Commons by Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY 4.0

An Apse Mosaic of the Early 9th Century

Here is an interesting thing I happened to stumble across today, a little oratory in the town of Germigny-des-Prés, about 76 miles directly south of Paris. It was built in 806 as part of a large palace complex by Theodulf (750/60 - 821), a Spaniard who served as bishop of the nearby city of Orléans for about 20 years, (798 ca. - 818), and was one of the leading literary figures of the Carolingian Renaissance. No other part of the palace survives; the oratory is of particular interest because it still preserves the original apsidal mosaic, the only example of a mosaic from its period still preserved in situ. It depicts two angels hovering over the Ark of the Covenant. There was a lot of cultural exchange between the court of Charlemagne and that of Byzantium, and the influence of Byzantine art is very evident here.

Unfortunately, very little remains of the mosaic work in the arches underneath the apse. 

The oratory was originally built on a Greek-cross plan, but a nave was added to it on the west side in the later 15th or early 16th century, and then extended in the 19th, with the further addition of the bell-tower over the façade.

The floorplan and various cutaway views.

None of the decoration in the nave has been preserved either.

The baptismal font from the Romanesque period.

St Paula of Rome

The Roman Martyrology notes today as the anniversary of the death of a Saint named Paula in the year 404. She was a disciple of St Jerome, and the principal source of information about her is one of the longest among his many letters (108), written to console her daughter Eustochium. It recounts a great deal of information which the daughter certainly already knew, but of course, Jerome wrote with the expectation that his letters would be widely copied and read. He therefore takes the opportunity to present Paula as a model Christian, and describes his work with the opening words of one of Horace’s odes (3.30): “Exegi monumentum aere perennius – I have raised up a memorial more lasting than bronze.”

The Madonna and Child with Ss Paula of Rome and Agatha, ca. 1500, by the Italian painter Michele Ciampanti (from Lucca in Tuscany), formerly known as the Stratonice Master. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Paula was born in 347, a descendent of some of the wealthiest and most ancient families in Rome; at 16, she was married to a nobleman of similarly ancient lineage called Toxotius. They had four daughters, Blaesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina, and a son named for his father. When she was thirty-two, her husband died, and after a period of extreme grief, she was encouraged by another widow, St Marcella, to devote herself to a kind of monastic life. This was not a formal enclosure in a religious house, solemnized by vows, a custom which barely existed in her time, but a life of great austerity, study and prayer, commonly shared with other women of similar station, and charitable works, for which the resources at her disposal were vast.

In 382, she was introduced to Jerome, who came from Bethlehem to the Eternal City in the company of two other Saints, Paulinus, the bishop of Antioch who had ordained him a priest, and Epiphanius of Salamis, the author of a well-known (but rather careless) treatise against heresies. Jerome became the spiritual director of the circle of devout women to which Paula belonged, a fact which invited a good deal of unpleasant and jealous gossip. This was also the period in which he undertook the first of his Biblical projects, at the behest of Pope St Damasus I, the revision of the Latin text of the Gospels.

Damasus died in 384, and Jerome, finding the atmosphere of Rome uncongenial (to say the least), returned to the Holy Land. Shortly thereafter, Blaesilla died, and Paula decided to leave Rome and join her spiritual father. Her second daughter Paulina was well married to another wealthy nobleman, Pammachius, also a friend of Jerome, and the builder of the Roman basilica of Ss John and Paul. Eustochium had always been much more inclined towards her mother’s way of life, and would be her constant companion for the rest of her life, but at the time of her departure, Rufina and Toxotius were still very young. Jerome describes in the aforementioned letter how she overcame her motherly affection to go where she knew Christ to be calling her. After visiting Epiphanius in his see on the island of Cyprus, they met Jerome at Antioch; from there, they proceeded to a pilgrimage of the major sites of the Holy Land, and visited the emergent monastic communities of Egypt and the Sinai desert.

St Paula Embarking on Her Journey at Ostia; after 1642, by the French painter Claude Lorrain (1604-82). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

After this pilgrimage, Paulina and Eustochium settled in Bethlehem, where Jerome had long been previously established, and lived as they had in Rome, with him as their spiritual director. She used her fortune to build two monasteries, one for men and one for women, governing the latter herself, as well as a hospice for pilgrims. Her financial support was also essential to Jerome in his great work of translating the Hebrew parts of the Old Testament, and she and her daughter helped him on a scholarly level as well, since they knew both Greek and Hebrew. Jerome’s prefaces to Esther, Isaiah, Daniel and the Twelve Prophets, and that of his second revision of the Psalms (the so-called Gallican Psalter, used in the Roman Breviary) are all addressed to Paula and Eustochium, as are his commentaries on some of the Pauline Epistles. The preface to Joshua, Judges and Ruth was written to Eustochium “after the death of St Paula.” An author of the ninth-century, St Paschasius Radbertus, successfully passed off a treatise of his own on the Assumption, known from its opening words as “Cogitis me”, as the work of St Jerome by pretending to address it to the same two women. A passage of it is still read to this day in the Divine Office on the feast of the Immaculate Conception under Jerome’s name, and indeed, it has proved to be far more influential than any of Paschasius’ works published under his own name.

The younger Toxotius married a woman called Laeta, the Christian daughter of a pagan priest, and from this union was born a girl named for her paternal grandmother. One of St Jerome’s most influential treatises is a letter addressed to Laeta concerning her daughter’s education, which is placed in his epistolarium right before the letter to Eustochium. It concludes with the advice that Rome may prove a less-than-ideal place for the child’s rearing, in which case, she should send her to her grandmother and aunt in Bethlehem once she was old enough, which did in fact happen.

After Paula’s death, Eustochium took over the administration of the monastery until her own death 15 years later, at which it passed to the younger Paula. She was buried with her mother, and when Jerome passed away a year and two days later, he was buried next to them.

The Holy Trinity, with Ss Jerome, Paula and Eustochium, ca. 1453, by Andrea del Castagno, in the Montauti chapel of the basilica of the Annunciation in Florence. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

Around the same time, a Greek named Palladius wrote a book about the lives of the early desert fathers known as the Lausiac History, which contains this very funny story about Paula and Jerome. “A certain Jerome, a priest, distinguished Latin writer and cultivated scholar as he was, showed qualities of temper so disastrous that they threw into the shade his splendid achievements. Posidonius, who had lived with him many days, said in my hearing, ‘The noble Paula, who looks after him, will die first and be freed from his bad temper…’ ”

The Gospels of the Epiphany (Part 3)

The introit of the Third Sunday after Epiphany begins with the same words as another antiphon from the Matins of that feast, “Adore God, all ye His Angels.” The reference to Epiphany is even more explicit in the Gradual, taken from the one-hundred-and-first psalm, “The nations will fear thy name, o Lord, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.”

On the previous Sunday, the Church reads of the first miracle occurring in the Gospel of St John; on this Sunday are read the first two miracles in the Gospel of St Matthew (8, 1-13), namely, the healing of a leper, and of the servant of the centurion of Capharnaum. The Roman centurion, when asking for the cure of his gravely ill and beloved servant, declares himself the inferior of a provincial carpenter, unworthy to receive Him into his home. This Gospel is therefore not simply the story of a miracle, but also of the nations’ confession of the divinity of Christ; even the might of the Roman Empire humbles itself before Him, as the Magi did at His birth. The story of the centurion is one of the very few that is used more than once in the temporal cycle of readings, being also the Gospel of the Thursday after Ash Wednesday. In the liturgical rite which originated in Rome, and is now celebrated in every corner of the world, his confession of faith in Christ has been part of the rite of Holy Communion for many centuries.

Christ and the Centurion, by Paolo Veronese, ca. 1571

The remaining Sundays of the season after Epiphany have their own prayers and Scriptural readings, but their Gregorian antiphons are repeated from this third Sunday. On the fourth Sunday, the last which can occur before the Christmas season ends on the Purification, the Gospel recounts yet another manifestation of Christ, the calming of the waters of the Sea of Galilee. (Matt. 8, 23-27) Up to this point in St Matthew’s Gospel, the miracles he recounts have all been healings; this is the first miracle of dominion over inanimate creation. This Gospel was perhaps also chosen as a vague reminiscence of the Office of the Epiphany, in which the antiphon of the Benedicite reads, “Seas and rivers, bless the Lord, sing to the Lord a hymn, o fountains, alleluja.” The last two Sundays after Epiphany always fall after the Christmas season ends on February 2nd, and the Gospels chosen for them are no longer manifestations of Christ, but parables.

At most of the Masses associated with the Epiphany, (the vigil, the feast, the two Sundays after the feast), the text of the Communion antiphon is taken from the Gospel. On the third Sunday, however, it is taken from a Gospel text that is not read at all in the Missal of St Pius V. In the Tridentine missal, the ferial days of most seasons have no proper Scriptural readings, but simply repeat those of the previous Sunday, a custom well-established in Rome long before Trent. Many medieval missals, on the other hand, including those of Sarum, Liège and most of the churches of the German Empire, preserve an older custom of the Roman Rite, whereby proper readings were assigned to the Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. The story from St Luke’s Gospel of Christ in the synagogue at Capharnaum, (4, 14-22), is assigned by the very oldest surviving Roman lectionary, the seventh-century Wurzburg manuscript, to an unspecified day after the Sunday of the wedding at Cana. After Christ reads a passage from the book of Isaiah, He declares the words of the prophet to be fulfilled in by His coming to Israel; it is the Lord Himself who manifests to the world the true meaning of the words of sacred Scripture. This Gospel’s former presence in the corpus of Mass-lessons is the origin of the Communion antiphon which is sung until Septuagesima Sunday arrives; “All wondered at these things which proceeded from the mouth of God.”

The ancient lectionaries and medieval missals add a number of other Gospel episodes to the season, such as the arrival of Christ in Galilee (Matt. 4, 12-17), and several of the early healings performed by Him. The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and the feeding of the five-thousand is also occasionally counted as part of the Epiphany story. The Ambrosian liturgy’s Epiphany hymn Illuminans altissime devotes three strophes to this event, more than it gives to the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ or the Wedding at Cana; then, curiously no further reference to it is made until the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, when it is read from the Gospel of St Luke (9, 10-17). The same hymn is sung in the Mozarabic Rite, whose preface of the feast also dwells at length upon the event, but the Gospel itself is never read in the Epiphany season. The Wurzburg lectionary assigns the story to be read twice in the seventh week after Epiphany, first from St Mark and then from St Matthew, but these readings are not in the eighth-century Murbach lectionary, or the medieval missals.

The Crucifixion, by Ottaviano Nelli (1421-24), from the chapel of the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno, Italy; Blessed James of Voragine, who was archbishop of Genoa, Italy from 1292 until his death in 1298 or 99, is the bishop on the left. (Photograph by Georges Jansoone from Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 4.0)

Blessed James of Voragine, the author of the much maligned (and unjustly so) Golden Legend, says that the feast commemorates four miracles, and, citing the authority of the Venerable Bede and of the aforementioned hymn, notes that the feast was also called Phagiphania, from the Greek word for eating. He also notes, with some of the critical spirit he is habitually attacked for lacking, “but concerning this fourth miracle, it is doubted whether it happened on this day, both because this is not read in the original text of Bede, and because it is said in the sixth chapter of John, where this miracle is dealt with, ‘Easter was nigh.’ ” (Legenda aurea cap. 14)

Sicard of Cremona agrees in rejecting this tradition as “not authentic”, and it is very likely that the prominent position of the story on Laetare Sunday is the reason why it was early on removed from the Epiphany season. As the church of Milan sings in an antiphon of Epiphany Matins, “Thou alone hast wrought many wonders, o Lord God,” and some must be saved for the rest of the Church’s year.

Deus in Adjutorium Meum Intende: Online Conference on the Divine Office, February 6 & 7

Discover the beauty of the sung Divine Office at this enriching online conference!

The Church Music Association of America is proud to serve as a co-host with the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music for an upcoming conference on the sung Divine Office, which will be held online on February 6-7.

Beginning with the ancient invocation “Deus in adjutorium meum intende ~ O God, come to my assistance”), this event explores how the Divine Office, the Church’s official daily prayer, is sung and lived across diverse spiritual traditions and charisms, from Benedictine monasteries, Dominican friaries, and Norbertine abbeys to diocesan rectories, cathedrals, and in the lives of the laity.

Sessions include:

• Theological reflections on biblical texts and the hymns of the Office
• Practical workshops on chanting psalmody and employing the organ at the Divine Office
• Insights into adapting the Divine Office in parish settings, religious communities, and private prayer
• Presentations on historical and contemporary approaches to sung prayer in various rites and orders

Whether you are a cleric, religious, choir director, or lay faithful seeking to deepen your prayer life through sacred music, this conference will inspire you to make the Church’s universal prayer a vibrant part of your daily rhythm. Register now and join Catholics from around the world in praising God through the timeless treasure of the Divine Office!

Learn More and Register

Speakers and Topics

• The Spirituality of the Divine Office – Fr. Mark Bachmann, OSB, Choirmaster of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey
• The Spirituality and Place of the Divine Office in the Lives of the Laity – Dr. Anthony Lilles, St. Patrick’s Seminary, Avila Institute
• The Spirituality of the Sung Office for the Diocesan Priest – Fr. Robert Pasley, Church Music Association of America (CMAA)
• Accompaniment & Accentuation: The Role of the Organ in the Divine Office – Prof. Christopher Berry, CMAA and Catholic Institute of Sacred Music
• The Hymns of the Divine Office – Sr. Maria Kiely, OSB, Dominican House of Studies, ICEL
• Vocal Technique for Singing the Office – Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, CMAA and Catholic Institute of Sacred Music
• Officium Divinum: The Role of Latin in the Celebration of the Divine Office – Gregory DiPippo, Editor of New Liturgical Movement
• Progressive Solemnity in the Dominican Office – Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, University of Notre Dame
• The Old Testament Canticles of Lauds: Songs of the New Creation – Dr. Nina Heereman, St. Patrick’s Seminary
• Nihil operi Dei præponatur: The Centrality of the Divine Office in Monastic Life – Abbot Marc Crilly, OSB, St. Benedict’s Abbey
• The Divine Office for the Canons Regular of Prémontré: A Changing Expression of a Perennial Vocation – Fr. Chrysostom Baer, O.Praem., St. Michael’s Abbey, Silverado, California
• Challenges in Preparing Editions for and Singing the Liturgy of the Hours in Parish Life – Dr. Richard Skirpan, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
• Psalmody Workshop: Pointing, Pacing, and Developing a Community Sound – Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, CMAA and Catholic Institute of Sacred Music

Liturgical Items at the Abbey of St Martin in Disentis, Switzerland

At the beginning of this month, we shared Nicola’s pictures of the abbey of St Martin in Disentis, a town in the Swiss canton of Grisons, about 35 miles to the southeast of Lucerne. Today we follow up with his pictures from the abbey’s museum, which has a lot of very beautiful liturgical items.

A bronze processional cross from sometime after the middle of the 12th century. As is typical in Romanesque art, Our Lord is show standing upright to indicate that even in the midst of His sufferings, He is still the creator and sustainer of the world.

A silver monstrance made in Spain sometime in the 15th century. The cylindrical form is typical of the period, and still the norm to this day in the Ambrosian Rite.

A cross made of rock crystal and silver made in France in the same period, with a corpus of the Baroque period added to it.

A modern copy of a thurible made ca. 1200.

On the left, a Gothic pyx made of gilded brass, French, ca. 1460; on the right, a Gothic chalice, ca. 1300.

Two more Gothic chalices, on the left, ca. 1450, on the right, ca. 1500, and a 16th century German paten made of gilded copper.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun: Sister Bodily Death

Van Gogh, Woman on Her Deathbed

Lost in Translation #157

For those who think of Saint Francis of Assisi as nothing more than a Christian Dr. Doolittle, a friar who talks to the animals and hugs tree, the following stanzas of the Canticle of the Sun come as something of a shock:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore et sostengono infirmitate et tribulatione.

Beati quelli ke ’l sosterranno in pace,

ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati.

Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale,

da la quale nullu homo uiuente pò skappare:

guai a quelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali;

beati quelli ke trouarà ne le Tue sanctissime uoluntati,

ka la morte secunda no ’l farrà male.

Which I translate as:

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,

and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace

for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,

from whom no living man can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin.

Blessed are those who will find Your most holy will,

for the second death shall do them no harm.

The first stanza praises God for giving people the grace to forgive and to bear infirmity and tribulation. The second stanza contains the only “Beatitude” in the canticle, that is, a statement beginning with “Blessed are…” In this case, Francis proclaims that those who endure in peace are blessed and will be crowned by the Most High.

These two stanzas are distinctive in that they do not praise suffering directly but praise those who respond to suffering in the right way. It is an obvious fact that every human being suffers during his or her life, for the Lord “maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5, 45). Even those who do not deserve to suffer, such as Our Lord and Our Lady, suffered greatly. The key is how one responds to suffering: in a spirit of acceptance and forgiveness or in a spirit of denial, anger, or despair. And the model for the right kind of response is Saint Francis. When he wrote these stanzas, Francis was in great pain, was going blind, and was living in a hut infested with mice that kept him awake at night. But thanks to a consolation from God, he learned to rejoice in all his troubles.

Even more astonishingly, Francis learned to embrace bodily death like a sister, which is why he wrote the stanza on death as he lay dying. The Saint understood that thanks to Jesus Christ, bodily “death is swallowed up in victory” and has no victory anymore, no sting (see I Cor. 15, 54-55). For as St. Paul explains:

The dead shall rise again incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (I Cor. 15, 52-53).

In other words, bodily death—probably the greatest natural fear in the human heart and certainly the one thing that modern man goes out of his way to avoid through medication, diet, and exercise—becomes nothing against the backdrop of eternal life. “And fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul,” Our Lord commands, “but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Matt. 10, 2). Moreover, bodily death is nothing in comparison to the greatest evil of all: eternal death or eternal damnation. Saint Francis was poignantly aware of this fact, which is why he adds the only warning in the canticle: “Woe to those who die in mortal sin.” Let us remember that it is called mortal sin because it is a sin that mortally wounds our chances of salvation, that kills our friendship with God. Woe indeed to those who die in such a state. Saint Francis said that he wrote Canticle of the Sun to edify his neighbor, and this section is a key part of that edification.

Memento Mori

This article originally appeared as “Eternal Crown” in the Messenger of Saint Anthony 127:11, international edition (November 2025), p. 33. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Announcing the CMAA 2026 Colloquium

The Church Music Association of America is pleased to announce that its 36th annual Sacred Music Colloquium will be held at the St John Newman Center, at the University of Illinois in Champaign (located at 604 E. Armory Ave.), from June 22-26, an opportunity for beginner to advanced singers, conductors, and clergy to experience and learn about the beauty of sacred chant, polyphony, and organ repertory.

Early bird registration is available until March 31st! (Click here)

• Extensive training in Gregorian chant under a world-class faculty, with choices of chant classes for beginners to advanced, for men and women.
• Music specialty breakout sessions for organists and sessions on new music, vocal pedagogy, education, and building chorister programs, among others.
• Choral experience with one of two choirs singing sacred music of the masters such as Palestrina, Marenzio, Gombert, Isaac, Guerrero, Severac, La Rocca, as well as a newly composed Mass Ordinary by composer Chris Mueller.
• Plenary talks on timely and relevant liturgical topics.
• Individual training in vocal production and technique (by appointment only)
• A one-of-a-kind Book of Scores for participants, including chant and polyphony, along with a copy of the Mozart Requiem Choral part.
• Book sales from the CMAA warehouse, with discounts on our books to CMAA members.

In addition, all attendees will sing in the Grand Choir for the Mozart Requiem. You’ll learn with our gifted faculty; daily liturgies are offered with careful attention to musical settings in English and Latin.

For more information about the Colloquium faculty, schedule and repertory, and information about registration and accommodations, see the following page of the CMAA website:

https://churchmusicassociation.org/colloquium-2026/

Ss Vincent and Anastasius

Today is the feast of one of the most venerated martyrs of the last and greatest of the ancient Roman persecutions, the deacon St Vincent of Saragossa. Towards the end of the 3rd century, he was ordained and appointed as a preacher and instructor of the faithful by the bishop of that city, St Valerius, and together they were arrested by the governor Dacian when the edict of persecution was issued by the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian in the year 303. The poet Prudentius, who was also from Spain, and is one of the principal sources for his life, tells us that the local governor Dacian killed a group of eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, then soon after arrested Valerius and Vincent, who were transferred to Valencia, and left for a long time in prison, starved and tortured.

St Vincent, by the Spanish painter Tomás Giner, 1462-6; from the archdeacon’s chapel of the cathedral of Saragossa, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. His millstone (explained below) is seen on the left, behind the kneeing donor, on the right, his rack; note that the Roman persecutor Dacian is represented as a Moor in this painting of late Reconquista Spain. (Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

The point of the persecutions was to get Christians to offer sacrifice to the statue of the emperor, and it was particularly important for the Romans that the clergy should be induced to do this, so as to break down the resistance of the ordinary faithful. Dacian therefore tried by various threats and promises to bend the prisoners to his will, but Valerius suffered from a speech impediment and simply made no answer. St Vincent therefore said to him, “Father, if you order me, I will speak,” to which Valerius replied, “Son, as I committed to you the dispensation of the word of God, so I now charge you to answer in vindication of the faith which we defend.”

Vincent then said to Dacian that they were ready to suffer everything for the true God, and that his threats and promises meant nothing to them. In the days of St Augustine, the acts of the martyrs were often read in church as part of the liturgy, and he says in one of his sermons that Vincent suffered in ways that no man could bear in a merely natural way, while remaining perfectly calm and patient. Completely defeated by the martyr’s constancy, the governor relented, and allowed the faithful to visit him in prison; they dressed his many wounds, and laid him on a bed at which he died. He is sometimes depicted with a raven, in reference to the story that Dacian ordered his body to be left in a field, but a raven defended it from other animals until the Christians could collect it. More commonly, he is seen with a millstone tied to his neck, since Dacian then tried to get rid of his body by throwing it into the sea thus weighed down, but it miraculously returned to the shore anyway.

Many of the details of both St Vincent’s passion and various translations of his relics are regarded as unreliable by hagiographical scholars, but there can be no doubt that devotion to him spread through the Church very early on. St Augustine preached six sermons on his feast day, he appears in some of the earliest liturgical books of the Roman Rite, and is named in the canon of the Ambrosian Mass.

In Rome, his feast day was long joined to that of another martyr, a Persian soldier who was converted to Christianity on seeing the relics of the True Cross when they were taken into his country by the Emperor Chosroes, after the sack of Jerusalem in 614 AD. At his baptism he changed his name from Magundat to Anastasius, in honor of the Resurrection. There were several ferocious persecutions against the Christians in Persia, and Anastasius died as a martyr in the midst of torments as horrible as those of St Vincent. His body was removed first to the Holy Land, then to Constantinople, and finally, in the iconoclast era, when many of the iconodules fled West, to Rome, and placed in a church dedicated to St Vincent. This is the reason for the joint feast of two otherwise unrelated martyrs, but St Anastasius is not found on non-Roman calendars in the Middle Ages. As noted in the Martyrology, one of the arguments adduced in favor of the veneration of sacred pictures at the Second Council of Nicea was that many miracles of healing and exorcism took place at this church in the presence of an image of him and the relic of his head.

The façade of Ss Vincent and Anastasius, added by Matteo Longhi (1644-50) at the behest of Julius Cardinal Mazarin, the successor of Cardinal Richelieu as Prime Minister of King Louis XIV of France. (Photo from Wikimedia by Mister No, CC BY 3.0)

Ss Fructuosus and Companions, Spanish Martyrs of the Third Century

The feast of St Agnes is one of the oldest and most universal among those of the ancient martyrs; it is kept on this day in the Roman, Byzantine and Ambrosian Rites, and several of the Fathers preached or wrote about her, including Ss Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. The importance of her cultus is also demonstrated by the presence of her name in the canon of the Roman Mass, and the fact that her church in Rome on the via Nomentana was one of the first six built by the Emperor Constantine in the earliest years of the peace of the Church.

Earlier today, His Holiness Pope Leo blessed two lambs, as has customarily been done for centuries on the feast of St Agnes. The wool shorn from them is later used to make the pallia which the pope gives each year to those who have newly been made archbishops.

One of the works in which St Augustine mentions her is a sermon preached on her feast day in the year 396; however, it is titled “On the feast of Ss Fructuosus the bishop, and the deacons Augurius and Eulogius,” with whom it is principally concerned, who were martyred on the same day as Agnes, but roughly forty-five years earlier, at Tarragona in Spain, during the persecution of Valerian and Gallienus. Spanish liturgical books of the Roman Rite traditionally keep St Agnes on this day, and either transfer or commemorate the martyrs, but in the Mozarabic Rite, the native rite of Spain, they take precedence over Agnes, as a feast which is both older and more proper to the rite. The same is true in Tarragona, where they are honored the principal patron Saints.

The original account of their martyrdom survives, and is one of a fairly small number of such documents which are universally recognized to be authentic, even by the most skeptical among scholars of hagiography. These acts contain a record of the trial, such as it was, of Fructuosus and his companions before the Roman governor Emilian, who begins the interrogation.

“You have heard what the emperors have commanded?”
“I do not know what they have commanded, but I am a Christian.”
“They have commanded that the gods be worshipped.”
“I worship one God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all the things therein.”
“Do you know that there are (other) gods?”
“I do not.”
“You shall know hereafter.”

This last statement was effectively a threat of torture, at which Fructuosus “looked to the Lord and began to pray.” Emilian declared, “Who will be heard, who will be feared, who will be adored, if the gods are not worshipped, and the images of the emperors are not adored?” He then turned to Augurius and said, “Do not listen to the words of Fructuosus”, at which the latter replied, “I worship the almighty God.” Emilian then asked Eulogius, “Do you also worship Fructuosus?”, five words which fully betray a mystified incomprehension of Christianity very typical of the Romans. The answer was, “I do not worship Fructuosus, but the same (God) whom he worships.”

Turning back to Fructuosus, Emilian asked him “Are you a bishop?”, and to the answer “I am”, replied with a single word in Latin, “Fuisti – you were”, a very curt way of saying “You shall soon be dead.” He then gave the order that they be burnt alive.

The chapel dedicated to Ss Fructuosus, Augurius and Eulogius in the cathedral of Tarragona. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Turol Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0)

As the Saints were taken to the local amphitheater, the ruins of which still stand to this day, not only the Christians, but also the pagans expressed their grief, for they also loved Fructuosus. These acts contain an interesting witness to the antiquity of the Church’s discipline of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is also mentioned in one of the very oldest Christian documents outside the New Testament, the Didache. On his way to the amphitheater, Fructuosus was offered a cup of wine, but he would not drink it, saying that “it was not yet the hour to break the fast”, being only mid-morning. And thus, having kept the “statio” [1] of Wednesday in prison, “he hastened to complete that of Friday with the martyrs and prophets in the paradise which the Lord hath prepared for them that love Him.”

Another episode right before the execution, one of several such known to us, bears witness to the great veneration in which the martyrs were held by the early Christians. A man named Felix came forward, took the bishop’s right hand, and asked him to remember him, the clear implication being that the martyr would certainly stand in God’s presence very shortly, and thus be able to plead for him. To this Fructuosus replied, “I must keep in remembrance the Catholic Church, spread (through the world) from East to West.” He then addressed his flock as follows: “You will not now lack a shepherd, nor will the Lord’s charity and promise fail, either now or in the future; for what you see now (i.e. their execution) is but the weakness of an hour.”

The remains of the Roman amphitheater at Tarragona, constructed at the end of the 2nd century. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Burning at the stake usually killed more by smoke inhalation than actual burning, and this seems to be the case with these martyrs, since the acts say that the fire loosened the bonds which held them, in such a way that they were able to kneel in prayer before they died, “certain of the resurrection.” The author then reports that “the customary miracles” took place, a standing rebuke to those skeptics who are wont to treat excessive reports of miracles as a sign that the written life of a Saint is not authentic. Two of Emilian’s servants, Babylas and Mygdonius, who were also Christians, as well as his own daughter, saw the heavens open and the Saints ascending with crowns on their heads. Many of the persecutors focused their energies entirely on the clergy, and ignored the laity, and Emilian seems to have been such a one, since the two Christian servants were able to invite him to “come and see those whom you have condemned today, how they are restored to heaven and their hope”, but Emilian “was not worthy to see them.” The faithful then collected the relics, in accordance with the custom also attested in many other ancient accounts of martyrdoms.

In St Augustine’s time, the acts of the Martyrs were often read at Mass on Saints’ days, if they were available, and the sermon mentioned above is one of several that refers to this custom. “When we hear how the martyrs suffered, we rejoice, and glorify God in them. … You heard the persecutors’ interrogation, you heard the answers of those who confessed (Christ), while the passion of the Saints was being read.” Further along, he introduces St Agnes by saying, “Blessed are they whose passion was read. Blessed is Saint Agnes, the day of whose passion is today.” This custom never obtained in the Roman Rite, which had only two readings at the Mass, the Epistle and Gospel; hence the passions of the Saints found their place in the Divine Office instead. In the Ambrosian Rite, on the other hand, which has three readings on Sundays and feasts, the custom is still preserved to this day, even in the post-Conciliar form, by which the life of a Saint (in a fairly succinct version, to be sure) may be read in place of the Old Testament reading on certain feast days.

The following video was taken in 2014 in the basilica of St Ambrose in Milan, on the feast of the Martyrs Ss Protasius and Gervasius; after the Gloria and Collect, the passion of the two martyrs is read.

The cause and manner of the death of these martyrs naturally suggested to the author of their acts a similarity with the three children in the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel; this was a Biblical story near to the heart of every Christian in antiquity, since the Romans’ principal reason for persecuting them was their refusal to worship the statue of the Emperor, just as the three children would not worship the statue of the Babylonian Emperor. He therefore wrote that “they were like Ananiah, Azariah and Misael, in such wise that the divine Trinity was also seen in them, once they were set in the fire of the world, so that the Father was not far from them, and the Son came to help them, and the Holy Spirit walked in the midst of the fire.”

The Mozarabic liturgy makes many references to this idea in its liturgical texts for their feast day, as in this prayer at Matins. (The great veneration in which these Saints were held is also indicated by the fact that Mozarabic Matins normally has three prayers, but on their feast day, twenty-one, of which this is the sixth.) “Ananiah, Azariah, Misael, the three children tested by the fire of Babylon, were a great sign, o Lord, to Thy holy martyrs, to whom their august victory offered an example. In the case of the former, the fire fled, lest they die; in the case of the latter, it was let in, that they might be crowned. With the former, since also the time of the passion was not yet ripe, the fire of punishment could not touch their holy bodies; with the latter, in the acceptable time, when the way to paradise was opened by the death of Christ, it destroyed the bodies that were touched to the fire, once the door of paradise was now opened to the blessed. Therefore, we bless Thee, o God, who delivered the former from the flames, and crowned the latter after the flames; Who also, to deliver the former, didst sprinkle (dew) upon the fires, but allow them to take the latter up (to heaven). Grant us therefore, by the examples and prayers of them all, that we may so be delivered from the fire of carnal vices, that enkindled by the fiery sweetness of Thy words, we may merit to come to Thee in peace.”

The adoration of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Three Children in the furnace. From a manuscript known as the Saint-Sever Beatus (mid-11th century), an illustrated commentary on the book of the Apocalypse by the Spanish monk St Beatus of Liébana (ca. 730-800). This copy also includes St Jerome’s Commentary on the book of Daniel and a treatise by St Ildephonse of Toledo on the perpetual virginity of Mary. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 8878)

In a similar vein, the preface of their Mass (which, like many Mozarabic prefaces, is exceedingly long) ends with the words “Full worthy was it, that a divine voice should mark them, like unto that which marked the Hebrew children, Azariah and his companions, who walked in the furnace of the king of Babylon safe and sound, singing Thy praises with a new song, and in the heavenly office of the Angels cried out and said: Holy, holy, holy…”

Each year since 1990, a cultural association based in Tarragon and named for St Fructuosus has performed a passion play by Andreu Muñoz Melgar in honor of the three martyrs, in conjunction with the schola cantorum of the city’s cathedral. The story sticks very closely to that of the ancient passion, and in 2018, it was staged in the very amphitheater where the actual martyrdom took place, and at the same time of day. Here are links to two videos (not embeddable, for some reason) of the performance of it, the first from 2014 in Catalan, and the second from 2015 in Castilian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJJSrot0IM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZVp7Ovexo

[1] “Statio” meant the keeping of a fast until the mid-afternoon, which would later become the time for the canonical hour of None. This reference from 259AD shows us as an early form of the custom, later developed more fully, by which the Mass on penitential days was celebrated after None, and followed by Vespers, and the breaking of the fast.

An Exceptional Chasuble in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe

While the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe has long since passed, it is always worth taking a look at the finest handmade vestments in honor of Our Lady, to give honor to her (as is meet), and to inspire ideas in others for vestment commissioning. A case in point is this remarkable vestment set made by Sacra Domus Aurea, worn by a Vancouver priest-friend of mine for a Low Mass on one of the days of my visit there.

Let’s have a look first at the back of the chasuble, obviously designed to be seen for most of the Mass. We see a classic Borromean cut, wider and longer than some other fiddlebacks, and a tasteful use of a rich blue color, studded with gold stars, and allowing room for an ample reproduction of the tilma:

Here’s a close-up taken after Mass:

It is always a delight to see a priest’s coat of arms on a vestment, which is a very traditional way to mark it as his, while striking the dominant note of family heritage and transgenerational patrimony.

The front of the vestment, while plainer, is still noteworthy for its gold piping and well-chosen brocade fabrics, with the ubiquitous star motif:

The maniple continues the stellar theme:

as do the chalice veil and the burse:

Vestments like these accomplish many purposes.

First, they honor God in His saints by the homage of costly beauty.

Second, they honor the priesthood of the priest who dons them in analogy to the Son of God assuming human nature as a garment (in a common patristic manner of speaking) and in analogy to the Christian putting on Christ in baptism, the glorious “clothing” of sanctifying grace.

Third, they delight the faithful with their beauty, which reminds them of the beauty of Our Lady (“tota pulchra es - thou art all fair!”) and of Our Lord, “fairest of the sons of men.”

I am sure more reasons could be given. Fundamentally, such vestments show, without the need for labored explanations, that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a transcendent mystery that demands all the best of our efforts and resources.

Read more of Dr. Kwasniewski’s writing at Tradition & Sanity on Pelican+, and visit his personal website, his composer page, or Os Justi Press.