Pontifical Vespers and Benediction in New York City on Feb. 2

The Durandus Institute for Sacred Liturgy and Music is sponsoring a special event for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Presentation of the Lord: pontifical Vespers in Latin, followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, will be in candlelight by candlelight at Old St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. A chamber orchestra will play Antonio Vivaldi’s settings of the psalms and Magnificat. The ceremony will begin at 7pm on Friday, February 2; the church is located at 263 Mulberry Street.

A Video of Solemn Pontifical Vespers from the Throne

This past Sunday, His Excellency William Lori, the Archbishop of Baltimore, preached and then celebrated Pontifical Solemn Vespers from the throne, followed by Benediction, at the National Shrine of St Alphonsus Liguori in Baltimore. In 2017, the Archbishop Lori entrusted the church, which had had an indult Mass since 1992, to the Fraternity of St Peter; we thank His Excellency for his paternal solicitude for the faithful attached to the traditional rite.

Pontifical Vespers Celebrated by Abp Sample

On Wednesday, March 20th, at St Stephen’s Parish in Portland, Oregon, His Excellency Alexander Sample, Archbishop of Portland, celebrated Pontifical Vespers at the throne according to the 1960 Antiphonale Romanum. Vespers was of the Wednesday of the second week of Lent; since there was no Solemn Mass being sung the following day, the attending ministers wore simple choir dress instead of sacred vestments. St Stephen’s celebrates traditional sung Latin Vespers every Sunday at 5 pm.

Tradition will always be for the young!

The Magnificat alternatim trium vocem by Christoph Dalitz (2018) was sung with a robust faux bordon, directed by 17 year old Coulter McIntyre and the schola of young men and seminarians.

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Pontifical First Vespers of Pentecost in Rome

On Saturday, May 19th, His Excellency Georg Gänswein, titular archbishop of Urbs Salvia and prefect of the papal household, will celebrate Pontifical 1st Vespers of Pentecost at the Fraternity of St Peter’s parish in Rome, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. The ceremony will be followed by the administration of the Sacrament of Confirmation to several parishioners. Vespers will begin at 6 p.m.; the church is located in the Piazza Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, very close to the Ponte Sisto.

On the morning of the same day, the solemn Mass of the vigil of Pentecost will be celebrated, beginning at 9:30.

Church in Tolentino, Italy, Restored After 2016 Earthquakes

In the Italian city of Tolentino, located in the Marches region, the church of the Sacred Heart and St Benedict was badly damaged by the same earthquakes that wrought so much devastation in nearby Norcia. After a year of restoration, the church has now been restored and reopened, thanks in part to a generous contribution from the Hungarian government. On December 9th, Pontifical First Vespers of the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, patron of Italy, and particularly of that region of central Italy, in which Loreto is located, were celebrated by Bishop Giuseppe Sciacca, Secretary of the Apostolic Segnatura, in the presence of Mons. Nazzareno Marconi, the bishop of Macerata and Tolentino, and Mons. Lajos Varga, auxiliary bishop of Vác, Hungary. The president of the Juventutem International Federation, Bertalan Kiss, were present, as well some of the Monks of Norcia, and members of local religious confraternities. An official delegation of the Hungarian government was also present, including the ambassadors to the Holy See, Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, to the Italian State, Ádám Kovács, and Péter Heltai, the ambassador-at-large of the charitable organization Hungary Helps. The secretary for religious affairs, Miklós Soltész, read a message of congratulations from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the community of Tolentino: “Following this terrible destruction, you have been an example of perseverance to us all, restoring in one year the walls of your church, so that you can continue in this ancient building, now renewed, the prayer begun by your fathers.”

Our thanks to Dr Andrea Carradori, prior of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, for sharing this information and these photos with us. (Photos by Paolo Biancoforte.)

Bishop Marconi unveils a plaque in Italian and Hungarian commemorating the restoration.

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Pontifical Vespers and Confirmations at the Fota Conference

The annual Fota Liturgical Conference in Cork, Ireland, is not only an important scholarly gathering, but includes a number of ceremonies celebrated at the highest level of our Catholic liturgical tradition. This year, on Saturday, July 9th, the conference’s keynote speaker, Cardinal Raymond Burke, was the celebrant of Pontifical Vespers for the eve of the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, after which he confirmed several young parishioners of the hosting church of Ss Peter and Paul. The wonderful Lassus Scholars, conducted by Dr Ite O’Donovan, sang the Gregorian chants for Saturday Vespers, and the Magnificat Septimi Toni of their patron musician, Orlando di Lassus. (Listen here on a previous post.) Our thanks to Mr John Briody for sharing these photos with us; the full set may be seen on his flickr account, along with those of a good many other liturgical events.

His Excellency Peter Elliot, Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, Australia, who also spoke at the conference, and Mons. James O’Brien, one of the principal organizers, attend in choir.

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Bishop Athanasius Schneider to Pontificate in Rhode Island, June 28–29

Readers in New England may want to know that Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who is becoming ever more widely known in traditional Catholic circles (e.g., here, here, and here), will visit Holy Ghost Church in Tiverton, Rhode Island, next week.

On Tuesday, June 28th, at 6:00 pm, he will speak on the crisis of faith in the world today ($10 ticket required) and then preside at Solemn Vespers in the ordinary form (Latin and English). A reception in the church hall will follow. Copies of his book Dominus Est—It Is the Lord! will be available for purchase.

On Wednesday, June 29th, at 6:00 pm, he will celebrate Solemn Pontifical Mass at the faldstool (extraordinary form) for the Feast of SS Peter & Paul.

For tickets and more information, visit the parish website.

Pontifical Vespers in Copenhagen, Denmark

On May 7, Solemn Pontifical Vespers in the usus antiquior were celebrated for the first time in Scandinavia since the liturgical reforms. Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen celebrated First Vespers for Sunday after the Ascension in the Catholic cathedral of St. Ansgar. The Gregorian proper chants were sung together with a polyphonic setting of the Magnificat by Tomas Luis de Victoria. Clergy from the diocese assisted together with visiting priests.

Remarkably, the Vespers were part of the religious and cultural festival “Danish Ecclesial Days,” held every third year. Originally an event of the Danish Lutheran State Church, this year other denominations have been involved. It was the Catholic representative to the organizing committee, a permanent deacon, who asked the St. Charles Borromeo Group (which organizes the TLM in Copenhagen) to arrange for this celebration of Vespers; he himself served as Assistant Deacon. The cathedral was open for prayer and Eucharistic adoration throughout the three-day event.

Mgr. Kozon has been very supportive of the older liturgical use and will celebrate an EF Solemn Pontifical Mass and confer Confirmation in St. Augustine’s Church, Copenhagen, on June 25. Thank you, Your Excellency!

EF Pontifical Mass with Archbishop Cordileone, Oct. 2

Full details given in the poster below: click to enlarge. Please note that there will also be Pontifical Vespers in the evening of the same day. 

More from the Ars Celebrandi Workshops in Poland

The organizers of the Ars Celebrandi workshops recently held in Poland have produced a nice video highlighting their many different activities, the various liturgies, as well as the seminars and lectures. There are a few captions in Polish, but most of it covered by music. They have also set up galleries with over 800 photographs, which you can access here by clicking here.

Bishop Schneider at the “Ars Celebrandi” Workshops in Licheń, Poland

Our thanks to the organizers of the Ars Celebrandi workshops for sending us these photographs and the accompanying press release. I would call our readers’ attention particularly to the report in the second paragraph of Bishop Schneider’s words about the false opposition between the observance of liturgical norms and interior participation in the liturgy, and the “deep wound” in the heart of the Church caused by lack of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. Most of the photographs below were taken at the Pontifical Mass, but the last one is of the blessing of new chalices, and the three before that are of Pontifical Vespers.

On 19 August 2015, at the Ars Celebrandi workshops on the traditional liturgy, Bishop Athanasius Schneider celebrated Pontifical Mass and Vespers, and gave a lecture on the proper renewal of the liturgy and due adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. He also answered questions from participants in the workshops, and signed copies of his latest book Corpus Christi.

In a lecture entitled “The Renewal of the Liturgy and the Perennial Sense of the Church”, His Excellency pointed out that the essential feature of the sacred liturgy is the adoration of God. The Eucharistic liturgy is the most sublime realization of the first commandment of which Jesus reminded us: “You shall adore the Lord your God and worship Him alone” (Matt 4, 10). Bishop Athanasius referred to the liturgical norms of the Church and the importance which should be attached to them in accordance with the whole of Scripture and Catholic doctrine.

To establish an opposition between exterior norms and the attention of the heart would be against the Divine truth. Such a contrast was often established by heretical movements, by neglecting or refusing exterior norms, e.g. Christian Gnostics, Cathars and Albigensians, Calvinists, and some Catholic Pentecostals and progressives of various degrees in our days. He also pointed to some alarming data about an increasing number of profanations related to giving Holy Communion on the hand. Then Bishop Schneider went on to present a sublime model to be imitated in liturgical celebrations: the liturgy of the Heavenly Jerusalem described in the Book of the Apocalypse. It is characterized by seven elements: kneeling, deep inclinations, and prostrations; incense; sacred songs, not performing wordly or sensual music (“a new song”); freedom from concentration on oneself; praying and singing together with the Angels; a prolonged time for silence; putting Eucharistic Christ in the visible centre of the liturgical assembly (and not the seat of the human celebrant).

During the Pontifical Mass celebrated in the Basilica of Licheń, Bishop Schneider gave a sermon in Polish in which he said, “The true renewal of the Church begins in an area which is the most important and which is the heart of the Church: in the Eucharistic Lord. However, a deep wound appeared in the heart of today’s Church because of a horrible lack of reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament, and numerous cases of unworthy reception of Holy Communion, without full belief and true contrition.” He also added, “Sinful man wants to put himself in the centre, even in church interiors, even during the Eucharistic feast; he wants to be seen and noticed. For this reason Eucharistic Jesus, who was made man, present in the tabernacle under Eucharistic species, is put to the side in many churches.”

After the Holy Mass, Bishop Schneider shared his feeling that it was one of the most beautiful ones in his life, praising the masters of ceremony and altar servers, as well as the musicians.

Before leaving Licheń, the bishop said a few words to the participants and organizers of the “Ars Celebrandi” Workshops on Traditional Liturgy.

I was deeply impressed by this Ars Celebrandi conference, especially as I met so many young people and young priests who seek to show real love for the holy liturgy and greater honor for Jesus in the holy liturgy. It was for me an experience of little piece of springtime of the Church, because this holy liturgy, the traditional liturgy, is a treasure for the whole Church, as Pope Benedict said, and this is a treasure which our forefathers handed over to us; so we have to love it and to pass it on to the next generation. This liturgy guides us closer to experience the presence of God, of Jesus, and the mystery of His sacrifice of the Cross, and the beauty, the majesty of God, and draws us closer to Him. Of course it is necessary that such beautiful celebrations influence our private lives, our Christianity, our moral lives. This should be a new force to give us new strength and new joy to live a real Christian life; and give an example of good Catholics. So I was favourably impressed and I hope that this Ars Celebrandi meeting will continue in the future and attract ever more young people, seminarians, young priests, to help them to live closer to Jesus, to live deeper this infinite, ineffable mystery of the holy Mass.

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