The music is splendid, but some peculiarities:
1. The Mass is a hybrid of ENGLISH and Latin
2. The homily is preached in English, not Italian or German
3. It’s quite beautiful, reverent and what the Mass of Pope Paul VI should be not only at St. Peter’s but every parish in the world.
4. A note to Bishop Martin of Charlotte, please note that Holy Communion is received in a variety of ways, diversity in unity, some kneel, most stand, many receive in the hand and most on the tongue. What is important at the reception of Holy Communion is our focus is on Jesus—He is at the center even in the diversity of how our Lord is received.
4 comments:
Thank you so very much Father! Very beautiful indeed! May Dearly Beloved Pope Benedict XVl, whom Fr. Murray
( of EWTN’ s “World Over-Papal Posse”) called the greatest Theologian to ever be elected Pope, already be resting against the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Whom he loved and served soooo FAITHFULLY during his lifetime!
May his soul and the souls of all the Faithful Departed RIP!
Amen
🙏❤️🙏🙏🙏
With Father McDonald's permission, here is the homily:
“My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, three years ago on the feast on St. Silvester, the priest and bishop Joseph Ratzinger completed his earthly pilgrimage and preceded us into the heavenly homeland.
After death, it is not only eternal rest and pleasantness that await us. We shall come to know God, who has chosen us from all eternity in His Son and predestined us to share in His genuine love.
We shall see God from face to face, and we shall praise and love Him in the communion of all His chosen saints. The knowledge of God is the ultimate goal of all human spiritual endeavor.
For Jesus Himself, the word made flesh, says, "This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one who you sent, Jesus Christ." This is a Son who reveals Himself as the way, the truth, and the life.
Therefore, we all include it in God's universal plan of salvation, for He desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Joseph Ratzinger always understood himself as a collaborator with truth, Cooperatores veritatis.
Both as a professor of theology and a mass sought-after preacher, he consistently put himself in the service of the word. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he set standards of the highest diligence, intellectual precision and incorruptibility for the Roman magisterium.
During his pontificate, he was one of the greatest theologians on the Kathedra Petri.
He has left us an immense theological legacy of exceptional quality and was rightly recognized as one of the great Catholic intellectuals of our time.
Even Jürgen Habermas, the most prominent representative of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, who embodies the intellectual world of a modernity without God, sought dialogue with him, so that believers and non-believers alike might work together to save the modern world from the cold death of anti-humanism, transhumanism and nihilism.
When I presented Pope Benedict with the first volume of the opera omnia, I informed him of the plan for 16 volumes with semi-volumes estimated to comprise some 25,000 or 30,000 pages.
Rather than expressing pride in such a monumental intellectual work, he said to me with my name Gerhard, 'Who is going to read all that?' Somewhat embarrassed, I replied, Holy Father, 'I don't know, but I do know the person who wrote it all.'
A complete edition of his theological works, distinct from his papal documents, is not intended to intimidate or discourage potential readers. His theology is a gift to the entire Church, including future generations.
Each person remains free to draw from it according to his or her own spiritual, theological, philosophical, or cultural, theoretical interests, both old and new. One person might focus on his sermons throughout the liturgical year.
Another might turn to the volumes of the Second Vatican Council, of which he was an important advisor, expert, and later an authoritative interpreter.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
With Father McDonald's permission:
Part 2 of 2
"A third might study the volumes of St. Augustine's teaching on the Church at the People and the House of God.
However, if a fellow Christian who is searching and troubled in faith were to ask me what he should read above all, I would recommend the three volumes on Jesus of Nazareth.
The fact that he published this work under his personal name, in order to distinguish his theological from his papal authority, also expresses the deepest meaning of papal primacy.
For every pope as a successor of St. Peter must understand that the Pope's most sacred task is uniting the entire Church with all his bishops, priests, and faithful in the confession of the Prince of the Apostles who declared to Jesus, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
This is the fundament of the Catholic Church. This is also where the future of the world and the Church will be decided.
“Since the Enlightenment, a conflict has arisen between faith and reason. It has often seemed that the findings of historical, critical, biblical research, philosophical epistemology, the critical philosophy, and in particular in questions concerning of the origin of the universe and of life, belief in God the Creator and in Jesus Christ, the only Savior, were in contradiction.
In reality, however, there is no contradiction with the revealed truth about the world and humanity, even though faith does not need to be validated by the always fallible conclusions of empirical science.
Faith rests on the word of God through whom all that exists has come into being. Because Jesus, true God and true man, is the truth itself in His divine person. Our knowledge of God in the Holy Spirit is infallible and cannot be challenged by purely worldly knowledge.
Indeed, it is a task of the theologians to demonstrate the deeper unity between revealed faith and the latest secular knowledge as expressed in theories.
For we should always be ready to give a logical, in the Logos, answers to anyone who asks us about the hope that is in us. That is written in the first letter of St. Peter.
The Son of God is a divine Logos, the word of God who never errs and never leads astray.
Joseph Ratzinger has repeatedly reminded us that Christianity, with all its great cultural achievements in social teaching, music and art, literature and philosophy, is not a theory or a worldview, but an encounter with a person. Jesus is the truth in his divine person, the light that enlightens every human being.
Everyone who is in the truth hears His voice, the voice of the word. And what is a church of Jesus Christ? She is not a man-made organization with a grand ethical or social program, an NGO now.
The Church of Christ is a community of his disciples who say of themselves and profess before the world, we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.
Joseph Ratzinger, the Theologian, the Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope, is not far from us, for our earthly liturgy corresponds to the heavenly liturgy in which he is united with us in worshipping and glorifying God, loving and praising him for all eternity. Amen.”
Pax.
Mark Thomas
The following reflected holy Joseph Ratzinger's tremendous love of, and concern for, Holy Mother Church:
Journalist Peter Seewald: "Then how, taking leave of the Curia, could you promise your successor absolute obedience without knowing who it would be?"
Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI: "The Pope is the Pope, regardless of who it is."
Peter Seewald: "So you do not see any kind of break with your pontificate?"
Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI: "No. I mean, one can of course misinterpret in places, with the intention of saying that everything has been turned on its head now.
"If one isolates things, takes them out of context, one can construct opposites, but not if one looks at the whole.
"There may be a different emphasis, of course, but no opposition."
=======
Throughout his glorious Pontificate, there were folks who attempted to pit Pope Francis' (requiescat in pace) against Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI.
But Pope Emeritus, as his above comments had made clear, did not tolerate such nonsense. He rejected the absurd claim that Pope Francis had broken with/cancelled Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate.'
Pope Benedict XVI contributed greatly to the Church's/our spirituality via his promise to render unto his successor "unconditional reverence and obedience."
He echoed Pope Saint Pius X's following teaching:
"Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed;
"when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey...
"...we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
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