Saturday, January 24, 2009

Lecture Notes from "The Splendor of Catholicism"

I just got back from the second day of the lecture series by Dr. Ted Sri. I'm making my notes freely available. You can download them here. His lectures were "Praying the Rosary Like Never Before", "A Biblical Walk Through the Mass", "Marriage and the Eucharist", "The Eucharist in Scripture", and "Entering Christ's Passion".

Morning Prayer was beautiful. The Mass was also beautiful. The chanting was wonderful, thanks to the cantor Geoff (who is studying liturgy at Mundelein) and his schola, and the rest of the music for Mass was wonderfully sung by the rest of the choir. The organist played wonderfully as well.

The homily on St. Francis de Sales and the universal vocation to holiness — 20 minutes at least, and that's the longest homily I've ever heard at a daily Mass — was exquisite. Fr. Timothy, God bless you!

Last but certainly not least, the church had some particularly interesting and moving decorations in the sanctuary. Two "icons" (I'm not quite sure what to call them), one of the Victory of the Lamb (sitting on a book with seven seals, all of which are opened), the other the Pelican feeding its young with its own flesh and blood. These are of course two ancient symbols for Christ. There was also a crucifix (as opposed to an empty cross or a "resurrectrix") suspended above the altar. There were three lights in the ceiling shining on it, such that on the back wall of the sanctuary, there appeared three shadows of crucifixes (evocative of Calvary). And the center shadow had, at its base, the tabernacle! And to top it all off, above the sanctuary were the pipes of the organ, and the center pipes were not standing straight up but sticking out horizontally, looking like trumpets... trumpets of the angelic host proclaiming the victory of Christ over death and sin.

God moved me today. It shall not be forgotten.

1 comment:

hyperstem said...

Man, that sounds interesting...let me know next time something like that comes up in the area (unless you mind having company :)