Venerable Bede on John the Baptist

"His persecutor had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep silent about the truth." (Office of Readings, Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist)

Remember, there is such a thing as a sin of omission.

H/T to Fr. Z

Prayer: Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas

Today is the memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas is known as the Angelic Doctor: he is a Doctor of the Church and he was blessed by God, through two angels, with pure chastity. He authored the great Eucharistic hymn Pange lingua. As my friend Tiber Jumper points out, one stanza of this chant succinctly captures the Church's perennial teaching on the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ:

Verbum caro, panem verum verbo carnem efficit:
fitque sanguis Christi merum, et si sensus deficit,
ad firmandum cor sincerum sola fides sufficit.

A rough translation of this is:

The Word-made-flesh (Verbum caro), true bread (panem verum) -- by His word (verbo) -- into flesh (carnem) turns (efficit), and makes (fitque) the Blood of Christ (sanguis Christi) of wine (merum); and if the senses fail (et si sensus deficit), to strengthen (ad firmandum) the pure heart (cor sincerum) faith alone (sola fides) suffices (sufficit).

Liturgy: From BCL to CDW

[Via The New Liturgical Movement, via Amy Welborn.]

The former "Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy" is now the "Committee on Divine Worship". Deo gratias!

Liturgy: Liturgy of the Hours, Night Prayer (now in Latin)

Update (2007-07-27): I've added more Latin and corrected some more typos. See below.

I have a booklet available for download and printing. It's Night Prayer (part of the Liturgy of the Hours); I compiled it from my Liturgy of the Hours (in English) and from Latin translations of most of the prayers I found online, as well as from an edition sent to me by AJV on the Catholic Answers Forum. It covers Night Prayer for all the days of the week (Saturday's Night Prayer is Sunday's Night Prayer After Evening Prayer I). It has the Psalmody, Reading, and Prayer for each night in one section, and the "Ordinary" of Night Prayer (the Introduction, the Examination of Conscience, the Responsory, the Canticle of Simeon, and the Marian Antiphon) in another section. It also has a brief introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as a guide to the formatting used in the booklet.

(Updated) Latin is provided for all of Night Prayer, including each day's closing prayer and the all the antiphons for the Psalmody. The psalms themselves are provided in Latin, as are the readings, alongside the English translation; Latin translations primarily follow the Biblia Nova Vulgata. The page margins have changed to allow more text on each printed page. I've also added bold formatting to the psalms to aid in chanting and antiphonal recitation. Each strophe has the first word of each section in bold so you can split the psalms up between people or groups.

The file is a 322 K, 20pp MS Word document. Please refer to the printing caveat on my book list posting. The file is set-up as B4 paper size, so when you print it in booklet form, your printer needs to know it's converting B4 paper to Letter paper.

News: Motu Proprio and "Subsistit In"

Two particularly interesting documents were released from the Vatican quite recently. One is the long-awaited motu proprio entitled Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI that relaxes restrictions on the celebration of the Mass of Blessed John XXIII (commonly called the "Tridentine Rite" or the "Traditional Latin Mass"). The other is a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which Pope Benedict was head of before he was Pope) which answers questions about the phrase "subsists in" (subsistit in in the Latin) in Lumen Gentium, and why the Catholic Church uses the term "ecclesial communities" instead of "Churches" for those communities originating from the Reformation.

I will be writing about both of these in the near future. After my New Testament midterm (Thursday) and I finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I hope to visit Mater Ecclesiae in Berlin, NJ soon -- some Wednesday evening -- to experience (by active participation, no less) my first "Traditional Roman Rite" Mass; that is, the Extraordinary Rite of the Roman Missal, as clarified by Pope Benedict XVI in his motu proprio. I suggest, in the mean time, you check out Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog "What Does the Prayer Really Say?", where he is currently focusing a lot of time and effort on responses to the motu proprio from various Bishops and Archbishops (as well as reporters).

On the topic of the statement from the CDF, let me just remind you that the statement is clarification of what has already been said many times in the past. The document is primarily quotations from previous Magisterial documents; the commentary on the document, also provided by the CDF, follows suit.

I expect to have posts on these two subjects by early August. Also in August there should also appear a post about the outline Historia Salutis (On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church) from March of this year, which is the guideline for the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God. This is of particular interest to me because I will be the facilitator for a Young Adult Bible Study at Saint David the King parish in West Windsor, NJ, starting in October; the theme I have selected is the Psalms (as an introduction to lectio divina and the Liturgy of the Hours).