ROME 26/5– Day 42: Keeping up my end

Posted on 5 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

We’ve broken the 06:00 barrier for sunrise by 1 minute.

Sunset is at 20:15.

The Ave Maria Bell: 20:30

We are 125 days into this civic year.

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For centuries, bearing weight.

I’m really tired and I have more to do.  A wall across from The Parish™.

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ROME 26/5– Day 41: Groovy

Posted on 4 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

When 06:00 arrived, up came the sun here in Rome.

The sun set was at 20:14, officially that is.

The schedule for the Ave Maria Bell is still 20:30, though technically it should be more closely connected to sunset. Therefore, sliding around as the days get longer.

In the older calendar today we celebrate St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, who died at Ostia, Rome’s port on their way back to N. Africa. She has a lovely collect:

Deus, mæréntium consolátor et in te sperántium salus, qui beátæ Mónicæ pias lácrimas in conversióne fílii sui Augustíni misericórditer suscepísti: da nobis utriúsque intervéntu; peccáta nostra deploráre, et grátiæ tuæ indulgéntiam inveníre.

More about her, and a moment that changed Western Civilization, in another post.

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Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Along the Epistle flank of The Parish™ some cleaning has begun.

You can see the grooves in the travertine.  I believe that these were caused from carts passing each other in the narrow street and slowly gouging it out.   Think about it.  At the church and at huge refectory and hospice and hospital which the Archconfraternity had hosted half a million pilgrims in the Jubilee.   The Archcon housed and fed them and took care of them, in this complex and in other of their holdings around Rome.  Try to imagine the huge amount of food that had to be delivered, newly cleaned bedding, things to be removed that had been used.   The amount of people and carts coming and going…. hard to imagine.  The Parish™ was the second most visited place in Rome after St. Peter’s!  Try to get your head around that!

I think they will continue down to the end of the travertine.

I would subject these pissing little dogs who spray their paint all over to the “corda“.

In other news, I transplanted my jasmine (not the Jesuit) plant today.  An accomplishment.  It went into the planter on the right, and I straightened everything up.  Not sure what to do next.

I so hope my jasmine (not the Jesuit) takes off before I have to leave.  The fragrance is lovely, especially as the temperature drops in the late afternoon.  Thank you God, for these beautiful proofs of your love for us.

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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St. Monica, her incipient alcoholism, the intervention that saved her. WORLD HISTORY CHANGING in an INSTANT!

Posted on 4 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In the older calendar, today is St. Monica’s Feast, also spelled Monnica, a Punic name.

Monica was an inch away from becoming an alcoholic. (The story of her abusive husband has been told here before.)

This is IMPORTANT. At the end, I ask you to consider the implications of the events recounted. WORLD HISTORY CHANGING in an INSTANT.

From Serge Lancel’s Augustine, the best biography I know of the great Bishop of Hippo (p. 8 ff – emphases mine):

Before devoting himself entirely to Mother Church, as he approached the age of forty, Augustine had had a concubine for about fifteen years, of whom he had been very fond and who had given him a son; then, at the same time as a fleeting engagement, a second short-lived liaison.  But only one woman really counted in his life, and that was his natural mother, Monica.

As we may guess from reading a few pages of Book IX.8 of the Confessions, Patricius – Augustine’s father – had taken a wife in Thagaste from a milieu close to his own.  He had married Monica, as his would describe it in a phrase borrowed from Virgil, “in the fullness of her nubility”, which means that he had not married a child, a practice that was in any case more rare then in Africa that in Rome itself.  The couple had three children, in what order we do not know: a girl, who remains anonymous to us, but who, once widowed, would later become the superior of a community of nuns, and two boys, Augustine and Navigius, whom we shall find with his brother in Italy, at Cassiciacum, then at Ostia at their dying mother’s bedside.  …

So Monica had been born into a Christian family and was, as we would say today, a practicing believer.  The religious practices of Christians at that time, in North Africa, sometimes included aspects that would be surprising to us, such as the custom of taking offerings of food to the tombs of martyrs, for agapes that only too often degenerated into orgies; an obvious survival of the pagan festival of the Parentalia.  Of course, Monica did not indulge in those excesses.  If the baskets she brought to the cemetery contained, besides gruel and bread, a pitcher of unadulterated wine, when the time came to share libations with other faithful, she herself would take only a tiny amount, diluted with water, sipped from a goblet in front of every tomb visited.  Was this sobriety a memory of some experience in her early youth?  Augustine tells this story which he says he heard from the lady herself.  Raised in temperance by an old serving-woman who enjoyed the complete trust of Monica’s parents, she had fallen into a bad habit.  Well-behaved girl that she was, she was sent to the cellar to fetch wine from the cask, but before using the goblet she had brought to fill the carafe she would just wet her lips with the wine, not because she liked it, says Augustine, but out of childish mischief.  But gradually she had acquired a taste for it, to the point where she was drinking entire goblets of it with great gusto.  Fortunately she had cured herself of this incipient liking for drink in a burst of pride: the maidservant who accompanied her to the cellar, having fallen out one day with her young mistress insultingly called he a “little wine bibber”.  Stung to the quick, Monica had immediately stopped her habit.

Think now about the spiritual works of mercy: admonish the sinner.

NOW… consider how that servant affected WESTERN CIVILIZATION because of what she did for the future mother of St. Augustine, arguably one of the most influential figures in history.

You never know.

Do the right thing, in sacrificial love.

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Here’s the Latin from Confessions 9.8.18.

A few interesting words in bold:

8. 18. Et subrepserat tamen, sicut mihi filio famula tua narrabat, subrepserat ei vinulentia. [“an inclination for getting drunk on wine slithered into her”] Nam cum de more tamquam puella sobria iuberetur a parentibus de cupa vinum depromere, submisso poculo, qua desuper patet, priusquam in lagunculam funderet merum, [wine uncut with water – in the ancient world wine was always cut and it drinking merum was a sign of low manners, etc, as Cicero accused Mark Antony] primoribus labris sorbebat exiguum, quia non poterat amplius sensu recusante. Non enim ulla temulenta [archaic word for wine] cupidine faciebat hoc, sed quibusdam superfluentibus aetatis excessibus, qui ludicris motibus ebulliunt et in puerilibus animis maiorum pondere premi solent. Itaque ad illud modicum quotidiana modica addendo; quoniam qui modica spernit, paulatim decidit; in eam consuetudinem lapsa erat, ut prope iam plenos mero caliculos inhianter hauriret. [with a gaping mouth she quaffed whole cups of uncut wine] Ubi tunc sagax anus [wise old woman] et vehemens illa prohibitio? Numquid valebat aliquid adversus latentem morbum, nisi tua medicina, Domine, vigilaret super nos? Absente patre et matre et nutritoribus tu praesens, qui creasti, qui vocas, qui etiam per praepositos homines boni aliquid agis ad animarum salutem. Quid tunc egisti, Deus meus? Unde curasti? Unde sanasti? Nonne protulisti durum et acutum ex altera anima convicium tamquam medicinale ferrum [reproach like a cautering iron] ex occultis provisionibus tuis et uno ictu putredinem illam praecidisti? Ancilla enim, cum qua solebat accedere ad cupam, litigans cum domina minore, ut fit, sola cum sola, obiecit hoc crimen amarissima insultatione vocans meribibulam. [The old servant woman threw this crime (at Monica) with the bitterest reproach calling her a drunk (“wine-swiller”).] Quo illa stimulo percussa respexit foeditatem suam confestimque damnavit atque exuit. Sicut amici adulantes pervertunt, sic inimici litigantes plerumque corrigunt. Nec tu quod per eos agis, sed quod ipsi voluerunt, retribuis eis. Illa enim irata exagitare appetivit minorem dominam, non sanare, et ideo clanculo, aut quia ita eas invenerat locus et tempus litis, aut ne forte et ipsa periclitaretur, quod tam sero prodidisset. At tu, Domine, rector caelitum et terrenorum, ad usus tuos contorquens profunda torrentis, fluxum saeculorum ordinans turbulentum, etiam de alterius animae insania sanasti alteram, ne quisquam, cum hoc advertit, potentiae suae tribuat, si verbo eius alius corrigatur, quem vult corrigi.

In the online Pusey translation… a little dated:

And yet (as Thy handmaid told me her son) there had crept upon her a love of wine. For when (as the manner was) she, as though a sober maiden, was bidden by her parents to draw wine out of the hogshed, holding the vessel under the opening, before she poured the wine into the flagon, she sipped a little with the tip of her lips; for more her instinctive feelings refused. For this she did, not out of any desire of drink, but out of the exuberance of youth, whereby it boils over in mirthful freaks, which in youthful spirits are wont to be kept under by the gravity of their elders. And thus by adding to that little, daily littles (for whoso despiseth little things shall fall by little and little), she had fallen into such a habit as greedily to drink off her little cup brim-full almost of wine. Where was then that discreet old woman, and that her earnest countermanding? Would aught avail against a secret disease, if Thy healing hand, O Lord, watched not over us? Father, mother, and governors absent, Thou present, who createdst, who callest, who also by those set over us, workest something towards the salvation of our souls, what didst Thou then, O my God? how didst Thou cure her? how heal her? didst Thou not out of another soul bring forth a hard and a sharp taunt, like a lancet out of Thy secret store, and with one touch remove all that foul stuff? For a maid-servant with whom she used to go to the cellar, falling to words (as it happens) with her little mistress, when alone with her, taunted her with this fault, with most bitter insult, calling her wine-bibber. With which taunt she, stung to the quick, saw the foulness of her fault, and instantly condemned and forsook it. As flattering friends pervert, so reproachful enemies mostly correct. Yet not what by them Thou doest, but what themselves purposed, dost Thou repay them. For she in her anger sought to vex her young mistress, not to amend her; and did it in private, either for that the time and place of the quarrel so found them; or lest herself also should have anger, for discovering it thus late. But Thou, Lord, Governor of all in heaven and earth, who turnest to Thy purposes the deepest currents, and the ruled turbulence of the tide of times, didst by the very unhealthiness of one soul heal another; lest any, when he observes this, should ascribe it to his own power, even when another, whom he wished to be reformed, is reformed through words of his.

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Three Precious “Moments of Sharing” in Fr. Z’s Neighborhood

Posted on 3 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Okay… I am one way street right now, but here are three things I need to “share”.

Moments of sharing No. 1. (You can return to this one.)

The Regina Coeli at The Parish™ this morning after the Solemn Mass.  Sorry, I didn’t have energy to make a groovy video like the next two.

Moment of Sharing No. 2.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Moment of Sharing No. 3.

Should I rebrand?

Fr.Z’s Neighborhood? A cardigan and maybe a lively and charming Bugatti Veyron coming in once in a while? Appearances by The Great Roman™ (his voice is prominent in the Regina Coeli, btw)?

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I must post this. And then I have a mind experiment for you.

Posted on 3 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I must post this. And then I have a mind experiment for you.   If you don’t have Spanish …

In 2001, Coca-Cola announced that it sold 4 times more than Pepsi. Pepsi did not respond with words. It responded with an 11-second ad that is studied today in the world’s top marketing schools.

Swap out some terms in the video.

Coke is, in the video, the Novus Ordo, even celebrated well, even with all the traditional fiz and maybe some Latin.

Pepsi is, in the video, the Vetus Ordo, 99% of the time now celebrated well.

The boy is growing up, but is not yet fully grown. He has by now experienced both, Coke and Pepsi. He’s ready to pay twice to get what he now prizes and even leave the other thing behind.  He even stands on the Novus to get to graduate (“step up”) to the Vetus.  Pretty soon, he won’t have to do that.  But now, it’s worth it.

St. Paul wrote in 1 Cor 3:2:

[Brethren, I] could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it….

St. Paul wrote in 1 Cor 13:11:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Discuss.

Hint: For people in Columbia Heights, this is not about whether you like Pepsi better than Coke.  If you didn’t get that before you read this, you might just read the combox.

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Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 4th Sunday after Easter (N.O. 5th Sunday OF Easter)

Posted on 3 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Mass of obligation for this 4th Sunday after Easter (N.O. 5th Sunday OF Easter)?

Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

A taste of what I offered at 1 Peter 5 this week:

[…]

Desursum, “from above”, so that our hearts may be sursum, “upward”. Every good gift comes down from the Father of lights, with whom, as James says, there is “no variation or shadow due to change.” God is immutable. God is the source of all that is truly good. If the gift is not good, perhaps we should look elsewhere for its origin. Perhaps toward the “prince of this world”.

That phrase in the Gospel deserves attention. The Lord says that “the prince of this world is already judged,” or, in the RSV, “the ruler of this world is judged.” The “árchon toútou kósmou… princeps huius mundi” is the Devil. The same image of “archon… princeps” appears in the Synoptic tradition when the Lord’s enemies speak of Beelzebub as the “prince of the devils” (cf. Matthew 9:34; 12:24; Mark 3:22). In John 14:30, Christ says, “the prince of this world is coming. He has no power over me.” See also John 12:31.

There is no dualism here. God alone is King. The Devil, however marvelous a creature he once was before his fall, can never be king of anything. He can be a ruler in the sense of a tyrant. He can dominate, seduce, accuse, claim. Fallen angels have a measure of domination over material creation, always under the restraint of Almighty God. Because of Original Sin, we too fell under the domination of the Enemy of the Soul.

This explains the sober realism of the traditional Roman rites.

In the ancient rites of Baptism there are exorcisms. In the traditional Rituale Romanum, when priests bless certain objects, especially important sacramentals, there are exorcisms before constitutive blessings. When Father blesses an object in that way, he tears it away from the “prince of this world” and hands it over to the King. It is no longer ordered to ordinary, temporal, profane use. Profane comes from pro-fanum, “outside the sacred place”. After a constitutive blessing, the thing or place is sacred and demands reverent treatment. It now belongs, invisibly and juridically in the realm of sacred signs, to the dominion of Christ.

The new-fangled Book of Blessings, in its Preface, explicitly seeks to eliminate the distinction between invocative blessings and constitutive blessings. An invocative blessing calls down God’s favor here and now. A constitutive blessing renders a place, thing, or person sacred. That distinction matters. When we flatten such distinctions, we become poorer in our spiritual grammar.

When we eliminate, say, the Leonine Prayers after Low Mass, with their invocation of St. Michael the Archangel, and when we eliminate constitutive blessings, we are cruising for spiritual bruising. Look around.

[…]

 

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ROME 26/5– Day 39 & 40: A True Scoundrel

Posted on 3 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In Rome we got sun at 06:02.

It set at 20:13.

The Ave Maria Bell is in the 20:30 cycle.

In the Novus Ordo calendar, along with being the 5th Sunday OF Easter, it is the Feast of the Apostles Philip and James the Lesser.

In the Vetus Ordo, in the back of the Missal, we find texts today the Feast of the Finding of the Cross.  The orations are terrific.

Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance.  US HERE – UK HERE

Welcome Registrants:

Phil the Elder
LMC (added to the live stream list for when I start up again, since you followed Masses during COVID Theatre)

The damage this man did was inestimable.

White to move and win.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

A screenshot of this instead of posting code, so that I don’t slime up my page.   Two comments.  A priest how long and that was a first Mass ad orientem?  Celebrating Mass this way is so far off his radar that he doesn’t know enough Latin to spell it correctly.  St. Ignatius would be so proud.

Pray that he have the courage to work with Courage.

I was out to lunch with The Great Roman™ after Mass today.   We went to a nearly legendary place right on the Campo and had a great meal.  We ate inside in the “upper room”.  It was quiet and some air was on the move with open windows.  The saltimbocca was, honestly, the best I’ve had in a Centro restaurant for years.  Mixed salad for veg and a glass of Cesanese (a varietal common in Lazio).  More on that below.

I took a big step.  I got my jasmine (no, not the Jesuit).   I’ll transplant it into that nearby planter and let it climb.

In the restaurant today there was a great framed “Bando” decree from 1716 fixing prices of meats, qualities and terms of sales.

I quite enjoy the stipulation that …

Terrific saltimbocca today.  With a little bread at the end … ho fatto la scarpetta.

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WDTPRS – 5th Sunday of Easter (Novus Ordo): The prayer’s very word order reveals God’s love – UPDATED/CORRECTED

Posted on 2 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

UPDATE 3 May 2026:

Well!   This shows how out of touch I have been with the Novus Ordo and I posted from my work in the old days, on the 1970 edition.   But I did write about the 2002 edition Collect in 2016 HERE.   Folks, you can use the SEARCH feature.

In the 2002 edition of the Missale Romanum (the third typical edition), the Latin orations for the 5th Sunday of Easter were updated to include a new collect. This collect was drawn from Saturday of the fourth week of Easter in previous editions.  WHY???!???

Omnípotens sempiterne Deus, semper in nobis paschále perfice sacraméntum, ut, quos sacro baptísmate dignátus es renováre, mirábili tuitióne foveas. Per Dóminum.

Music Sacra has an interesting post which lists changes – TINKERITIS ANYONE? (if you needed more proof) – to the orations of the Easter season in the Novus Ordo.  HERE  It’s astonishing.  Here it is in small, just to give an idea.  You can see larger type there.

In case it’s of marginal interest to anyone:

I’ve discovered that a number of the collects for Easter weekdays are not ju2nd Week of Easter, Monday
was previously based on the 19th Week in Ordinary Time, but now has its own collect

2nd Week of Easter, Thursday
was previously the same as Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter, but now has its own collect

2nd Week of Easter, Friday
was previously the same as Wednesday of Holy Week, but now has its own collect

2nd Week of Easter, Saturday
was previously the same as the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time (and the Fifth Sunday of Easter), but now has two unqiue collects from which to choose

3rd Week of Easter, Monday
was previously the same as the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, but now has its own collect

4th Week of Easter, Monday
was previously the same as the 14th Week in Ordinary Time, but now has its own collect

4th Week of Easter, Saturday
now has a new collect because…

5th Sunday of Easter
was previously the same as the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time (and Saturday of the 2nd Week of Easter), but now has the collect that was previously assigned to Saturday of the 4th Week of Easter

5th Week of Easter, Monday
was previously the same as the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, but now has its own collect

6th Week of Easter, Tuesday
was previously the same as the Third Sunday of Easter, but now has its own collect

There is also a new collect provided for the Vigil Mass (and 1st Vepsers) of the Ascension, as well as an alternate collect for the Ascension itself.

While most of this work seems to be concentrated on Eastertide, there are a handful of other days in the Proper of Time that have had “touch-ups”:

In Lent, there is an new alternate collect provided for Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent.

The “new” collect for the Vigil Mass (and 1st Vespers) of the Epiphany was formerly the collect for January 7/Monday after the Epiphany, which has now received a new collect.

The alternate collect for the Baptism of the Lord is duplicated from January 8/Tuesday after the Epiphany.

 

Originally posted 2 May 2026

As we journey from the passion and Easter toward Ascension and Pentecost, the Church in Holy Mass leads us through meditations on the fruits of the Resurrection and our baptism.  Our mysterious procession was made possible by the Cross.  Our Collect today, for the 5th Sunday of Easter in the Ordinary Form calendar, is a delightful little piece of polished oratory.

It also has the Cross at its core.

Deus, per quem nobis et redemptio venit et praestatur adoptio, filios dilectionis tuae benignus intende, ut in Christo credentibus et vera tribuatur libertas, et hereditas aeterna.

This prayer, not in pre-Conciliar editions of the Roman Missal, was in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary in a section for evening prayers during Paschaltide. Its vocabulary suggests Patristic sources (e.g., Hilary of Poitiers, de trin 6, 44; Ambrose of Milan, ep 9, 65, 5).

Note the lovely chiasms (from the Greek letter chi, which looks like a “X”): redemptio venit…praestatur adoptio (subject verb – verb subject … and note that the endings of the subjects match) and vera libertas…hereditas aeterna (adjective noun – noun adjective).  These rhetorical flourishes are intended to delight the ear and help us link concepts within the text.  A chiasm is mapped out as

A       B
X
B        A

The Cross is embedded in the prayer’s very structure.

LITERAL VERSION:

O God, from whom both redemption comes to us and adoption is fulfilled for us, kindly give attention to your beloved children, so that both true freedom and an everlasting inheritance may be bestowed on those believing in Christ.

We pray for the freedom that is true, not the false and deceptive freedom of those enslaved to the world, the flesh and the devil… or false mercy, which fogs over the truth deceiving people smoothly.  We want an inheritance which is lasting, eternal, not passing.

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.

Christ is the Father’s Son by His nature (He is consubstantial with the Father). We are sons and daughters by grace (conferred through baptism).

Our adoption through grace is “perfect” (perfecta).  It is complete (perficio, “bring to an end or conclusion, finish, complete”).  God the Holy Trinity puts the imperishable mark upon us in baptism and confirmation.  Nevertheless, our redemption and adoption, our freedom and inheritance, will only be completed and ratified as such if we persevere throughout our lives and, having died in a state of grace, having died in the supernatural love which is charity, we see God face to face.

Today’s Collect has its foundation certainly in the New Testament’s imagery of adoption (Ephesians 1:5, Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:5), but I think it also flows out of ancient Roman legal concepts of manumission and adoption, the freeing of slaves and the adoption of heirs.

In ancient Rome even a father’s natural children required his recognition before they were legally legitimate and heirs with any rights.  Adoption could grant those same rights and privileges.  Roman adoptio removed a person from one familia and put him into another, placing him under the authority of the paterfamilias, the head of the family and whole household.

By baptism and the life of grace, we are not only freed from the slavery of sin and death, but we undergo an adoption.

We are not merely former slaves, we are free members of the Church and sons and daughters of God.

No longer subject to Satan and destined for hell, we are now under new mastership and fatherhood of God.

Our prayer today also underscores the concepts of redemption and adoption, together with freedom and inheritance.  This too is reflected within the Collect, in another pattern of words called synchesis (A-B-A-B) useful for showing how one set of concepts reveals the relationship of another set.

The subjects of the Collect are found in this order:

Freedom is the result of redemption, inheritance the result of adoption.

This week we have connections and interconnections of words.  The phrases and patterns they make weave in and out of each other.  It seems to me that this whole collect provides a good reflection on how deeply intertwined are the effects of the resurrection.   And – the Cross – makes this all possible.

redemptio ↔ adoptio (A – A)
                ⤡     ⤢
        ⇵   dilectio   ⇵
                ⤢     ⤡
libertas ↔ hereditas (B – B)
And even as the Cross over-weaves the prayer, in the very heart we find dilectio, “love”.

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WDTPRS – 4th Sunday after Easter (Vetus Ordo): “The smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God”

Posted on 2 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

 

We’ve come to the 4th Sunday after Easter according to the older, traditional Roman calendar.

Today’s Collect survived the slash and hack editors of the Novus Ordo.  You can find it in the Novus Ordo for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time as well as Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter.  That is… of Easter.  In the post-Conciliar calendar Sundays are reckoned “of Easter”. In the pre-Conciliar calendar they are “after Easter”.  In the newer calendar Easter Sunday itself is included in the reckoning of Sundays of the Easter season.  In the older calendar Sundays are counted from the first Sunday after Easter.  So, in the new calendar today is the Fifth Sunday of Easter and in the older it is the Fourth Sunday after Easter.

However, today’s Collect is in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary for the Third Sunday after the close of Easter!  Our more distant ancestors counted Easter Sunday, the days of the Octave, and “Low” Sunday in albis as being one single liturgical idea, one day, as if the clock stopped for that whole Octave.  Thus, what is the Fifth Sunday of  Easter (2002MR) and the Fourth Sunday after Easter (1962MR) is also the Third Sunday after the close of Easter (GelSacr).

Is it clear now?

COLLECT – (1962MR):
Deus, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis: da populis tuis id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis; ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia.

Beautiful.  Elegant.

The Novus Ordo version adds commas “ …ut, inter mundanas varietates,…”  All those long eeee sounds produced by the Latin letter “i” are marvelous to hear and to sing. Note the nice parallels in the construction: id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis as well as ibi…sint corda with ubi…sunt gaudia.  In the first line the genitives unius…voluntatis are elegantly split by the verb efficis.

A genius wrote this prayer.  Let’s find out what it really says.

Now in paperback!

The densely packed leaves of your own copy of the thick Lewis & Short Dictionary (HERE) show that varietas means “difference, diversity, variety.”  It is commonly used to indicate “changeableness, fickleness, inconstancy”; “vicissitude” hits it square and sounds wonderful to boot.  The adjective mundanus, a, um, “of or belonging to the world”, must be teased out in a paraphrase.  Efficio (formed from facio) means, “to make out, work out; hence, to bring to pass, to effect, execute, complete, accomplish, make, form”.   Voluntas means basically “will” but it can also mean things like “freewill, wish, choice, desire, inclination” and even “disposition towards a thing or person”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, You who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will,
grant unto Your people to love that thing which You command,
to desire that which You promise,
so that, amidst the vicissitudes of this world,
our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are.

Let us revisit that id…quod construction. We could simply say “love that which you command,” or “love what you command”, but to me that seems vague and generic.  Of course, we must love everything God commands, but the feeling I get from that id…quod is concrete.  We love and desire God’s will in the concrete situation, this concrete task.  A challenge of living as a good Christian in “the world” is to love God in the details of life, especially when those details are little to our liking.  We must love him in this beggar, this annoying creep, not in beggars or creeps in general.  We must love him in this act of fasting, not in fasting in general.  This basket of laundry, this paperwork, this Jesuit…. Didn’t I say it was a challenge?  God’s will must not be reduced to something abstract, as if it is merely a “heavenly” or “ideal” reality. “Thy will (voluntas) be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

What did the Anglican Church do with this back in the day?

1662 Book of Common Prayer (Fifth Sunday in Lent):
O almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men:
Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest,
and desire that which thou dost promise,
that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found.

You have to love that!  I often wonder why the original incarnation of ICEL didn’t use the Book of Common Prayer as a model.  But… right… first the redactors of the Novus Ordo cut certain unpleasantries, such as guilt and sin, out of the Latin original and then the people working for ICEL cut out all the rest of the meaningful concepts.

When you slaughter a critter, first you bang it on the head, then you tear its guts out, and afterwards hang upside down to drain out all its blood.

Sort of like Traditionis custodes, followed by the DDW “dubia” without origin, etc.

So what did the pre-reformed ICEL do to this prayer?

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father,
help us to seek the values
that will bring us lasting joy
in this changing world.
In our desire for what you promise
make us one in mind and heart.

This … makes me want to scream.

Note the theological catch-all word “help”, a technical term in obsolete ICELese and rather Pelagian.  Does “help us” underscore our total reliance on God?  He does a bit more than “help”.  What did ICEL did to God’s “commands”?

Presto-chango they are now “values”.

And did no one in ICEL or in Rome, where blame for this translation disaster must also be ascribed, see a theological problem with “lasting joy in this changing world”?

The Latin says the world is “fickle” (mundanas varietates).  We cannot have “lasting” joy in this world.  It can be attained only in the life to come.

More about the slippery word “values”.  We should make a distinction between values and virtues.  To my mind, values have an ever shifting subjective starting point while virtues are rooted in something objective.  In 1995 Gertude Himmelfarb wrote in The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values: “it was not until the present century that morality became so thoroughly relativized that virtues ceased to be ‘virtues’ and became ‘values.’”

Rem acu tetigit!   In this post-Christian, post-modern world the term “values” seems to indicate little more than our own self-projection.  I suspect this is at work in the obsolete ICEL prayer with its “help us” and the excision of God’s commands and promises.

We should be on guard about that word “values”, in this time of growing conflict between what the Church embraces and worldly relativism.  Can “values” be rescued, used properly? Perhaps. John Paul II used it in Evangelium vitae, but in a concrete way.

Benedict XVI constantly presented us with the threats we face from both religious and secular relativism, the reduction of the supernatural to the natural, caving in to “the world”, that which shifts constantly, is subjective.

Holy Scripture also warns us about “the world” which has its Prince.

The Enemy still dominates this world until Christ the King will come again.   St. Paul wrote to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2 – RSV).  Christ put His Apostles on guard about “the world”: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil” (John 7:7).

When what “the world” has to give is given preeminence over what God has to give through His Church, we wind up in the crisis Pope Paul VI described on the ninth anniversary of his coronation (29 June 1972):

“…da qualche fessura sia entrato il fumo di Satana nel tempio di Dio… through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God”.

Today’s Collect, in both the Novus Ordo and the Vetus form of the Roman Rite, is a spiritual safeguard in the vicissitudes of this world.

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ROME 26/5– Day 39: Evviva San Giuseppe!

Posted on 1 May 2026 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

It’s the feast of St. Joseph Opifex… the Worker. On 19 March 1937 (the Feast of Saint Joseph), Pius XI placed “the vast campaign of the Church against world Communism under the standard of Saint Joseph, her mighty protector.” In 1955, Pius XII established the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker on 1 May. He said that he was instituting the new feast “so that the dignity of human labor might sink more deeply into souls”. This is an explicit anti-Communist, anti-Socialist day for the Church favoring the dignity of the human person who works. As Pius IX wrote, no one can be both a Socialist and a Catholic.

The Roman sun rose at 6:07 on this feast, a civic holiday in Italy – Labor Day – probably because it is a special day for Communists. That’s how things are, I’m afraid.  It was chosen by Marxists to be International Workers’ Day to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The sun will set on Rome at 20:09.

The Ave Maria Bell is supposed to ring at 20:30.

It is the Feast of the Old Testament Prophet Jeremiah.   He figures in a newish book by Michael O’Brien, By The Waters Of Babylon which follows the youth and exile of Ezekiel with the Jews. O’Brien is a pleasure to read.  US HERE  UK HERE

It is a 1st Friday.

I was out with a friend tonight.  An aperitif at a usual spot, then to a place he remembered we have been to before and he liked.

The caponata is terrific.

He has a pistacchio crusted salmon with cabbage.

I, some pasta with tuna, artichoke and mentuccia.  While good, it was not something that I will get again.

It was one of the dailies.  Here are the others.   Maybe too many?

Full moon tonight.

CLICK

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

White can mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

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