Dowry.” Picture: Second Year FSSP UK Seminarians Henry and Conan Were Delighted to Receive the Visit of Sr Mari Caritas at Their Seminary in Nebraska
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owry D Autumn 2020, Issue N˚47 “O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon England thy Dowry.” Picture: Second Year FSSP UK seminarians Henry and Conan were delighted to receive the visit of Sr Mari Caritas at their seminary in Nebraska. The three were part of one of our local youth groups in England, and consecrated their lives to God last autumn. Let us pray for them and for many more! In this issue: Editorial: Gloom versus Glow The Privilege of Motherhood I Go To The King! Good Books For All As Christmas Presents The Philosophy of Christendom Three Books On Priestly Spirituality Sharing our Roman Traditions Catholic Novels: When Fiction Illustrates Faith A Very Priestly Fraternity History And Spirituality Books For All Schools of Prayer Support Our Apostolate (N˚41, Spring 2019) Dowry – Catholic periodical by the FSSP in Great Britain & Ireland (N°47, Autumn 2020) Editorial: Gloom versus Glow ooking at nature around us in we have taken it easy, being satisfied of hell shall never prevail over Holy this bleak November month, with an average righteousness, Mother Church. But beware again, L we see life hiding away. whereas God meant us to rise and to for those of us whose memory has Daylight is getting shorter and glow and to shine and to radiate His not been amputated by secular shorter. In the sky, a heavy slab of splendour with inimitable education; for those of us who read grey clouds weighs upon us. The graciousness, fecundity and glory! the lives of our forefathers in leaves are falling off the trees. The recusant times or in other glorious bright colours of autumn are fading It is not too late to allow God, the pages in the life of the Church, the away, while the chill of winter is most creative and prolific of artists, devil can cunningly lock us up into looming ahead. to shape our mediocrity and turn it nostalgia. He makes us wish we had into the varied and splendid been born at the time of St Bernard Even more disheartening than the generation of saints in this Covid-19 or St Dominic, or of St Catherine of gloom in nature is the demise of era. It is not prideful to look at the Sienna. By doing so, the devil society. For us Catholics in this sterilises grace in us. He distracts us November 2020, could it get much from the time and place where God bleaker? We feel unsupported, if not in His wisdom and mercy chose to abandoned, by our leaders both civil plant us and make us grow and bear and religious. Subjected to yet The varied fruit. another lockdown, with no clearer evidence that the alleged threat and splendid On the contrary, friends, our time is justifies the confiscation of our now. Our place is here. We are the fundamental liberties, we can’t see saints God has appointed from all when this oppression will end, if it generation of saints eternity to solve the many problems ever will. The economy is of our modern era. Let us desire to imperilled; workers lose their jobs or in this Covid-19 era. be made saints. If sin abounds, soon will; we are forbidden from divine grace will over-abound. It is travelling or merely from going out irrelevant whether God will make and from sustaining our social life our sanctity known to people in our through innocent entertainments; our empty niches on the walls of our time. Sanctity is mostly hidden, like children and students are denied churches and at our abstract stain the mustard seed in the soil; and like suitable conditions to prepare their glasses and to realise: God wants us leaven in flour. But it does grow and future; our sick and elderly are depicted there one day. God plans does convert the world, through sequestrated in care homes and for men and women alive in two patient intercession, through hospital wards. Much worse than all hundred years to look at these walls sacrificial reparation, through this even, Holy Mass is made and to draw inspiration from the undeterred hope and joy in the Lord inaccessible. virtues He will have put in us after His Immaculate Mother our ordinary Catholics: in me, in you. model. Friends, let us ask the saints and holy For God wants our lives to become angels for help in our present as holy as those of the saints of old. We assure you of our prayer at the troubles, for they are powerful if we altar for a blessed Nativity of the trust in their intercession. But also, So, let us beware of the devil, the Saviour, the yearly anticipation and let us consider that our loving Father, master in discouragement. The devil token of His final victory. God almighty, allows us to be shrinks our horizon to the short- chastised for our expiation and sighted scope of what the media Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP, Superior of the English FSSP amendment. Let us confess that we depressingly repeat day and night. Apostolate, 15th November 2020. □ have failed to respond to God’s plan The devil wants us to forget that God of sanctity for us. Let us admit that is Lord of history and that the gates 2 Dowry – Catholic periodical by the FSSP in Great Britain & Ireland (N°47, Autumn 2020) I Go To The King! A visitor to a church run by our Fraternity in Europe sent us the following reminiscences about her conversion. The issue of dress and devotion in church is a delicate one, to which this article provides only a personal illustration. year or two after my compunction about my misery or my Communion. The very beauty of the conversion to Catholicism, trousers. Our Lord was as present church reflects the solemn reality of A I happened to go to a Latin there as He was at that Latin Mass. this, and everything inside concurs Mass, and from which I came away What sense did it make to cover my to honour as sumptuously as profoundly changed. I had seen no head at the Latin Mass but not at the possible the ineffable dignity of that visions, I had heard no trumpets, it Mass in my church? As if God were which transpires there, and within us was a low Mass and on a very cold not there? Well, the reasoning was : exquisite linens and lace clothe the and dark and early morning; there certainly sound enough, but courage Altar and choicest flowers adorn it was no incense, no Gregorian chant enough I did not have for wearing a like jewels, the Priest is solemnly and no organ. There was instead a veil quite then. However, I did start vested in his sacred garments and most chastening decorum and wearing skirts and dresses, and after the very air is ennobled by plumes sobriety that shook me to the core: a while I just stopped wearing of the most heavenly incense; if it God was in that place and my trousers altogether. And in were given us to see the divine appalling misery was all right there hindsight, I can say that it was the reality of what is unfolding unseen before me. I would have given most important step I took in the all around us and upon the Holy anything to have had, not a veil, but whole of my spiritual life. Nothing Altar, the glory of it would cause us a blanket to cover myself. Before could have removed me more to faint before ever reaching the returning the next day I made sure to effectively from the clutches of the altar-rail. There we come before the have something to put on my head, world than putting away the trousers King of kings, our great Prince at least, and a longer coat for for good. It may seem a very great Who, upon the Altar has wrapping around the trousers. exaggeration to say so, but it is the accomplished the great sacrifice of simple truth. His cruel death which He died to I attended that Mass every day for a crush the horrible enemy of our month, and then it was time to go Every time we go to the Holy Mass souls. In receiving Holy home and to my regular parish it is our royal marriage, and most Communion we are united to our church—and where I felt no especially if we are to receive Holy beautiful Prince-Saviour in the holiest of unions; our flesh becomes one flesh with His Flesh, and our Picture Joseph Shaw: Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat 2009, England bodies become the Holy Body of our Royal Spouse. How reverently, how carefully we ought to clothe it then! How reverently and carefully we ought to keep it! *** And so it was that I began wearing dresses. And to my great surprise, it began to change me. It is difficult to remember now the myriad transformations brought on by the dresses and skirts, but a few in particular stand out. For instance, just for starters, I began to think of myself as an adult woman and not anymore as some generic piece of 3 Dowry – Catholic periodical by the FSSP in Great Britain & Ireland (N°47, Autumn 2020) ageless humanity. I was nearing 40 morning trousers in the evening! began to learn how to be gracious at the time. When I started wearing Men on the other hand are always with others.