Newsletter the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross Vol 1 No 8 August 2020 Trinitytide
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Newsletter The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross Vol 1 No 8 August 2020 Trinitytide Inside This Issue Page 2 Why Do Young People Leave Excerpt of “The Transfiguration” by Danish painter Carl Bloch (1834- 1890) (Wikimedia) the Faith? Anthony Esolen The Ordinary’s Message Page 5 “And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, Confirmation in Sydney who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he Page 6 was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:30-31) Assumption – Robert Southwell Other than Sundays, there is only one Solemnity Page 7 in the month of August: the Assumption of the An Aussie Christus Rex Blessed Virgin Mary. Let us, however, consider Pilgrimage one of the three Feasts during the month – the Page 9 Transfiguration of the Lord which occurs on 6 What is the Ordinariate? August. This year, we’ve just read the version of the Transfiguration from Luke, at Evensong on Thursday, 30 July (being the Thursday after Trinity 7), which this year falls just one week before the actual Feast Day when we shall read the version, here in Year A, from Matthew. In the Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Transfiguration is ranked as one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Byzantine liturgical calendar, and even though it falls during the Dormition (the Greek title of the west’s Solemnity of the Assumption) fourteen day fast (1-14 August), there is an all-night vigil for the Transfiguration beginning on the eve of the Feast. The Dormition fast is relaxed somewhat: the eating of fish, wine and oil being permitted on the Transfiguration. Most often when we contemplate the Transfiguration, we do so in the context of the more obvious: - How it fulfilled for Peter, James and John the words of Jesus that he uttered eight days prior to the event, “Truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” NEWSLETTER OF OLSC VOLUME 1 ISSUE 8 AUGUST 2020 1 - How the Transfiguration prefigured his Passion, with a particular purpose as regards the three chosen witnesses. As the Catechism states, “Christ's Transfiguration aims at strengthening the apostles' faith in anticipation of his Passion: the ascent on to the "high mountain" prepares for the ascent to Calvary. Christ, Head of the Church, manifests what his Body contains and radiates in the sacraments: ‘the hope of glory’.” We might say that the revealing of Christ’s glory helps to offset the shock of His first Passion prediction just nine verses earlier, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” - How the Father’s voice, the chosen Son, and the cloud manifest the presence of the Blessed Trinity. - How the appearance of Moses and Elijah represent the two principle components of the Old Testament: the Law and the Prophets, which are fulfilled in Jesus. And it is in regard to this last, along with the opening quotation that begs some extra attention. Many of the English translations of the account as recorded in Luke state that Moses and Elijah spoke of Jesus’ “departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Other English translations use decease or passing. If one refers to the Greek for the passage, the word is ἔξοδον – yes, “exodon, exodus.” In the opening quote, I actually used the RSV 1st Catholic Edition, which translates the word as “departure.” Much as we might lament certain other modernisations that have occurred in the RSV 2nd Catholic Edition – the current approved translation for readings in the Ordinariate – this is one place where “they got it right.” The RSV Second Catholic Edition renders the passage, “who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Does that not much more deeply communicate the fullness of His mission than do departure, or decease, or passing? Perhaps, in addition to the events of His Passion, right through to the triumphant victory of the Resurrection of His transfigured body, not just his departure/decease/passing, perhaps we might consider its significance also against the Exodus from Egypt to the first Jerusalem of the Promised Land. In our Lord’s case, His exodus begins in the first Jerusalem, and ends in the Jerusalem which is above. Symbolically, for all of us, His exodus also represents the journey from sin (us, not Him) and death to the bliss of everlasting life in which we too will be transformed, transfigured, “Our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21ab). In a continuation of last month’s primary theme of our need to evangelise – get out there and share that good news! The Right Reverend Monsignor Carl Reid, PA Ordinary Why Do Young People Leave the Faith? Anthony Esolen Reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine Why do young people leave the Faith? I the Faith and our magnificent heritage of arts was asked that question the other day, and I and letters, and they wanted to have sex. replied, off the cuff, that it was two things: Most of the reasons that people give are Their imaginations had not been formed by NEWSLETTER OF OLSC VOLUME 1 ISSUE 8 AUGUST 2020 2 either variations of the first, or excuses for themselves before the political and sexual the second. The latter make no sense. For idols of the age, have been as wise as pigeons example, people will say that they had to and as innocent as snakes. leave the Faith because some priests did the From this point, we could with profit launch same evil things with children that some out in a number of directions. I will choose people from every other line of work have one direction today. In a room of ten or done. It is as if you said, “Because that filthy twelve adults, there should be a strong The Conversion of St Augustine - Fra Angelico vicious traitor stabbed Christ in the back, I’m chance that the priest is the most broadly going to do it, too, but I’ll be nicer about it learned of them all. and won’t use a knife.” I am looking at a copy of The English Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. In Hymnal (1933), and I am struck by how a world formed by the Christian faith, it much the editors assume the rector and the might be well to ask why anyone would cantor will know or might like to pursue. leave. It would be like turning away from There is, for instance, an Index of Original Chartres to go make houses of mud. It would First Lines of Translated Hymns, and the list be like rejecting Bach to listen to crows. In is huge, made up of the following numbers of this world, formed by the engines of mass hymns from each language represented: entertainment—I used to add “mass Latin, 163 schooling,” “mass marketing,” and “mass Greek, 25 politics” to that phrase, but I see that they are German, 21 all forms of the same thing—the question to Syriac, 2 ask is why anyone would stay. We should Italian, 2 perhaps assume the worst, that is, that unless Russian, 1 we are as wise as serpents and as innocent as Irish, 1 doves, they are going to leave. That is the Welsh, 1 default. Of course, our hierarchs as a group Swahili, 1 have not been as wise as serpents and as Danish, 1 innocent as doves. Some of them, prostrating NEWSLETTER OF OLSC VOLUME 1 ISSUE 8 AUGUST 2020 3 The names of the Greek hymns are printed in things are, where, without having to point it the Greek alphabet. Those in German are out, we make the lame objections of the printed in Gothic script. The one in Russian atheist seem old and tired, as in fact they are, is in the Cyrillic alphabet. The one in Irish is and we show up the “edgy” and “new” and in Gaelic script. Those in Syriac are in “bold” in contemporary art and social mores Aramaic cursive. as dull, old, and craven, as in fact they are, Why would you have such an index? Only if too. you believe that the priest, for his homily, When I was an undergraduate at Princeton, I might want to hunt down the original text of held on to the Faith as someone grabs onto a the hymn he or the cantor has chosen for the small jut of rock on the side of a cliff. I had service so as to link it up with the readings had twelve years of Catholic school, and I for the day. Or maybe the cantor and the knew absolutely nothing about Saint choir might want to sing the hymn in the Augustine, or even of the patron of my home original. Or you know the hymn already in parish, Thomas Aquinas. When I first read the original, and you want to hunt down its the Confessions, I was astounded. Here was translation in the hymnal, if it is there. You someone, sixteen hundred years ago, say, “Where is the Te lucis ante speaking about the nature of time, of primal terminum?”—the traditional hymn for matter, and of what it means for God to Compline. You say, “Where is Christe, create, as well as how to interpret with sanctorum decus Angelorum?”—because the subtlety and philosophical depth the first few Sunday happens also to be the feast of Saint sentences of Genesis.