Elgar’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’

This is one of my favourite, favourite anthems. One day!

AMSA’s performance of ‘Adoro Te Devote’

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,

Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;

Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,

Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,

Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.

Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;

Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

In cruce latebat sola Deitas,

At hic latet simul et Humanitas,

Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,

Peto quod petivit latro pœnitens.

Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor:

Deum tamen meum te confiteor.

Fac me tibi semper magis credere,

In te spem habere, te diligere.

O memoriale mortis Domini!

Panis vivus, vitam præstans homini!

Præsta meæ menti de te vívere,

Et te illi semper dulce sapere.

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,

Me immundum munda tuo sanguine:

Cujus una stilla salvum facere

Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,

Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio:

Ut te revelata cernens facie,

Visu sim beátus tuæ gloriæ. Amen.

We will be learning this arrangement of Adoro Te for Corpus Christi in June. I’m terribly excited–not in the way where you feel like you get to own the beautiful thing, but in the way where you feel like it will be a wonderful blessing just to be able to convey a beautiful thing to people. (I happen to think that’s a good way to be, in a liturgical choir.) June! But until then, Christus surrexit!

The psalmist said that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning, but most days I realise that I only understand that in the evening. Not just in looking back on my day, and registering the moments God gave me each day, but just in the way the sunset looks. The sun sets every day, but you never know what it’s going to look like until it comes. And in its own givenness–just like every day with God–every sunset is beautiful in its own way.

‘Anglicanism’s flirtation with Catholicism and with Queerness’…?

‘Miles Christi: Soldiers of Christ in America’

‘Two priests and a brother … were sent to the United States … in order to assist American Catholics in their struggle against relativism, secularism, and consumerism. In other words, they were sent to the US to help Americans be holy.’

Chills. Miles Christi.

On Holy Saturday, God incarnate entered “the absolute and extreme solitude of mankind.” Here Benedict pointed out that we have all experienced that terrifying feeling of abandonment, which is why we fear death—similarly to how, “as children, we are afraid of being alone in the dark, and the only thing that can comfort us is the presence of a person who loves us.” And that is precisely what happened on Holy Saturday, he said. Even in the darkest of times, “we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that takes ours and leads us out.” If love can penetrate to the very depths of hell, we are never alone or hopeless.

Read more here, at First Things. Christus surrexit!

There was a boy I knew who would spend a lot of time with the friars at the parish we were doing RCIA at. He was nearly always with the parish’s deacon–in and out of the office, puttering around church talking to people, moving things around, and just generally hanging out. This deacon (now a priest) was the parish MC, and in charge of the healthy troop of altar boys at this big suburban parish.

I got to see him serving mass one weekend, and I was struck, all of a sudden, by how he walked and moved and just seemed to breathe like the friar he spent so much time with. Reverently, solemnly, and grandly, like all the smallness and greatness of man was simultaneously apparent. It was beautiful.