Feast of Faith

Even though "Year of Grace" is no more, I invite you to visit the new-and-improved liturgy page at the Cathedral website. Add a bookmark and come back to read the weekly updates!   http://www.stjames-cathedral.org/liturgy/liturgy.aspx  It's not exactly a blog... but it's blog-like.

The Liturgy and Century 21

On this date, August 21, in 1962, the Liturgical Week opened at the Seattle World's Fair.  Father Ryan goes "back to the future" today at Conciliaria.com, a wonderful site dedicated to remembering what was happening at the Second Vatican Council, day by day.  With its emphasis on the active participation of the laity in the liturgy, the Liturgical Week was a foretaste of things to come in the Council's reform of the liturgy.  Read Father Ryan's article here. 

A very young Michael Ryan staffs the information booth
at the Liturgical Week, fifty years ago this week.

In Praise of Mary

There comes a day, there comes an hour

there comes a moment when St. Marcel and St. Germaine

and St. Germain himself and our great friend the great St. Genevieve
and the great St. Peter himself are no longer enough.
And when you must resolutely do what you must do.

When you must take your courage in both hands.

And address yourself directly to the one who is above them all.
To be brave.  This one time.  To address yourself boldly to the one who is infinitely beautiful.
Because she is infinitely good.

To the one who intercedes.

The only one who can speak with the authority of a mother.

To address yourself boldly to the one who is infinitely pure.

Because she is also infinitely gentle.
 
To the one who is infinitely noble.
Because she is also infinitely courteous.
Infinitely welcoming.
Welcoming like the priest who goes out to the threshold of the church to greet the newborn.
On the day of his baptism.
To welcome him into the house of God.

To the one who is infinitely rich.

Because she is also infinitely poor.

To the one who is infinitely high.

Because she is also infinitely descending.

To the one who is infinitely great.

Because she is also infinitely small.
Infinitely humble.
A young mother.

To the one who is infinitely joyful.

Because she is also infinitely sorrowful.
 
Seventy times seven times sorrowful.
To the one who is infinitely touching.
Because she is also infinitely touched.

To the one who is infinitely heavenly.

Because she is also infinitely earthly.

To the one who is infinitely eternal.
Because she is also infinitely temporal.

To the one who is infinitely above us.

Because she is also infinitely among us.

To the one who is the mother and the queen of the angels.

Because she is also the mother and the queen of men.

To the one who is with us.

Because the Lord is with her.

Charles Péguy (from Le Porche du Mystère de la Deuxième Vertu, 1912)

On the move

This summer, many Cathedral parishioners are participating in Camino Seattle, a special program of walking and prayer that evokes the traditional pilgrim way of St. James--the ancient Camino or Road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. 


Signpost on the Meseta.  Photo of the Camino de Santiago
by Rev. Dr. Sandy Brown.

Walking and prayer are a natural combination, and pilgrimages are part of many faith traditions, including our own.  The pilgrim, trusting to his or her own feet and on the hospitality of strangers, learns to depend on God.  Pilgrims are focused on the destination, but mindful of the landscape through which they journey and of those who walk with them.  No wonder pilgrimage is such a powerful metaphor for the life of faith.  The Second Vatican Council often invoked the Church as a pilgrim, following a path of penance and renewal to the heavenly city.

Pilgrimage is part of our liturgy, too.  The processions at Mass serve a practical function--getting the ministers in and out of the sanctuary, getting the Book of the Gospels to the ambo--but they are, of course, much more than that.  The entrance procession of the ministers to the altar, with signs of Christ--cross, Gospel Book, and celebrant--at the beginning, middle, and end of the procession, evokes the people of God, walking towards heaven with Christ in their midst.  The offertory and communion processions are the pilgrimage of the entire people of God, bringing our gifts and receiving gifts from God.  And the procession at the conclusion of the Mass sends us forth into the world, to bring the presence of Christ, of whose body we are members, into the places where we live.

Pilgrim: who calls you?
What hidden power attracts you?
It is not the field of stars
Nor the great cathedrals.
It is not the peoples of the camino
Nor their rural customs.
It is not history or culture.
The power that pushes me
The force that attracts me
I know not how to explain it.
Only He who is above understands it!

A poem found in Najera, along the Camino, (trans. Father Kevin Codd, To the Field of Stars)

Corpus Christi

This Sunday, June 10, we celebrate the great Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ.  At 10:00am, our Mass will conclude with the traditional procession with the Blessed Sacrament.  Gathered as the Body of Christ, we celebrate the presence of the risen Christ in our midst in the sacrament of his Body and Blood.

There is nothing magic about Christianity. There are no short-cuts; everything passes through the humble and patient logic of the grain of wheat that broke open to give life, the logic of faith that moves mountains with the gentle power of God. For this reason God wishes to continue to renew humanity, history and the cosmos through this chain of transformations, of which the Eucharist is the sacrament. Through the consecrated bread and wine, in which his Body and his Blood are really present, Christ transforms us, conforming us to him: he involves us in his work of redemption, enabling us, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to live in accordance with his own logic of self-giving, as grains of wheat united to him and in him. Thus are sown and continue to mature in the furrows of history unity and peace, which are the end for which we strive, in accordance with God’s plan.

Let us walk with no illusions, with no utopian ideologies, on the highways of the world bearing within us the Body of the Lord, like the Virgin Mary in the mystery of the Visitation. With the humility of knowing that we are merely grains of wheat, let us preserve the firm certainty that the love of God, incarnate in Christ, is stronger than evil, violence and death. We know that God prepares for all men and women new heavens and a new earth, in which peace and justice reign — and in faith we perceive the new world which is our true homeland.

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for Corpus Christi 2011