Category: Devotions

Discovery

petersham2a.jpgI came back this afternoon from a 24-hour retreat at the Maronite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Petersham, MA. Eric Ewanco and I were there to attend the Holy Thursday and Good Friday services.
While there, I started translating a little prayer booklet by Fr. Jean Galot into English; it’s dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and here’s one of the prayers.

Lord Jesus, God of love incarnate
Since you have come into this world to reveal to us the love divine, help us to discover in the gospel this love which inspired all your actions.
Make us understand the deep significance of your words and your gestures, the intimate sentiments of affection that make you appear as the Good Teacher and the Good Shepherd.
Introduce us into the mystery of your heart, in this hidden sanctuary of your soul that forms an unceasing furnace of love.
When we shall have grasped, going through the gospel stories, this inexhaustible love that surfaces and manifests itself in your way of acting, teach us to find this same love in all our existence, since you continue to give yourself over to us by your presence and your blessings.
Under the light of the Holy Spirit, might we be able to believe more firmly in this love, which explains everything in your life and in ours, to attach ourselves more completely to your heart, and to entrust to it all our being!
–Jean Galot, S.J.

The monks’ new chapel is almost complete, and they’ve begun to use it. The colors are a little off in the photo I took; the wood of the walls, columns, and ceiling is lighter, but not really much different from the color of the wooden pews and choir stalls.

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Get your indulgences here!

On Christmas Day, Cardinal Stafford announced the Holy Father’s grant of indulgences in connection with the Year of the Eucharist:

1. A Plenary Indulgence is granted to each and every member of the faithful under the usual conditions (sacramental Confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayers for the Supreme Pontiff’s intentions, in a spirit of total detachment from any inclination to sin), every time they take part, taking care to do so with pious attention, in a sacred liturgy or pious practice in honour of the Most Blessed Sacrament, solemnly exposed or preserved in the tabernacle.
2. A Plenary Indulgence is also granted to the clergy, members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and to the other faithful bound by law to recite the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as those who are accustomed to praying the Divine Office for pure devotion, every time, at the end of the day, when they recite Vespers and Compline before the Lord present in the tabernacle, either in community or privately.

More information is available in the decree.
The Latin version looks a little sloppy on the Vatican website. Are venerazioni, exspositum and Tabernacolo proper Latin? And is “sacred liturgy” a proper translation of sacrae functioni? Where is Reginald Foster? What have they done with him?

1. Omnibus et singulis christifidelibus Plenaria Indulgentia conceditur, suetis sub condicionibus (nempe sacramentalis Confessionis, eucharisticae Communionis et Orationis ad mentem Summi Pontificis, animo quidem omnino elongato ab affectu erga quodcumque peccatum), si cui sacrae functioni vel pio exercitio in honorem SS.mi Sacramenti, sive sollemniter expositi sive in Tabernaculo adservati peractis, attente ac religiose interfuerint.
2. Clericis insuper, sodalibus Institutorum Vitae consecratae et Societatum Vitae apostolicae, aliisque christifidelibus qui lege ad Liturgiae Horarum recitationem adstringuntur, vel qui sola devotione Divinum Officium recitare solent, Indulgentia Plenaria conceditur sub enuntiatis condicionibus quotiescumque, declinante die, sive in communi sive privatim, Vesperas et Completorium ante SS.mum Sacramentum venerazioni fidelium exspositum aut in Tabernacolo adservatum, pie persolverint.
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Et Incarnatus Est

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The earth is glad, O Lord, and leaps with joy, for that the Word made flesh dwells in the womb of the holy Virgin. At His coming the whole earth is ransomed from captivity, after having been kept, by Adam’s sin, in a dark prison. Now let the sea be moved, and all things that are therein; let the mountains leap with joy, and all the trees of the forest; because God, having become man, has deigned to come through the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, from heaven into this world. By this His coming, therefore, we beseech Thee, O almighty God, that thou loose the weakness of our flesh from the bonds of sin, and come in Thy overflowing mercy, to the assistance of this Thy family here present before Thee.

From the Mozarabic Missal quoted by Michael Davies in an article “Et Incarnatus Est”

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