Dear Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday (September 22, 2024) is the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost. In the Gospel reading for the day (Matthew 9:1-8), we are told that upon His arrival by boat at “His own city” Jesus was met by a group carrying “one sick of the palsy lying in bed.” Seeing the faith of those who brought the man, Our Lord immediately said to the paralytic, “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” Some scribes, hearing this, accused Him in their own thoughts of blasphemy; but Jesus, reading their minds, asked them, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” Was it easier to tell a man his sins were forgiven or to say, “Arise and walk?” Then, having already forgiven the man’s sins, he demonstrated His power to accomplish the other as well, telling the man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house.” The man having done so, “[T]he multitude seeing it feared and glorified God who had given such power to men.” Note that the people perceive the power—both to heal and to forgive sins—is given by God not just to a man but to men.
Calendar of Saints and Special Observances
Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962 and on the Liturgical Calendar of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary.
DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)
Sunday, September 22 – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (II)
Monday, September 23 – St. Linus, Pope and Martyr (III); and Commemoration of St. Thecla, Virgin and Martyr
Tuesday, September 24 – Commemoration of Our Lady of Ransom
Wednesday, September 25 – Feria
Thursday, September 26 – Commemoration of Ss. Cyprian and Justina, Virgin, Martyrs; (USA) Ss. Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues and Companions, Martyrs
Friday, September 27 – Ss. Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs (III)
Saturday, September 28 – St. Wenceslaus, Duke and Martyr (III)
Note: The feast of St. Thomas of Villanova, Augustinian Bishop and Confessor (III) and the commemoration of St. Maurice and his Theban Legion, which are usually celebrated on September 22nd in accordance with the traditional Roman Calendar, are displaced this year by the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the Proper Prayers for Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost with either English or Spanish translation. The English version includes a commentary on the Gospel reading by Msgr. Patrick Boylan entitled “The Delegation of the Power to Absolve Sins.” We also offer a link to a New Liturgical Movement article by Dr. Michael P. Foley on “An Exchange to Remember: The Secret of the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.”
Latin Mass Schedule: Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (September 22, 2024)
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Latin Mass Schedule: Weekdays
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Note: Travelers are advised to contact parish offices to confirm weekday and Saturday Mass times, since local schedules are sometimes subject to change without notice, especially on or around holidays, holy days of obligation and other special feast days.
Announcements
Fourth Saturday Respect Life Mass
The Fourth Saturday Respect Life Latin Mass will be celebrated at St. Ann on September 28th at 8:00 a.m. Following Mass, prayers will be said at Planned Parenthood and a Holy Hour of Reparation will be offered in the church for those unable to travel to the abortion facility.
Sunday Coffee and Doughnuts
We wish to thank Saint Ann parish for providing the donuts and coffee and doughnuts after the Masses last weekend. We also remind our readers to help support the weekly coffee and cookies after Latin Mass provided by Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society on the other Sundays as we could always use assistance in setting/cleaning up, or general support for this weekly tradition.
Update on the Jacksonville Carmelite Sisters Affected by Hurricane Debbie
In an email update, the Jacksonville Carmelite Sisters thanked everyone who contributed to their new roof to replace the one damaged by Hurricane Debbie a few weeks ago. The Sisters reported the new roof work began this past week. During their historic move from New York to Florida this past January, the Jacksonville Carmelites were hosted by Saint Ann Parish for an overnight stay in Charlotte. At the new location in Jacksonville, the Carmelite convent is probably the nearest to Charlotte of any traditional contemplative religious community. To continue supporting the sisters, please click here.
Prayers for the Election
54-Day Rosary Novena: Fr. Timothy S. Reid, pastor of St. Ann Parish, has encouraged participation in the 54-Day Rosary Novena already underway in connection with the upcoming national election. The novena began Friday (September 13th) and will conclude on Election Day (November 5th). Participants are asked to pray the Rosary daily for the intention that God’s will may be done in the election. “But also pray,” Fr. Reid urged, “for the respect and protection of life in all its stages; for the sanctity of marriage and families; for the upholding of constitutionally protected religious freedom; and for a return of our nation to God and holiness. And, of course, we should pray for peace in our world.” Fr. Reid also encouraged those who join in the 54-Day Rosary Novena to fast during this period, giving up something to reinforce their dedication to the prayer intentions.
Fr. Chad Ripperger’s Prayer for the Election: Fr. Chad Ripperger, who spoke at Saint Thomas Aquinas last year, has asked the faithful of the United States to pray for our nation as the election approaches. Fr. Ripperger, a Latin Mass priest and founder of the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother (the Doloran Fathers), is perhaps best known for his work as an exorcist. He has written a special prayer consecrating the election and its outcome to Our Lady. The text of the prayer may be found at the end of this update or downloaded at this link.
Holy Face Devotions
Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:
“Jesus, Your ineffable image is the star which guides my steps. Ah, You know, Your sweet Face is for me Heaven on earth” (from Canticle to the Holy Face by Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, the 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun who took the name in religion, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face).
Latin Mass and Liturgical News
Saints and Special Observances
Ss. Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues and Companions, Martyrs is one of the “Proper Feasts Celebrated in the Dioceses of the United States” listed in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal. The feast may be celebrated either on September 26th or on October 19th. The life of St. Jean de Brebeuf will be sketched here; that of St. Isaac Jogues will be addressed in this space in October.
Jean de Brébeuf was born on March 25, 1593, in Condé-sur-Vire, Normandy. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1617 after completing his university studies and taught at the College of Rouen for several years, surviving an attack of tuberculosis in 1620 that threatened to bring his religious career to an early end. Ordained to the priesthood on February 19, 1622, he subsequently responded to an appeal issued by the Franciscan Recollets for the members of other orders to assist in the evangelization of the inhabitants of North America. Arriving in Québec on June 19, 1625, along with four other Jesuits, he accompanied a group of Montagnais on a hunting expedition that lasted from October through the ensuing winter. During this time, he learned not only how the native people lived but much about the languages that they spoke.
In The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, Francis Parkman calls Jean de Brébeuf “that masculine apostle of the Faith,--the Ajax of the mission” and describes him as “a tall, strong man, with features that seemed carved by Nature for a soldier, but which the mental habits of years had stamped with the visible impress of the priesthood.” Having survived a disease that normally killed those who contracted it, the Jesuit missionary would display astonishing hardihood and unmatched fortitude throughout his years in New France and especially at the end in his martyrdom.
When a group of Hurons returning to their home territory in July of 1626 offered the Jesuit missionaries the opportunity to accompany them, they at first refused to take Brébeuf, considering him too large to be carried safely in a canoe. They only relented when sufficient payment was provided along with a promise that the Frenchman would not move while in the canoe. When the party approached waterfalls or other impediments that made it necessary to carry the craft overland for some distance, the size and strength of Brébeuf served well and earned the priest the name of Echon (“the man who carries the load”).
Devoting himself to the study of Huron customs and beliefs, Jean de Brébeuf also learned their language, prepared a grammar and phrase book, and translated the catechism for use in proselytizing the native people. He had little success in securing conversions to Christianity before being ordered back to France in July of 1629 due to hostilities between the French and English in Canada. He went back to teaching in Rouen until the restoration of peace allowed him to return to Québec in May of 1633. The Hurons, traveling in a downsized convoy because their numbers had been reduced by an epidemic, were unwilling to carry all of the Jesuit missionaries back to their home country but agreed to take Echon and one other priest, Fr. Anthony Daniel. Later joined by another priest and five lay helpers, the missionaries constructed a cabin just outside the Huron village; and Brébeuf went to work teaching the others the customs and language of the Huron people. In 1635 they undertook the hard work of evangelization, catechizing children during the day and adults at night. At the end of a year, they had baptized a dozen people: four infants and eight adults at the point of death.
Fr. Brébeuf and his companions were frequently in danger of being condemned by the Huron people they lived among and sought to convert to Christianity. When disease or famine struck, the people blamed the new religion the Frenchmen sought to impose on them; clinging to their old beliefs, sometimes it seemed only right that the interlopers should forfeit their lives to make things right again. Ultimately, a council of the Huron nation, convened in March of 1640, determined that all of the Jesuit missionaries should be put to death.
Moving to the mission headquarters at Sainte-Marie, Brébeuf escaped the sentence of death and renewed the work of evangelization with a tribe known as the Neutrals, only to be accused of plotting with the Seneca clan of the Iroquois against the people who had taken him in. He was forced to flee to Québec, where he remained for three years before returning to Saint-Marie. During his absence, the threat posed by the hostile Iroquois people had escalated; and two priests, Fr. Anthony Daniel and Fr. Isaac Jogues, had already been martyred.
On March 15, 1649, Brébeuf and Fr. Gabriel Lalemant left the mission to make their weekly tour of the Huron villages. They were staying that night in the one the missionaries called Saint-Louis when the Iroquois attacked another nearby village. The Huron women and children ran to hide in the forest; the two Jesuits remained with the men, most of whom were baptized Christians by this time. When the Iroquois overwhelmed the village defenses at dawn, the Hurons who remained alive were taken captive along with the two priests. Someone revealed the identity of Jean de Brébeuf as Echon, the most formidable shaman among the cassock-clad foreigners; and he was singled out for especially harsh treatment.
After an initial torture session at Saint-Louis, Brébeuf and Lalemant were stripped and forced to run naked through the snow to the Iroquois village. Other captives had already been assembled there; all were forced to run the gauntlet and were beaten mercilessly. Then the two Jesuits were tied to posts to be killed slowly in a manner meant to maximize the pain inflicted on the condemned. The cruelty of it exceeded even that of the English authorities who, while claiming to be Christians, tortured and executed many more Catholics during the same century. Scalded with hot irons and torched from head to toe, Jean de Brébeuf continued to stand tall, exhorting the Christians present to remain firm in the Faith. The Iroquois responded by ripping off his skin, slicing off his lower lip, shoving a hot torch down his throat, and cutting off his feet. They also poured boiling water over his head to mock the sacramental rite by which some 7,000 native inhabitants of North America had been brought into the Church by the Jesuit mission. After four hours they finally managed to stop his beating heart by ripping it from his chest and eating it.
The bodies of Fathers Brébeuf and Lalemant were recovered five days after their martyrdom and transported to Sainte-Marie for proper burial. Jean de Brébeuf was known to be a visionary whose love of Christ was such that he longed for martyrdom as the only adequate expression of the love he felt for Our Lord. Numerous miracles have been associated with his relics. He was beatified on June 12, 1925, and canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29, 1930. The twin feast days of September 26th and October 19th are shared by eight Jesuit martyrs in all: Fathers Jean de Lalande, Isaac Jogues, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel; René Goupil, an oblate; Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant.
Closing Commentary
We offer, in closing, an excerpt from the commentary of Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, on the “Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost,” followed by a link to the full text of the commentary from The Liturgical Year.
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Paralytic carrying his bed is the subject of this day’s Gospel, and gives the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost its title. It has been thought, by some, that its having the number it bears has caused it to be inserted in the Missal immediately after the Ember Days of autumn. We will not, like the Liturgists of the Middle Ages, discuss the question as to whether we should consider it has having taken the place of the vacant Sunday, which formerly used always to follow the ordination of the sacred ministers, in the manner we have elsewhere described. Manuscript Sacramentaries and Lectionaries, of very ancient date, give it the name which was so much in use of Dominica vacat. Whatever may be the conclusion arrived at, there is one interesting point for consideration—that the Mass of this day is the only one in which is broken the order of the lessons taken from St. Paul, and which invariably form the subject of the Epistles, from the sixth Sunday after Pentecost: the Letter to the Ephesians—which we have had already before us, and will be afterwards continued—is today interrupted, and in its stead we have some verses from the first Epistle to the Corinthians, wherein the Apostle gives thanks to God for the manifold gratuitous gifts granted, in Christ Jesus, to the Church. Now, the powers conferred, by the imposition of the Bishop’s hands, on the ministers of the Church, are the most marvelous gift that is known on earth, yea, in heaven itself. The other portions of the Mass, too, are, as we shall see further on, most appropriate to the prerogatives of the new Priesthood. So that the Liturgy of the present Sunday is doubly telling, when it immediately follows the Ember Days of September. But this coincidence is far from being one of every year’s occurrence, at least as the Liturgy now stands; nor can we dwell longer on these subjects without seeming to be going too far into archæology, and exceeding the limits we have marked out for ourselves.
Mass.—The Introit of the Sunday Masses, since Pentecost, was always taken from the Psalms. From the 12th to the 118th, the Church, without ever changing the order of these sacred canticles, chose from each of them, as its own turn came, the Verses most appropriate to the Liturgy of each Sunday. But dating from today, she is going to select her Introits elsewhere, with one exception, however, when she will again turn to this the Book, by excellence, of divine praise. Her future opening-Anthems, for the Dominical Liturgy, to the end of the Year, will be taken from the various other books of the Old Testament. For this 18th Sunday, we have Jesus, son of Sirach, the inspired writer of Ecclesiastes, asking God to ratify, by the accomplishment of what they foretold, the fidelity of his Prophets. The interpreters of the divine oracles are now the Pastors whom the Church sends, in her own name, to preach the word of salvation and peace; let us, her children, pray with her, that their words may never be void.
The last Coming of the Son of Man is no longer far off! The approach of that final event, which is to put the Church in full possession of her divine Spouse, redoubles her hopes—but the Last Judgment, which is also to pronounce the eternal perdition of so great a number of her children, mingles fear with her desire; and these two sentiments of hers will henceforth be continually brought forward in the holy Liturgy.
It is evident that Expectation has been, so to say, an essential characteristic of her existence. Separated as she is, at least as to the vision of his divine charms, she would have been sighing all day long in this vale of tears had not the love, which possesses her, driven her to spend herself, unselfishly and unreservedly, for Him who is absolute Master of her whole heart. She therefore devotes herself to labor and suffering, to prayers and tears. But her devotedness, unlimited as it has been, has not made her hopes less ardent. A love without desires is not a virtue of the Church; she condemns it in her children as being an insult to the Spouse.
So just, and at the same time so intense, were, and from the very first, these her aspirations, that Eternal Wisdom wished to spare his Bride by concealing from her the duration of her exile. The day and hour of his return is the one sole point upon which, when questioned by his Apostles, Jesus refused to enlighten his Church. That secret constituted one of the designs of God’s government of the world; but besides that, it was also a proof of the compassion and affection of the Man-God: the trial would have been too cruel; and it was better to leave the Church under the impression, which after all was a true one, that the end was nigh in God’s sight, with whom a thousand Years are as one day.
It is this which explains how it was that the Apostles, who were the interpreters of the Church’s aspirations, are continually recurring to the subject of the near approach of our Lord’s coming. St. Paul has just been telling us, and that twice over in the same breath, that the Christian is he who waiteth for the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the day of his Coming. In his Epistle to the Hebrews, he applies to the second Coming, the inflamed desires of the ancient Prophets for the first; and says: Yet a little, and a very little while, and He that is to come, will come, and will not delay. The reason is that under the New Covenant, as under the Old, the Man-God is called, on account of his final manifestation, which is always being looked for, he that is coming, he that is to come. The cry, which is to close the world’s history, is to be the announcement of his arrival: Behold! the Bridegroom is coming.