Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed)
Dear Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday (November 17, 2024) is the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed). In the parable reprised in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a single grain of mustard seed that grows into a tree substantial enough for the birds of the air to “dwell in the branches thereof.” Dom Prosper Guéranger says in The Liturgical Year that the mustard seed is “the Word of God, at first hidden in Judea” and the tree is the Church that sprang from it, “reaching rapidly to every part of the world.” The birds that come and dwell in it are “the souls of men aspiring to the eternal goods of the better world.” This is just one of a series of parables presented in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. The Gospel reading for this Sunday concludes with one of the more intriguing passages in the New Testament. Echoing an earlier passage in the same chapter of St. Matthew, Our Lord explains to His disciples the rationale for His parabolic approach to preaching. (For more on this subject, see “Three Parables” in Saints and Special Observances below.)
Calendar of Saints and Special Observances
Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962 or on the liturgical calendar of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary.
DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)
Sunday, November 17 – Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed) (II)
Monday, November 18 – Dedication of the Basilicas of Ss. Peter and Paul (III)
Tuesday, November 19 – St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Widow (III) – Commemoration of St. Pontianus, Pope And Martyr
Wednesday, November 20 – St. Felix of Valois, Confessor, Founder of the Trinitarians (III)
Thursday, November 21 – Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (III)
Friday, November 22 – St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr (III)
Saturday, November 23 – St. Clement I, Pope and Martyr (III) – Commemoration of St. Felicity, Martyr
Note: The Feast of St. Gregory Thaumaturgas, Bishop and Confessor (III), celebrated on November 17th in most years, is displaced this year by the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed).
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed)
The links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the Proper Prayers for Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed) with either English or Spanish translation. (Note, however, that in Spanish the Mass is identified as that for the twenty-seventh Sunday after Pentecost.) The English version includes a commentary on the Epistle reading from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB (1805-1875). Also offered below is a link to Dr. Michael P. Foley’s essay on “The Collect and Postcommunion of the Reconfigured Sixth Sunday after Epiphany” from New Liturgical Movement.
Latin Mass Schedule: Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed)
(November 17, 2024)
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
11:30 a.m., Saint Thomas Aquinas
12:30 p.m., Saint Ann
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
8:30 a.m., Saint John the Baptist (Tryon)
9:00 a.m., Our Lady of the Angels (Marion)
1:00 p.m., Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock)
1:30 p.m., Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro)
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
12:00 p.m., Prince of Peace (Taylors SC)
1:00 p.m., Our Lady of the Lake (Chapin SC)
Note: Travelers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in the regular schedule of Sunday Mass times.
Latin Mass Schedule: Weekdays
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Saint Ann – Wednesday, 6:00 p.m.
Saint Thomas Aquinas – Thursday, 7:00 p.m.
Saint Ann – Friday, 7:00 a.m.
Saint Ann – Saturday. 8:00 a.m. (Fourth Saturday Respect Life Mass followed by prayers at Planned Parenthood and a Holy Hour of Reparation in the church for those unable to travel to the abortion facility).
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Our Lady of the Mountains (Highlands) – Tuesday, 9:30 a.m.
Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – Friday, 8:30 a.m.
Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – Friday, 9:30 a.m.
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) — Monday-Friday,12:00 p.m.
Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) — Saturday, 8:00 a.m.
Note: Travelers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in weekday Mass times.
Pray for Our Priests
During the Diocese of Charlotte Eucharistic Congress, Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society launched a "Pray for Our Priests" campaign, soliciting prayers on behalf of our diocesan priests. Please join those already engaged in this prayer initiative by pledging as many Hail Marys as your heart will allow! Our goal is to secure the recitation of 150,000 Hail Marys for the 133 diocesan priests before the end of the liturgical year on November 30th. As we all know, spiritual warfare between angels and demons rages continually, and prayer is a powerful weapon in the battle.
During a recent talk, Living Through these Trying Times: Faith in Trials (1/5), Father Chad Ripperger (at the 13-minute mark), said that we must pray for the protection of our clergy and pray in a very specific way. He noted that we should call on Our Lady and give her our prayers for our priests and also ask her to protect and hide us and our prayers from the demons, to prevent them from undermining the effects of the prayers (click here to listen).
To participate in the “Pray for Our Priests” campaign, please visit the Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society website or use the link below, keeping in mind that you can always add Hail Mary’s once your initial pledge has been met.
Oremus!
Announcements
3rd Sunday Doughnuts at Saint Ann – Saint Ann parish will be sponsoring doughnuts and coffee after all Masses this Sunday, including the 12:30 p.m. Latin Mass.
Respect Life Mass – The 8:00 a.m. Latin Mass at St. Ann next Saturday (November 23rd) will be the usual Fourth Saturday Respect Life Mass to be followed by prayers at the Planned Parenthood abortion facility. Those unable to make it to the prayer site are invited to join in a Holy Hour of Reparation in the church following Mass.
Traditional Sung Vespers, Friday, November 22, 7:00 p.m. – Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro will again offer Traditional Vespers according to the 1934 “Antiphonale Monasticum” of the Benedictine Abbey at Solesmes in France on the fourth Friday of this month at 7:00 p.m. The Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes was founded by Dom Prosper Guéranger who, in addition to the composition of his monumental opus, The Liturgical Year, was responsible for revitalizing the use of Gregorian Chant in the liturgy.
“Sister Parish” Relief Program – The Diocese of Charlotte is sponsoring a program to assist in the recovery of parishes in the western part of the state affected by Hurricane Helene. The program will partner parishes that escaped the wrath of the storm with those that sustained substantial impacts. Fr. Reid has announced that St. Ann has committed to serve as a sister parish to Saint Lucien in Spruce Pine, providing financial assistance to help cover recovery costs and to make up for the loss of collection revenue resulting from the displacement of parishioners. Funds for the effort will be derived from second collections on the following dates: November 16-17, December 14-15, January 4-5, February 1-2, March 1-2 and April 5-6.
All Souls Novena of Masses and Indulgences
– St. Ann is again offering a Novena of Masses for the Poor Souls in
Purgatory during the month of November. The names of those one wishes
to have remembered in this special way may be submitted either by
collection envelope or online. In addition, the Book of the Dead will
be available in the narthex of the church for enrollment of the names of
deceased loved ones. All those whose names are submitted will be
especially remembered in the Litany of the Dead to be offered after every daily Mass in November.
Election Prayers – Thanks to those who prayed the Election Consecration novena prayer composed by Fr. Ripperger and the 54-day Rosary Novena encouraged by Fr. Reid.
Advent/December Latin Mass Schedule – We hope to share the December Advent/Christmas schedule (as announced) in next weekend's update.
Holy Face Devotions
Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:
St. James (Concord) – Monday, 10-10:30 a.m. (in the cry room)
St. Mark – Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. (5:00pm for Tuesday November 19 only)
St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesday, 6:00 a.m.
St. Ann – Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. (following 7:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
St. Michael the Archangel (Gastonia) – Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. (following 8:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
Holy Spirit (Denver) – Tuesday, 10-11:00 a.m. (following the 9:15 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
St. John the Baptist (Tryon) - First Saturday, 9:30 a.m. (after 8:30 a.m Latin Mass)
“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
Return to Our Lady: Seventeenth Reflection is the latest offering from Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke for those participating in his Nine-Month Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe on behalf of the Church and the world. Cardinal Burke provides a video presentation of his reflection, together with the text of his message, the prayer to be recited daily by participants and links to valuable background material regarding St. Juan Diego’s miraculous encounter with Our Lady in 1531. [Return to Our Lady: Seventeenth Reflection]
Forgotten Customs of Martinmas and Saint Martin’s Lent, by Matthew Plese in OnePeterFive provides history and traditional customs surrounding the the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours whose feast day was celebrated this past Monday November 11. The piece also explains the ancient fasting period known as Saint Martin’s Lent. [Forgotten Customs of Martinmas]
Cardinal Burke Receives Enthusiastic Welcome, an article by Pamela Seal for the Diocese of Lake Charles in Louisiana, reports on Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke’s recent visit highlighted by a reception in his honor at the American Legion hall in Vinton and his offering of a Pontifical Latin Mass at the Institute of Christ the King Oratory in Sulphur. [Cardinal Burke Receives Enthusiastic Welcome]
In the heart of the Church, I will be Love is the title of an e-newsletter dated November 13 from the Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Fairfield, Pennsylvania (home of the cloistered sisters who follow the ancient Carmelite Rite), conveying the following announcement: “On October 23, 2024, Bishop Gainer blessed and dedicated the new Extern Oratory at the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Afterwards, with about 400 people in attendance, he offered the Votive Mass of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Our hearts [are] filled with joy, with gratitude, and with great love for all our friends and benefactors who continue to bring this project to fruition! May God reward you all!” We share links to the images of the occasion. [Sanctuary] [Pontifical Mass] [Blessing of the Oratory] [fairfieldcarmelites.org]
The Solemn Ostentation of Relics on All Saints Day at FSSP in Urbe is a photographic post by local writer John Paul Sonnen for Liturgical Arts Journal, capturing the unique renewal at the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter’s church in Rome of an ancient custom involving veneration of the relics of saints. [The Solemn Ostentation of Relics on All Saints Day at FSSP in Urbe]
The Feast of Saint Brice, Saint Martin’s Bad Disciple, an article by Greg DiPippo in New Liturgical Movement tells the history of a monk called Brice, “an unpromising candidate” who eventually became successor of Saint Martin, the bishop of Tours. [The Feast of Saint Brice, Saint Martin’s Bad Disciple]
Guidance in Spiritual Direction is the title of a book by Msgr. Charles Hugo Doyle about growing in holiness according to the advice of the saints. The book, first published in 1958 but recently reissued by Sophia Institute Press, is now available from Fraternity Publications. It is meant to serve as a “guide for lay Catholics who want to progress in holiness but have yet to find a spiritual director of their own.” [Guidance in Spiritual Direction]
Saints and Special Observances
Three Parables – The Gospel readings for this Sunday (Matthew 13:31-35) and the preceding Sunday (Matthew 13:24-30) include three parables in which Jesus speaks explicitly about the nature of the kingdom of heaven. To say He speaks explicitly is not to suggest directly, because His approach in two of the three exemplifies the parabolic approach from which the term parable is derived. Rather than making a straight-line connection between the point at which He begins and the end of the message He seeks to convey, His thought pursues an indirect route, curving its way to His intended conclusion. In the case of the third parable, the end is implicit and is left unexpressed by Our Lord.
The first parable begins, “The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field.” The straight-line projection of how the story should end would call for a good harvest when the time came to gather the crop. But the path taken by the story is diverted by an enemy who oversows the field with bad seed. Only the patience and forbearance of the one who owns the field prevents that which is good from being uprooted along with the bad. When the time for the harvest arrives, he will have the cockle bound into bundles to be burned; but the wheat he will gather into his barn.
The second parable begins, like the first, with the metaphor of sowing: “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. . . .” The “least indeed of all seeds,” little or nothing ought to be expected to come of it; and yet, when fully grown, “it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in the branches thereof.” Once again, the indirect approach to the subject arrives at an end one would be unlikely to anticipate at the beginning of the parable.
The third parable begins and ends in a single sentence: “The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened.” The parabolic element here is to be found in the word hid. We know how the story will end; the woman will take a loaf of bread from her oven once it has been baked. But she has only succeeded in producing the loaf by an act of intervention, overcoming the ordinary inertness of the meal by hiding leaven within it.
What, then, is Jesus telling us about the kingdom of heaven in these three parables? First, it is not meant in the end for everyone without distinction. Some among us, products of the bad seed introduced by the enemy, will be weeded out and consigned to the fire when human affairs are brought to their conclusion. For now, good and bad coexist, living and growing side-by-side in the same field.
The second revelation is that the kingdom of heaven emerges from an almost invisible beginning. Its seed, overlooked and nearly undetectable at first, holds within itself the potential for unlimited growth. Ultimately it will expand into something capable of accommodating all who flock to it.
The third is like unto the second: The kingdom of heaven emerges from something that is essentially hidden, unseen until the time when its capacity for expansion makes its presence known.
The kingdom of heaven is, in fact, the Body of Christ – in this world the Church established by Jesus Himself. The Church is open and accessible to all in this life, even if some among its ranks have been corrupted to a degree that renders them unworthy of a place in the next. This is no doubt an uncongenial thought to many in an era when inclusivity and tolerance seem to trump all other values. But this is what Our Lord taught.
Jesus Himself was the grain from which grew the Church he founded. He has been called an obscure itinerant preacher whose ministry was limited to a distant corner of the Roman Empire, a man born in poverty who died the ignominious death of a convicted criminal. But the seed He planted grew with astonishing rapidity, branching out as His apostles spread out across the world to convey the message that was Jesus Christ Himself. The kingdom of heaven exists, in this world, wherever He is to be found; and that is in the Church that He established.
He is the leaven hid in the bread that sustains the Body of Christ. Born in Bethlehem (“House of Bread”) and laid in a feeding-trough (a manger, from the Latin mangere, to eat), He offered His body and blood as a final sacrifice in atonement for the sin of man and as sustenance for all who seek to ascend with Him to the heaven above.
Where He is, there is the kingdom of heaven.
Closing Commentary
We offer, in closing, Dom Prosper Guéranger’s commentary on the Gospel for “The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany” from The Liturgical Year. A link to the full text of the commentary on the liturgy for the day follows.
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany: Gospel
Our Lord here teaches us, under the symbolism of two parables, what we are to believe concerning his Church, which is his Kingdom, - a Kingdom that rises indeed here on the earth, but is to be perfected in Heaven. What is this grain of mustard-seed, which is hid under ground, is unseen by man's eye, then appears as the least of herbs, but, finally, becomes a tree? It is the Word of God, at first hidden in Judea, trampled on by man's malice even so as to be buried in a tomb, but, at length, rising triumphantly and reaching rapidly to every part of the world. Scarcely had a hundred years elapsed since Jesus was put to death, and his Church was vigorous even far beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. During the past nineteen centuries, every possible effort has been made to up-root the Tree of God; persecution, diplomacy, human wisdom, - all have tried, and all have but wasted their time. True, - they succeeded, from time to time, in severing a branch; but another grew in its place, for the sap of the Tree is vigorous beyond measure. The birds that come and dwell upon it, are, as the Holy Fathers interpret it, the souls of men aspiring to the eternal goods of the better world. If we are worthy of our name of "Christians," we shall love this Tree, and find our rest and safety no where but beneath its shade. - The Woman, of whom the second parable speaks, is the Church, our Mother. It was she that, from the commencement of Christianity, took the teaching of her Divine Master, and hid it in the very heart of men, making it the leaven of their salvation. The three measures of meal which she leavened into bread, are the three great families of mankind, the three that came from the children of Noah, who are the three fathers of the whole human race. Let us love this Mother of ours; and let us bless that heavenly leaven, which made us become children of God, by making us children of the Church.
