Dear Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday (July 28, 2024) is the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. In the Gospel for this Sunday Jesus relates the parable of the Pharisee and the publican “to some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised others” (Luke 18:9). They are represented in the parable by the Pharisee who stands proudly before God (and anyone watching) giving thanks that he is better than other men. There is a phrase in contemporary parlance to describe such behavior: virtue-signaling. People go about the business of sharing how virtuous they are in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s just a matter of saying the “right thing” in a casual conversation, but some people go so far as to put signs in their yards listing all the things they believe that make them more virtuous than others. Sadly, the inclusivity frequently proclaimed in such displays generally excludes those despised for not sharing the same beliefs. In the parable it is the one who prays humbly in the background, acknowledging his sinfulness, who goes home justified: “because every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14).
Calendar of Saints and Special Observances
Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.
DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)
Sunday, July 28 – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (II)
Monday, July 29 – St. Martha, Virgin (III) [Commemoration of St. Felix, Pope and Martyr (II); and Ss. Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrice, Martyrs]
Tuesday, July 30 – Commemoration of Ss. Abdon and Sennen, Martyrs
Wednesday, July 31 – St. Ignatius of Loyola, Confessor, Founder of the Society of Jesus (III)
Thursday, August 1 – Commemoration of the Seven Machabees, Martyrs
Friday, August 2 – St. Alphonsus of Liguori, Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church, Founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (III) [Commemoration of St. Stephen I, Pope and Martyr]
Saturday, August 3 – [Vacant]
Note: The liturgical celebration of Ss. Nazarius and Celsus, Martyrs; St. Victor, Pope and Martyr; and St. Innocentius, Pope and Confessor (III) which usually takes place on July 28th, in accordance with the traditional Roman Calendar, is displaced this year by the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Tenth 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 Tenth Sunday after Pentecost with either English or Spanish translation. The English version includes a commentary on the readings by Msgr. Patrick Boylan (1879-1974). We also offer a link to a New Liturgical Movement article by Dr. Michael P. Foley entitled “Running Humble: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost.”
Latin Mass Schedule: Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (July 28, 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.
Latin Mass Schedule: Feast of the Assumption (Thursday August 15)
We share the currently announced Latin Masses for the Feast of the Assumption. If more Masses are announced, we will post them in the weeks ahead.
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Note: Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro will be offering a special Traditional Latin Mass on the Vigil of the Assumption, Wednesday August 14 at 6:30 p.m.
Announcements
New Time for Latin Mass at Our Lady of Grace: Beginning last Sunday, July 21st, the Traditional Latin Mass at Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro commences at 1:30 p.m. every Sunday, instead of 1:00 p.m. Please spread the word about this change in the regular Sunday Mass schedule.
The Feast of the Holy Maccabees will be celebrated this Thursday, August 1st, beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Saint Thomas Aquinas Church in accordance with the traditional liturgical calendar. (See Gregory DiPippo’s New Liturgical Movement article, "The Feast of the Holy Maccabees.") The Holy Maccabees were seven Old Testament brothers who, along with their mother, were martyred by King Antiochus Epiphanes around 150 B.C. for refusing to eat the flesh of swine in violation of the Judaic law. Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish will offer its 7:00 p.m. Traditional Latin Mass for this rare commemoration of Old Testament saints who died defending God’s sacred laws and traditions. But one of them, who was the eldest, said thus: What wouldst thou ask, or learn of us? We are ready to die, rather than to transgress the laws of God, received from our fathers (2 Maccabees 7:2).
Portiuncula Indulgence – Friday August 2nd: On Friday August 2nd, there is a plenary indulgence called the Portiuncula Indulgence which was first offered to only those who visited the Portiuncula chapel St. Francis of Assisi rebuilt in Italy, but now it is available to everyone in the universal Church. This indulgence, the "Pardon of Assisi" can be performed at any time during the evening August 1 until midnight Friday night August 2nd. To participate, one must go to confession (20 days before or after); receive Holy Communion at Mass on August 2nd, and enter into a parish church or Franciscan Church, and with contrition, pray the Our Father, Apostles Creed, and a prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions. To learn more visit this Catholic News Agency article.
Holy Face Devotions
Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:
Latin Mass and Liturgical News
Saints and Special Observances
Saint Martha, Virgin, was a central figure in one of the more moving and consequential episodes in the life of Our Lord, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Martha first appears in the Gospel of Saint Luke complaining to Jesus that her sister Mary is not helping to serve the Honored Guest whose travels have brought Him under the roof of their home. Jesus tells her, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42).
Later, Jesus returned to the home of Martha and Mary in Bethania under very different circumstances. The sisters had sent word that their brother Lazarus was very ill, imploring Jesus to come; but Our Lord responded, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God: that the Son of God might be glorified by it” (John 11:4). He delayed His departure for two days before telling His disciples, “Let us go into Judea again” (John 11:7). The disciples were reluctant to go again into the country of the Jews who had previously sought to stone the Master. But Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, so He prepared to set out for their home in spite of the looming threat to His own life.
“Lazarus our friend sleepeth,” Jesus said to His disciples, “but I go that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11). When they misunderstood what he meant by sleep, Our Lord told them bluntly, “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad, for your sakes, that I was not there, that you may believe: but let us go to him” (John 11:14-15). He might have had to go alone but for the Apostle Thomas who rallied the rest to go and die with Him if necessary.
Upon their arrival they found that Lazarus had already been in the grave for four days. It was Martha who, hearing Jesus had finally come, went out to meet Him while Mary remained with their guests, many of whom had come from Jerusalem to comfort the sisters. Martha began by complaining to Jesus, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” Yet unwavering in her faith, she added, “But now also I know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee” (John 11: 21-22). When Jesus told her Lazarus would rise again, Martha affirmed her belief that he would rise again in the resurrection at the end of time.
Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live: And every one that liveth, and believeth in me, shall not die for ever. Believest thou this? (John 11:25-26)
Martha, who had been too busy on that earlier occasion to sit and listen like Mary at Jesus’s feet, responded, “Yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art Christ the Son of the living God, who art come into this world” (John 11:27). Here was an elegantly simple and deeply intuitive profession of faith to equal that of Saint Peter!
Martha went and told Mary that Jesus had come; and she, falling at the feet of Our Lord, wept as she echoed her sister’s words: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother. had not died” (John 11:32). Then, seeing her weep, Jesus, who had wept at the vision of Jerusalem in ruins, truly wept for the death of his friend. The Jews who had come to mourn with Martha and Mary were struck by the depth of Jesus’s love for his friend, but some questioned why this man who could give sight to one born blind could not prevent the death of a man he loved as much as Lazarus.
Then did Jesus approach the sepulcher and order the stone that enclosed it to be rolled away. Martha objected that after four days in the tomb the corpse would stink, but Jesus said to her, “Did not I say to thee, that if thou believe, thou shalt see the glory of God?” (John 11:40). And he cried out in a loud voice for Lazarus to come forth, whereupon his friend emerged from the place in which he had been “sleeping” for four days, still bound by the cloths he had been wrapped in to prepare him for burial.
This miracle by which Jesus actually brought back to life a man who had been dead and buried naturally caused a sensation that attracted some new followers. Others used it against Him, reporting to the Pharisees what He had done, further inciting the determination of those in power to eliminate one whom they perceived to be a threat to their domination of the Jewish people.
Six days before the Pasch, Jesus returned to Bethania and sat down to supper for the last time with those who were not included in the innermost circle of his followers. Martha served, and Mary anointed the head of Our Lord with precious ointment, an extravagance to which Judas Iscariot objected. Knowing Jesus was there, a great many Jews came to see the miracle-worker, not for His sake alone “but that they might see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead” (John 12:9).
But the chief priests thought to kill Lazarus also: Because many of the Jews, by reason of him, went away, and believed in Jesus (John 12:10-11).
The feast day of Saint Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, is celebrated on July 29th in accordance with the traditional Roman Calendar.
OTHER NOTABLE SAINTS CELEBRATED IN THE WEEK AHEAD:
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Confessor and Founder of the Society of Jesus, a 16th century Spanish priest who served as the first superior general of the Jesuits – July 31st
The Seven Machabees, Martyrs whose heroic defense of the one true God in the second century before Christ is described in the First and Second Book of Machabees, works retained in the Catholic canon but deleted from the Protestant Bible at the time of the Reformation – August 1st
St. Alphonsus of Liguori, Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church, 18th century founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) and a prolific author whose works are still widely read today – August 2nd
Closing Commentary
In closing, we offer commentary on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost excerpted from The Liturgical Year of Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, followed by a link to the full text.
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
The destruction of Jerusalem has closed that portion of the prophetic Scriptures which were based on the institutions and history of the figurative period. The Altar of the true God, built by Solomon on the the summit of Moriah, was the authenticated evidence of the true religion, to those who were then living under the Law of expectation. Even after the promulgation of the New Testament, the continued existence of that Altar (the only one heretofore recognized by the Most High as his own), was some sort of an excuse for such of the Jews as were obstinate in clinging to the old order of things. That excuse was taken away, when the Temple was so destroyed, as that not a stone was left on stone; and the blindest partisans of the Mosaic system were compelled to acknowledge the total abrogation of a religion, which was reduced by God himself to the impossibility of ever offering those sacrifices which were essential to its existence.
The considerateness wherewith the Church had, so far, treated the Synagogue, would henceforward be unmeaning. As the beautiful queen and bride, she is now at full liberty to show herself to all the nations, subdue their wild instincts by the power of the Spirit, unify them in Christ Jesus, and put them by faith into the substantial, though not visible, possession of those eternal realities which had been foreshadowed by the Law of types and figures.
The New Sacrifice, which is no other than that of the Cross and of Eternity, is now, more than ever, evidently the one sole center where her life is fixed in God with Christ her Spouse, and from which she derives her energy in laboring for the conversion and sanctification of all future generations of men. The Church, now more than ever fruitful, is more than ever receiving of that life of Union, which is the cause of her admirable fecundity.
We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the sacred Liturgy, which is the outward expression of the Bride’s inner life, will now more than ever reflect this closeness of her Union with God. In the seventeen weeks we have still to spend of this Time after Pentecost, there is no such thing as gradation, no connection, in the Proper of the Sundays’ Masses. Even in the Lessons of the Night Office, dating from August—the historic Books have been replaced by those which are called the Sapiential and which, in due time, will be followed by the Books of Job, Tobias, Judith and Esther; and here again, there is no connection further than that of sanctity in precept or in example. So far, we have found more or less of oneness of idea between the Lessons of the Office and the Proper of the Mass; but beginning with this tenth Sunday, these are independent of each other.
Henceforward, therefore, we must limit our commentary to the Proper of each Sunday’s Mass; and in doing this, we shall be respectfully taking the teachings which the Holy Spirit, who divideth as he willeth, gives us, unitedly with the Church, in each portion of each Sunday’s Liturgy. Each Epistle and Gospel, especially; and then, each Introit and Collect, each Gradual and Offertory, each Secret, Communion and Postcommunion, each of these will be a precious and exquisitely varied instruction. We shall see all this in the Epistle of this tenth Sunday.
The fall of Jerusalem—that great event, which told men how the prophecies were going to be gloriously fulfilled, now that the Jewish opposition was so completely removed—yes, the great event we were commemorating last Sunday, is one more and solemn proclamation of the reign of the Holy Ghost throughout the entire earth; for as we said of Him, at the grant Pentecost solemnity, He hath filled the whole world. We have much to learn from the tone our holy Mother the Church puts in the Liturgy of these remaining seventeen Pentecostal Sundays. In the admirable teachings she is now going to give to her children, there is no logical arrangement or sequel. She is as intent as ever on leading souls to holiness and perfection; yet it is not by following a method of any sort, but by her applying to us the united power of the divine Sacrifice and the word of the Scripture, to which she sweetly adds her own; and the Holy Spirit of Love breatheth upon it all, just where he willeth, and when he willeth.