Dear Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday (October 13, 2024) is the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost. In the Gospel reading for Sunday, Jesus offers a parable illustrating the importance of a key passage in the prayer He taught his disciples: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. A literal translation of this passage into contemporary English might read, “And dismiss our debt as we dismiss those of our debtors.” This is not what happens in the parable: Having had his own large debt dismissed, the wicked servant proceeds to throttle a fellow servant in an attempt to extract from the man the rather insignificant amount owed by him. In the end the wicked servant gets his comeuppance because the king in the parable, like the King of Heaven, rules with justice for all. In these last weeks of an election season characterized by so much hateful rhetoric and the threat of political violence, it will be incumbent upon us to remember that we have been enjoined by Our Lord to forgive those who have injured us, so that we may be forgiven the injuries we have inflicted on others. Pray God may preserve our nation.
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, October 13 – Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (II)
Monday, October 14 – St. Callixtus I, Pope and Martyr (III)
Tuesday, October 15 – St. Teresa of Avila, Virgin and Doctor of the Church, Founder of the Discalced Carmelites (III)
Wednesday, October 16 – St. Hedwig, Widow (III)
Thursday, October 17 – St. Margaret Mary Alocoque, Virgin (III)
Friday, October 18 – St. Luke, Evangelist (II)
Saturday, October 19 – St. Peter of Alcantara, OFM, Confessor (III)
Note: The feast day of St. Edward, King of England (III), celebrated on October 13th in most years, is supplanted this year by the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost.
Twenty-First 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 Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost with either English or Spanish translation. In addition, we provide a link to “The Final Conflict and the Orations of the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost,” a New Liturgical Movement article by Dr. Michael P. Foley.
Latin Mass Schedule: Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
(October 13, 2024)
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Note: As the normal schedule of Masses at numerous churches in both the Diocese of Charlotte and the Diocese of Charleston was affected by the widespread damage resulting from Hurricane Helene, readers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in the regular schedule of Mass times this week.
Latin Mass Schedule: Weekdays
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Note: As the regular schedule of weekday Masses at some of the churches listed above may have been affected by the widespread damage resulting from Hurricane Helene, readers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in Mass times this week.
Announcements
Parking Alert for Saint Thomas Aquinas this Sunday – Those planning to attend the 11:30 a.m. Latin Mass at Saint Thomas Aquinas this Sunday may want to allow a few extra minutes to find parking as a large crowd may be expected at the 11:00 a.m. Saint Basil the Great Ukrainian-Greek Church’s Divine Liturgy occurring in Aquinas Hall. Both Bishop Martin and Ukrainian Bishop Bohdan Danylo will be present for the occasion.
Fatima Procession – Saint Thomas Aquinas parish will host the last of its 2024 Fatima devotions this Sunday October 13 at 7:30 p.m., the 107th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun.
Disaster Relief – Catholic Charities is requesting monetary donations to support disaster relief efforts in western North Carolina in the wake of the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Helene. The following website has been established to facilitate the donation of funds to help survivors recover from the catastrophic flooding caused by the storm: Donate to Disaster Relief for Western North Carolina. Please continue to pray for those who lost their lives or their homes or were otherwise affected by the recent storm.
Sunday Coffee and Cookies – Readers are encouraged to help support the weekly service of coffee and cookies made available after the 12:30 p.m. Saint Ann Latin Mass by the Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society. Assistance in setting up, cleaning up, or otherwise supporting this weekly effort would be greatly appreciated.
532nd Anniversary of Columbus Discovery of the New World – Today Saturday October 12 is a feria day (e.g. no feast day), but historically it is the 532nd anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World. We share an excerpt of Pope Leo XIII’s 1892 encyclical, Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the discovery.
For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum*, and also the manner in which he endeavoured to execute the design, it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church.
To read the entire encyclical click here.
(* Mare tenebrosum is Latin for the Sea of Darkness, e.g. Atlantic Ocean)
Prayers for the Election – The following special prayer initiatives have been launched in anticipation of the national election scheduled to take place on November 5th:
54-Day Rosary Novena: Fr. Reid 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
St. Teresa of Ávila was born on March 28, 1515, at Ávila in the Kingdom of Castile. Baptized Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada, she was the third of nine children born to her parents and ultimately one of twelve children in the family as her father also had three from a previous marriage. Her mother died when she was about fourteen, and Teresa sought solace in devotion to the Blessed Mother and distraction in reading the popular fiction of her day.
Having initially resisted the idea of a religious vocation, Teresa entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at the age of twenty. It was an institution not known for strict observance of the order’s rule. However, her reading of works on ascetical mysticism, such as the Tractatus de oratione et meditatione of St. Peter of Alcantara, led her down the more demanding path of self-mortification. The rigorous program of self-denial she pursued seriously impaired her health and nearly took her life, necessitating her removal from the convent. Confined to bed for almost a year before making a miraculous recovery she attributed to the intercession of Saint Joseph, she was absent from the convent for three years. When she returned, transformed by the mystical insights she had received during her illness, regarding the “prayer of quiet” and the “prayer of union,” she began to experience periods of spiritual ecstasy while engaged in prayer.
After reading a Spanish translation of St. Augustine’s Confessions, Teresa became convinced of the possibility of overcoming the effects of original sin in order to achieve a state of holiness. Nevertheless, the pleasure arising from social interaction with those around her impeded her spiritual progress for some time. It was only after she renounced such distractions and renewed her commitment to the life of prayer that she began to receive visions and hear voices that she believed came from God. Some around her came to believe she was the victim of hallucinations or even diabolically inspired delusions, but her Jesuit confessor, Fr. Francis Borgia, sought to reassure her that the things she saw and heard could only have a divine origin. When deeply immersed in a state of rapture, she was sometimes known to levitate; and she found it necessary to enjoin the other sisters in the convent not to hold her down on such occasions.
A visit by Peter of Alcantara in 1557 convinced the great mystic that Teresa was in the grip of the Holy Spirit. Commiserating with her over the slanders directed at her by those who doubted her visionary experiences, he urged her not to be diverted from the path of holiness. Teresa’s personal visions of Our Lord culminated in a mystical marriage to Christ in a ceremony that involved the repeated piercing of her heart by a fiery dart wielded by an angel so bright she took it to be a seraph.
Growing discontent with the laxity of conditions in the Convent of the Incarnation led Teresa to envision the establishment of a reformed Carmelite institution. In 1562 she opened a new convent dedicated to St. Joseph and was met with immediate opposition from both the prioress of the Incarnation and local authorities in the town. However, having obtained authorization for the new convent from the pope, as well as the concurrence of the local bishop, she was able to overcome efforts to stifle the reform movement before it got started. The nuns of St. Joseph embraced a rule of poverty and almost complete silence and, dressing in coarse habits with only sandals on their feet, came to be known as Discalced (or “shoeless”) Carmelites.
In 1567 Teresa founded a second convent at Medina del Campo. There followed, in quick succession, a third at Malagon, a fourth at Valladolid and a fifth at Toledo. At Medina del Campo she encountered two friars who, having heard of her reform, desired to adopt it: Antony de Heredia and John of the Cross. With their collaboration, and the permission of the prior general, she established a reformed Carmelite house for men at Durelo in 1569 and then a second at Pastrana. Her collaboration with John of the Cross, who was still in his twenties when they met, led to a lasting friendship. In time they became co-founders of the new Order of Discalced Carmelites.
Fr. Antony de Heredia was present to administer Extreme Unction just before Teresa died while on a visit to Alva de Tormez on the evening of October 4th in 1582. As it happened the new Gregorian calendar came into use the following day; and, as it required skipping ten days to get the seasons back into proper alignment, the date of her death was recorded as October 15th. That date eventually was proclaimed her feast day. She was buried in the place where she had died, according to her own expressed wish; but three years later the Reformed Carmelites secretly transferred her remains to Ávila. However, the Duke of Alva appealed to Rome and succeeded in securing the return of St. Teresa’s body to Alva de Tormez, where it has since remained.
While lacking the university training of her friend, John of the Cross, and writing only in the ordinary Castilian dialect of her native speech, St. Teresa produced numerous spiritual works of enduring value that are still essential elements of the Catholic literary canon after more than four hundred years. They include The Book of Life, The Way of Perfection, Interior Castle and The Book of Foundations. Her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus, stands with St. Augustine’s Confessions at the very summit of that genre. Her legacy also includes 31 poems and 458 extant letters. St. Teresa was beatified by Pope Paul V on April 24, 1614. She was canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622. On September 27, 1970, Pope Paul VI conferred the title, Doctor of the Church, on both St. Teresa and St. Catherine of Siena, the first women to be so honored.
Closing Commentary
We offer, in closing, that portion of Dom Prosper Guéranger’s commentary on the “Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost” having to do with the Gospel reading for the day. A link to the full text from The Liturgical Year follows. The commentary is followed by Fr. Chad Ripperger’s “Consecration of the Election to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
“O thou just Judge of vengeance (on man), grant us the gift of forgiveness, before the Day of reckoning cometh!” Such is the petition that comes from the heart of holy Mother Church as she thinks on what may have befallen those countless children of hers, who have been victims of death during this as every other year; it is, moreover, the supplication that should be made by every living soul, after hearing the Gospel just read to us. The Sequence, Dies iræ, from which these words are taken, is not only a sublime prayer for the Dead; it is, likewise, and especially at this close of the Ecclesiastical Year, an appropriate expression for all of us who are still living. Our thoughts and our expectations are naturally turned towards our own deaths. We almost seem forgotten and overlooked in this evening of the world’s existence, but it not so, for we know from sacred Scripture that we shall join those who have already slept the last sleep, and shall be taken, together with them, to meet our divine Judge.
Let us hearken to some more of our Mother’s words, in that same magnificent Sequence; this is their meaning: “How great will be our fear when the Judge is about to come and rigorously examine all our works!—The trumpet’s wondrous sound will pierce the graves of every land and summon us all before the throne!”—Death will stand amazed, and nature too, when the “creature shall rise again, to go and answer Him that is to judge!—The written Book shall be brought forth, wherein all is contained for which the world is to be tried. —So when the Judge shall sit on his throne, every hidden secret shall be revealed, nothing shall remain unpunished!—What shall I, poor wretch, then say? Who ask to be my patron, when the just man himself shall scarce be safe?—O King of dreaded majesty! who savest gratuitously them that are, save me, O fount of love!—Do thou remember, loving Jesu! that I was cause of thy life on earth! Lose me not, on that Day!”
Undoubtedly, such a prayer as this has every best chance of being graciously heard, addressed as it is to Him, who has nothing so much at heart as our salvation, and who, for procuring it, gave himself up to fatigue and suffering and death on the Cross: but we should be inexcusable, and deserve condemnation twice over, were we to neglect to profit of the advice he himself gives us, whereby to avert from us the perils of “that day of tears, when guilty man shall rise from the dust and go to be judged!” Let us, then, meditate on the parable of our Gospel, whose sole object is to teach us a sure way of settling, at once, our accounts with the divine King.
We are all of us, in fact, that negligent servant, that insolvent debtor, whose master might, in all justice, sell him, with all he has, and hand him over to the torturers. The debt contracted with God, by the sins we have committed, is of that nature as to deserve endless tortures; it supposes an eternal hell, in which the guilty one will ever be paying, without ever cancelling his debt. Infinite praise, then, and thanks to the divine Creditor who, being moved to pity by the entreaties of the unhappy man, who asks for time and he will pay all—yes, this good God grants him far beyond what he prays for—he, there and then, forgives him the debt. He puts but this condition on the pardon, as is evident from the sequel—he insists, and most justly, that he should go and do, in like manner, towards his fellow-servans, who may perhaps owe something to him. After being so generously forgiven by his Lord and King, after having his infinite debt so gratuitously cancelled, how can he possibly turn a deaf ear to the very same prayer which won pardon for himself, now that a fellow-servant makes it to him? is it to be believed that he will refuse all pity towards one whose only offense is that he asks him for time, and he will pay all?
“It is quite true,” says St. Augustine, “that every man has his fellow-man a debtor—for who is the man, that he has had no one to offend him? but at the same time, who is the man that is not debtor to God, for all of us have sinned? Man, therefore, is both debtor to God, and creditor to his fellow-man. It is for this reason that God has laid down this rule for thy conduct—that thou must treat thy debtor as He treats his … We pray every day; every day, we send up the same petition to the divine throne; every day, we prostrate ourseles before God and say to him: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive them that are debtors to us. Of what debts speakest thou? Is it, of all thy debts? or of one or two only? Thou wilt say: Of all. Do thou, therefore, forgive thy debtor, for it is the rule laid upon thee, it is the condition accepted by thee.”
“It is a greater thing,” says St. John Chrysostom, “to forgive our neighbor the trespasses he has committed against us, than to condone him a sum of money; for by forgiving him his sins, we imitate God.” And after all, what is the injury committed by one man against another man, if compared with the offense committed by man against God? Alas! we have all got the habit of that second; even the just man knows its misery seven times over and, as the text probably means, seven times a day; so that it comes ruffling our whole day long. Let this, at least, be our parallel habit—that we contract a facility in being merciful towards our fellow-men, since we, every night, have the assurance given us, that we shall be pardoned all our miseries, on the condition of our owning them. It is an excellent practice not to go to bed without putting ourselves in the dispositions of a little child, who can rest his head on God’s bosom, and there fall asleep; but if we thus feel it a happy necessity to find in the heart of our heavenly Father forgetfulness of our day’s faults, yea, more an infinitely tender love for us his poor tottering children—how can we, at that very time, dare to be storing up in our minds old grudges and scores against our neighbors, our brethren, who are also his children? Even supposing that we had been treated by them with outrageous injustice or insult, could these their faults bear any comparison with our offenses against that good God whose born enemies we were, and whom we have caused to be put to an ignominious death? Whatsoever may be the circumstances attending the unkindness shown us, we may and should invariably practice the rule given us by the Apostle: Be ye kind one to another! merciful! forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you, in Christ! Be ye imitators of God, as most dear children! What! thou callest God thy Father, and dost thou remember an injury that has been done thee? “That,” says St. John Chrysostom, “is not the way a son of God acts in! The work of a son of God is this—to pardon one’s enemies, to pray for them that crucify him, to shed his blood for them that hate him. Would you know the conduct of one who is worthy to be a son of God? he takes his enemies, and his ingrates, and his robbers, and his insulters, and his traitors, and makes them his brethren and sharers of all his wealth!”