Dominica Prima Adventus at the Cathedral in Wichita

Bishop Carl Kemme offered the 10:00 a.m. Mass for the First Sunday of Advent at our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the Novus Ordo in Latin and Ad Orientem. In fact, the Cathedral will offer most of the Masses during Advent Ad Orientem and provided a pamphlet to explain why. The rector of the Cathedral also made some comments before the dismissal on the use of Latin and Ad Orientem throughout this shortest of Advents: three weeks and day.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent is December 24, so Christmas Eve Masses will be held that night! I guess it's really three weeks and half a day!

We still had the four hymn structure--no Introit or Offertory verses, but we sang Veni, Veni Emmanuel during the Processional and Creator Alme Siderum for the Recessional. The choir sang Jesu Dulcis Memoria during the Offertory and invited us to sing along with O Esca Viatorum at Communion.

O Esca Viatorum has been attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, but since no publication of it is known before the mid to late seventeenth century in Germany, it was more likely composed by anonymous "German Jesuit" as this source notes. It has been translated often, but one translation that pops up is by Athelstan Riley.

Riley (full name John Athelstan Laurie Riley) was born on August 10, 1858 in Bayswater, London and died on November 17, 1945, in Jersey on the Channel Islands:

Riley graduated from Eton and from Pembroke College, Oxford (BA 1881, MA 1883). He helped edit The English Hymnal in 1906, and the revision of the Prayer Book in 1911. For much of his life he was a member of the House of Laity for the Province of Canterbury. At some point he acquired the Manoir de la Trinité in Jersey, and thus became Seigneur of the Island of Jersey. He was on the island when the Germans invaded in World War II, and spent the rest of his life there. Riley’s works include:

• Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks, 1887
• The Religious Question in Public Education, 1911
• Concerning Hymn Tunes and Sequences (London: A. R. Mowbray & Company, Ltd., 1915)

The most common tune for the translation is Innsbruck by Heinrich Isaac with harmonization by J.S. Bach. I don't know what tune the choir sang on Sunday.

Note that when I went to the evening Mass at Blessed Sacrament with my husband, that Mass was offered Ad Orientem as is the custom and one of our Parochial Vicars reviewed the use of Latin for the Ordinary before Mass began. One of the sopranos in the Schola sang the Alma Redemptoris Mater antiphon after Holy Communion. Driving home we had a beautiful view of the Super Moon!

Deo Gratias!

" Ignem veni mittere in terram"!

Yesterday the Sunday Gospel was from St. Luke (12:49-53):

Jesus said to his disciples:“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

Father Adam Keiter, the Rector of the Cathedral, used the phrase "I have come to set the earth on fire" to frame his homily, referring to the Venerable English College in Rome and its Latin motto, Ignem veni mittere in terram. Sometime this week, they will post the audio file of his homily on the Cathedral website. 

It moved me to hear a priest speak about the martyred priests of the Venerable, how they trained and prepared in the midst of the splendor of Counter-Reformation Rome (with the Oratorian Philip Neri as a neighbor), the music of Palestrina, the art of Michelangelo, and the architecture of Bernini and then traveled in disguise to their home country to serve Catholics in hiding, knowing that they faced arrest, torture, and horrendous death--and 44 from the Venerable have been canonized or beatified because they suffered such a martyrdom. Father Keiter then went on the verse about the baptism Jesus wanted so urgently to accomplish: His crucifixion, death, and Resurrection. He also reminded us of the gloriously precious presence of Jesus in the Tabernacle and how so many have suffered and died throughout Church history, including in sixteenth and seventeenth England, to offer and receive Holy Communion.

When we came home from Mass, I searched for the remarks Pope Benedict XVI made when he visited the Venerable on December 3, 2012 at the close of the 650th anniversary celebrations, because the pope also highlighted that motto:

Your College motto speaks of Christ’s desire to bring fire to the earth, and your mission is to serve as his instruments in the work of rekindling the faith in your respective homelands. Fire in sacred Scripture frequently serves to indicate the divine presence, whether it be the burning bush from which God revealed his name to Moses, the pillar of fire that guided the people of Israel on their journey from slavery to freedom, or the tongues of fire that descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, enabling them to go forth in the power of the Spirit to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Just as a small fire can set a whole forest ablaze (cf. Jas 3:5), so the faithful testimony of a few can release the purifying and transforming power of God’s love so that it spreads like wildfire throughout a community or a nation. Like the martyrs of England and Wales, then, let your hearts burn with love for Christ, for the Church and for the Mass.

When I visited the United Kingdom, I saw for myself that there is a great spiritual hunger among the people. Bring them the true nourishment that comes from knowing, loving and serving Christ. Speak the truth of the Gospel to them with love. Offer them the living water of the Christian faith and point them towards the bread of life, so that their hunger and thirst may be satisfied. Above all, however, let the light of Christ shine through you by living lives of holiness, following in the footsteps of the many great saints of England and Wales, the holy men and women who bore witness to God’s love, even at the cost of their lives. The College to which you belong, the neighbourhood in which you live and study, the tradition of faith and Christian witness that has formed you: all these are hallowed by the presence of many saints. Make it your aspiration to be counted among their number.

Please be assured of an affectionate remembrance in my prayers for yourselves and for all the alumni of the Venerable English College. I make my own the greeting so often heard on the lips of a great friend and neighbour of the College, Saint Philip Neri,Salvete, flores martyrum! Commending you, and all to whom the Lord sends you, to the loving intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, I gladly impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of peace and joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you.