Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Once again we come to a feast of All Saints. “But wait!” I hear you cry, “wasn’t that back on the first of November?” Right you are! But today on the Benedictine calendar is the feast of All Saints of the Benedictine Order. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside […]
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Today is officially “The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed”, but like most folks, I’ll stick with the simple version – All Souls’ Day. Given the day’s importance in the life of the Church, there’s a lot of history and liturgy – and Gregorian chant – to unpack. First, let’s talk Purgatory. We have to, to make any sense at […]
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Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. This is the first year since 1891 that no Mass will be celebrated for this feast at what was once the parish of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Tacoma. I’m feeling melancholy today, so I thought I’d post some photos from past celebrations of what was our patronal […]
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Wednesday, October 7 is the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. For those of us who were once parishioners of Holy Rosary parish in Tacoma, it was our patronal feast. In years past, we could celebrate this on a Sunday – today, in fact. Altar servers for our patronal feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary parish (Tacoma, […]
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Do you pray to your Guardian Angel? Do you ask them for advice or help? Why not? The Church teaches that we all receive a guardian angel at birth, an angel assigned to guide and protect us, to watch over us. As it says in scripture: There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy […]
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Depart from me, I will weep bitterly; labour not to comfort me. (Antiphon 1 of Monastic Lauds for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows) Two days ago, Archbishop Paul Etienne celebrated the final Mass of Holy Rosary parish in Tacoma. Perhaps appropriately, today is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. In his blog, his excellency had this to […]
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Current and former Holy Rosary Parishioners are invited to attend our farewell outdoor Mass with Archbishop Etienne and several former pastors on September 13th 2020 at Noon. Guidelines to Attend We are strictly limited to 200 in the congregation, and parishioners MUST sign up ahead of time.Those who are vulnerable are encouraged to stay home and participate in a Mass […]
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Only a handful of Popes ever get named “Great”. Today in the Ordinary Roman calendar is the feast of one of them, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, confessor and doctor of the Church (540 – 604). Gregory had been born into an ancient and wealthy Roman family. Before he was 30 years old, he had been a Roman Senator and […]
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As of yesterday, I am no longer a catechist, at least in the formal sense. Yesterday, Archbishop Etienne and Holy Rosary parish welcomed the Boylan-Nims family into Christ’s Church. And with them, our parish RCIA comes to an end, and by extension my role as its director. This was our penultimate Mass as a parish, and it seems fitting that […]
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Santiago Apóstol Today is the Feast of Saint James the Greater, known throughout the Spanish-speaking world as Santiago. He was one of Christ’s Twelve Apostles. Saint James is the patron saint of the archdiocese of Seattle, and therefore today is a solemnity within our archdiocese. May you have the joy of the feast! James and his brother John were natives […]
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Today is the 450th anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution Quo primum by which Pope Saint Pius V promulgated the revised Missale Romanum mandated by the Council of Trent. Pope Saint Pius V The core of the document is the oft-quoted (and misquoted) third and fourth paragraphs. Let all everywhere adopt and observe what has been handed down by the Holy Roman Church, […]
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Since Archbishop Etienne declared The Year of the Eucharist, it might be time to get back to our ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. It seems like a timely project, and the Archbishop’s observation that this is “an appropriate time for parishes to provide additional training for all liturgical ministers, as well as additional […]
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For seven years, on the Sunday Solemnity of Corpus Christi, my parish of Holy Rosary had an outdoor Procession of the Blessed Sacrament following the Noon Mass, taking Jesus through the streets of Tacoma and amongst His people. Rev. Jacob Maurer in the Corpus Christi Procession, 2013 This is a particularly special solemnity for our parish. Back in 2013, this […]
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Archbishop Paul Etienne Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle has proclaimed a “Year of the Eucharist” to begin on the external Solemnity of Corpus Christi, this coming Sunday. In his recent pastoral letter The Work of Redemption, he says: During the coming year, I ask every Catholic and every parish community to commit themselves to deepening our understanding and experience of […]
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The Saint Boniface Window at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church, Tacoma Saint Boniface, whose feast is today, is widely known as the “apostle to the Germans”. An Englishman of Devonshire, he was part of a great Anglo-Saxon missionary effort in the Saxon marches of the Frankish Empire in the early eighth century. Since my parish church of Holy […]
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Tomorrow is Pentecost, the great solemnity celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. The Church has long celebrated this event in three ways: the solemnity of the day itself, the octave of the day, and the vigil. With the liturgical reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, all but the day itself was suppressed, a sad testament to […]
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Two years ago today, we buried our pastor, Rev. Michael Wagner. This short, two-minute video was produced by our local newspaper. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. In memoria æterna erit iustus, ab auditione mala non timebit. Absolve, Domine, animas omnium fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo delictorum et gratia tua illis succurente mereantur evadere iudicium ultionis, […]
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