CARDINAL DEW CLOSES ST GERARD'S ON PENTECOST SUNDAY

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St Gerard's by night - expensive floodlighting being part of the 'ambience' 

Presiding today over the closure of the 'iconic' St Gerard's Monastery, Cardinal John Dew told the nation that "people came here for the ambience, the stained glass windows".

There's the reason for its closure: right there. The Church, headed by Cardinal John Dew, couldn't find the money to save it, because churchgoers didn't feel like coughing up $11 million to preserve 'ambience' and 'stained glass windows'.  

 +Dew and ICPE Mission NZ director Silvana Abela (the 'MC', said Stuff) at today's Mass

Where is this prelate's faith? Gone, it seems. Gone, like most Novus Ordo Massgoers' or celebrants' faith seems to go. 

The closure of St Gerard's is but another 'fruit' of Vatican II.  More evidence of the Novus Ordo effect.

Notice how we don't hear about the 'fruits' of Vatican II any more? That's because they are bad. 

St Gerard's, like any other Catholic church, was where people once went to worship Almighty God, really present in the tabernacle as His Son, our Eucharistic Lord and God, Jesus Christ. That was in the days before Vatican II - and its creature, the Novus Ordo Missae, which has conditioned them to lose their faith in God and to come to church for the 'ambience'. To admire the stained glass.  

"The church was packed," reported Stuff. And so it should be. Not because of 'the ambience', not because of the stained glass, but because today is Sunday, when every church should be packed - and today is Pentecost Sunday. What bitter irony, that the Holy Spirit in the Monastery of St Gerard should be closed down on His great Feastday, this "magnificent Sunday" as Fr John Zuhlsdorf describes it. 

If you're feeling like the chap pictured (above) this morning at St Gerard's - or were reduced to tears or anger by your experience, like a reader of this blog's at St Columba's Hamilton this morning, of the utter awfulness of a 'School Mass' - you will be consoled and edified by this homily from Father Zuhlsdorf (aka Father Z).

The Fiftieth Day Feast, Hebrew Shavuot or Greek Pentekosté, for the Jews commemorated the descent of God’s Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, wreathed in fire, fifty days after the Exodus.  But Jewish feasts also looked forward even as they looked back to an historic event.  At Shavuot they looked forward to the return of the fiery glory cloud of God’s presence in the Temple.

Fifty days after Our Lord’s Resurrection, the tenth (perfection) from His Ascension, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and first disciples to breathe grace-filled life into Christ’s Body, the Church.

The Spirit descended as “tongues of fire”, on the day they memorialized the descent of God like fire on Mount Sinai.

The Jews at that time would also have thought of the vision of the temple in the Book of Enoch, made of tongues of fire.

Hence, this Pentecost event would have really got the the attention of the multitudes, perhaps a million people, thronging Jerusalem for the feast.

This magnificent Sunday (which in the Roman Rite’s Extraordinary Form retains its Octave along with the special Communicantes and Hanc igitur) has in the Ordinary Form a Collect rooted in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary.

Deus, qui sacramento festivitatis hodiernae universam Ecclesiam tuam in omni gente et natione sanctificas, in totam mundi latitudinem Spiritus Sancti dona defunde, et, quod inter ipsa evangelicae praedicationis exordia operata est divina dignatio, nunc quoque per credentium corda perfunde.

I like that defunde and perfunde.  Spiffy.

That's Latin for you. "Spiffy", succinct. 

Cor is “heart” and corda “hearts”.  Sacramentum translates Greek mysterion.  Sacramentum and Latin mysterium are often interchangeable in liturgical texts.  Defundo means “to pour down, pour out”. Perfundo, is “to pour over, moisten, bedew”, and “to imbue, inspire” as well as “to dye”.

Exordium means “the beginning, the warp of a web”. Exordium invokes cloth weaving and selvage, the cloth’s edge, tightly woven so that the web will not fray, fall apart.

Er, selvedge, actually (I used to sew).  

Exordium, also a technical term in ancient rhetoric, is the beginning of a prepared speech whereby the orator lays out what he is going to do and induces the listeners to attend.

From Pentecost onward Christ the Incarnate Word, although remote by His Ascension, is the present and perfect Orator delivering His saving message to the world through Holy Church. “He that heareth you, heareth me”, Christ told His Apostles with the Seventy (Luke 10:16).

Much hangs on exordia.

LITERAL VERSION:

O God, who by the sacramental mystery of today’s feast do sanctify Your universal Church in every people and nation, pour down upon the whole breadth of the earth the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and make that which divine favor wrought amidst the very beginnings of the preaching of the Good News to flow now also through believers’ hearts.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

God our Father, let the Spirit you sent on your Church to begin the teaching of the gospel continue to work in the world through the hearts of all who believe.

Really?   REALLY?

Moving on…

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

O God, who by the mystery of today’s great feast sanctify your whole Church in every people and nation, pour out, we pray, the gifts of the Holy Spirit across the face of the earth and, with the divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed, fill now once more the hearts of believers.

Unity and continuity are keys to this Collect.

The Holy Spirit pours spiritual life into the Body of Christ.

The Holy Spirit wove the early Church together through the preaching of the Apostles and their successors and, in the Church today, extends their preaching to our own time.

The Holy Spirit guarantees our unity and continuity across every border and century.

The Holy Spirit imbues and infuses, tints and dyes the fabric of the Church as He flows through it.

When the Holy Spirit’ fire poured over the Apostles, they poured out preaching in public speeches to people from every nation.  I think they were not in the “upper room” but in the Temple, as the Law required Jewish men.  In Greek, oikos can mean “temple” or “house of God”, not just “house”

(my emphasis).

That makes greater sense of the immediate reaction they received

(my emphasis).

The Holy Spirit, in the preaching of the Apostles, began on Pentecost’s exordium to weave together the Church’s selvage, that strong stable edge of the fabric, through the centuries and down to our own day.

Also, for Shavuot, Pentecost, the Jews at harvest were commanded by God to leave the edges of the fields unharvested for the sake of the poor.

The bonds of man and God symbolically unraveled in the Tower of Babel event, when languages were divided (Gen 11:5-8).

Ever since the Pentecost exordium’s “reweaving”, though here and there and now and then there may be rips and tatters, Holy Church’s warp and weft hold true.

Let our hearts and prayers be raised for unity. Sursum corda!

In our Collect we pray that our corda may be imbued with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Sacrum septenarium!

Let them be closely woven into, knit into Holy Church and even over-sewn with her patterns, not ours.

Let our hearts be bounded about by her saving selvage, dyed in the Spirit’s boundless love.

Let us also pray for the unwitting agents of the Enemy of the soul, hanging onto Holy Church’s edge but in such a way that they tear at and fray the Church’s fabric.

Pardon my homographs, but though they be on the fringe, they endanger necessary threads, precious souls of our brothers and sisters who through their work of unraveling can be lost in the fray.

Indeed. How the Spirit of Christ must suffer at the sight of so many souls lost just through this closure of His church of St Gerard's, on His feastday of Pentecost. How the Church needs to  preach reparation by faithful clergy and lay people, for these lost souls, and beg the intercession of Our Lady Help of Christians, to save others from the fires of hell and bring others out of Purgatory to Heaven. 

When we mesh with the Successor of Peter and remain true in the Faith and charity, our holy selvage and our salvation will not be undone.

 

Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for New Zealand on your feast day today, May 24