New Liturgical Movement

On Thursday, the DDF issued a document called Venite ad me, (“Come unto me”, from Matt. 11, 28) subtitled “Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in the Change of Epoch.” Assuming the Italian text to be the original, the official English version slightly bungles this subtitle as “in an Epochal Change”; the French, Spanish, Portuguese and German versions all agree with t...

The revised version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints, in the notes to the entry for the feast of St Raphael the Archangel, says that “In the Ethiopic Synaxarium... is a curious account of the dedication of a church to St Raphael in an island off Alexandria early in the fifth century.” A reference is given for an English translation of this Synaxarium, which is basically the Easte...

The church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in the Italian city of Pavia, which houses the relics of St Augustine, also has those of another Saint, the philosopher and theologian Boethius, whose feast is kept today. The first page of a later 14th-century manuscript of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, showing him as a teacher of philosophy above, and in prison below.  His full...

Lost in Translation #172 After receiving (and distributing) Holy Communion, the priest purifies the sacred vessels and his canonical digits. As Fr. Nicholas Gihr notes, “the exterior act of cleansing the chalice and also his fingers” prompts a meditation on his interior, [1] and thus he prays: Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamus: et de munere temporali fiat nobis ...

October 22nd is the feast day of two Spanish virgin martyrs, sisters called Nunilo (or Nunilone) and Alodia, who died on this day in the year 851. Their martyrdom is described in book called the Memorialis Sanctorum, written by a priest of Córdoba named Eulogius, which gives an account of many of the martyrs killed by the Islamic emirs of Córdoba in a persecution that last for a...