Watching the recorded Mass for Feast of Sts. Peter & Paul
the metropolitan bishops getting the palliums
Let’s sing the Kyrie from the Missa de Angelis!
let’s sing the Sanctus
It’s the Feast of the Assumption today (Holy Day of Obligation for some… check your diocese)
our new (young) priest decided to make his homily theological, which made me look up the Apostolic Constitution in which Pope Pius XII promulgated the dogma:
I liked this bit:
- It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.
So, if you try to contradict it, not only will you anger God, but Sts. Peter and Paul will come after you. So DON’T DO IT.
It would have been nice to have a bit more lead time, but here we go:
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV asked Catholics to observe Aug. 22 as a day of prayer and fasting for peace and justice, particularly in Ukraine and in the Holy Land.
At the end of his general audience Aug. 20, the pope noted that the church will celebrate the feast of the Queenship of Mary Aug. 22.
“While our world continues to be wounded by wars in the Holy Land, in Ukraine and in many other regions of the world,” he said, “I ask all the faithful to spend Aug. 22 in fasting and prayer, asking the Lord to grant us peace and justice and to dry the tears of those who suffer because of the armed conflicts underway.”
“May Mary, queen of peace, intercede so that people would find the path of peace,” he prayed.
It doesn’t feel like that is all of them.
just a subsample
Pope Leo’s 4 favorite films were directed by a Frank, Robert, Robert and Roberto. Pope Leo’s birth name was…Robert. Surely there’s a fourth Robert film out there.
Actually Pope Francis liked Rome, Open City directed by Roberto Rossellini.
A close one has died, so I decided to write a simple Python library to recite the Rosary. At the core of the library is a class called Rosary which has some amount of customization via your choice of Mysteries and Scriptures to be recited for each decade, and a boolean to toggle an optional prayer to St. Joseph:
"""
Main Rosary class.
"""
from prayers import (
APOSTLES_CREED,
GLORY_BE,
HAIL_HOLY_QUEEN,
HAIL_MARY,
OH_MY_JESUS,
OUR_FATHER,
PRAYER_TO_ST_JOSEPH,
ROSARY_PRAYER,
SIGN_OF_THE_CROSS
)
from utilities import pray
class Rosary:
"""
Main class for defining the structure of Rosary, as well as calling the prayers during its recitation.
Parameters
----------
mysteries: dict
A dict specifying which Mystery will go along with your Rosary. Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, or Luminous.
scriptures: list
A list of length 5 of scriptures to be read during each decade. One element per decade.
st_joseph: bool,
A bool specifying whether St. Joseph's prayer will be recited towards the end of the Rosary.
"""
def __init__(
self,
mysteries: dict,
scriptures: list,
st_joseph: bool
):
self.mysteries = mysteries
self.scriptures = scriptures
self.st_joseph = st_joseph
def recite(self) -> None:
"""
Recitation of the Rosary
"""
# Make the Sign of the Cross.
pray(prayer=SIGN_OF_THE_CROSS)
# Hold the Crucifix, say the Apostle's Creed.
pray(prayer=APOSTLES_CREED)
# On the first bead, say Our Father.
pray(prayer=OUR_FATHER)
# Say one Hail Mary on each of the next three beads:
for bead in range(3):
pray(prayer=HAIL_MARY)
# Say the Glory Be.
pray(prayer=GLORY_BE)
# Five decades.
for decade in range(5):
self.decade(nth=decade)
# After saying the five decades, say the Hail, Holy Queen,
# Followed by the Rosary Prayer.
pray(prayer=HAIL_HOLY_QUEEN)
pray(prayer=ROSARY_PRAYER)
# Optional prayer to St. Joseph.
if self.st_joseph:
pray(prayer=PRAYER_TO_ST_JOSEPH)
# Conclude with the Sign of the Cross.
pray(prayer=SIGN_OF_THE_CROSS)
def decade(self, nth: int) -> None:
"""
Recitation of an individual decade.
"""
pray(prayer=self.mysteries[nth])
pray(prayer=self.scriptures[nth])
# Ten beads of each decade
for bead in range(10):
pray(prayer=HAIL_MARY)
# Say Glory Be.
pray(prayer=GLORY_BE)
# Say O my Jesus
pray(prayer=OH_MY_JESUS)
The prayers module contains the text of the individual prayers of the Rosary. With the divine power of my 32 core CPU praying 24/7, I can get him an express ticket out of Purgatory in no time!
In a Tibetan lamasery, the monks seek to list all of the names of God.
…
They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer (and, by extension, its operators) when nothing happens. The Westerners leave slightly earlier than their scheduled departure without warning the monks, so that it will complete its final print run shortly after they leave. On their way to the airfield they pause on the mountain path. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
I remember reading this story in HS . . . and found the ending rather surprising given the author’s position WRT religion.
