For those last minute Advent ponderies... a look at the four groups at Jesus' nativity.

Owen of Drawn to Catholicism is has drawn my attention to his yearly devotion to pray for the Souls in Purgatory.

Beginning November 25th my family and I are praying daily through the Month for the Souls In Purgatory from November 25th to December 25th 2009.

This is my fourth year practicing this devotion while three of my family members joined me during 2007, 2008 and again this year.

We would be grateful to add any of your deceased Christian loved ones to our list of souls being prayed for.

Our family is offering Masses during these thirty days leading up to Christmas Day, known as a day when our Holy Mother, through her faithful prayers, sees many souls released from Purgatory to enter the gates of heaven. On Christmas Day we will pray aloud each and every name given to us and commit these souls to the Lord at the Christmas Day Mass.

I have to say, Christmas is not a time I naturally associate with thoughts about purgatory but now I think about it, it makes a lot of sense to think of purgatory as a kind of advent - or of advent as a kind of purgatory.

So if you have somebody you would like praying for or if you would like to join in the praying (or both) then it's not too late to join in.

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Today is the feast day of St Nicholas. He was a Bishop in the fourth centuary, know as a patron saint of children. He helped three girls to get married by providing their wedding dowery. He was there at the Council of Nicea and James likes him becuase he punched Arius!

In Europe (but not England) there is a tradition where children put their shoes outside the door so that the next morning on the feast of St Nicholas they can find that St Nicholas has been and put coins in them. In England Saint Nicholas or Santa comes on Christmas Eve and fills childrens stockings and we thought it would be confusing for the girls if Saint Nicholas visited twice!

So I came up with an idea that Saint Nicholas would throws bags of coins down the chimney on his feast day and give gifts in celebration of the birth of our Lord on Christmas Eve.

This year when he threw the bag of coins down the chimey it burst and the coins scattered round the room so the children (Leona and James) had to find all the coins :o) They had bounced in to all sorts of interesting hiding places and it took Leona a while to find all of hers... it too James even longer.

It's our first Christmas with a child old enough to learn the names of things... sheep, cow, pig, etc. We thought it was important to get a good nativity set but we couldn't find one we liked anywhere (we are v fussy).

But we do like this...

This fantastic cake was made by Lucy Shaw in Oxford (any connection with Joseph Shaw?) and we think it's brilliant.

Fr Dwight Longenecker says...

The major problem in the church today is when Christians exchange the Divine and supernatural economy of redemption for an attempt to change the world. Many Catholics have forgotten that the Church is established for the forgiveness of sins and the proclamation of the gospel, and believe instead that the Church is here to make the world a better place, and that this needs to be accomplished by all sorts of educational, social welfare, political and even revolutionary activities.

[link]

Well, we've just got back from Mass at St Joseph's. Since we had the Baby (which is nearly two years!) we don't make it to Wednesday evening Mass as often as we used to.

Tonight we made a special effort because during Advent Fr Massie organises special Rorate Masses by candlelight in which we sing the Rorate Caeli.

The Rorate what now?

Fr Roderick will explain...

Exploring the Advent Theme as a Family

10am - 4pm
St Mary's, Brigg
Saturday 29th November

Activities, Talks, Mass & Confession, Benediction

Lunch will be a shared table - Tea and Coffee Provided

Telephone: 01652 652221
Email: stmarysbrigg@btinternet.com

From our "glorious traditions our parent's generation pissed away" department we bring you the 'O' Antiphons. The last eight nights before Christmas Eve were called "The Golden Nights" and the antiphons all begin with 'O' e.g. O Wisdom, O Lord of Israel, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, O King of Nations, O God With Us.

In latin that reads: O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, O Clavis David, O Oriens, O Radix Gentium, O Emmanuel. The first letter of each title (not including the 'O' of course) spells "SARC ORE" which is Ero Cras backwards which means "tomorrow I will come" in latin.

Fortunately, somebody wonderful has pub together a web page on the subject of the 'O' antiphons resplendent with mp3 files and jpg scans of gregorian chant notation - click here for that.

114. The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care. Choirs must be diligently promoted, especially in cathedral churches; but bishops and other pastors of souls must be at pains to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs, as laid down in Art. 28 and 30.

116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.

118. Religious singing by the people is to be intelligently fostered so that in devotions and sacred exercises, as also during liturgical services, the voices of the faithful may ring out according to the norms and requirements of the rubrics.

[Sacrosanctum Concillium]

Are Choirs diligently promoted? Are our pastors of souls at pains to ensure that the whole body of the faithful are able to contribute when we celebrate with song? Is chant given pride of place? Is religious singing intelligently fostered?

It must be the lack of demand from young families...

So let me get this right? Old ladies... Fr Stephen... a Piano... and you want me to pay £12 for the pleasure? Get thee thou out of here. If Fr Stephen has anything useful to say he can bally well say it for free. It's blatantly just him showing off on the piano while old ladies coo over him and tell him how lovely he is. I want to throw up. So sayeth the James. It didn't help much that when Ella asked Fr Stephen about it he said "You'll have to come to find out". When Ella told him I thought it would be just him playing the piano he told her "James hasn't been to one, that's the trouble with blogging, people don't invite you to things for fear of being blogged about".

Ella wanted to go, so we went. £24 between us. That's more than the cinema that is!

It were right good.

Fans of GK Chesterton will know what I am on about when I say that Chesterton was very fond of stories as a means to convey the truth. Chesterton points out that the good stories are those that, in some way or another, tell the story. A short summary of Fr. Stephen's musical retreat might be to say that what GK Chesterton did with fairy tales, Fr. Stephen Maughan did with music. If anything, it works better with Music - you cannot tell a story at the same time as you talk about the story, but you can play music as you talk about music.

He began by talking about themes, he played the hovis theme and then asked us what we were thinking about. Even those of us not born in the 70's were thinking of bread. He then described how Dvorak was in south america in the middle of nowhere when he wrote the piece, trying to describe the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen. Words failed him, so he wrote music instead. Fr Stephen then played the music at it's proper speed (much slower) and we dreampt of sunsets. He played some themes from films such as ET, Star Wars and Superman and talked about Nessun Dorma and his frustration that this theme is so often played and ends with a single chord when it should seque in to the rest of the story. Of course, nobody knows the story (they don't speak Italian for a start), they just like the nice music.

Fr. Stephen pointed out that Nessun Dorma alone makes little sense without the rest of the story and suggested that the same is happening today with Advent. People know the Christmas songs but they make no sense on their own. They end like Nessun Dorma with a single chord on Christmas day an make no sense because they do not continue in to Easter. He showed us Madonna of the Meadow by Giovanni Bellini and Michaelangelo's Pieta. Pointing out that when the Angel comes to Mary and she says "Yes" and we say "Isn't it lovely" we really need to think about what she is saying "Yes" too.

Next he talked about variations. Focussing on Elgar's Variations. Elgar started with a theme and then wrote variations based around people he knew. The point is this, the variations were totally different and reflected the different people's lives and personalities. However, the theme is the same. In the Christian life, the theme is Christ and our lives should be variations on his life. Fr. Stephen suggested that as an examination of conciense we think about how our own variation on the theme might sound if Elgar were to write a variation based on our lives. Would there be any part of the music we would want to change?

Finally, he talked about the Church as Fugue. Having overheard a man describe the Church as a Fugue he explored the idea. This was particularly interesting for me as I got to learn not only Fr. Stephen's point but also what a fugue actually is. The shortest description I can think of is that it's a bit like if Elgar's variations all happened at the same time... no, that's a rubbish description. How about if I just say that this is one. Once again, Fr. Stephen talked about Jesus Christ as the central theme and our lives as variations upon it. Lest this sound like religious pluralism (we're all different and nobody is wrong) Fr. Stephen was very clear on the point that the original theme had to be the same and suggested John 3:16 as the central theme.

My description only skims the surface really, if Fr. Stephen does another one of these (and I hope he does) then you should all go. It's well worth £12 and very good.