This year the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter was honored to begin celebrating February 22nd, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, as a first class feast as was recently granted by the Holy See.

Below are photos taken from the Solemn High Mass celebrated for the occasion at the North American District Headquarters. Fr. Simon Harkins, FSSP was the celebrant, with Fr. Justin Nolan, FSSP as deacon and Mr. Gregory Bartholomew, FSSP as subdeacon. Boys from St. Gregory’s Academy served Mass and provided the schola cantorum.

Photos courtesy of Joseph Dalimata.

During the holy season of Lent, Holy Mother Church encourages us to spend forty days growing in knowledge of ourselves, so that, by our penance, we may better understand the exalted value of the soul over the body. By means of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the desires of the body are placed in subjection to the higher faculties of the intellect and will: By prayer we elevate our minds to God, by fasting we lessen our desire for pleasure, and by almsgiving we curb our love of money.

By fasting forty days in the desert, Our Lord, too, showed that there are benefits of denying the senses and appetites what is morally permitted them. Furthermore, the saints have testified that the detachment from creation (possessions, people, enjoyments) is absolutely necessary to arrive at perfection, for it is typical that God completes the purification of the soul only after it has expended great time and effort doing so by ordinary means. Thus, it is our obligation to mortify our senses and passions so that the soul’s capacity for her Creator is not otherwise occupied with His creation.

It should be noted that “to mortify” does not mean that we annihilate our senses, appetites, or passions; rather, we practice self-denial or privation in order to orient all desires and appetites towards God and make Him the sole desire (object) of our heart, mind, body, and soul.

Besides the senses and appetites of the body, the higher faculties of the intellect and will must also be purified. The intellect apprehends the true and presents it to the will as a good thing to pursue out of love. Thus, the action of the will is to love what the intellect says is good. But since the fall of Adam, the intellect has been darkened and the will has been weakened to the point where the will is inclined to selfishness and seeks to love that which the intellect can erroneously perceive as a good.

The superiority of the soul over the body means that the mortification of the will—the rational appetite—is even more important than the mortification of the body.

Contrarily, when the will embraces that which it should not, this turning away from God and towards creation is called sin. As sin resides in the will, it is the home of our faults and needs to be purified in order to regain strength to love purely the One Who is All-good, God.

When the free will is not properly ordered, the person lives for himself, seeking his own gratification in this world. Excessive self-centeredness subdues the soul so that sufferings and hardships are not willingly endured; fraternal correction and advice are not heeded; and pride, disobedience, and impatience develop deep roots in the soul. This inordinate self-love causes the person to abhor mortification. To express it in scientific terms, the person thinks that the world is not geocentric or  heliocentric, but rather egocentric.

Hence, it is extremely important to mortify the will to combat pride and to lessen excessive love of self. Ultimately, the more the intellect understands the baseness of anything temporal (for example, the body) compared with the importance of the eternal (our soul, God), the greater the will turns to God in love. For it is only in her humility that the soul recognizes that without God, she is nothing.

As Lent is upon us, the resolution to maintain a stricter guard over our appetites ensures that the intellect and will are properly maintained as the sovereign faculties. In closely examining the giving up of some food, we recognize that there will be a corresponding suffering in the body. The growth in sanctification from this mortification is not so much in the pain itself; rather, it is in the intention of the will to embrace the suffering out of love for God. And such is the power of love (charity): it takes a finite act and produces an infinite value. Hence, in all that we do in daily life, if borne out of love for God or in union with Christ Crucified, the action produces a hundred-fold merit, based upon the charity God sees in our intention. This is why the
widow who gave two mites gave more than all others: it is because she gave out of charity.

But great pain can reside in the will, more so than pain in the body. If a person were to hit us, the physical pain may subside in a few minutes, but deep down inside, the will can hold onto the emotional or intellectual pain. At times, the mind can take this memory and actually increase the suffering so that by recalling the incident, the person increases his pain. If that pain continues to grow in one’s  mind or heart, and the will decides to remain offended instead of forgiving, then the mental, emotional, or spiritual health of that person is at risk.

We witness this phenomenon in the Western world: The notion of “I do what I want” is so prevalent that when we have to do something or endure something which we do not want to do, we feel violated or helpless. Such feelings, if not dealt with properly, remove joy from a soul, replace it with anger, bitterness, and even hatred towards other people—or even God. Ultimately, a society which overly emphasizes doing one’s will produces a culture which abhors authority, whether parental, governmental, or ecclesiastical.

For how dare another tell me what I should do? “I have my own will.” This rebellion to get our own way is readily seen in most children in their first years of life. When a child does not get his way, he throws a tantrum. Thus, it is incumbent upon parents to admonish, teach, and lead by example that there are many times in life when we have to do things which we prefer not to do. By such instruction, children will grow up to better respect proper authority, such as their parents and the Church, and thereby to use their will properly to choose good and avoid evil.

Because we live in a world where temptations abound, we are further required continually to monitor our will, chastise it when disordered, and re-direct it to the good when it fails. As this requires mortification, we annually employ the Lenten days of penance to maintain the will  within its proper boundaries.

Furthermore, a pure motive for our penitential practices is also necessary for perfect union with God. Penance can be performed for less noble purposes, such as to lose weight or to seek the praise of others, or out of some Stoic attitude that emotions are beneath us. Yet, penance is more meritorious if done for the greater glory of God, or to conform our will to His Divine Will, or to strengthen the will over the senses, appetites, and passions of the body. The renewal of our pure motive will most likely have to be done throughout Lent in order to persevere in our good intention.

Lent is a time of not seeking or wishing anything other than to follow Christ Crucified and to give honor and glory to His Name, for the salvation of souls. So let us follow the advice of St. John of the Cross: “In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, desire to have pleasure in nothing.”

by Fr. James Buckley, FSSP
From the February 2011 Fraternity Newsletter

Since a parable manifests a truth of the supernatural order by comparing it to some image from nature or the life of man, it is all important to discover the point of comparison between the two. As Saint Basil the great observed, “The parables do not  correspond to the exterior image in all its parts of the subject to be considered but direct the attention to the principal truth.” Nevertheless, that basic comparison, as Our Lord’s own explanations of some parables demonstrate, can be extended to different parts of the parable.

A great clue to understanding the point of comparison will be found in the words introducing or concluding the parable. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, was introduced by a lawyer’s question, i.e., “And who is my neighbor?” It answers the question by providing a concrete image and not by offering a philosophical definition. At its conclusion, Our Lord emphasizes its point when He asks, “Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbor to him that fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36)

Similarly, Our Lord first admonished His hearers “to pray and not to faint” before presenting to them the parable of the unjust judge. In a few lines He tells how the sheer persistence of the widow forced one who feared neither God nor man to grant her justice. His concluding remark makes the supernatural truth obvious, i.e., “And will not God revenge his elect who cry to him day and night and will he have patience in their regard? I say to you, that he will quickly revenge them.” (Luke 18:7–8)

Though the parable of the two sons has no introduction, it has a significant conclusion. Our Lord tells His audience that when a father asked his two sons to work in his vineyard, the first one said that he would not but the second said that he would. The one who agreed to work did not, but the one who refused to work repented and worked. When Our Lord asked them which did his father’s will, they replied “the first.” Christ reveals the comparison in the conclusion: “Amen I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of justice and you did not believe him. But the publicans and the harlots believed him: but you, seeing it did not afterwards repent, that you might believe.” (Matt. 21:32)

It is the conclusion of the parable of the ten virgins which also indicates the comparison (i.e., “Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day or the hour” [Matt. 25:13]). In this parable the foolish virgins, by neglecting to take oil with their lamps, failed to welcome the bridegroom at his arrival and, consequently, merited the punishment of not participating in the wedding feast. The comparison is this. Just as the virgins were obliged to have their lamps burning when the bridegroom arrived, so too the faithful are obliged to prepare for Christ’s coming in judgment by their good works. Those who do will enter into everlasting life, but those who do not will be condemned by those dreadful words, i.e., “Amen I say to you, I know you not.”

This central comparison is extended to other parts of the image. The bridegroom who bars the foolish virgins from the wedding feast is Christ who will reward each man according to his deeds. The wedding feast, therefore, represents the everlasting happiness of heaven. The uncertainty regarding the time of the bridegroom’s arrival signifies that the time of Christ’s second coming is hidden from us. There are many other incidents in the parable which have no supernatural counterpart. It is of no significance, for example, that while the bridegroom tarried all the virgins slept. This is merely a detail enhancing the realism of Christ’s story. The same is true of the refusal of the wise virgins to share their oil with the foolish.

Next time I will look at the parable of the unjust steward.

by Father James Buckley, FSSP
From the January 2011 Fraternity Newsletter

In Mark 4:11–12 (and in the parallel passages from Matthew 13:13 and Luke 8:10) Christ says that the apostles “are given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God” but that others are told this truth in parables so that “hearing they may hear and not understand.” From these words the question arises about Christ’s intention in using parables.

Writing in 1926, the Dominican Fr. James Voste, a professor of New Testament exegesis at the Angelicum, observed that many non-Catholic commentators repudiated this question. According to them, the difficulties and obscurities recorded in the parables are the invention of the evangelists and not what Christ Himself actually said. They claim that the evangelists imposed a difficult and enigmatic form on the parables of Our Lord to provide a reason to the early Christians for Israel’s blindness and exclusion from the kingdom of God.

Even to this day several well-respected and influential non-Catholic exegetes maintain that the parables which appear in the Gospels are different from the parables originally given by Our Lord. C.H. Dodd, for example, commenting on Mark 4:11–20, writes: “These facts create at once a presumption that we have here not a part of the primitive tradition of the words of Jesus, but a piece of apostolic teaching.” (Parables of the Kingdom, p.4) The highly regarded Joachim Jeremias writes: “Already in the earliest period of all, during the first decade after the death of Jesus, the parables had undergone a certain amount of reinterpretation…” (The Parables of Jesus, p. 12)

This explanation, which denies the authentic history of the parables, was identified and condemned by Lamentabile. (“The Evangelists themselves as well as Christians of the second and third generation artificially arranged the parables and so they gave a reason for the small fruit of Christ’s preaching among the Jews.”)

But even among Catholic exegetes who accept the historical authenticity of the New Testament parables, there is a difference of opinion regarding the meaning of Christ’s saying that He used parables so that “seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

In his commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, the outstanding biblical scholar, Fr. Cornelius de Lapide, S.J. wrote: “Christ spoke in parables, with this intention and this end in view; that He might instill into them (the scribes and Pharisees) a sincere desire of examining their meaning, believing in Christ and being saved, and that having suffered a temporary blindness with regard to the parables which they did not comprehend, they might the more eagerly desire Christ, the true light, and ask of Him the explanation of the parables” (The Holy Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Volume II, p. 10).

This appears to be the majority opinion, but there is a minority opinion which is well argued by another Jesuit scholar, Fr. Leopold Fonck, S.J. Father Fonck, first of all, acknowledges that not all the parables needed an explanation and maintains that among Our Lord’s hearers there were many who were not adverse to further instruction. These, when they could not penetrate the meaning of the parables of the kingdom, he says, would seek an explanation from the disciples. The scribes and Pharisees, whose militant disbelief in Christ and in His miracles erupted in the blasphemous accusation that He was possessed (Mt. 12:24), were a different case. By their actions “they had brought upon themselves the sentence of reprobation” so now “they had to experience the punishment of their hard-heartedness.” These men would hear but not understand and their unbending pride would prevent their enlightenment. Since a Catholic is free to accept either de Lapide’s or Fonck’s position, I will next month explain one of the clues for understanding the meaning of some parables.

The Fraternity apostolate in Dayton, OH has unveiled a panoramic view of its historic and beautiful church. Built in 1926 in the Romanesque style, the church was left unscarred by the iconoclast spirit so prevalent in the second half of the twentieth century.

View the panoramic tour at Holy Family Church in Dayton, OH.
Visit the the Holy Family Church FSSP Apostolate website.

Holy Family Parish Information:

Fr. Mark Wojdelski, FSSP, Pastor
Fr. Joseph Orlowski, FSSP, Parochial Vicar

Office and residence:

140 S. Findlay St.
Dayton, OH 45403
tel (937) 938-6098

Holy Family Catholic Church
5th Street & Findlay; Dayton OH

Mass Schedule:
Sunday 8:00 & 10:30 a.m.
Monday-Friday 7:15 a.m.
Saturday 9:00 a.m.
Holy days 7:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m.

Recently, an incredibly beautiful painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe was installed in the new chapel at the seminary in Denton, Nebraska.

by Fr. James B. Buckley, FSSP
From the December 2010 Newsletter

When I was in the fifth grade at St. Luke’s in the South Bronx, Sister Vincentia one morning darkened all the classroom windows and turned off the electric lights. Standing in front of us, she held an orange in her left hand and a flashlight in her right. She shined the flashlight on the orange so that all of us could see that the upper part was in light and the lower part in darkness. She rotated the orange and what had been in light was now in darkness and what had been in darkness was now in light. By showing us the relationship between an orange and a lighted flashlight in a darkened  room—something we could see—she taught us about something we could not see, i.e. the relationship between the sun and our planet earth.

In making known supernatural truths Christ also taught His audiences by comparisons with familiar things and He did this through parables. Parables belong to the literary category of a simile and not that of an allegory. In an allegory every detail of the literary figure corresponds to something outside of it. Saint Paul, for example, in his letter to the Ephesians uses allegory in describing the armor of the Christian in his fight against iniquity. He admonishes him to put on the “breastplate of justice,” take up “the shield of faith,” and wear the “helmet of salvation.” Each of those three pieces of armament signify three distinct spiritual realities, i.e. justice, faith and salvation. Unlike an allegory, a simile has one point of comparison. Matthew 10:16, for examples, says: “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.” Christ here compares the apostles to sheep because like the sheep they are weak and defenseless.

The parable is in the category of a simile because it provides a point of comparison between unlike things. It differs from a simple simile—according to commentators —because it teaches moral and dogmatic truths about the Kingdom of God. Secondly, because the parable does so by presenting an image in concrete detail, commentators further agree, that the parable is more elaborate than a simple simile.

In his Parables of the Kingdom, the Protestant commentator C.H. Dodd writes, “there is a reason for this realism in the parables of Jesus. It arises from a conviction that there is no mere analogy, but an inward affinity, between the natural order and the supernatural order, or as we might put it in the language of the parables themselves, the Kingdom of God is intrinsically like the processes of nature and of the daily life of man.” The Catholic commentator Leopold Fonck, S.J. makes the same point when in his Parables of the Gospel he writes: “That such images and comparisons for the illustration of the supernatural order exist everywhere in the natural world is in accordance with the relation which the divine creator willed should exist between the visible and the invisible world.”

A striking example of the visible world illustrating the invisible world is found in Our Lord’s explanation of the parable of the Sower. Just as the productiveness or non-productiveness of the seed depends upon the soil that receives it, so does the productiveness or non-productiveness of the word of God depend upon the receptiveness of those who hear it. This basic comparison is further subdivided. Just as the seed does not penetrate the footpath, the word of God does not penetrate the hearts of the calloused and indifferent. As the seed which flourished for a time in rocky ground and among thorns ultimately yielded no fruit, so it is with those who welcome the word of God but afterwards fall away. Some do so because they are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices (the rocky ground) and others because they do not curb their inordinate desires (the thorns). The seed which bears fruit does not do so to the same degree and this re-emphasizes the point that the productiveness of God’s word depends on the receptiveness of those who hear it.

Because Christ did not explain all of his parables, Catholic exegetes have alerted us to clues of interpretation. Before touching on any of these, however, a difficulty regarding the object of the parables arising from Mark 4:11–12 (and parallel passages in Matthew 13:13 and Luke 8:10) must be confronted. There Christ says: “To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to them that are without, all things are done in parables: That seeing they may not see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.”

On October 23rd, 2010 ten second year seminarians at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska received their tonsure.  His Excellency the Most Reverend Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, presided and conferred the tonsures.  Please pray for our seminarians!

For Immediate Release

Watch the 2010 FSSP Seminary Video on EWTN!

DENTON, Nebraska –5 November 2010 – On November 15th, at 6:30pm (EST), Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) will broadcast “To God Who Giveth Joy To My Youth,” a 28 minute film about life at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, the house of formation of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter for its English-speaking candidates.

The title, taken from the opening words of Mass as celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, embodies the essential goal of priestly formation in the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. As His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has stated, the resurgence of interest in the traditional liturgical movement of the Church is, in significant part, a movement among the young. The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter has been blessed with numerous vocations attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. This new film is a response to numerous expressions of interest in the character of formation operative in the Fraternity’s houses of formation.

In particular, this DVD provides a helpful introduction for young men discerning a priestly vocation. At the same time, the film provides to all a thorough portrait of daily life at the seminary as well as its spiritual goals and purposes. In addition, it demonstrates the continued vitality and effectiveness in our own day of the traditional elements of priestly formation.

Under the Authority of the Church, the members of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter have been given the fundamental grace and purpose of sanctifying themselves through the faithful celebration of Holy Mass and the Sacraments in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. At the same time, they offer to souls the fruits of the graces of their vocation by making the liturgy in the Extraordinary Form available to all Catholics. Throughout the seminary’s intensive seven year program, each of the various elements and stages of formation has at its core, the formation of priests whose union with God is pursued through the spiritual and liturgical riches of the traditional liturgy.

Viewers are invited to see how the Fraternity seminary, drawing on the Church’s rich tradition of priestly formation, forms new priests through the study of philosophy and theology according to the method of St. Thomas Aquinas, through Latin as the language of the Church and her liturgical prayer, through Gregorian Chant as having primacy of place once again affirmed by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, as well as through elements of community life including spiritual direction, manual labor and recreation.

Discover how one seminary receives a man and prepares him for his transformation into an Alter Christus, “Another Christ” so that God may be served with humble fidelity and so that the needs of souls may be met through the perennial resources of the Church’s liturgical patrimony.

Watch EWTN online at http://www.ewtn.com/audiovideo/index.asp
Media Contact
Father Joseph Lee, FSSP
Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary
7880 West Denton Road
Denton, Nebraska 68339
phone (402) 570-2707
emailjlee@gmail.com

About the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter
Established in 1988 by Pope John Paul II, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter is a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right. The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter strives to serve the Catholic Church by means of its own particular and specific role or objective, i.e. the sanctification of priests through the faithful celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Through the spiritual riches of the Church’s ancient Roman liturgy, the priests of the Fraternity seek to sanctify those entrusted to their care. The Priestly Fraternity instructs and trains its priests to preserve, promote, and protect the Catholic Church’s authentic liturgical and spiritual traditions in over 16 countries worldwide. The Fraternity has over 200 priests and 125 seminarians studying in its two international seminaries in Bavaria, Germany and Denton, Nebraska. For more information, please go to fssp.org.

About EWTN
EWTN Global Catholic Network, in its 29th year, is available in over 160 million television households in more than 140 countries and territories. With its direct broadcast satellite television and radio services, AM & FM radio networks, worldwide short-wave radio station, Internet website www.ewtn.com and publishing arm, EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world.

by Taylor Marshall

On October 9th, His Excellency Kevin Farrell, Bishop of Dallas, blessed our new parish Mater Dei Catholic Church for the Diocese of Dallas. While many of the parishioners have prayed for this moment for decades, our family greeted the day as newcomers. We have been members of the parish for only a few months.

My family and I entered the Catholic Church in 2006. Prior to our conversion, I had served as an Anglican clergyman. The liturgy that we had experienced in the Anglican Communion was generally reverent—kneelers, altar rails, chant, and ad orientem altars. After we entered the Catholic Church, we experienced a time transition in some Catholic parishes where the music tended toward the folk genre and where Holy Communion was received standing—two things quite different from our previous experience. Nevertheless, we were grateful to be fully Catholic, in communion with the Holy See, and recipients of all the prayers and blessings of Holy Mother the Church.

Several months ago, we decided to visit the local parish served by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP)—Mater Dei Catholic Church in Irving, Texas. The decision was not based on idealism or nostalgia. Nor did we seek it out in reaction to anything we had experienced. We simply attended Sunday Mass on a whim, and discovered that our family immediately felt at home. The first thing we noticed was that our five children behaved more reverently on account of the liturgical environment. As we began to attend daily Mass at Mater Dei and receive confession and spiritual direction, we immediately appreciated the committed priestly ministry exhibited by Father Thomas Longua and Father Philip Wolf.

Although we are relatively new to Mater Dei Catholic Church, we were as eager as everyone else for the church’s blessing. Day by day we stuck our heads into the church to find new construction, new altars, new pews, new confessionals, and new artwork. And when the day for the blessing finally arrived, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was stunning. Father Thomas Longua celebrated, Father Phil Wolfe served as deacon, and Father Flood served as subdeacon. Bishop Kevin Farrell blessed the building (he chanted all his parts in Latin), and His Excellency preached an encouraging homily about the need to evangelize our culture and teach the Catholic Faith in an era when many Catholics have not been rightly catechized.

Bishop Farrell’s words at the Mass and during the reception were very humble, kind, and beautiful. Everyone was grateful to have His Excellency present. A hearty thank you to Bishop Farrell and to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter for making this parish possible. We thank Almighty God for the unique blessing of being part of an exciting renewal of Christ’s Church. Deo gratias!

Taylor Marshall is a former Episcopalian clergyman and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Dallas. He is the author of The Catholic Perspective on Paul and The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholicism. He blogs at Canterbury Tales {taylormarshall.com}. You may also be interested in his post: “Seven Reasons Why I Joined a Latin Mass Parish.”

You can visit Mater Dei Church here: https://www.materdeichurch.org/

Photos provided by Ron St. Angelo.