Blessed Be God, a prayer book which has been in print for almost a hundred years now, has enjoyed a renewed popularity of late thanks to its excellent collection of prayers and devotions.

One of the particularly wonderful things about this book is its copious use of liturgical commemorations. Commemorations are short little snapshots of a feast, traditionally used at Lauds and Vespers when that feast has been superseded by a higher-ranking one but is still nevertheless worthy of being remembered. They have three main parts: an Antiphon, a Verse and Response, and the Prayer or Collect.

Commemorations have been printed devotionally for quite some time, but few prayer books have done so as richly as this one. This one little volume can actually serve all by itself as a sort of “Little Office” for the laity that can be used throughout the year.

For Catholics, of course, the most important way to mark time is through the liturgical year. In the section “Devotions for the Holy Days and Special Feasts” (p. 196-252), Blessed Be God gives us commemorations for the Circumcision, the Epiphany, Candlemas, and St. Joseph; Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday; then ones for Paschaltide including Easter, the Rogation Days, the Ascension, and Pentecost; and finally Corpus Christi, Ss. Peter and Paul, the Assumption, Ember Days, All Saints, All Souls, Immaculate Conception, and Christmas. The following section, “Devotions for the Seasons of the Year” (p. 253-256), has additional commemorations for Advent, Christmastide, Septuagesima and Lent, Passiontide, and Eastertide.

But the book also diverges from the liturgical calendar proper and offers commemorations for each day of the week: Sunday (The Most Blessed Trinity), Monday (The Souls in Purgatory), Tuesday (The Holy Angels), Wednesday (St. Joseph), Thursday (The Most Blessed Sacrament), Friday (The Passion  of Christ), and Saturday (The Blessed Virgin).  Next the months are commemorated: the Holy Name in January, the Holy Family in February. St. Joseph in March, and so on.

Catholics may well know that May is dedicated to our Lady, that October is dedicated to the Rosary, and November is for the Holy Souls. We abstain from meat, of course, on Fridays. But what do we do on the other months and days? Are they not worthy of giving back to God as well?

And even the well-known “special” days and month just mentioned–do we really acknowledge and keep these devotionally? Or do we sometimes simply acknowledge the fact and move on, as if the knowledge alone was sufficient?

The great strength of Blessed Be God, with its numerous commemorations, is that it helps give structure to those popular devotions. Each feast, each season, each day of the week, and each month of the year has its own special prayer. These take less than a minute to say, and as such they are accessible even to the busiest working dad and homeschooling mom.

Praying the commemorations keeps us in the spirit of each liturgical feast and season, and since they come directly from the texts of Lauds and Vespers, by entering more deeply into them we can, in our own little way, participate in the public liturgy of Holy Mother Church.

A recent online survey of 1779 adults from 39 states found that the “Traditional Latin Mass is experiencing a high volume of participation and interest in the 18-39 demographic.”

Fr. Donald Kloster of the diocese of Bridgeport, CT, with the help of other contributors, conducted the survey between October 22, 2019 and March 1, 2020.

Fr. Kloster directed his study not at a general Catholic audience but at those within the age range who at least prefer the Latin Mass. And his findings are remarkable. The survey showed an astounding 98% weekly Mass attendance in the 18-39 age group . These adults would have been born roughly in the range of 1980-2001, and therefore largely represent the Millennial generation (1981-1996) and the earliest individuals in Gen Z (1996-2010).

How does that compare to statistics in the church at large? Research done by Gallup shows dramatic declines in church attendance since 1955 in all age categories: with the 21-29 age group consistently at the bottom, at 25% weekly Mass attendance. The Gallup data shows a steep drop from 73% attendance in 1955 to percentages in the mid-30s by 1975. This drop began with the members of the Silent generation (born 1928-1945) and the early Baby Boomer generation (1946-1955). After holding steady for a decade, it dropped to a low point with Generation X (1964-1979), where it has largely remained for the Millennials.

Although a large majority of the respondents said that their parents regularly attended Church, only 10% of those surveyed were raised in Traditional Latin Mass households, and only 16% reported that their parents had led them to the ancient liturgy.

The reasons that did lead them to Mass, ranked in descending order, are as follows:

35% Reverence
16% Parents
13% Friends
12% Curiosity
8% Solemnity
8% Other
5% Spouse
3% Music

Combining some of this data, we can see that personal preferences (reverence, curiosity, solemnity, and music) account for 58% of the total, while peer influences (friends, spouses) account for  18% of the total. Thus, to the tune of 76%, the impetus to attend the Latin Mass among 18- to 39-year-olds seems to be largely coming internally from within their own generation, rather than being inherited from previous generations.

One important factor in the study seems to be a strong religious family life: 65% of the respondents’ fathers regularly attended Church, 75% of their mothers regularly attended Church, and fully 84% were raised in a married (but not remarried) household. And note that these fathers and mothers are the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers whose generations saw the steep decline in Mass attendance mentioned earlier.

It seems that those Boomers and Xers in the parent generations who retained a solid family structure and regularly attended Mass—whether or not they themselves attended a Latin Mass—helped set the stage for the Millennials and early Gen Z to rediscover tradition through personal and peer channels. Of course we cannot discount intellectual influence from older traditionalists online or elsewhere, but the trope of “cultish” parental influence is not borne out at all in this data. Fr. Kloster’s study suggests that these generations have come to the Latin Mass largely on their own and for their own reasons.

Fully 80% of Fr. Kloster’s respondents had thought of a priestly or religious vocation. This finding will come as little surprise to those in Latin Mass communities that, while often small, tend to generate vocations well beyond the norm. Moreover, men comprised 57% of those responding to the survey, while only being 49% of the population. All of these numbers are highly relevant to the priest shortage, and suggest a clear way out of it.

And as far as the laity goes, if the trend of 98% Mass attendance continues to hold across the wider Catholic world, it hints not just at potential to reverse the decline in attendance since Vatican II but to go even further and surpass the 1955 numbers of 73%-77% attendance across all age groups.

Fr. Kloster shared his thoughts with the Missive about that possibility. He theorizes that, in a few key respects, the Latin Mass today is unlike the Latin Mass of the 1950s. Priests are now saying the Mass slower, and they are offering more high Masses and solemn Masses. That more reverential approach seems to be bearing fruit.

“We are doing what the Vatican Council was supposed to do,” he said. “We are fixing all the gaps that should have been fixed.”

Overall, the findings are very encouraging, and this study will be worth continuing to unpack in the coming months and years. Kudos to Fr. Kloster and his team for taking the time to put data and actual numbers behind the anecdotal evidence that has been bandied about for a while.

A previous version of this article gave an incorrect number for the study population. -ed.

The liturgical year is a story of many layers, and one of those layers is closely tied to the natural world.

So, for instance, on the Ember Days–and those of summer begin today, as a matter of fact–the Latin Church specially marks the four seasons. Our Christmas hymns are filled with the piercing cold of winter, Easter with the blossoming of Spring, the time after Pentecost with the green growth of summer, and the apocalyptic Last Sundays of the liturgical year with the Autumn harvest.

So closely tied, in fact, is our ecclesiastical calendar to the natural cycles of the European continent that we hardly give it much thought. And since many of our churches here on the other side of the Northern Hemisphere have a similar climate and natural fauna, we can fully appreciate the Roman liturgical calendar just as it evolved across the Atlantic.

But our particular cultural and geographical environment can also offer us a new take on the Latin calendar that would not have necessarily been apparent in Europe.

A classic example is seen in this month of June: the month of the Sacred Heart.

June also marks the appearance of that very familiar fruit: the strawberry, which originally was bred from two wild varieties of the New World.

The American Indians were familiar with the original woodland strawberry, Fragaria virginiana. But their name for it did not match up with our modern English name–which refers, some think, to the straw that was used to mulch the fruit in England, or to the way it was strewn on the ground.

Instead, the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands called attention to what its shape and vivid red color immediately suggested. The Lenape called it wtehim–literally, “heart berry”. The Iroquois celebrated its arrival in June with a great national festival of thanksgiving, as the first berry to appear and the fulfillment of the promise of the Creator. They gave it many names such as the “the Great Medicine”, and ascribed wonderful qualities to it.

Here the natural world prefigured the supernatural…and the ancient cultures found their fulfillment in Holy Mother Church.

The Catholic Iroquois near Montreal–said by the early missionaries to have surpassed even the French Canadians in piety–largely preserved their culture intact except for “only that which vice had spoiled” in the pagan towns. These traditional concepts would have filled their minds as they gathered to hear the Introit of Holy Mass Iesos Raweriasatokenti, literally “Jesus-his-sacred-heart” right around the time when they were celebrating the strawberry’s arrival as they had done from time immemorial.

And we, whose ancestors have may have come to this continent from Europe, Africa, or Asia, can still hear their echoes in our own humble little gardens. With them we join in celebrating this month, not only the beginning of summer marked by these Ember Days of Pentecost, and not only the first fruits which Almighty God has provided us for our sustenance, but also the higher reality that they and the liturgy point us toward: the burning furnace of charity in the Sacred Heart of Our Savior.

“What do you miss most about your FSSP parishes and priests since the lockdown?”

We asked this question a few weeks ago on our Facebook page and received many thoughtful and wonderful replies–too many to reprint here. Here is a sample of what FSSP parishioners replied from across the District. 

“I miss being around the holiness of our FSSP parish priests. I know this sounds crazy, but there’s a beautiful supernatural presence around priests. There’s a holy and loving, yet terrifying majesty (like the presence of Christ) that surrounds the priests.” – Eve Barbieri

“The Eucharist, high mass, Adoration, choir, incense, processions, our priests, our community. Everything.” – Anastacia Schiele

“Missing all of it, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the inspirational homilies, Confession, receiving the Body of Christ, the bells and smells, the sacred music, the rosary before mass, the interior joy in my heart knowing I was in heaven on earth, sensing the presence of Angels and saints. Oh, how does one pick from such wonders. I can’t.” – Gerianne Storelli

“I missed being physically present and the ability to physically receive Our Lord, but I am eternally grateful for the FSSP priests continuing to say the Mass daily and knowing that, even if I can’t watch online, the Mass is still prayed with reverence and devotion. I know I’m not needed for this magnificent prayer to ascend to God for all of us. I missed the Sacraments and the music and seeing my fellow Catholics after Mass. It’s returning slowly here, but who knows what will happen next? I will never take it for granted again.” – Ellen Maschino Wrinn

“I miss the profound reverence of the priests in every deliberate move they make during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that brings me to the realization that Jesus IS truly present on that altar. When one can come to that realization that Jesus is truly there, nothing else matters. It’s like you can be there, but not there; in the world but not in it. I long for public Masses to resume again. It’s like having a taste of Heaven, then having to go through withdrawals when it’s been taken away.” – Janet Jordan

“Mass. Our parish community. Our wonderful FSSP priests at St Mary’s. Their teachings and the many things going on in our parish. Essentially everything. At the same time, I am very thankful for all that our FSSP priests have done for us every day during lockdown. I’ve learned so much from their catechism classes and Bible studies. It has been such a huge gift and blessing.” – Jennifer Elizabeth

“Besides the Mass, I miss the more routine opportunity to go to confession on Sundays before Mass. I miss the magnificent sermons, although we can watch them online, the surrounding distractions will always put a bit of a damper on the overall impact of the sermons. I also miss our high Masses on special feast days such as St. Joseph in March and other lovely festivities outside of Sunday during the week. I greatly missed the Easter Vigil which I ardently enjoy.” – Martin Palihnich

“Community. Shared sense of vision. Besides the exquisite Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I miss being surrounded by the faithful and their witness. I also miss the quiet and inspiring catechism of traditional church artwork in stained glass.” –Allison Girone

“What I miss most is being surrounded by the body of Christ celebrating together with the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of our life. Seeing our priests in Persona Christi – the holy and sacred witness – offers a source of peace, comfort and strength in a world gone mad.” – Cindy Lou Teller

“The beauty, awe and reverence of the Latin Mass and the great dignity and faithfulness of the FSSP who offer it.” – Joann Veara Castricum

“Receiving our Lord. The beautiful and reverent liturgy. Confession always available. The faithful families and priests.” – Chelsea Elyse

“The whole parish standing to sing the Credo. Little people crying out in the back of the church. Candles, incense. The sensibility that we get to step into a great moment in history and join it.” – Silvia Dipippo Aldredge

“I miss my spiritual director, but I got one chance to see him at confession. He responds to the confession hotline and is always ready to step out of the rectory for a confession in the parking lot. Also love seeing him on YouTube now.” – Joe Johnson

Thank you to all who participated! To share your thoughts with fellow FSSP parishioners across North America and join in the discussion of our Missive articles, like and follow our Facebook page.

Priestly and Diaconal Ordinations for the FSSP North American District will take place at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln, Nebraska on Monday, June 1.

Please unite with us in prayer by joining in singing or reciting the Veni Creator Spiritus for the men being ordained to the priesthood for the District:

• Rev. Mr. Daniel Alloy, FSSP
• Rev. Mr. Eric Krager, FSSP  
• Rev. Mr. Joseph Loftus, FSSP
• Rev. Mr. David McWhirter, FSSP
• Rev. Mr. Javier Ruiz Velasco Aguilar, FSSP

as well as for those being ordained to the diaconate:

• Mr. John Audino
• Mr. Joseph Dalimata
• Mr. James Eichman
• Mr. Nicholas Eichman
• Mr. Joel Pinto Rodriguez
• Mr. Thu Truong

Our apostolate LiveMass.net will be live-streaming the ceremony on June 1st, from 10 AM – 3 PM Central Time.

Veni, Creator Spiritus,
mentes tuorum visita,
imple superna gratia
quae tu creasti pectora.

This week we celebrate back-to-back feasts of two great English saints–Bede the Venerable on May 27 and Augustine of Canterbury on May 28. Both of these men are recognized today as key figures in the early English Church–St. Bede who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People and saved much history from oblivion, and St. Augustine who was appointed by Pope St. Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons and become the Apostle to England.

Among many other treasures, Bede’s chronicle preserves an invaluable exchange between Augustine and Gregory. Augustine asks why communities who shared the same faith nevertheless had different liturgical expressions.

Pope Gregory answered back:

You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman church in which you remember you were bred up. But it pleases me, that if you have found anything, either in the Roman, or the Gallican, or any other church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you carefully make choice of the same, and sedulously teach the church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from every church those things that are pious, religious, and upright, and when you have, as it were, made them up into one body, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto.

Fourteen hundred years later, we are still coming to terms with similar issues.

The 1962 Missal has been the standard missal for FSSP parishes for so long–but many have long lamented that it is profoundly untraditional for a calendar to be “frozen in amber” without any new saints being added. For example, it feels quite unnatural to honor St. Pio of Pietrelcina everywhere but on our altars. Yet on the other hand, how would it be possible to add in 60 years of new saints while also respecting the integrity of the traditional calendar? It took until this very year to painstakingly work out a solution, through the Congregation of the Faith’s promulgation of the decree Cum Sanctissima.

Other scholars have looked back to earlier times and wondered whether it would not be truer to the classical Roman Rite to restore practices that were abolished by Pius XII’s liturgical changes of 1955. Rome has granted some limited allowances along these lines as well, with some FSSP parishes being provisionally allowed to use the pre-1955 Holy Week rites.

Like Augustine on his arrival on the British Isles, we find ourselves confronted with disparate liturgical books but a wish to harmonize them in a single “body” that best exemplifies the overall spirit of the classical Roman Mass. Our different missals are chronological rather than geographical, but the essential problem is the same.

A liturgical purist might well object that to foray outside the protective confines of the 1962 missal is, to use the vernacular expression, “picking and choosing.” That for something as vitally important as the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, we should simply stick to the commonly-used missal and be done, instead of embarking on a complicated synthesis that will lead (so the thinking goes) to inevitable liturgical chaos.

But thanks to the pens of both Augustine and Bede, we can put the question back to Pope St. Gregory for advice.

Gregory flatly stated that it pleased him for Augustine to “carefully make choice” from the liturgical practices of different churches.  Indeed, he himself was responsible for finalizing the Traditional Latin Mass as we know it today.

However, he is no reckless reformer. He naturally assumes that such a synthesis will only make use of those things that  “may be more acceptable to Almighty God”, and are “pious, religious, and upright”. In other words, the ingredients of that synthesis must be chosen from what is in accord with the faith that Christ has given us and that contributes most to God’s glory. This principle necessarily excludes from consideration any concept that stems from mere convenience, worldliness, current fashions, or hostility or embarrassment toward tradition.

As the spiritual descendants of the English Church founded by Augustine and chronicled by Bede, we ought to consider how to apply Gregory’s sage words to our own time and our own liturgical challenges. Granted, they do not give us minute instructions to that effect, but they do provide us with some key points to keep in mind.

For tradition, in its fullest and truest definition, is not so much the exclusive property of one Missal or another, but remains ever present, in varying degrees, as a unifying thread through all of them. May Sts. Bede, Augustine, and Gregory watch over us as we strive to preserve it.

by Rachel Shrader

A blessed and peaceful Memorial Day to all. Although today evokes thoughts of barbecues, get-togethers with family and friends, and the unofficial beginning of summer, much of what we would normally have planned for today may have been curtailed by recent events and the accompanying closures. But perhaps such restrictions give us a chance to pause and reflect on what this day is really about, and the relative isolation we may have to endure may be a fitting reminder of those who are no longer with us, and whose absence will remain even when the lockdowns are lifted.

Memorial Day is, of course, a tribute to those who have given their lives in the service of our country. Though different wars happen for different reasons in different eras with varying levels of popular support, what is common to them all is that many went, many returned, and some did not. All who went raised their right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, with the implicit obligation to give their lives in its defense if necessary, and some fulfilled their oath to the letter. Some military children have rejoiced at their parents’ return from war; some have wept. Some parents have greeted their returning sons and daughters with laughter and “Welcome Home” signs; others have greeted flag-draped coffins with a sorrow that, unless experienced, is hard to comprehend. For some, remembering those who have made the ultimate sacrifice is something they do every hour of every day.

A couple years ago I visited Arlington National Cemetery with a friend. We both have relatives buried there. It was a drizzly day, the dreary weather and the thousands of identical gravestones cast across the green hills a somber reminder of the sacrifices of so many. We stopped at one of the most famous graves in the cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a monument to those unidentified dead and missing of the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and by extension all conflicts in which the U.S. has been involved. The U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment maintains a constant presence there, guarding the Tomb day and night, every day of the year, and we watched the impressive changing of the guard that occurs every 30 or 60 minutes depending on the time of year. It is fascinating to me that the most carefully guarded and iconic of all graves in Arlington belongs to those who do not have so much as an identity, who are, in a sense, the least among the thousands of their brethren buried there, the least loved, the least known.

But in God’s view, not one is forgotten. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge (Matthew 10:29), and He knows the names of all the unknowns who lay buried in Arlington, in the fields of France, in the depths of the sea, or elsewhere in unmarked graves. He is a God well-acquainted with both obscurity and sacrifice, Who chose to live in obscurity most of His earthly life and allowed Himself to be counted with the transgressors in His death. He is the God Who told us that “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), the day before He gave us the most perfect example of sacrificial love when He died on the Cross.

Indeed, something about obscurity speaks deeply to the nature of sacrifice. A sacrifice is magnified when the giver gains no glory from it, in life or death, so the unnamed soldier stands as an example of a particularly high ideal of self-sacrifice. None of them chose to be unknown, but nonetheless, they and their known compatriots illustrated for us, when they took the road from which they would not return, the idea that some things are worth the sacrifice of our own life, our own future, and sometimes, our own name.

So let us remember today all who have made the ultimate sacrifice, especially, perhaps, those who are unknown. Not all of us can raise up physical monuments, but we can send up a prayer for the unknown soldier, that, in a busy and forgetful world, every one may be prayed for, thanked, and remembered. +

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine: et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Requiéscant in pace. Amen.

Rachel Shrader was the editor and primary writer of the Missive from its inception in June 2017 until May 2020. She now contributes as a freelance writer, covering military topics, the international work of the FSSP, and FSSP parish life.

In the summer of 1629, about 50 Jumano Indians from western Texas appeared before the Spanish Franciscan friars at the town of Isleta, near modern-day Albuquerque, NM.

Smaller groups of the Jumano had been coming there for some years, each time asking for missionaries to teach their as-yet-uncatechized nation the faith of Christ. The friars inquired exactly how they had learned about Our Lord, and in return they would always tell the same rather odd story: that a mysterious “Lady in Blue” had been appearing among them and instructing them about God and the Christian religion. It was she, they said, who told them to come to this place and ask for Baptism.

Although the friars were sympathetic to the Jumanos’ need for missionaries, the tale about the Lady had been easily enough dismissed: there were no Spanish friars in that faraway region, let alone women.

But on this last embassy in 1629, that odd story struck a chord with their superior Fr. Alonso de Benavides, who had been charged to investigate these strange reports–and also to get to the bottom of strange rumors that a Spanish nun was somehow being mystically transported to the Americas. He interviewed the Jumano themselves, who pointed to a portrait of a nun and stated that the Lady in Blue, though younger in age, wore similar clothes.

Intrigued, he sent two missionaries to the Jumano homeland in western Texas. The missionaries found the people knowledgeable of the faith, and baptized a number of them. Benavides composed an account of what happened, then set off for Spain, trying to track down who the nun was. There he learned that it was Sister Maria of the convent of the Immaculate Conception in Agreda. Under obedience, she was directed to reveal these hidden aspects of her interior life, and she also described details of the country and the different peoples of the region. Benavides left the meeting completely convinced. Later, the ecclesiastical authorities investigated her and found her mystical gifts to be authentic.

To this day, American folklore reveres Venerable Mary of Jesus of Agreda as one of the founders of the Catholic faith in the state of Texas–despite her apparently never leaving her convent. But it is through her spiritual writing that she earned the most fame in her lifetime. Indeed, Benavides himself would later say that “I call God to witness that my esteem for her holiness has been increased more by the noble qualities which I discern in her than by all the miracles which she has wrought in America.”

Venerable Maria de Agreda–her cause for beatification is now ongoing–left her mortal life on May 24th, 1665, leaving behind a spiritual classic: the Mystical City of God.

And the locals continue to cherish a legend that when she said farewell to the Indians for the last time and faded away beyond the hills, she left the area blanketed in deep blue flowers the color of her robe–the Texas bluebonnet.

From the sermon of St. Leo the Great, on the Lord’s Ascension.

Dearly beloved brethren, let us also rejoice with worthy joy, for the Ascension of Christ is exaltation for us. And where the glory of the Head of the Church has passed into, there is the hope of the body of the Church called to follow. Let us rejoice with exceeding great joy, and give God glad thanks! On this day not only is the possession of Paradise made secure for us, but in the Person of our Head we have actually begun to enter into the heavenly mansions above.

Through the unspeakable goodness of Christ we have gained more than we ever lost by the envy of the devil. We, whom our venomous enemy thrust from our first happy home, — we, being made of one body with the Son of God, have by Him been given a place at the right hand of the Father; with Whom He liveth and reigneth, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Rogation Days are a very old and wonderfully “earthy” tradition in the Roman Rite–uniting both the supernatural world (prayer and the intercession of the saints) and the natural world (the land and the planting of crops).

The coronavirus shutdown has impeded the celebration of the Rogation Days in many places, but St. Mary’s on Broadway, our FSSP apostolate in Providence, not only carried out the traditional Rogation Day ceremonies but also recorded them for the benefit of the faithful everywhere.

As explained on the parish’s Youtube channel:

On the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension, the Lesser Litanies can be celebrated. On these days, there can be a petitionary procession, in which fields are blessed, which is then followed by a violet petitionary Mass (the Rogation Mass, from the Latin “Rogare” which means “to ask, to ask for”).

Originally instituted in France (Vienne) for deliverance from calamities, the practice eventually became widespread. Their location on the Church’s calendar expresses how the joys of Easter are mingled with the sadness that these are the last days of Our Lord’s (liturgical) physical, risen presence among us.

Here are two of the videos just released earlier today, featuring a Rogation Day Procession, with the Litany of the Saints:

and the Rogation Mass, in violet vestments:

Even in the midst of quarantines and shutdowns, sacred tradition never ceases to glorify God!