Sunday, November 29th, 2009
Daily Archive
Dear Santa Project 2009
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 29 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Parish News
Please take the time to stop by and make an underprivileged child’s Christmas wish come true!
This year, the students of St. Jerome’s School in the Bronx are the beneficiaries of your generosity and good will. Please give them hope and faith in the miracle of Christmas. All we ask is that you chose one letter and make their Christmas wish a reality! The project meeting is on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 6:30 P.M at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick Parish House, 14 East 51st Street, between Madison and 5th Avenues. Please rsvp and visit our web site at www.cspya.org.
Mass of Solemn Profession
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 29 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Dominicans, Parish Events
Click above for video of the Mass of Solemn Profession celebrated here this past November 7th, during which Fr. Gabriel Gillen, O.P., and I professed our final vows in the Order of Preachers.
The music heard in the video is an ancient Dominican chant entitled “Sicut in holocaustis arietum.” It was sung during the Offertory of the Mass by a schola composed of student brothers from the Dominican House of Studies, who traveled to New York to attend the Profession Mass. The full text of the chant reads, in English: “As a holocaust of rams and bullocks, and of thousands of fatted lambs, so let our sacrifice be in your sight on this day, that it may be pleasing unto you. For there is no shame for those who put their trust in you, O Lord.” In his Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas uses the image of the holocaust, mentioned in the chant, to illustrate the complete nature of the sacrifice required by religious when they make solemn profession. “The religious state may be considered . . . as a holocaust,” writes the Angelic Doctor, “whereby a man offers himself and his possessions wholly to God” (ST.II-II.186.7).
Fr. Dominic Izzo, O.P., Prior Provincial of the Province of St. Joseph, celebrated and preached the Mass.
The St. Vincent Ferrer Chorale shared musical duties with the chant schola, thus adding their own beauty and reverence to the solemn liturgy. Other student brothers assisted at the altar. Fr. Jordan Kelly, O.P., served as the Master of Ceremonies.
Organ Recital – November 30
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 29 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Music
We invite you to our next musical event here at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, an opportunity to hear one of the finest concert organists here in New York City.
David Enlow, Organist and Choir Master at Church of the Resurrection here in Manhattan, and a faculty member of the Juilliard School, will perform an Organ Recital on Monday, November 30 at 7:00 PM. Mr. Enlow’s program will include works by Franck and Dupré.
The recital is free and open to the public.
We hope to see you!
“Bringing Morals to the Public Square”
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 29 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous
The following essay was penned by Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. It appeared a week ago on Zenit.
BRINGING MORALS TO THE PUBLIC SQUARE
Catholic Political Leaders Need to Make Principled Stand
By Carl Anderson
As much of the world moves in a secular direction, some commentators have taken to speaking of a “post-Christian” society.
Certainly, the days of the close embrace of Christianity by civil authority are a thing of the past. We might say we live in a “post-embrace” world. But that does not — and must not — mean that Christianity is headed for a marginal “ghetto” existence.
Indeed, it was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) who wrote in the 1980s: “In the long run, neither the embrace nor the ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world.”
As the Church faces a culture that is increasingly secular and finds little place for Christianity in the public square, it will be up to Christians, who value conscience, to create the “creative minorities” Benedict XVI has called for to bring moral reasoning into the public discourse.
Pope Benedict on the Theologians of St. Victor
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 29 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous
At last week’s General Audience, Pope Benedict continued his survey of medieval Christian culture by turning our attention to the twelfth-century theological school of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. As one of the academic forerunners of the University of Paris, St. Victor produced some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, including Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, and his disciple, Richard of St. Victor. All three composed theological works of immense depth and skill. Their writings on the Trinity and on the sacraments especially helped to prepare the stage for the great flourishing of theology in Paris in the thirteenth century, when figures such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure took center stage. In Wednesday’s audience, the Holy Father focused on the work of Hugh and Richard specifically.
GENERAL AUDIENCE ADDRESS
November 25, 2009
Dear brothers and sisters,
During these Wednesday audiences, I have been presenting some exemplary figures of believers who have been determined to show the harmony between reason and faith, and to witness with their life the proclamation of the Gospel.
Today I would like to speak to you about Hugh and Richard of St. Victor. Both are among those notable philosophers and theologians known by the name of Victorines, because they lived in the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, founded at the beginning of the 12th century by William of Champeaux. William himself was a renowned teacher, who was able to give his abbey a solid cultural identity. In fact, inaugurated in St. Victor was a school for the formation of monks, open also to outside students, where a happy synthesis was made between the two forms of doing theology, of which I have already spoken in previous catecheses: namely, monastic theology, mainly oriented to the contemplation of the mysteries of the faith in Scripture, and scholastic theology, which used reason to attempt to scrutinize these mysteries with innovative methods, to create a theological system.
We know little about the life of Hugh of St. Victor. The date and place of his birth are uncertain: perhaps in Saxony or in Flanders. It is known that he arrived in Paris — the European capital of culture at the time — and spent the rest of his years in the abbey of St. Victor, where he was first a disciple and then a teacher. Already before his death, which occurred in 1141, he achieved great notoriety and esteem, to the point of being called a “second St. Augustine”: Like Augustine, in fact, he meditated much on the relation between faith and reason, between profane sciences and theology.