Posted on August 30, 2020 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ!
Our students begin to return to school and our seminarians back to seminary during this time of year. Please be sure to keep each of them in your prayers. Bro. Brent, Bro. Henry, and Deacon Eddie Hoffmann all began their final year of seminary this past week. Please be sure to especially keep them in your prayers, and all of our seminarians. Pray that the Lord continues to send to us holy men to discern the priesthood and holy women to discern the religious life!
Please be sure to note our First Friday and First Saturday special Masses. Also note that Labor Day is September 7, and Masses at Old St. Mary’s will be at 7:15 a.m. (Low Latin) and 9:00 a.m. (English). Confession will be heard at 8:15 a.m. There will be no 12:10 p.m. Mass or Confession before. Finally, we will receive Raymond Fredette and Joseph Marsala into the novitiate on September 8. This will be a private ceremony, but as such, we will not have Evening Adoration that day. We will have adoration in the morning. We chose this day since it is the Nativity of Our Lady. Please remember them in your prayers! After September 8, they will be known as Brother Raymond and Brother Joseph. They will be clothed in the habit at a later date.
Today, in the Extraordinary Form, our Gospel is the healing of the ten lepers. Please find St. Augustine’s explanation of the Gospel for us. He relates leprosy to those who teach a Gospel contrary to Christ. I hope you find his reflection insightful this week. Have a blessed week ahead!
“The ten lepers “lifted up their voices and said: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when He saw them, He said unto them Go, show yourselves unto the Priests. And it came to pass that, as they went, they were cleansed.” Question why did the Lord send them unto the Priests, that, as they went, they might be cleansed Lepers were the only class among those upon whose bodies He worked mercy, whom we find that He sent unto the Priests. It is written in another place that He said to a leper whom He had cleansed: “Go, and show thyself to the Priest, and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them” We ask then, of what leprosy was a type, whereof they that were ridded were called, not “healed,” but “cleansed.” It is a disease which doth first appear in the skin, but destroyeth not immediately the strength, nor the use of feeling and the limbs.
The lepers, therefore, we may not absurdly suppose such to be figured as have not the knowledge of the true faith, but do show forth diverse-coloured teachings of error. They hide not their witlessness, but do use all such wit as they have to make it manifest, and proclaim it in high-sounding phrases. There is no false doctrine but hath some truth mixed up with it. A man’s discourse then, with some truths in it unequally mingled with falsehoods, and all confounded in one mass, is like to the body of one that is stricken with leprosy, whereon all manner of foul colours do appear in this and that place along with the true colour of skin.
Such men as these are banished out of the walls of the Church, to the end that haply when they stand afar off they may lift up their voices and cry to Christ for pardon, just as those ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off, outside the village, lifted up their voices and said “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” That they styled Him Master, by which title I know not if any besought the Lord for bodily healing, I think doth sufficiently show that leprosy signifieth false doctrine, whereof the Good Master doth cleanse us.” – St. Augustine