Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine)

«I am the door of the sheep»: our Lord says he is the door of the sheepfold. Now what is this sheepfold, the pen into which Christ is the door? It is the Father’s heart, into which and of which Christ, who has unsealed and opened for us the heart hitherto closed to humankind, is indeed our most lovable door. All the saints are gathered inside this fold. The shepherd is the eternal Word; the door, the humanity of Christ; by the sheep in this house we understand human souls. But angels, too, belong to the sheepfold…; the Holy Spirit is the doorkeeper… because all truth understood and expressed comes from him… O with what love and goodness he opens the door of the Father’s heart to us and grants us access unceasingly to the hidden treasure, the inmost dwelling places and all the wealth of this house! No one could imagine or comprehend how welcoming God is, always ready to receive, yes, longing and thirsting to do so, and how he precedes us at every moment and each hour… O my children, how obstinately deaf we remain to this loving invitation…: so often we refuse him our acceptance of this invitation. How many of the Holy Spirit’s summons and appeals are repulsed; we refuse them on the grounds of all kinds of things here below. So often we want something else and not the place God where wants us.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become children; being made children, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. God says: “I have said you are gods, and all children of the Most High” (Ps 81[82],6). This work of baptism is variously called grace, illumination, perfection, and washing. Washing, by which we cleanse away our sins; grace, by which the punishment owing to our sins is remitted; illumination, by which the holy light of salvation is beheld so that we see clearly the divine things; perfection, because nothing is lacking. For what is yet lacking to one who knows God? Or how could we call “God’s grace” something that is not perfect? Being perfect himself, God only bestows perfect gifts… Therefore, we have hardly been regenerated than, as the name suggests, we have been “illuminated”, set free from darkness and, in the same instant, filled with light… We are relieved of the sins that concealed the divine Spirit like a cloud and, behold, the eye of the spirit is set free, uncovered and full of light: that eye which alone enables us to contemplate divine things.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

The apostles were sitting there in the Cenacle, the Upper Room, waiting for the Holy Spirit’s coming. Like torches they were present there, ready and waiting to be set alight by the Holy Spirit so as to illumine the whole creation with their teaching… They were there like farm hands carrying seed in their coat pocket waiting for the order to go out and sow. They were there like sailors whose boat is tied up in the harbor of the Son’s commandment and who are waiting for the gentle wind of the Spirit. They were there like shepherds who have just received their staff from the Chief Shepherd of the fold and who are waiting for the flock to be divided among them. “And they began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” O Cenacle, kneading trough into which has been thrown the leaven leavening the whole world! O Cenacle, mother of all the churches, who have witnessed the miracle of the burning bush (Ex 3). O Cenacle, amazing Jerusalem with a wonder far greater than that of the burning furnace which astonished the inhabitants of Babylon (Dn 3). The fire of the furnace burned all those around it but protected those in its midst; the flames of the Cenacle gather together those outside who wish to see them while bringing comfort to those who receive them. O fire, whose coming is word, whose silence is light! O fire, establishing hearts in thankfulness!… Some people, who were opposed to the Holy Spirit, said: “These people have had too much new wine; they are drunk.” Indeed, you speak truly! However, it isn’t as you think it is. It isn’t wine from the vineyard they have drunk. It is a new wine that flows from heaven: a wine newly pressed on Golgotha. The apostles caused it to be drunk and thus they inebriated all creation. This is wine that was pressed on the cross.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

We are nothing of ourselves but we are a great deal with the Holy Spirit. The human person is all earthly, wholly animal, only the Holy Spirit can raise the soul and elevate it on high. Like those kinds of spectacles which magnify things, the Holy Spirit makes us see both the good and the bad enlarged. With the Holy Spirit one sees everything enlarged: the greatness of the least action done for God and the greatness of the least fault. As a clockmaker can distinguish with his spectacles the smallest parts of a watch so, with the light of the Holy Spirit, we can see every detail of our poor lives. Everything is cold without the Holy Spirit and so, whenever we feel our fervor fading, we should make a novena to the Holy Spirit to ask for faith and love!

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

“Watch!” Jesus insists… We are not simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not simply to obey, but to watch. To watch for what? For that great event, Christ’s coming… We seem to see a special duty enjoined on us, such as does not naturally come into our minds. Most of us have a general idea what is meant by believing, fearing, loving, and obeying; but perhaps we do not contemplate or apprehend what is meant by watching… He watches for Christ who has a sensitive, eager, apprehensive mind; who is awake, alive, quick-sighted, zealous in seeking and honouring him; who looks out for him in all that happens… And he watches with Christ (Mt 26,38), who, while he looks on to the future, looks back on the past, and does not so contemplate what his Saviour has purchased for him, as to forget what he has suffered for him. He watches with Christ, whoever commemorates and renews in his own person Christ’s Cross and Agony, and gladly takes up that mantle of affliction which Christ wore here, and left behind him when he ascended. And hence in the Epistles, as often as the inspired writers show their desire for his second coming, as often do they show their memory of his first, and never lose sight of his crucifixion in his resurrection… If he speaks to the Corinthians of “waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1Cor 1,7-8) he also speaks of “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2Cor 4,10)… Thus the thought of what Christ is, must not obliterate from the mind the thought of what he was… And the same union of opposite thoughts is impressed on us in Holy Communion, in which we see Christ’s death and resurrection together, at one and the same time; we commemorate the one, we rejoice in the other; we make an offering, and we gain a blessing. This then is to watch; to be detached from what is present, and to live in what is unseen; to live in the thought of Christ as he came once, and as he will come again; to desire his second coming, from our affectionate and grateful remembrance of his first.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team