Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine)

True devotion to Mary is an easy, short, perfect, and safe road to perfection, which means union with Christ. It is an easy road. It was opened up to us by Jesus when he came to us. There are no obstacles there to prevent our using it to go to him. One may, it is true, arrive at union with God by other roads. But one will encounter many more crosses, deadly perils, and difficulties to overcome. There will be dark nights, strange combats, bitter agonies. There will be steep mountains to climb, sharp patches of briars and brambles, frightful deserts. But the road of Mary is gentle and more peaceful. One finds there, it is true, great difficulties and fierce battles. But our mother is ever near, to light the darkness, to clear away doubts, to give strength, to banish fear, to help in every way. The Virgin road to Jesus, in comparison with all others, is a path of roses and wild honey.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

In the course of the ages two great revolutions have shaken the earth; we call them the two Covenants. The first one caused people to pass from idol worship to the Law, and the second, from the Law to the Gospel. A third upheaval is predicted: that which will transport us from below to above, whereupon there will be no more movement or disturbance. Now these two Covenants both share one same characteristic..: neither of them suddenly caused an instantaneous transformation… They were not to force but to persuade us. For what is imposed by force does not last… The Old Testament manifested the Father clearly and the Son obscurely. The New Testament has revealed the Son and hinted at the divinity of the Spirit. Today the Spirit is alive in our midst and is making himself know more clearly. It would have been hazardous, so long as the Father’s divinity was not recognized, to preach the Son openly, and so long as the Son’s divinity was not acknowledged, to impose… the Holy Spirit. One might have feared that, like people who are surfeited or like those who stare at the sun with weak eyes, believers would have run the risk of losing what they had strength to bear. So the glory of the Trinity had to shine out in successive steps or, as David says, “from strength to strength” (Ps 84[83],8) and progressively, from one degree of glory to another… I would like to add one further consideration: our Savior knew certain things that he considered his disciples would be unable to bear in spite of all the teaching they had already received. For the same reasons as I said above, he kept these things hidden. And he emphasized that when the Spirit came, he would teach them all things.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

Christ really is with us now, whatever be the mode of it. This he says expressly Himself; “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Mt 28,20)… You may be led to explain his declaration thus; “He has come again, but in his Spirit; that is, his Spirit has come instead of him; and when it is said that he is with us, this only means that his Spirit is with us.” No one, doubtless, can deny… that the Holy Ghost is come; but why has he come? to supply Christ’s absence, or to accomplish his presence? Surely to make him present. Let us not for a moment suppose that God the Holy Ghost comes in such sense that God the Son remains away. No; he has not so come that Christ does not come, but rather he comes that Christ may come in his coming. Through the Holy Ghost we have communion with Father and Son. “In Christ we are built together,” says Saint Paul, “for an habitation of God through the Spirit” and: “Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Ep 2,22; 3,16f). The Holy Spirit causes, faith welcomes, the indwelling of Christ in the heart. Thus the Spirit does not take the place of Christ in the soul, but secures that place to Christ… The Holy Spirit, then, vouchsafes to come to us, that by his coming Christ may come to us, not carnally or visibly, but may enter into us. And thus he is both present and absent; absent in that he has left the earth, present in that he has not left the faithful soul; or, as he says himself, “The world sees me no more, but you see me.” (Jn 14, 19).
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

The going forth of a contemplative is a heavenly life… for by means of blissful love he transcends his creaturely state and finds and savors the riches and delight which God is himself and which he causes ceaselessly to flow forth into the hidden depths of the spirit, where the spirit bears a likeness to God’s own nobility. When an interior, contemplative person has thus attained his eternal image and, in this purity and by means of the Son, has possessed the Father’s bosom, then he is enlightened with divine truth… You should know that the heavenly Father, as a living ground and with all that lives in him, has turned actively toward his Son as toward his own eternal wisdom (Pr 8:22), and that this same wisdom, together with all that lives in it, has actively turned back toward the Father, that is, toward that same ground from which it comes forth. In this meeting between the Father and the Son there arises the third Person, the Holy Spirit, who is the love of them both and who is one with them in the same nature. In a way characterized by both activity and blissful enjoyment, the Spirit embraces and penetrates the Father and Son and all that lives in both of them with such great riches and joy that all creatures must remain silent before this, for the incomprehensible wonder which resides in this love eternally transcends the understanding of all creatures. But when a person understands this wonder and savors it without amazement, then has his spirit been raised above itself and been made one with the Spirit of God; it savors and sees without measure, like God himself—the riches which it has itself become in the Unity of the living ground where it possesses itself in accordance with the mode of its uncreated being… Now this blessed meeting is actively renewed in us… For just as the Father ceaselessly sees all things anew in the birth of the Son, so too are all things loved anew by the Father and the Son in the flowing forth of the Holy Spirit. This is the active meeting of the Father and the Son, in which we are lovingly embraced by means of the Holy Spirit in eternal love.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

Saint Benedict is the father of Europe. When the Roman Empire fell apart, consumed by dilapidation and vices, and when the Barbarians tore into its provinces, this man who (according to Tertullian) has been called the last of the great Romans, who combined what was Roman with the Gospel, drew from these two sources the help and the strength to powerfully unite the peoples of Europe under the banner and authority of Christ… For legions of Benedictine monks spread from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the plains of Poland, soothing the rebellious and savage nations by means of the cross, books and the plow. “Pray and work.” Does not this Benedictine motto contain in its majestic brevity the main law and rule of life of humankind…? Praying is a divine precept; working is also one. We must fulfill the one and the other for the glory of God and the perfection of our minds and bodies… Now [very soon after the Second World War], Europe is groaning from calamities and destitution… In the midst of this storm that caused Europe to fall into disaster and misfortune, it is not inappropriate or useless to remember that powerful interior forces, a long and excellent civilization… were established in Europe as if built on extremely solid foundations.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team