Upcoming Special Masses Ember Day Masses at St. Josaphat

Tridentine Community News (March 6, 2011):

For the first time in over 40 years, St. Josaphat Church will offer Tridentine Masses on the Ember Days of Lent: Wednesday, March 16 and Friday, March 18, both at 7:00 PM. Ember Saturday is superseded this year by the Feast of St. Joseph; a special Tridentine Mass will be held on March 19 at noon at St. Joseph Church.

Ember Days are a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of one week on which the Church calls for prayer in thanksgiving for the gifts of the earth. These were also historically days on which ordinations were held and thus are fitting days of prayer for vocations. There are four seasonal sets of Ember Days, observed on the weeks after December 13 (Feast of St. Lucy), the First Sunday of Lent, Pentecost, and September 14 (Exaltation of the Holy Cross). While no longer mandatory, it is traditional for the faithful to fast and abstain on the Ember Days.

When the Calendar was revised in 1969, Ember Days were not officially discarded, but were relegated to be decided upon by national Bishops’ Conferences. Unfortunately, they seem to have been forgotten in Canada and the U.S., perhaps because the concurrent relaxing of the fasting laws made their non-observance no longer a mortal sin. Fasting laws are matters of Canon Law and not Liturgical Law, and for the time being are aligned with the Ordinary Form Calendar.

Next St. Albertus Mass In Two Weeks

The next Tridentine Mass at St. Albertus Church will be held on Sunday, March 20 at noon. The celebrant will be Fr. Louis Madey.

Bishop Boyea to Celebrate Tridentine Mass in Ann Arbor

As part of His Excellency’s plan to establish and support four principal sites for the Extraordinary Form in the Diocese of Lansing, Bishop Earl Boyea will celebrate a Pontifical Low Mass at Ann Arbor’s Old St. Patrick Church on Lætáre Sunday, April 3, at 12:30 PM. With this visit, His Excellency will have celebrated the Tridentine Mass at all four of those locations.

Another Tridentine Mass at the National Shrine in DC

The Paulus Institute, organizer of the first Pontifical Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC in April, 2010, has scheduled another Pontifical Mass there on Saturday, April 9 at 1:00 PM. EWTN will provide live coverage beginning at 12:30 PM. The celebrant will process in wearing the Cappa Magna, a cape with a long train traditionally used by bishops and cardinals for the most solemn of celebrations. The National Shrine is the largest church in the United States and a magnificent setting for the Traditional Mass.

The celebrant will be Archbishop Joseph Augustine DiNoia, OP, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. As a point of interest, this is the Vatican department that regulates the Ordinary Form of Holy Mass. Yet even Archbishop DiNoia’s immediate superior, Congregation Prefect Antonio Cañizares Llovera, is a regular celebrant of public Extraordinary Form Masses, and has made public statements supporting the classic Liturgy. These are examples to be heeded.


Further information is available at www.pontificalmass.org.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 03/07 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Thomas Aquinas, Confessor & Doctor)

Tue. 03/08 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. John of God, Confessor)
Wed. 03/09 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Ash Wednesday)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for March 6, 2011. Hat tip to A.B.]