Mass for Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent, from the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany. The celebrant is Auxiliary Bishop Ansgar Puff.
Mass from the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis
The 10 a.m. Mass for the Fifth Sunday of Lent from the magnificent Cathedral in St. Louis:
Celebrant: Abp. Robert Carlson
Organ: Dr. Horst Buchholz
Proper chants from The Proper of the Mass by Fr. Samuel Weber, OSB
Responsorial Psalm by Jeffrey Ostrowski
Chants for the Ordinary of the Mass from the Graduale Romanum
Mass from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham
Mass was offered this morning for the Fifth Sunday of Lent at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, the seat of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction for Catholics in North America of Anglican heritage:
PS: While we’re mentioning one church named in honor of Our Lady of Walsingham, her National Shrine in England has started 24/7 live streaming of its events, including today’s Mass rededicating England to our Lady as her “dowry”:
https://www.walsingham.org.uk/live-stream/
Prayers for the event are on-line at https://www.behold2020.com/
Closing time at St. James
The “Classic FM” radio station in Britain shared this on Facebook the other day:
Last Sunday, hours before lockdown in the United Kingdom, some singers continued the tradition of singing church services, but singing to empty buildings and spaced two meters apart.
This is Mozart’s ‘Ave verum corpus’, sung at St James’, Spanish Place in London.
Vespers for Laetare Sunday
Today CMAA chaplain Fr. Robert Pasley, rector of Mater Ecclesiae Parish in Berlin, New Jersey, celebrated Vespers for the Fourth Sunday of Lent:
And in Charles Town, West Virginia, the community of Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem did the same:
Ordinary Form Ordo 2020
The USCCB Committee on Divine Worship has helpfully published the 2020 Liturgical Calendar for the Dioceses of the United States of America (PDF, free download) on their web site.
The Calendar contains Scripture readings for each observance, details about regional variations in holy days of obligation, and an appendix listing patronal days for Latin American countries and the corresponding celebrations that may be observed when they fall on ferial days.
Also mentioned is the new memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, which falls on Pentecost Monday; this year that will be June 1, temporarily displacing St. Justin Martyr.
The water organ
W.H. Auden’s Hymn to Saint Cecilia, memorably set to voices by Benjamin Britten, sketches the patroness of music thus:
In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on,
Poured out her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean’s margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
Why would St. Cecilia construct an organ by the shore? We don’t think of that as a hospitable place for delicate instruments. But the earliest known pipe organ, the hydraulis, invented in the third century BC, ingeniously used water to maintain the pressure in its wind chest. This animation illustrates the mechanism:
and this reproduction instrument at Bath illustrates some of its potential for sound:
No wonder the Byzantine emperors used it in their court ceremonies. This German reconstruction sounds more refined: