She Doesn't Pay Her Musicians!

It's the thin end of the wedge. Sure, just a polka band; laugh if you like. But this is a desperate woman. Mark my words: there are no depths to which this woman will not sink. It will end in not paying the piper.

The Island of Dr Moreau

A wonderfully creepy film with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi in 1932 done again in 1996 with Marlon Brando.
But we never knew the location of Dr Moreau's island.

Now we will. If Dr Moreau, uh, Mr Brown gets his way.

How Many Months Has It Been?

Only ten days? Are you sure?

Well, a quick glance at the indispensable desk calendar shows that it has indeed been only ten days. But now She is, at long last, back and I am going to the airport to retrieve her and put this hideous quasi-bachelor life behind me.

(I'm not a great believer in the exclamation point. But to get the full-flavour of this post you really should imagine three or four of them at the end of that last sentence.)

Rosaries for Peace. . . .

. . .in South America.

[A tip of the balmoral to The Western Confucian.]

Resurrexit Sicut Dixit

Holy Saturday

From Msgr Ronald Knox's The Creed in Slow Motion, published in 1949. [Note: "The sermons of which this book is composed were delivered to the girls at the Assumption Convent (now at Exton, Rutland) when they were evacuated to Aldenham Park, Bridgnorth, during the late war."]

Chapter XII: Dead and buried

I don't know whether you learn any French history here. I can't remember ever being taught any French history in my life. But if you do learn any, you have probably by now got down as far as Clovis, who was king of the Franks in about a.d. 500. He was a pagan to start with, but was converted by marrying a Christian wife, St. Clotilde. And when he was being instructed before his baptism (by St. Remigius, I suppose) and had got down as far as the story of the Crucifixion, Clovis is said to have remarked, " If I had been there with my Franks, we wouldn't have stood for that sort of thing ". This is always quoted as the comment of a very stupid man, who quite failed to see the point. Well, I suppose he did, but in some ways I don't think it's such a bad comment. He was only an old tough, but he had the sense to see that this article in the Christian creed is a very extraordinary one—that the Crucifixion should ever have been allowed to happen.

I don't mean it was an extraordinary thing that men should have allowed it to happen. On the contrary, I'm afraid it was just like us all over; and if Clovis had really been there with his Franks, Pilate would probably have managed to explain to him that this was, after all, the best way out of a difficult situation. No, but it was extraordinary that the Son of God should be allowed to die. Our Lord, as we know, was free from original sin, and on that ground alone you might have thought he ought to be spared the sentence of death, which was only pronounced against our race because of Adam's fault. But there, of course, our Lady was in the same position; and she, like him, underwent the experience of death before she went home. But in our Lord's case there is a quite extraordinary paradox, which may be expressed quite simply in two words; God died. Oh, it's quite true that he didn't die as God; the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity could not, for a solitary moment of time, cease to exist. But the Person who breathed out his Spirit on the Cross was God; and yet he died.

We think of the Resurrection as an extraordinary thing; but that is really the wrong way to look at it. The Resurrection was, you may say, an inevitable event, an event which anybody ought to have foreseen. The pains of death, as St. Peter says, could not hold our Lord; of course they couldn't. No, the extraordinary thing was that the pains of death should ever, even for a moment, have the power to assail him. And yet they did. I've tried to explain to you, in one of my earlier sermons, why it was fitting that this should happen, so far as our limited intelligences can attempt to account for such a mystery. But, however much you or I may understand it or fail to understand it, there is the fact; God died. And it is a mystery which will, perhaps, make it easier for us to understand other mysteries; other mysteries which will cross the path of each of us, as life goes on. I mean, when someone for whom we care deeply is taken from us by death and we find ourselves murmuring at the back of our minds the old complaint: " Why was this allowed to happen? " All we know is that God hung on the Cross, with his Blessed Mother beside him praying a Mother's prayers; and he was allowed to die.

Our Lord wasn't like other men. God didn't treat him as he treats you and me, sending what he sees best to us whether we like it or not, and often in spite of our frantic struggles to avoid it. No, nothing was done without the co-operation of our Lord's human will. And so it was at his death; his death was an action, not a pressure from outside which he couldn't avoid. Sometimes the deaths of holy people have the air of being deliberately willed. I was told a story of Father Bede Jarrett, the great Dominican provincial who died not very long ago, which illustrates that. I have been told that when he fell into his last illness, Father Bernard Delany went to see him, and said, " Well, Father, of course you know that you've got to get well; we can't possibly spare you ". And about a fortnight later, when Father Bernard went to see him again, Father Bede said, " Oh, Father, I'm so dreadfully tired; do you think you could let me want to die after all, or must I go on under obedience wanting to live? " And he naturally said, " Oh, of course I never meant to put you under obedience ." And Father Bede said, " Thank you so much", and died about half an hour afterwards.

Well, as I say, nothing ever happened to our Lord which he didn't will with his human will, and therefore you may think of his death as an action of his; he didn't just get killed, or let himself die, he chose death. You get hints of that all through the story of the Crucifixion; that he should have died after three hours, I mean, whereas a man may hang alive on a cross for three days; that he should have cried aloud, saying quite intelligible words, a moment before, as if there was no mortal weakness in him; and then there's that phrase St. John uses, " Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst"—he has the whole situation in his hands, up to the last moment. I don't mean that if our Lord's body had been submitted to a post mortem examination it would have been impossible to find any cause of death; I don't see why his death should have been supernatural in that sense. But his will co-operated in his own death; he was not robbed of his life, he deliberately handed it over.

It's curious, isn't it, how when you come to look into them all the clauses of the Credo which seemed the obvious and easy ones are really the obscure and difficult ones ? To say that our Lord died seems quite an ordinary statement, but we have seen that it's a very extraordinary statement indeed. And then when we come on to this next clause, we're in just the same position. He died, and was buried; of course, you say, if he died, naturally the next thing was to bury him. Yes, but what I'm trying to show you is that, if it was an astonishing thing that our Lord should die, equally it was an astonishing thing that he should stay dead. The separation of body from soul, even in us ordinary human creatures, is not a natural state; it is an unnatural state which only takes effect because we are sinful creatures, fallen creatures, born under a curse. It's not natural for a soul to be separated from its body any more than it is natural for a fish to live out of water. And in our Lord's case there was no question of punishment for sin, no question of his having inherited the taint of fallen nature. Therefore you would have expected that as soon as he died he would come to life again. Every second during which he stayed dead, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday morning, was a kind of miracle; a much more remarkable miracle really than his Resurrection. Why did that happen?
You see, there's a very important principle in theology which lays it down that miracula non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is Latin, but it is not very difficult Latin to translate; I should think some of you could almost do it in your heads. Miracula, miracles, non sunt, are not, multiplicanda, meet to be multiplied, praeter, beyond, necessitatem, what is necessary. God can do any amount of miracles, but we are not to assume that he throws miracles about the place recklessly all the time. For instance, if you look in your desk to find a particular book and can't see it there, and the mistress says, " Go back and look again ", and you say a prayer to St. Anthony and find the book as soon as you open the desk, it's possible that there has been a miracle. It's possible that you left the book among the straw you put in your rabbit-hutch; there would be nothing unusual about that. And it's possible that St. Anthony found it there and scooped it up and put it back in your desk in answer to your prayer; St. Anthony is a very great saint, and it is not impossible that his intercession should have done that for you. But, on the principle which we have just been translating from the Latin, it's safer to assume that probably when you looked in your desk before you didn't look very carefully. And that makes us wonder why our Lord didn't come to life again almost immediately after he died, instead of lying on there in his tomb all Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, by a long series, as it were, of miracles. Why was it our Lord wanted, not merely to die, but to be buried in the earth?

Well, I think there are a whole lot of answers to that question; and we shall come across most of them in their due place, if we go on pegging away at the Credo. For instance, I think he wanted to fortify our imaginations against the uncomfortable feeling we all have when we go to a funeral, and the coffin is smothered in earth. We know really that all that makes no difference, because the dead person will rise again; but there is something which depresses our imagination about the thought of a grave dug in the ground. To lighten that depression of ours, our Lord was content to be buried in a tomb, so that we should be able to think of the earth to which, sooner or later, we must return, as something which has been hallowed and quickened by his presence. When you were very small, and had to take medicine, did your mother ever take a sip of the medicine first, just so as to assure you that everything was all right? That is what Jesus Christ did, when he was buried for us. But we shall be talking about that, I suppose, when we get on to the Resurrection of the Flesh.

And then, I think he wanted his burial to be the mystical symbol of our baptism. St. Paul doesn't think of baptism so much as washing us clean from our sins; he likes to think of it rather as burying us away from our sins; the waters of baptism roll over us and engulf us, and we come to life again, as it were, new creatures, after that drowning. So, right back to St. Paul's time, Christian thought has looked upon our Lord's passage through the dark gates of the tomb as the type of our passage through the waters of baptism, and not merely the type of it, but the power which gives it its efficacy.

And then you've got to remember that, while his body lay in the tomb, our Lord's soul was not being idle. But we shall be talking about that, I hope, on the last Sunday of this term, so there's no need to deal with it now.

Meanwhile, there's a much more human reason our Lord had for putting a fairly long interval—not too long, but a fairly long interval—between his death and his rising again. He wanted, surely, to test the faith of his followers. I think that is a point we are apt to forget when we read the story of the Resurrection. I mean, when you read the story of the Resurrection don't you find yourself wondering how it was that it came as such a surprise to everybody? Why weren't they expecting it? He'd told them, again and again. Well, you know, it's only a guess, but I think it was partly the strain of waiting. Oh, it's quite true, our Lord hadn't merely told them he was going to rise from the dead; he had told them he was going to rise from the dead the third day. But hope deferred does make the heart sick; and you will find that the two disciples whom our Lord met on the road to Emmaus, that first Easter Day, talk as if they had grown tired of waiting. " And besides all this, it is now the third day since all this happened "—as if you couldn't be expected to wait a matter of forty-eight hours for God to bring his purpose to fulfilment. Our Lord wanted them, I think, to learn to wait; waiting is good for all of us.

And perhaps the simplest way of all to answer the question, " Why did our Lord want to be buried in the earth?" is this. He wanted the whole of his merciful design for our redemption to unroll itself gradually before our eyes, like a kind of slow-motion picture; never hurrying, never giving us the opportunity of saying, " Stop a minute, I haven't quite taken that in yet". He wouldn't just come to earth, he would spend thirty-three years on earth. He wouldn't just appear suddenly and scatter miracles over the country-side in the course of an afternoon; he would spend three years going about and doing good. He wouldn't just die for us; he would hang there, three whole hours, on the Cross, so that we could watch him and take it all in. And he wouldn't just die-and-rise-again; he would spend part of three days in the tomb, with his enemies vindictively keeping watch over him, with his friends pathetically mourning for him, so that when the Resurrection did come it should come as a deliberate gesture. " I have power," he said, " to lay down my life, and power to take it up again." See how deliberately he lays aside that garment of life, master of the situation, even when his hands and feet are nailed to a cross! See how deliberately he takes that garment of life up again, master of the situation still, even when he lies in a tomb! Nothing impresses us so much, when we read the account of God's dealings with his creation, either in science or in history, as the majestic slowness of his movements. And God made Man did not lose the characteristics of Godhead; he went to work very slowly, for all the world to see that he was God.

Time For My Medicine

It's a penance, of course, but what can one do?

Politics: Running Barefoot Through the News

The political week, however, has been filled with entertainment.

Hillary finally released over eleven thousand pages of single-spaced typescript showing how qualified for the presidency you can get presiding over White House dinners and inventing failed health care plans. But not, alas, containing the fun stuff. Newsweek noticed.


Senator McCain didn't do anything very entertaining. He went overseas and did his best to look Presidential, which he does very well.

I see in The Times this morning he's not getting anywhere near the level of contributions the Democrats are. Not difficult to believe. A writer, I think in The Wanderer, recently summed up McCain's platform in three lines:

Your jobs aren't coming back.
The illegals aren't going home.
And we're going to have war for 100 years.

Hard to resist an appeal like that.

Stolen Car Returned After 38 Years

The Times story with picture can be found here.

O.K., not all that fascinating to you. But I learned to drive in a '65 Mustang. It was a beauty. And almost new. (Yes, I really am that old.) I don't doubt that Mr Brakke wants this one back and Mrs Smongesky will be in tears to lose it.

Of course, having learned I received my license.

And went on to drive the 12 year old Fairlane.

Not the same. Not the same at all.

Good Friday

Something on the early liturgical history of Good Friday from the Blessed Cardinal Schuster's Liber Sacramentorum, volume II:

Good Friday

Collecta at the Lateran. Station at the Holy Cross in Jerusalem

Christ had said, "Non capit prophetam perire extra Hierusalem";["It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." (Luke xiii; 33)] for this reason the station is held today in the basilica known as Sancta Hierusalem, to which the Pope formerly went barefoot, walking in procession from the Lateran. He swung, as he went , a censer filled with precious perfumes before the wood of he true cross, carried by a deacon, whilst the choir sang Psalm cxviii; Beati immaculati in via.

Originally, a a sign of deep mourning, this day was aliturgical, as were usually all the Fridays and Saturdays of the year in Rome. Thus, when towards the sixth century the rigour of the ancient rule was somewhat relaxed and the Friday stations of Lent were instituted, the Popes still continued for many centuries the ancient Roman usage, which excluded even the Mass of the Presanctified on this day. . . .

The Adoration of the True Cross on Good Friday was taken, as we have already said, from the Liturgy of Jerusalem, where it was already in use towards the end of the fourth century. Indeed, for a long time, in the West also, this adoration formed almost the most important and characteristic part of the ceremony, the central point, as it were, of the whole Liturgy of the Parasceve. Ecce lignum crucis: this is the beginning of the parousia of the divine judge, and at the sight of the triumphal banner of redemption, whilst the Church prostrates herself low in adoration, the powers of hell flee away terror-stricken into the abyss.

At Rome in the Middle Ages the papal reliquary containing the true cross was sprinkled with perfumes, indicating thereby the sweetness of the grace which flows from the sacred wood, and the inner unction and the spiritual balm which the Lord pours into the hearts of those who carry the cross for love of him..

According to the Ordines Romani of the eighth century, today's ceremony took place partly in the Sessorian Basilica and partly in the Lateran. Towards two o'clock in the afternoon the Pope and the palatine clergy moved in procession barefoot from the Lateran to the stational basilica, where the Adoration of the Cross took place, followed by the reading of the Passion according to St John, and the Great Litany for the various ecclesiastical orders and for the necessities of the Church. The procession then returned to the Lateran, singing as they walked the psalm Beati immaculati in via. On this day of sadness neither the Pope nor the deacons received Holy Communion, but the people were free to do so either at the Lateran, where one of the suburbicarian bishops celebrated, or at any of the titular churches in the city.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, there will be a celebration of the traditional rites according to the 1962 Missal at 3:00 p.m. at St John Vianney Chapel in Daniel Murphy High School, 229 Detroit St., Los Angeles CA. Take the Santa Monica Freeway from either direction and exit at La Brea. Head north to 3d Street and turn left. Detroit is the first street you come to. Turn right and you'll be in front of the chapel almost immediately. There is a parking lot which is easily accessed from the street behind the High School.

And hurry. You haven't got much time, what with the rush hour traffic.

The Week

It has been an unusual week. My mother-in-law has not been in good health for a while. And now the family thinks she is dying. Although, to be sure, there is no medical opinion to that effect, Mary flew off last Monday to be with her and be what help she can. So if you have an extra moment and can say a little prayer for Rosie, it would be appreciated.

In the meantime, I am once again pottering about here on the ancestral estate by myself and alternately enjoying doing whatever I like without regard to anyone else's wants and needs and missing having Someone Else's wants and needs to take into consideration. There's no one here to read to from the morning paper. Yes, I can read it out loud anyway, but nobody laughs or asks me questions about it. Usually, I take Herself's absence as an opportunity to cook all those things I like that she doesn't really care for. But, wouldncha know, it's Holy Week. Since I can't really do a proper fast according to the rule, in its place I try to keep things fairly bland and moderately unappetizing.

And I had nothing to do on St Patrick's Day. This is not only highly unusual but a major financial hit. It's like a retailer being closed in December. Some things were cancelled by the client and I had to pass on some other things to help get ready for the trip. "There is no shame in being a poor man," as the Reverend Canon Sidney Smith reminded us, "but it is confounded inconvenient."

Possibly St Patrick's Day

But probably not. Somewhere on earth this might be St Patrick's Day but I can't imagine where. This year because of the very early Easter, we have liturgical difficulties in celebrating the good saint. In Ireland, the Isle of Man, Nigeria, and a few other places where he is the principal patron, his feast day was transfered to last Saturday, the 15th. Except in those places that observe the traditional calendar, in which case the rubrics prescribe that it will be transfered ahead to some point after Easter Week, along with St Joseph's day and the feast of the Annunciation. See your local ordo for details. Here in the Archdiocese of Hollywood, before renewal hit and registered a solid 8 on the richter scale, Cardinal McIntyre of happy memory presided over the local church and St Patrick was the co-patron of the Archdiocese along with St Vibiana. But he's never mentioned as such any more and I don't know what became of his patronal status. In this Archdiocese, his feast seems to have vanished this year.

Because it's Monday in Holy Week, you know, and the feriæ Hebdomadæ Sanctæ are at the very top of the Tabula Dierum Liturgicorum, in the second category, inferior in importance only to the Triduum paschale Passionis et Resurrectionis Domini itself. In the old days, it appears that a commemoration was allowed. But no more. It seems to be transferral or nothing.

Just so you won't leave The Inn empty-handed, you can improve your appreciation of Irish Whiskey here.

And have a listen to the St Lawrence O'Toole Pipe Band playing their medley at the 2005 All Ireland Pipe Band Championship here:

Making the Mormons Look Better Every Day

WSJ: Obama and the Minister

The Atlantic: The Wright Problem

NY Post: Obama's Minister of Hate

ABC News: Obama's Preacher

Super Delegates

If you were wondering who they were and who was committed to whom, this website is just what you've been wanting. All the Super Delegates: listed by category, by state, and by who's committed to whom. My congresshuman, for instance, is a woman and a Latina but nevertheless shows up in the Obama column. A rare bird, indeed, according to those who profess to know about these things.

The Sarum Use

A wonderful series of videos of the Sarum Use Mass that was celebrated in 1997 has been posted by the Reverend Pastor of the Valle Adurni blog, accompanied by his own very useful commentary. This isn't to be missed.

There are fifteen in the series. You can go here and scroll down to February 25, 2008 and work your way up. Or use the direct links in order:

First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
Eighth
Ninth
Tenth
Eleventh
Twelfth
Thirteenth
Fourteenth
Fifteenth

[And thanks for the reference, Eloise!]

Obedience

A Lightning Meditation from Msgr Knox. Why? Because I'm not very good at obedience and it struck home. It's not as hard as charity to be sure, but it's no walk in the park either.

An age like ours, which treasures the smart sayings of the children, may be a little disconcerted over our Lord's biography. "I must needs be in the place which belongs to my Father" -- was that the only memorable thing he said before turning thirty-three? And the church, characteristically, will not let the story end there. "He went down with them to Nazareth, and lived in subjection to them"; the moral is not, after all, to be in favour of truancy. The exception proves the rule; one gesture of freedom is the preface to long years of dependence; the silence has been broken only to be resumed.

Of all the Christian virtues, none is more admired by the world at large than that of obedience; none is less admired for its own sake. Discipline is valuable in the school, in the army, even (after a fashion) in the workshop; obedience, the sacrifice of personality, is therefore necessary as a means to an end. What we admire for its own sake is not obedience, but freedom, originality, independence of character. If the Church preaches obedience, it is doubtless for her own ends. . . .But it is not so. "The Roman line, the Roman order" -- that is only a detail.

Much can be (and has been) said about the spiritual advantages which result from learning the habit of obedience; as, that when you have to obey out of necessity you will be able to do it without grumbling, or that it saves you from the distracting experience of having to make up your own mind about a hundred matters of detail. But all these are still side-issues; the real point about obedience is that it is a virtue on its own account. It is humility strung up to concert pitch by the fact that you are obeying a fellow-mortal whose judgment, humanly speaking, you have no particular reason to trust. You do it precisely to imitate the condescension of the God who was obedient to his own creatures. And, doing it, you become not just a more useful tool, but a better man.

Daylight Savings (sic) Time

The season of springing forward is upon us, yea, even tonight.

(This is the sort of public service stuff that makes The Inn the vital news source that the republic relies on.)

Prophecy from Peggy

Vide this morning's paper, wherein she saith:

I end with a deadly, dead pan prediction from Christopher Hitchens. Hillary is the next president, he told radio's Hugh Hewitt, because "there's something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power. . . people who don't want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end."

The rest is here.

St Joseph

St Joseph's day will be on the 15th this year. Or maybe on the 1st of April. It all depends upon whether you follow the calendar for the "ordinary" or "extraordinary" use. In any event, it won't be on the 19th this year since that falls in Holy Week.

If you're following the "ordinary" use calendar, we're a day late in starting the novena to St Joseph. So if you start today you'll be ending on the day itself rather than the day before. You can find a novena prayer here. Since we're a day late, you may want to add the litany.

"Extraordinary" use folks can relax; we've got two weeks to go yet.

Lt Vincent Capodanno, CHC USNR

This morning's Wall Street Journal carried a fine piece on the Servant of God Fr Vincent Capodanno. You can find it here. Not something one expects to see in the WSJ. A pleasant surprise.

Fr Capodanno's cause has its own website here.

The Day's Politics in Two and a Half Minutes

Playbook TV has become a daily must-see. Today's episode includes the "monster" comment and a Reszko update:



Witty, breezy, and fun. And, yes, a bit sophomoric at times. But you try summarizing each day's political news in two and half minutes without putting the world to sleep.

Each day's episode.

Found While Looking for Something Else

A very useful little website: Practical Money Skills For Life.

It seems to be sponsored by VISA of credit card fame (or infamy depending upon your APR) so I have been looking for the self-serving misinformation. So far, just practical and useful information clearly presented.

"Mutual Assured Destruction" Redivivus

That's Tim Russert's pointed description for this phase of the Democrats' campaign.

Starting with some practice jabs this morning:

"We want to start with the release of tax returns," [Obama advisor David] Axelrod said. "Sen Clinton has been very elusive in this campaign."

"There is no reason she cannot realease her 2006 returns. Talk about change you can Xerox. You can Xerox your tax returns," he said. "She has been a habitual non-discloser on this and other issues."

Followed by:

Statement from Howard Wolfson, [Senator Clinton's] Communications Director

Faced with many legitimate questions about Senator Obama’s long-time relationship with indicted political fixer Tony Rezko, the Obama campaign has chosen to lash out at Senator Clinton. . . .

. . . .Instead of making false attacks, we urge Senator Obama to release all relevant financial and other information related to indicted political fixer Tony Rezko.

I amaze myself with my fascination with this stuff. As the possibility that any party will nominate a candidate I could whole-heartedly support (or support at all without a sore conscience) vanishes to zero, I become more and more intoxicated with all the political to-ing and fro-ing. Not the issues, mind. There's very little of that sort of discussion anyway, and when there is, it's impossible to tell if any of these folks are telling the truth. But the political positioning is absorbing, a sort of year long dance or fencing match.

It's making it very hard to pay sufficient attention to the baseball season even though spring training is upon us.

Irish Pipering

We haven't brought up the bagpipe on The Inn for a while now. It hasn't been forgotten, although it might sound like it if you heard me play. I am desperately in need of practice; the dose of flu (not a bad title for a tune; something slow and very minor sounding) put a large crimp in the ability to practice. The piper here is Mickey Dunne playing The Highlevel Hornpipe and The Bucks of Oranmore. He's playing the Irish uilleann pipe, which I don't play, so I don't feel quite as guilty about my lack of practice as I would otherwise.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Dedwydd!

That had better mean "Happy St David's Day" or I shall be mightily embarrassed.

And it is St David's Day today, the 1st of March, so you should be wearing your leek or your daffodil. (If you're in the 2d Battalion, The Royal Welsh you have no excuse as they've already been presented to you.) You can take part in a parade if you're in Wales, where you'll hear Wales's own pipe band, the Bagad Bro Morgannwg. I couldn't find a picture or a page for the Bagad Bro Morgannwg, but the Welsh Piping Society has a page here.

The collect for the feast of St David in the traditional Roman Rite:

Concede nobis, omnipotens Deus, ut beati David, Confessoris tui atque Pontificis, pia intercessio nos protegat, et dum eius solemnia celebramus, in catholica tuenda fide firmitatem imitemur. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Filium tuum. Amen.

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the loving intercession of blessed David, Thy Confessor and Bishop, might ever protect us, and that while we keep his feast we may also imitate his perseverance in defending the Catholic Faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

And finally the DNB tells us more about St David than we knew existed.