St Andrew's Day

The 30th of November is the feast of St Andrew the Apostle, the patron of Scotland  -- and Russia, Prussia, somewhere in Greece, Amalfi in Italy and a lot of other places and things,  too.

A piece from a few years ago on St Andrew and Scotland.

And not least, the St Andrew Christmas Novena begins today.

From The Inn a couple of years ago:


It's not really to St Andrew; but it begins, depending upon which tradition you follow,  on his feast day or on the 1st Sunday of Advent which is the Sunday nearest his feast day.  This year that's the same thing. [Or it was 2 years ago.] And it's not really a novena which is supposed to last nine days.

But it's a beautiful prayer tradition for the season.  The prayer is this:

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.

The tradition is to pray it 15 times a day until Christmas.  There are many mentions of it on the web but no site goes very deeply, or indeed at all,  into its history.  Mrs Vidal says as much as anyone here. There's another mention here. [Or there was 2 years ago.] It seems that's as much as we're going to learn about it. My grandmother knew it and so as a good traditionalist, I've adopted it.

Veiled

A very charming little video and worth a look.  

But.  

The emphasis on veils exclusively is in my experience misplaced.  When I was a boy, a very long time ago, to be sure, women did not wear veils in church.  They wore proper hats. School girls in the younger grades had little beanies (zuchetti?) that co-ordinated with their school uniforms.  But adult women wore hats.  There may have been a little round piece of lace no bigger than a saucer in the handbag for purposes of "making a visit".  But for Sunday Mass it was a hat and not a veil.

Perhaps the mantilla reigned south of the border but it didn't in my parish.

The St Andrew Christmas Novena

Sort of.

It's not really to St Andrew; but it begins, depending upon which tradition you follow,  on his feast day or on the 1st Sunday of Advent which is the Sunday nearest his feast day.  This year that's the same thing.  And it's not really a novena which is supposed to last nine days.

But it's a beautiful prayer tradition for the season.  The prayer is this:

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.

The tradition is to pray it 15 times a day until Christmas.  There are many mentions of it on the web but no site goes very deeply, or indeed at all,  into its history.  Mrs Vidal says as much as anyone here. There's another mention here. It seems that's as much as we're going to learn about it. My grandmother knew it and so as a good traditionalist, I've adopted it.

Ad Orientem

A new video from the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales on the whys and wherefores of Mass celebrated ad orientem.

F.S.S.P. in L.A.

That somewhat cryptic headline is meant to indicate that the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter will now have an apostolate in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  Alas, since the Archdiocese runs from the Orange County line all the way up to the northern most border of Santa Barbara County the chances of the apostolate being anywhere near you or me is minimal . . . even allowing for the expansive definition of "near" which Californians and westerners in general have. Nevertheless, it's worth at least a privately-prayed Te Deum to have an established apostolate dedicated to the traditional liturgy here in the Archdiocese.

Here's the announcement in Rorate Cæli.
Here's the new apostolate's website.

And speaking of "Suppressio Veri" . . .

 . . . this pretty much hits the nail on the head.

". . . a simple low Mass in very austere settings."

Anyone visiting The Inn probably already haunts The New Liturgical Movement so we seldom link there as it would be a bit redundant.  But just in case you missed this, click here and read a beautiful post by a young Jesuit on his discovery of the traditional Roman Rite.