00:01
i will sing a hymn to our lady or queen of the holy rosary
and then crown the statue and then sing one more verse of the same hymn
o queen of the holy rosary o bless us as we pray and offer thee our roses

00:02
in garland's day by day while from our father's god and

00:03
with loving hearts and bold we gather white and red and gold
o queen of the holy rosary each mystery blends within the sacred life of jesus
in every step divine thy soul was his fair god and thy virgin breast his throne

00:04
thy thoughts is faithful mirror reflecting him alone you may have a seat
so yes let's um take seriously this rosary crusade it kind of
popped up out of nowhere for me just about a week ago
and hopefully we'll all be faithful to it all of us will pray
hopefully all of you will pray the rosary in your home
and mark your tally sheet uh come kind of brings back
memories of the bishop fellaia administration to me uh but we'll do that again
and also here at the church as you know we'll be praying the rosary
one more time than we normally do we normally play the rosary once a day

00:05
now we'll be praying it twice a day here at the church
so hopefully you'll be able to pray your rosary at least once a day
in your homes unless you want to come to the church and pray with us
so i'd like to um return to our saint who is the patroness of these classes
so far these spiritual conferences uh saint philomena
and this is looking at the life the life of pope pius ix
you might remember remember his name is blessed pope pius ix
the year was about 2000 when pope john paul ii declared that two
popes were going to be declared declared blessed they were pope john xxiii
and pope pius ix so you know how we traditionalists are we heard
pope john the 23rd he's the one who called the second vatican council and said
let's mix the church with the world and before we got all up in arms about
it they said but don't worry we're also beatifying pope pius ix
he's the champion of orthodoxy in the catholic church from the 19th century

00:06
so i guess we were kind of calmed and soothed
and placated and then i think that was the last time they ever mentioned pope
pius the 9th pope john the 23rd went on to become a
saint along with pope john paul ii himself
and i think pope paul vi is now a saint so
you've all written witnessed that story just as much as i have
so pope pius ix who is the hero and a champion of
the declaration of the immaculate conception of our lady in the year 1854
also he's the one who um wrote the syllabus of errors and quantikura
which show all the modern errors coming from the
exaggeration of the rights of man over the rights of god
and all the errors that will come from that he said this is an error that's an
error that's in there and all this is to be condemned

00:07
you know the religious liberty and um uh the idea that um one can find his own
salvation without the catholic church and one can find salvation
in all the the different religions which are the sects
uh without the catholic church that's all condemned and condemned and condemned
and he's the hero of that and also he's the hero pope pius ix is the hero of um
vatican council the first or the first vatican council
and most known for the declaration on papal infallibility that is pope pius the
ninth blessed pope is a ninth well when he was a child his name was
giovanni maria peretti he was an epileptic
he had epilepsy the man who would become pope
his mother prayed very hard for a cure for him
from saint philomena and it was granted he no longer was an epileptic

00:08
i've never heard of that happening before perhaps you've all known person
with absolute epilepsy in your life they're not always having seizures but
when they do you need to have medicine you need to have
doctors and all the rest of it and that stays with them their whole life
usually is the only case i know of someone who was epileptic and then was
no longer epileptic uh pope pius ix when he was a boy
he grew up and he became the archbishop of spoleto
which is a very important diocese in italy
and yes he spread the devotion of saint philomena
while he was archbishop of spoletto he became archbishop of imola
while he was archbishop there his secretary was that's a canonical position or
that's a ecclesiastical position his secretary
that's not a woman that's a priest with that assignment

00:09
don joseph stella was cured by saint philomena because of the prayers
of pope is the ninth for him through saint philomena he wasn't the pope yet
then he himself uh archbishop giovanni farati
became dangerously ill and his life was feared for
so not only the epilepsy as a child but also as an adult
he became dangerously ill and his life was feared for him
he prayed the same mean saint philomena for a cure
he always kept a beautiful statue of her at his bedside that's what
we're working on here is acquiring a beautiful statue of saint philimina
and he was miraculously cured of his dangerous infirmity
then he became pope archbishop giovanni marian
while he was pope there was a young man named paul mary

00:10
who was deathly ill from cholera and had gone blind this young man prayed very
hard for hard for a cure and was healed on saint philomena's feast day
august the 11th 1849 this young man went to the shrine of
saint philomena to thank her for the cure
and that's where he promised to become a priest at the shrine of saint philomena
this young man got to know pope pius ix and then the pope helped him through the
seminary and the young young man did become a priest
you might remember that it was pope gregory the 16th
uh during the life of pauline jerichot in the year 1837
uh pope gregory the 16th made her a saint he canonized her solely

00:11
solely on the merit of her miracles he didn't even need historical documentation
it was enough for him that they had the miracles and they had the
tomb with her name and the instruments of her martyrdom
that part really uh grabs me because it shows you how it shows us
how weak are the arguments of those who would like to
take away some of the biggest cults in a good sense huh called cultus of the
church because saint philomena by a very important pope
gregor the 16th was made a saint solely on her merits
as a miracle worker and then 100 years passed we get to 1961
and she was her name was taken off the universal calendar solely because she

00:12
was only a miracle worker come on what is this you know
today it's black and tomorrow's white and today is this truth and tomorrow's
that truth it's completely opposing she's made a
saint in one century solely because she's a miracle worker and for all
if practical purposes she was unsainted the next century because she was solely
a miracle worker somebody's got problems in their heads
up here unless they're purely malicious i wouldn't want to say that
um so that was what pope gregory the 16th did for her
and then pope pius ix during his pontificate just after
um this young man was healed and became a priest about 1849
he gave saint philomena her own mass and her own proper office in the breviary
on the feast day of august the 11th before that time
they were celebrating her feast day but you had to use the

00:13
common of virgin martyrs to pray her mass and then he made her own introit ramon
you know reading from the epistles etc just for her
this had never been done before for a roman martyr with no historical record
uh but as you know she had she had already been canonized by pope gregory 16th
eventually pope pius and knife are met with some difficulty
he was exiled from rome that's to say he had a flea roam
to make sure that he was not kidnapped or held as a hostage
in order to gain in order for some worldly power to gain some
worldly advantage has that hope and head help has had happened with um i
the the pope at the time of the finding of the relics of um
saint philippine about the year 1805. i forgot which pope that was

00:14
so the freemasons forced pope pius ix out of rome
that's after they claimed the papal states
and just to make sure they got what they got and they were gonna get
they're gonna take the pope also and say we will keep the pope hostage until he
admits and you all admit that the papal states belong to us
so he in a preemptive escape got out of rome uh until those
freemasons calmed down even after they had stolen the papal
states so where did pope pius and i go for his exile he went to the united
nations building i'm just kidding those are the last
people that will defend the papacy [Laughter] uh pope is the ninth lead to
fled sorry fled to muniano uh the shrine of um
saint filomino to spend some weeks there
or maybe even months why did he go there

00:15
for why did he go there because there he found
refuge and consolation with his great saint she had already saved his life or
at least saved his life once and saved and cured him from epilepsy as a child
and then he watched all these other miracles happening
through her for the church so he was quite
close to her and he went there to spend some time
he celebrated the holy sacrifice of the mass at her altar
he signed his forehead with the vial of her blood
and then carry this vial personally to all the faithful that were present
at the shrine so they could venerate it also
and then when kneeling before the relics of saint philomena
he felt an interior certainty that he would soon
return to rome much in the vatican much sooner than it was thought he would
return let's say providence made it clear to
him that it was safe to return and he did much before it was scheduled to return

00:16
and everything went well thanks to the saint pope pius ix granted
many indulgences to the pilgrims who went to visit saint philomena shrine
in june of 1930 well that's got to be way off i must have copied a date wrong
he didn't live that long uh in june of 1800 and something he
introduced the cause of pauline jerichot for beatification
and finally just a few weeks before his death the death of pope pius ix
he gave a beautiful chalice to her shrine so that's pope is the ninth and saint
philomena i'd like to cover with you the other popes
pope leo the 13th and pope is 10th next time we have class
so we continue to our um study of the holy sacrifice of the mass

00:17
in these spiritual conferences uh last week we did kind of a conclusion
everything that we were studying on the um level of principles
and level of um just sort of abstract thought about what is sacrifice
and what is adoration and why and what is propitiation
and the conclusion was that we what we were concluding with last week
was uh the world is a great persecutor of the church
but in the world there are many holy people who are very attached let's say
imbued with a imbued inspired by transformed by the holy sacrifice of the mass
and these people as much as they receive persecution from the world
they are always sacrificing themselves for the people in the world
while they are punished or whatever you call a tortured
by the world they make sacrifice and because of that other people from the

00:18
world convert and it is the it is the holy sacrifice
of the mass that makes that happen that's the point that we kept studying
last week over and over in different applications and now we come to
this study which is called the liturgical part of the holy sacrifice of the mass
so we're going to study prayers we're going to study gestures of the priest
perhaps gestures of the faithful and also all the
material items that are on the altar and the altar itself
so as you know our divine lord instituted
the sacrificial act with the last supper and then he leaves that to the holy
mother church to choose and form a liturgy where that holy sacrifice will be
made present over and over again he first celebrated the holy sacrifice

00:19
of the mass on a wooden table that wooden table is still preserved till this day
it's been covered over or let's say put inside of a large marble box which
is a new which is an altar and that's in the saint john lateran um
basilica or the basil arch basilica of our divine savior in rome uh
so that's what's happened with his altar
but then take for example the sacraments our lord instituted all the sacraments
then he leads it to holy mother church to keep repeating those sacraments
how did our lord institute confirmation for instance
well the holy spirit descended upon the apostles and our blessed mother
that filled them with the holy ghost all truth
it made them understand all these things of the world
in a supernatural sense it's because the holy ghost is inside of them

00:20
we don't see and hear and feel a strong violent wind
in an earthquake when we receive confirmation no we see a bishop he receives the
faithful he puts the holy chrism on their forehead with a formula
um i sign thee with the sign of the cross and i confirm the with the holy chrism
of salvation in the name of the father son the holy ghost
and gives him a tap on the cheek or a slap on the cheek
and that's confirmation how our lord did it was
how he sent the holy ghost was the violent wind but he leaves it to his
church to determine how they're going to receive confirmation
with the means we have and that's with through the bishop
same thing can be said with the receiving of the um
extreme unction our lord makes the sacrament and then he leaves it to the church
how that sacrament is going to be given to souls
when we offer the holy sacrifice we always use what is noblest

00:21
most noble let's compare in the old testament to the sacrifice of
the two sons of adam and eve at least two of their sons
cain who was older and abel who was younger abel offered a sacrifice of the best
lamb or the best sheep from his whole from his flock
abel was a man of sorry cain his brother was a man of agriculture and he offered
vegetables which is still all right but he offered to god vegetables which were
second class after he already took the best for himself
or for sale or whatever for selling or whatever the thing was was
god was happy with the sacrifice of abel and he was not hacker
happy with the sacrifice of cain and that came to rivalry between the
brothers and cain smote his brother abel does god need lambs and does god need

00:22
sheep no what he does need or what he does want is the sacrifice of what is most
precious to us he wants us to give up what is most precious to us
and say this belongs to you because you're greater than i am
and so when we use uh gold and silver and precious jewels on the altar or for
the monstrance or whatever it is that's not because gold is precious to god
he doesn't need our gold or our silver our jewels but what he does need
what he does ask for from us is to give him the best
of what we materially have and that's the way we say to him that
you are better than we are you're higher than we are
that's why i give up what is best in this world for you

00:23
god does not need our gold but what god does want is our contrite heart and our
humble heart which is expressed by giving up which
what would be best materially for us in this world to say no no no
this is for you we you are higher than we are you get the best
that's why we must adorn the altar with great
reverence to show the presence of god our lord during his lifetime excuse me
the altar represents the body of our lord jesus christ during the
lifetime of our divine lord he allowed for his body to be honored
think of the occasion when mary magdalene anointed the feet of our lord
with wright spikenard a very expensive perfumy ointment
and judas became indignant and he said we should have

00:24
sold that or whatever the price was 100 denarii something like that
and given the money to the poor our lord said what she has done will
never be taken away from her she has done this
in regard to my burial this should be never this never should be taken away
from her some have accused the church of spending all those funds on uh material
wealth or making big beautiful churches and altars and investments and sacred
vessels chalice and saboria and so forth this could have been given to the poor
same argument as judas and the answer is you've probably found this in your own
life the amount that you're generous with the poor
is always compensated for by the amount that god is generous with you

00:25
or the amount that you're generous with god
is compensated for how much that god is generous with you
as well so we get this idea that the church um
is generous with the poor and that's why
she continues to be blessed in providing the most the best things for god
if she were to stop providing the best things for god she
wouldn't have the funds to provide things for the poor as well
please take the example of saint lawrence from the um
the year 250. you know that he was the deacon of rome and he was given the
charge of the bank of rome uh for the christians
and he had an even distribution of what was used for the church

00:26
and what was used for the poor he was confronted by
the governor of that time to say turn over the riches of the church
and he instead of turning over everything that was invested in
whatever crucifixes chalices statues they might have had at that time
i don't think they had very much of it because they were still worshiping in
the catacombs what they had materially was not so precious
to um the caesars and the governors etc so he simply handed over to the governor
the poor people and said you want our riches here they are this is where we've
invested our riches he would have been speaking about
prayers he would have been speaking about time spent on the poor people and
charity and also the funds the material funds given to those people
but we should have from lauren st lawrence we should have this lesson

00:27
as if we are generous to god in the wealth spiritual and material
that we give to the church there will always be wealth for the poor
if we stop giving to god all of a sudden we're not going to have it for the poor
also it seems um kind of in style nowadays and hopefully we'll
get to it we'll see we'll see what has been lost in the novus ordo mass
different things that should be on the altar and the altar should be made of etc
but it seems that it's the very much in style these days at least
for about the last 50 years now to say our lord was simple saint francis
was simple and by all this material wealth on the altar we are
blurring our vision of god we've got to get back to simplicity

00:28
so that we can see god so what ends up happening
beautiful gold chalice out the window same with the ciborium same with the
candlesticks the same with the altar itself and we're left with something wooden
looking quite simple in the negative in the pejorative sense
chalices that are not even made out of precious metals anymore
candles that aren't candles these are just sort of a blob of wax and the altar
and just very um i would say non-uplifting things mundane of boring trite
just unfortunate things in sanctuaries nowadays
what is going on well this leaves man or this leaves the christians
catholics who come to church without anything to lift them up
you know it's a very important quality of the catholic church

00:29
something called transcendence and that's not just a word used by modernists
that's been a word used all along they've changed what they mean by it
by it but transcendence means to pull us out of this world
we know we have to go to work in college and we've got to make money and take
care of the family and drive a car and buy gasoline for it we
know we've got to do all those things but when i go to church i leave that
world behind for just about an hour maybe two hours
to be in the mysteries of our lord jesus christ
in in the sacrifice and with all the reverence and all the glory
and adoration that that sacrifice deserves that fills my soul out that that's
transcendent it takes me out of this world puts me in the supernatural world
and then when i leave church i'm refreshed and i can face these mundane
and trite and boring things again with a supernatural

00:30
spirit that lets me see god working through those things from my sanctification
but if i just come to church and find find things here
less elegant than a restaurant or even less elegant than my own house sometimes
keep that in mind too huh people who complain about things being too
rich and wealthy upon the altar kind of have nice homes
despite what they say about the catholic church
if i come to the church and i find just boring and trite
things here and i don't transcend in any way
then i leave the church tired and just as exhausted as when he's like when i
came in with no spirit of transforming the world outside of you
because i didn't go through any kind of transforming experience inside the
church i had the occasion a few times within the last couple years to be around
while novus ordo masses were going on in big latin parishes
in nicaragua we had a deal there when they were finished with their mass

00:31
we were able to use the church for the true mass and we had our 40 or 50 people
whatever it was that was kind of nice but they filled the church with their
three or 400 people and my goodness is just music all
mass long and microphones and loud you know just loud
not a moment of peace not a moment of recollection not a moment of transcendence
and i think that's the effect they're going for which is unfortunate because
it leaves a catholic without any kind of um
uh transforming influence on the world outside after going through that kind of
i would say worldly atmosphere which is supposed to be holy mass
if one loves the sanctuary of god he will necessarily love neighbor more

00:32
and be generous with neighbor if we give god his place the good place
our behavior towards our neighbor will improve
the items which are used for holy mass must be
withdrawn from the world and withdrawn from profane use
therefore the ultracloths the linens that are used in the chalice
the cruets the candles candlesticks the crucifix
everything you see is blessed at least blessed
the chalice is consecrated chalice and paten that's used on the whole on the
chalice are consecrated by a bishop only a bishop can
consecrate those these things must be taken out of

00:33
profane use and dedicated only to the use of god
we don't leave a chalice lying around the house
in the contrary the chalice is always either on the altar
or in the sacristy and usually when it's in sacristy it's in the cupboards
why because it's something sacred it must stay veiled
it's not normal to have a chalice unveiled around while we just have a normal
worldly conversation that's not correct it's something holy
in the old testament they had to pass through three different sort of cells
to get to the presence of god which was the ten commandments and the
staff of aaron and a little bit of manna those are symbols of god
the chalice touches god god becomes present in the chalice
so of course we don't treat it in a common and mundane way
it's veiled out of respect nothing is insignificant in the holy mass
whether that's called you know what's on the altar the altar itself

00:34
the priest and the way he behaves at the altar his gestures
nothing is without its meaning every gesture every bow every kiss of
the altar every genuflection has its purpose
there must be about 20 genuflections that a priest does in every mass
every time that the priest touches the sacred host when it's been consecrated
he doesn't touch the host without first genuflecting and when he's done touching
the host he genuflects again and there's no touching of the host
without geniflections speaking of genuflections uh
it has been known in the past that just a genuflection well made
is enough to convert a person looking on at the mass without being a catholic or
having been a catholic that was separated from practice in the faith for
a lot of years just to see a genuflection not even by the priest but by a layman
well made in the church that's enough to convert a soul

00:35
it's been said by protestants before i hear that you catholics believe that
that host up there is jesus well yes of course i do and the
protestant is known to say well hey if i believed that i would
never be on my feet in the church i would only crawl in in the what do you
call the center aisle to get up to the altar to receive him
if i really believed it i'm surprised you you catholics behaved so
casually in church was the comment i mean that kind of puts us in our place
i understand and that's the way we should take it but
i don't know if that protestant who said that ever converted either
uh there we are mass the holy mass must always be offered in a sacred place
there must always be a consecrated altar stone at least

00:36
for the holy mass mass may never be offered without an altar
keep that in mind novus ordo priests who like to celebrate
mass at a dining room table where there is no sacrifice there is no altar
so those who might try from the novus ordo to have a
some sort of ceremony without an altar you could say to them
don't worry there's no sacrifice here anyway so we must aim for
having a consecrated church in a consecrated altar
kind of hard to do i know that this parish i have no problem calling you all
a parish i'm called pastor so that means it must be a parish
you as a parish started out years ago probably in hotel rooms
and eventually people's houses or maybe start the other way around people's

00:37
houses and then you had the um the apartment or more than apartment or this
the rented space and kill any drive kill any road and now you're here
i would guess that those were not consecrated churches
and cantonese nor even consecrated altars i don't think
but here we are and i've seen pictures bishop tisi de molare did the
consecration of your altar that's beautiful and he probably blessed the church
but he didn't consecrate it because in order to have a consecrated church
he needs to stand on 12 stone pillars 12 representing the apostles and some
churches are built that way they have 12 pillars i'm not totally
convinced that they're holding up all the way to the church but at least they
have their 12 pillars and that's their 12 apos apostle
represented and therefore they can have a consecration of the church
not just a blessing but a consecration and then to have a consecrated altar

00:38
the altar needs to be of stone like this one i think i've already talked about
this in some other class how it has a five crosses traced out
or carved out on the on this table surface which is called the mensah
and in the very center there's actually what they call what they call a
sepulcher which contains three relics of at least
two martyrs and one other saint with certificates and the um seal of the bishop
that's very hard to get to that point to get all these things taken care of
but normally and in the best scenario that's the way it should be
a consecrated church with a consecrated altar
and the consecration of the altar is the most splendid
uh blessing ceremony that exists in the church and let me do a little quote
um about what's how that has devolved in the novus ordo

00:39
must be a consecrated altar in the consecrated church
this is talking about the novus ordo church the practice of mass
facing the people was the most striking of the post-vatican to innovations
affecting the altar but it was not the only one
some were obvious altars that looked like butcher blocks
salad bars meteorites giant anvils or copies of rubik's cube
that's how the newer alters look and just a moment
all right i guess that's all i have to say about what's happened to the altars
so i told you that the altar that our lord used was a wooden table which is
still preserved and made into an altar now

00:40
and then from the time of the apostles stone became the norm
for altars something that moved this along
i think i've told told you this before was a lot of the worship
most of the worship of early christians was in the underground
burial grounds of the christians which is the catacombs so it was very
convenient to start celebrating mass upon
the tombs of the saints and the martyrs which were above ground underground
underground buried place but the you could the the the the tomb itself
was not buried when they were underground with it and
they celebrated mass upon that and that became the norm to have a stone altar
and so now we have a stone altar we try to have stone altars in our churches
and this is what is called an immovable altar as opposed to the portable altar

00:41
which would be made of wood even though it's big and got all kind of decorations
and weighs a couple tons it's called a portable altar because the wood itself
is not the altar what really is the altar in a wooden altar is the very center
where you'll find a stone or ara i um can't think of the other word but
it means altar in latin and uh it's made of stone
inside of that stone just like this altar here are three relics
uh two of a martyr two one of a non-martyr
and with their certificates and sealed by a bishop
speaking about the altar it is good if it's elevated like this altar here
because the altar symbolizes our lord jesus christ
who is in triumph with his father in heaven
showing his wounds of his victory to his father

00:42
we look up to christ on the altar in heaven
and so therefore we look up to christ on the altar
it is good if the altar can be facing east
i kind of lose concept of what is east out here i don't have enough there are
not enough windows in the building the reason that we try to make altars
face east is because our lord is the son
s-u-n son of justice and our lord is the great orient
meaning that everything should be directed towards him
he's the rising of the sun and he is the center of orientation
it is good if both the altar and the church can be consecrated together
and why is that because the church the nave represents the mystical body
and the faithful of our lord jesus christ the altar represents our lord

00:43
jesus christ himself by doing both ceremonies one after the
other or on the same occasion we're showing this union of the mystical body
with our lord jesus christ the martyrs bodies are enclosed in the altar
they reign in triumph with our lord jesus christ
saint john the apostle saw under the altar
in the apocalypse he saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for
the word of god therefore the mortal remains of the saints are more valuable
than gold and precious stones i ran into this question some just about
a week ago with someone i think the person was heckling me and
just probably having a little fun so i didn't take it too seriously but i
tried to answer well the person was saying um why do you
place so much importance on where catholics are buried uh

00:44
and why do you think so much about people coming to visit your grave
after your death to pray for you the person said to me there's no
soul in that body anymore why go to someone's grave to pray for them
it's just as good if you bear them anywhere that you're not going to visit
them because you're really not visiting them when they're
dead uh and i responded by saying you know we have these relics on the
altar we have veneration of relics and so forth why is that because those relics
belong to saints and their bodies were the house of god temples of the
holy ghost their bodies were transformed by the
presence of our lord jesus christ in them
and therefore we venerate them that's a canonized saint but
really all of us and saint paul actually does this he calls the christians

00:45
saints he would call us saints you have our lord jesus christ dwelling
in you you're the temple of the holy ghost maybe we're not going to be canonized
after our deaths but it's very like very possible that we'll go to heaven so
that body which was so long a temple of the holy ghost deserves veneration
even if we're not canonized and just by you know
when we have a relic of a saint near us we have a certain
closeness proximity to that saint by having the relic with us
and we venerate it that saint intercedes for us because we're venerating the
relic so maybe a person is not a canonized saint but still
to be near their body is to somehow be near
them and they're interceding for us if they're in heaven
or we're meriting for them by praying for them at their sight in the cemetery
and of course that would bring up the uh consequential subject of um cremation

00:46
catholics have never cremated their dead
and why is that for the same reason just gave
that would be a great disrespect on our part to destroy
to change into ashes a body which was just the temple of the holy
ghost so it's very pagan to uh cremate a body catholics have never done it i'm
speaking universally there might be some countries or even
the catholics did it for some extreme reason but that's not the
general practice of the church let me compare that about relics
in the altar necessarily to uh what has happened
well first of all i think i missed one there
i was talking about altars made of stone

00:47
and what has happened with that with the novus ordo since the
general instruction of 1969 uh the general instruction paid lip
service to the sanctum tradition and said the table the altar should be
made of stone but the very next sentence added that
bishops conferences can improve the use of other materials they must be solid
becoming and well-crafted materials so with 15 words the innovators demolished
a tradition which went back at least sixteen hundred years of altars made a
stone and now what about relics church law maintained this tradition of
relics in the altar until the advent of the new mass
enclosing the relics of martyrs in the altar is no longer required
the diocesan bishop decides the suitability
of retaining the practice by considering the spiritual good of the community

00:48
whatever that means let me just study this i'm pretending that
one is a bishop of the diocese in the modern church
i consider that it is for the spiritual good of our church that there are relics
in the altar that sounds nice or i consider that it's
not for the spiritual good of our community that there be relics in the altar
how is one argument compared have any way compared to the
other argument how can i possibly argue that it would be against the spiritual
good of our church to have relics in the altar
there's no it's not even and then they let's see they made it even more
impossible as a further obstacle to observing this
tradition of relics in the altar the new legislation states that relics
placed in the altar must be large enough to be recognized to be recognizable as
parts of the human body so it has to look like a little has to
be evidently a chunk of bone uh or evidently a piece of dust from the

00:49
human body or evidently um coagulates of blood from the human body
are you going to find relics that look that big that are that big how are you
going to bury those relics in the center of your altar
you know by the time they put all the all these rules on it i don't think it's
suitable to have relics in the altar or there must be an evidently uh
obviously large p large enough piece of bone to call it bone
in the altar to have a relics what's going to happen
effectively as a result of all this since it is difficult enough to obtain
even a small relic from a martyr's bones the rule in effect abolishes the
traditional practice of having relics relics in the altar
moreover it is now forbidden to praise place relics in the table
top or the mensa of the altar and this practice
practice dates back at least to the 8th century

00:50
i didn't tell you but in a marble altar as we have here
the whole table top which is called mensah
must be of one only of only one piece of stone
it cannot be several pieces connected so that's um
that's important because there we are it is our lord jesus christ it represents
our lord jesus christ our lord jesus christ is not broken
therefore it's one big piece so relics have been effectively
uh overturned unfortunately my brother father kenneth is a real um
he's a priest of the society and he's a real crusader i guess you call it and he
loves to get boys on crusades get them all enthused like he
is so i don't know what his occasion was or where why or when but he was
in an airport with a group of young boys from a summer camp or something like

00:51
that they must have been 10 or 20 of them and they visited the uh local
uh they visited the uh multi-religious uh church or chapel in the airport and
they found there an altar and they found the altar stone
and i think he got a little crusade with those boys to get that altar stone and
take it to one of our churches i don't normally advocate that sort of thing
he must have assumed they weren't using that altar anymore for a catholic
purpose and therefore they acquired a an altar
stone that's not normally what we do but some are known for doing those sort of
things uh i guess his argument is reasoning would have been that
altar stones are no longer required in the new mass
relics that you just heard about are no longer required in the new mass
so that's what happened on that occasion i won't go on that much longer because

00:52
some of these things start to sound the same after a while
i'll talk about the um speaking about the stones and the stone altar
our lord jesus christ the god man is the chief cornerstone
saint paul speaks of him so it makes sense that the altar will be of stone
those who assist at mass those who are the faithful
they are the spiritual temple which grows up to eternal salvation
they are the living stones from the wounds of our divine lord flow the saving

00:53
clothes the saving ointment of all graces very good so i'll move on now to the
dressing of the altar and the decoration of the altar
you've probably noticed that the altar has ultra cloths on it
and there are three of them um the altar is covered with a mantle of gladness
and thus it is crowned only things necessary for the mass are permitted on
the altar it's not permitted to have loose sheets of paper
no extra books no photographs of families
the altar is not a place of storage the altar is only a place of sacrifice
there are three linen cloths on the altar why three first of all there's the
practical reason in case uh during the mass the precious blood

00:54
should spill if it does spill it will be absorbed by all these cloths
we have in the altar rather than going to the stone getting into the stone
and then we won't be able to pull it out easily because believe it or not
so stone is a little bit porous if you have a stone table like granite
and you have something spill on it and you don't wipe it up you'll notice a few
hours later that that part of the stone is a darker color
than the other part of the stone stone is porous
so we don't want the precious blood of our lord seeping into the stone
also three cloths are used to symbolize our lord wrapped in the holy shroud
when our lord was in the shroud the cloth went over his body on the front side
went behind his body on the reverse side
and overlapped again to a certain degree on the front side

00:55
so uh the holy shroud covered our lord in three and also um
this represents we are us the faithful who surround our lord i like how this
study is constantly bringing out the point that we are important for our divine
lord i know that we're just miserable sinners but we are converted by our lord
jesus christ to grace through baptism and he worked his whole life long
and it culminated with his death on the cross to
win us and to put his life into us it is his greatest delight as
man the human nature it is his greatest delight to be with us
and when he makes saints out of us we're something like his greatest trophy that
he presents to his father now i don't mean to make this kind of thinking
make us into something presumptuous and say you know what a great thing am i for

00:56
our lord jesus christ without doing any kind of prayer and sacrifice and penance
but it is noteworthy that quite a few of the things that are significant on the
altar have to do with how glorious are the saints that follow our lord jesus
christ christ died for humanity and we his redeemed christians are very
valuable to him and so the three cloths on the altar represent us
the faithful who surround our divine lord we are
his precious garments he is clothed with beauty saint john says in the
apocalypse that the golden girdle which he sees signed around around the
person that looks like our lord this signifies the hosts of the saints
also the three altar claws on the altar symbolize
the three branches of the mystical body the church militant

00:57
the church suffering and the church triumphant
and only the whitest linen is used because it shows cleanness of heart
just as during the holy mass only the whitest hosts are used
i remember the archbishop talking in his book letter to confused catholics
why do they use whole wheat hosts at the new mass
it's because they want to get away from this idea of the spotless victim
our lord jesus christ is pure and white and clean and spotless
he that's why the hosts are white same with the altar claws
they're white and they're linen linen is one of the purest
fibers we have for cleanliness and for just how white you can keep it
white is linen because it shows cleanness of heart which can only be acquired
by constant and laborious prayer watching

00:58
and mortification cleanness of heart as precious linen is prepared with much
labor so keeping the state of grace is hard work it means confession it means
rosary means the holy sacrifice of the mass all of us might think well the ten
commandments i mean i would never go completely
against just one or the other of them that that'd be horrible
you know maybe but still there are many mortal sins that can happen
if we're not practicing sacrifice and not receiving the sacraments and not
being present the holy sacrifice of the mass there's no forgiveness without the
shedding of blood and there's no salvation without penance
that means if we don't do penance we are going to violate the ten commandments
the three cloths this kind of a practical level now
uh the first two that are on the altar only have to cover the table surface or
the mensa they don't have to reach down the sides

00:59
but the one which is on top and the one which is usually decorated
that one should reach down to both sides to the floor
and the reason for that is they are part of the altar
as the altar itself touches the floor that top ultra cloth which is
part of the altar must touch the floor also
uh and let me just see if i can compare that with what's done now
the traditional rubrics rubric means let's say laws about the material things
the traditional rubrics prescribe three blessed linen cloths for the top of the
altar out of reverence for the precious blood should it be spilled by
accident during the course of mass it is easy to unders
easy to understand why the rubrics prescribe linen
the altar symbolically represents christ and all four gospels recount that his

01:00
body his body was wrapped in linen the general instruction of the novusardo
on the other hand required only one cloth made no mention you
made no mention of the use of linen and did not require that the cloth
be blessed there it is so whatever they can do to make the liturgy
less transcendent and more mundane mundane doesn't just mean boring mundane
also comes the word mundus which means world
so whatever they can do to make make the less less transcendent and more worldly
they will do and they tell us that they do that because
they don't want to leave to leave people
out in the cold with the impression that mass is just for
an elite uh who only have rich clothing and and uh can buy rich vestments

01:01
mass is for everyone jesus didn't turn down anyone
that's the impression they'd like to give but that's a lot of words
what they really mean to say is what they really mean
is our lord jesus christ is not going to get the reverence and adoration
he used to get and by taking that away from him
you all are going to be a lot less sanctified that's what's going on there
then they put some malicious words on the maliciously
deceptive words on the thing to say well this is the way it should
have always been people feeling more welcome to be in the presence of jesus
christ and uh i don't know if they do feel more welcome
they feel more exhausted when mass is finished they don't feel uplifted
they don't feel transformed and all this transformation happens because
of the reverence we give to our lord jesus christ first of all
so we'll continue from there next week talking about different items

01:02
of the altar which need to be observed and we'll close with a prayer
praise the lord huh