Solidarity...

I have to go back out in a minute for the Rosary Procession at my parish, but I thought I'd squeeze a quick post in before so. Yesterday morning at Mass and Benediction I began to think about things I had not really truly considered before. It occurred during the O Salutaris Hostia that I realised that I was chanting along with the very same liturgical hymns that J.R.R Tolkien himself would have chanted. Of course, I knew this before, but I hadn't thought much about it, as it were. This is one of the amazing things about the Catholic faith; it is catholic across time as well as space - linguistically too, not just in terms of the faith. Since the genius of the Church is to use a non-vernacular Sacred Language, the best of them all too (I love Latin!), we can rest assured that perhaps unlike our ''separated brethren,'' our common faith as Catholics is exactly the same as the faith of all the holy and heroic Saints and Confessors who came before us, such as St Edward the Confessor, or even closer to our own time J.R.R Tolkien (my mother was a school-girl when he died).

I had thought of taking down the previous post (someone at my parish had read it), but it received an encouraging comment, and perhaps by venting frustration in some small way we can clear the way for God's Grace. Small things at a time...

The above painting is probably my favourite depiction of The Crucifixion, and is by the Renaissance master Pietro Perugino. Michelangelo was of course not the only one who painted the Sistine Chapel!