Latin Missal

A friend just handed me a copy of the Latin-English Booklet Missal for Praying the Traditional Mass, put out by the Coalition in Support of Eclesia Dei (www.eclesiadei.org).

It is a simple and simply beautiful little booklet that gives clear explanations and takes you right through the Low, High, or Solemn High Mass.

Thank you, friend. I think this would be mighty handy when attending a Latin Mass.

Interlinear Mass

Here is an interlinear translation of the TLM. Very helpful. It's from the L.P.H. Resource Center. They have classes for Church Latin--for elementary children, but I've always found it helpful to go to children's resources when I am just being introduced to a subject. The explanations are often much clearer than in adult texts. I'm thinking. Does anyone have any ideas? Look in the left-hand column for more resources on learning Latin. I'd love to get a class started around here. Any suggestions are most appreciated.

Images of the Catacombs

Take a look at these 3D images of the Roman Catacombs. (h/t to The Anchoress).

On the Eucharist

The early Church was already well aware that the bread once changed remains changed. That is why they reserved it for the sick, and that is why they showed it such reverence, as is still the case today in the Eastern Chruch. But now, in the Middle Ages, this awareness is deepened: the gift is changed. The Lord has definitively drawn this piece of matter to himself. It does not contain just a matter-of-fact kind of gift. No,the Lord himself is present, the Indivisible One, the risen Lord, with Flesh and Blood, with Body and Soul, with Divinity and Humanity. The whole Christ is there. In the early days of the Liturgical Movement, people sometimes argued for a distinction btween the "thing-centered" view of the Eucharist in the patristic age and the personalistic view of the post-medieval period. The Eucharistic Presence, they said, was understood, not as the presence of a Person, but as the presence of a gift distinct from the Person. This is nonsense. Anyone reading the texts will find that there is no support anywhere for these ideas. How is the Body of Christ supposed to become a "thing"? The only presence is the presence of the whole Christ. Receiving the Eucharist does not mean eating a "thing-like" gift (Body and Blood?). No, there is a person-to-person exchange, a coming of the one into the other. The living Lord gives himself to me, enters into me, and invites me to surrender myself to him, so that the Apostle's words come true: "[I]t is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Only thus is the reception of Holy Communion an act that elevates and transforms a man. (From The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger)