PROJECT HOPE

We are now at the midpoint of Project Hope, the 100 day emergency refugee sponsorship campaign put in place by the Archdiocese of Toronto.

The Archdiocese of Toronto, with which the Ordinariate is in association, is providing a short update on progress to date. See the link below.  

During the final 50 days of the campaign, parishes are asked to encourage and promote donations to support Project Hope.

At the midway point of the campaign, we are at $1.7 million of the $3 million goal.

Please feel free to direct any questions regarding Project Hope to the following:

·         Donations/Finances – Development Office (416) 934-3411

·         Refugee Sponsorship/Volunteer Committees – Office for Refugees (416) 645-0827

·         Media Inquiries – Office of Public Relations & Communications (416) 934-3400 ext. 563

You can visit www.archtoronto.org/projecthope for more details and resources regarding Project Hope.

Thank you for your efforts to support Christian and other refugees fleeing violence and persecution. 

An excellent homily on our response to the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome

Fr. William Bradley in Washington has posted a prayerful response to reports about the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome.  Here are some excerpts:

. . .  The Synod of Bishops “is a group of bishops who have been chosen from different regions of the world and meet together at fixed times to foster closer unity between the Roman Pontiff and bishops, to assist the Roman Pontiff with their counsel in the preservation and growth of faith and morals and in the observance and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline, and to consider questions pertaining to the activity of the Church in the world” (c. 342). It is their role to discuss specific questions, outlined in a document called the Instrumentum laboris or working document, but neither to resolve them, nor themselves issue decisions without the express permission of the Pope himself (c. 343). During this most recent meeting the delegates discussed the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world.

At the opening of the Synod, the Holy Father acknowledged the many challenges that beset the Church in the area of the family today, and gave parameters for engaging in this dialogue. Amidst cries for the Church to submit to the scrutiny of this world, he affirmed that it is the duty of the Church (and so all of us), “to carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions”; that is, to present to the world the unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable revelation of Christ, the law of the kingdom of heaven, so all might come to know Christ as he really is and, knowing him, be drawn into his gift of salvation. It must be said that despite the Holy Father’s appeal, this basic principle of truth was perhaps not always clear to see in the presentation of the deliberations of the past few weeks. . .  Indeed, the Holy Father alluded to this in his final discourse yesterday afternoon, when he said of the meeting, “different opinions […] were freely expressed—and at times, unfortunately, not in entirely well-meaning ways.”

What are we to make of all of this and how, in faith, are we to respond? The first response is of course that based on our natural reaction. When we hear an inaccurate report or read an insincere remark, particularly in the area of Church affairs, it is instinctive for the faithful Christian to recoil, both in defence of ourself (and perhaps also of those for whom we have some care or responsibility) and in order to show our displeasure at the comment itself. A well-formed conscience and a sound knowledge of the faith can, should, and does change our outlook. Thus it is not, in and of itself, wrong for us to be frustrated or displeased, either with error or with the persons or situation that has brought it about. Where this risks becoming problematic, though—even to the point of being sinful—is when that natural reaction, albeit based on a well-formed knowledge of the faith, is where we stop. It is insufficient to respond to such a situation in a simply natural way. Instead, by virtue of the grace which calls us to seek that knowledge in the first place, our response must be one founded on supernatural, and not simply natural, principles.

Practically speaking this means that our instinctive natural reaction must become a catalyst for giving ourselves more freely over to the will of God, and to the means of his grace in our lives. It means, to use a rather belaboured phrase, that we must “offer up” our trials, and seek to draw from our natural instinct a desire for the comforting  peace that comes only from the supernatural source of our strength: God himself. This does not mean setting-aside our concerns, nor seeking to ignore the things of the world in a spiritual equivalent of running for the hills. We are not called to be naive by our Christian faith. On the contrary, it means engaging with our concerns and displeasure, but doing so in the light of our knowledge of God, according to the fullness of the person whom God has called us to be, and trusting in his care for us and for his Holy Catholic Church.

This response is not, of course, limited to dealing with ecclesiastical affairs! It is as true of our personal relationships, with work colleagues and family members, even—dare I say it?—the driver in front of us in beltway traffic. This spiritual response to the frustration and trials of our daily lives is a necessary means, not only of resolving the concerns themselves, but of seeking to avoid a cycle of behaviour that risks our separation from God and from the source of his saving grace.

And we see all of this, in a particular way, in the person of Christ and in his sacrifice for us on the cross. Indeed, when we come to the Eucharistic altar it is that self-same sacrifice that is re-presented before us, albeit in an unbloody manner, so that we might join ourselves to his eternal prayer to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and learn here the manner of our own sanctification. In the Eucharistic celebration we become children, humbled before the throne of our God and King, schooled in the means of our holiness. Here we see in the sacrifice of Christ the rich fruits of taking upon ourselves those wounds that are designed to inflict pain and suffering. And here, too, we see how, through obedience to the will of the Father, those scars are healed, and those weapons of torment are turned into instruments which resound to the glory of God: an affront to our enemies, but the source of our hope and, what is more, of our joy! Here, and likewise in a supernatural response to trials and disappointment, we see Christ the suffering servant crowned as Christ the King.

It is in that supreme gift that we find our consolation—not in idle gossip, nor fighting-talk, nor polemical rhetoric, nor even in mere academic debate, but in giving ourselves more and more to the person of Christ, our King and our friend, and in offering ourselves more and more freely to him within his sacrificial life. Here we not only gain a share in his crown, the gift which is offered to us through such fidelity to his way, but we are equipped with the armour that protects us from the assaults we face, and the supernatural means to overcome those things which threaten us and which, ultimately, risk our eternal happiness by bringing about a course of events at odds with the new and living way given us in Christ.

May this and every offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice bring about a renewed knowledge of this reality for us. May we see here the model of the life to which we are each called. And may our prayerful participation in this divine action strengthen us to live now, here in this earth, the supernatural reality of the life of the kingdom of heaven, that “happy home” for which we long and which, in the end, is the only thing that really matters.

________________________________

You can read (and hear) the full homily delivered by Fr. Bradley: In His Service

A Homily for TRINITY 21 (OT 30B) St Thomas More, Toronto

“What do you want me to do for you?”

Today’s Gospel is built around an irony – a blind man, Bartimaeus, becomes the first person apart from the apostles to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Also, the healing of Baritmaeus is the last miracle Jesus performs before entering the holy city of Jerusalem for His last week on earth.

Over the last few Sundays, the readings at Mass have explored the theme of  powerlessness: the young rich man not finding the strength to follow Jesus and so leaving in despair; how can the rich find salvation? A camel going through the eye of the needle is easier. The high standards set for us for marriage challenge all of us. We tend to be left saying: Who can do this?  We are powerless!

The scene on the road to Jerusalem evokes the joyful procession prophesied by Jeremiah in today’s First Reading. In Jesus this prophecy is fulfilled. God, through the Messiah, is delivering His people from exile and bringing them back from the ends of the earth along with the blind and lame in their midst. God is doing this not the people, not us.

Jesus, as Bartimaeus proclaims, is the long-awaited Son promised to David (2 Samuel 7:12-16; Isaiah 11:9). Upon the triumphal arrival in Jerusalem, all will see that the everlasting kingdom promised to King David has come (Mark 11:9-10).

We hear in today’s Epistle, the Son of David was expected to be the Son of God (Psalm 2:7). He was to be a priest-king in the order of  Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4), who offered bread and wine to God Most High at the dawn of human history (Genesis 14:18-20).

Bartimaeus is a symbol of his people – captive Zion of which we sing of in today’s Psalm: Restore our fortunes, O Lord, as the rivers of the South. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

God  has done great things for Bartimaeus. All his life to this point has been sown in tears and weeping. Now, he reaps a new life.

Bartimaeus, is also a sign for us. How often Christ passes us by in the people and circumstances of our lives, perhaps in the distressing guise of a troubled family member or a burdensome co-worker (Matthew 25:31-46) and yet we don’t see the Lord.

Jesus calls to us through the Catholic Church, just as Jesus sent His apostles to call Bartimaeus. Yet how often in private and public do we listen instead to the voices of the crowd, looking for a secular messiah and not hearing the words of His Church, words of healing and of respect for life.

The blindness of Bartimaeus, the exile of the Jews from their homeland, our own frailty and illnesses, whatever trouble we might be in, may, in fact, be impossible for us — but not for God. And the wonderful thing is that God accomplishes what we cannot as his gift, out of his grace. Scripture boldly calls to us “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

Bartimaeus did not earn his healing. Scripture doesn’t say he followed Jesus, worked on his life, built up merit, and then was healed. He followed Jesus after he was healed. The good news is that God loves first and moves first. He called Israel, he called Bartimaeus, he calls you and me. That is why the Collect or opening prayer of this Mass, prays that God will move first in making love, hope, and charity possible for us—so that those gifts which come from God can merit what God promises.

Often healing comes, not instantly, but at the moment it is meant to. It was so for the Jews who heard their promise from Jeremiah in today’s first reading—and they received that promise, they were brought home after a terrible exile, they did sing with joy—but not right away. They had to trust and wait for God’s good time for his purpose.

Sometimes, prayers that seem unanswered are, in the end, answered in entirely unexpected ways. Some people pass through a difficult time, seemingly with no answer to prayer, only to say that, later, they received extraordinary graces that they could not have imagined on the other side of their problem, so that, now, they even bless that difficult time

Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup would pass—that he would be delivered from the pain of what was to come. He wasn’t spared—the cup of suffering did not pass him but God the Father made that awful suffering into a the glory of our salvation. 

Jesus entered his glory through suffering, and made a path for so that now we bless the day of Christ’s suffering as Good Friday.

Jesus asks us what He asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”  Rejoicing, let us say, in the Spirit,  what can we do in response to what God has done for us?

Jeremiah 31:7-9     Psalm 126:1-6    Hebrews 5:1-6   Mark 10:46-52

Gloucester Cathedral Choir in Toronto

in concert at 

ROYAL ST. GEORGE'S COLLEGE

120 Howland Avenue, Toronto

Wednesday October 21

7:30 p.m. 

The concert is free of charge. 

There will be an offering taken in support of the choir stall lights project.

SOLEMN HIGH MASS - SUNDAYS NOVEMBER 1 and NOVEMBER 29

History Made with Publication of a New Missal

A unique event in the history of the universal Church will unfold on the First Sunday of Advent, November 29.  That day a copy of the newly published Divine Worship – The Missal will be presented to Pope Francis in Rome by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis with Msgr Steenson and Ordinariate members.

From Rome, to London to Washington, Houston, L.A., Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Sydney and Melbourne on that day, the newly published missal for the Personal Ordinariates of the Catholic Church established under the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, will be formally received and inaugurated in the celebration of Mass.

The Missal, published under the authority of the Holy See, offers another version of the Western Rite of the Holy Eucharist which includes traditional (hieratic) English adapted from the Book of Common Prayer, as well as the music of the Anglican Patrimony.

This singular event celebrates another major step for thousands once separated from the Catholic Church. These Anglicans and others who have joined with them are the first distinctive groups, in various countries, to be reunited collectively with the universal Church, in full communion with the Chair of St. Peter.

Ordinariate congregations retain many of the elements of their Anglican patrimony that are in harmony with the doctrine and discipline of the universal Church. Ordinariate communities, like Eastern churches in communion with Rome, have a distinctive liturgy, pastoral practice and now over two hundred priests, many of whom have been dispensed from the vow of celibacy in the Western Catholic, (Latin) Rite of the Catholic Church.

Personal Ordinariate parishes around the world, including the Catholic Parish of St. Thomas More (STM) in downtown Toronto, will inaugurate use of the Missal on the same day. STM shares Sacré-Coeur Church on Sherbourne St. at Carlton.

At 4:00 pm on Nov. 29, STM Parish will celebrate Solemn High Mass using the new missal for the first time. The parish choir, under the direction of Peter Mahon, will offer traditional music written for the traditional English Mass. Music will include a Mass setting by Adrian Batten and the motet Ad Te Domine by Scarlatti. The STM children's choir will sing the Advent Prose.

Solemn High Mass

celebrating the publication of

Divine Worship – The Missal

for the Personal Ordinariates 

Sunday, November 29 at 4:00 p.m.

Catholic Parish of St. Thomas More

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

381 Sherbourne St. (at Carlton)

TORONTO

Clergy and people from the archdiocese and visitors are cordially invited; a reception will follow.

Australia-Wide

If you have not read the Ordinariate newsletter from 'Downunder" the October edition is well worth a look.  It includes a thoughtful introduction to the new missal as well as social commentary that needs to be heard in Canada.  Here is a vignette from A-W.  

Congratulations to the editors.

Link to AUSTRALIA-WIDE

Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and others worldwide look with interest to the new Ordinariate Missal

For those who are interested in the fine tuning of the Ordinariate liturgy and liturgy in general we have the newly published Divine Worship - The Missal. 

The following, in excerpted form, is a thoughtful presentation by an Australian Ordinariate priest to an Anglican congregation.

As of Advent I , 2015, the Missal will be used worldwide in Ordinariate parishes and communities as well as by priests with faculties to celebrate the liturgy.

Liturgical scholars, laity and priests alike will be studying this new standard for the Anglican patrimony within the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Address to the Prayer Book Society: “The Ordinariates and the Book of Common Prayer”: All Saints’, East St Kilda: 10.10.2015 

- Fr. Ramsey Williams

On November 29th., this year, the First Sunday of Advent, a new Missal  [for the Catholic Church] will be used for the first time . . . .  It will be an historic occasion.

The Missal, called ‘Divine Worship – The Missal’, is remarkable in that its texts are largely drawn from the Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican tradition or ‘patrimony’. 

It contains the Order for the Eucharist, and the variable prayers and other scriptural texts, instructions and rubrics and music, and the liturgical calendar for Ordinariate congregations.

Until now, since 2013, the Ordinariates have been using the texts of an Interim Missal.
The decree of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments officially authorising the new Missal, was promulgated on the 27th. of May this year, being the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury.

It stands alongside the Roman Missal, as an officially authorised liturgical use of the Latin or Western or Roman rite of the Catholic Church. The new Missal is thus firmly in the western tradition of Christianity. It is a variant of the Roman Rite, and is not a distinctive or separate rite . . . .

The other authorised liturgical books in the Western Church are:

[1] The Roman Missal of 1970 [the result of the liturgical changes authorised by Blessed Pope Paul the Sixth following The Second Vatican Council] now in its Third Edition. [This is in the vernacular, the common language of the people]. [It is known as the ‘Ordinary Rite’ or the ‘Novus Ordo [New Order]]; and

[2] The Missal of 1962, which is largely the Missal of Pope St Pius V revised more recently by Pope St John the Twenty-third, and very slightly by Pope Emeritus Benedict the Sixteenth. This is in Latin, the official language of the Church. [It is known as ‘the Extraordinary Rite].

Although both these Missals are authorised world-wide for use in parishes of the Roman rite, they are, however, not the only Eucharistic rites authorised by the wider Catholic Church .... for instance, the Oriental and Eastern or Byzantine Churches of the Catholic Church [e.g., the Maronite, Melkite, Ukrainian, Greek and Russian Catholic Churches] and some of the other smaller Churches in Communion with Rome, have their own Eucharistic liturgies and liturgical books.

[We need to remember that the Latin or Western Rite is but one of perhaps 28 different churches in communion with the Holy See. The Latin or Roman rite Church is the largest in terms of numbers of adherents. The Catholic Church is not the monolithic structure which she is sometimes made out to be. ]

The new Ordinariate Altar Missal is being published in the United Kingdom, and will be a very handsome volume indeed of the finest quality ... which is indicated by the cost – three hundred pounds sterling ... or nearly eight hundred Australian dollars, including in Australia, the cost of postage and transport]! There are no plans at this stage for a ‘people’s missal’ due to the expense, but plans are afoot to produce Mass booklets within each Ordinariate.

The new Missal is currently being printed. Copies will be in the hands of those parishes which have ordered them by late October.

This will be the second liturgical book published by the Holy See for the Ordinariates. The first, called ‘Divine Worship – Occasional Services’ was published last year. This volume contains the Order of Holy Baptism and Confirmation for Adults and Older Children, the Order of Baptism for Infants and associated rites, the Order of Solemnisation of Marriage, and the Order of Funerals. All these draw on traditional Anglican resources, and are in the familiar language of the Book of Common Prayer.

Again, this is a very fine volume, which features black and white illustrations by the English artist Martin Travers, work originally commissioned by the Anglican Society of St Peter and St Paul in 1939 for their publication, The Anglican Missal.

The Scriptural readings are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible [second Catholic edition] and the Psalms are the Coverdale version.

The RSVCE [Second Edition] is the officially authorised version of Scripture for the Ordinariates. This version is also used with the new Missal for the Three Year cycle of Sunday readings for the Eucharist, the daily readings and those for Holy Days and other special commemorations. They are found in two very fine volumes published in the United States.

The Divine Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer have not been officially published separately, but members of the Ordinariate are able to use the Orders found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer or the 1928 Prayer Book, or the American Prayer Books. Each of the three Ordinariates publishes nationally its own daily Lectionary for the Readings.

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the United Kingdom in 2012 published another fine volume called ‘The Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham – Daily Prayer for the Ordinariate’. This contains the traditional Anglican Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, the Litany, as well as among other things, an order for Compline [Night Prayer] with the Coverdale Psalter in its entirety. This volume is largely the work of the well known liturgical scholar, Monsignor Andrew Burnham [formerly Bishop of Ebbsfleet in the Church of England] and the renowned Dominican theologian and author, Dom Aidan Nichols O.P., who also has an Anglican background.

The Missal and Occasional Services are, if you like, heirs of what was called ‘the Book of Divine Worship’, authorized in the early 1980s by Pope St. John Paul II for use in the United States of America for the so-called ‘Anglican Use’ parishes. This volume was largely based on the American Books of Common prayer of 1928 and 1979. These ‘Anglican Use’ parishes were established at the request of former bishops, clergy and laypeople of the Episcopal Church of the United States following significant changes in that Church in the 1970s.

I will not here go into the raison d’être or the history of the Ordinariates, except to remind you that Pope Benedict’s Anglicanorum Coetibus was a response to requests from Anglicans worldwide wishing to return to the rock from which Anglicanism was originally hewn, without losing their identity or liturgical heritage. It was a pastoral and ecumenical initiative, building on, although a separate initiative from the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on unity, established in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

But more than that, Pope Benedict sought to recover for the Catholic Church, the specific English Christian heritage, culture and patrimony largely lost to the Catholic Church from the time of the Reformation.

As the Papal document says: ‘... the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.”
In other words, the life of the Roman Catholic Church is to be enlarged and enriched by the finest liturgical and spiritual traditions specific to Anglicanism. This is the first time in history that distinctive elements of an ecclesial community established at the Reformation have found an honoured place in the life of the Catholic Church. [I understand approaches have been made from Lutheran sources for a similar arrangement.]

Earlier in the papal document, in referring to the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict concedes that ‘many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”

The new Missal, drawing on Anglican sources, is the work of an international liturgical committee set up in 2012 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [and the Congregation of Divine Worship]. The committee is known by its Latin name, ‘Anglicanae Traditiones’. Its members include canon law experts, liturgists, and prelates with both Anglican and Latin rite backgrounds, including Bishop Peter Elliott, an Auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, who was brought up as the son of a Vicar.

The elements of the Anglican liturgical patrimony incorporated into the liturgical life of the Ordinariate through the Missal seek to balance “two historic principles — that Christian prayer and proclamation should be offered in the vernacular and that the language of worship should be sacral. 
[Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of The Chair of St Peter, United States & Canada.]

According to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in its explanatory notes, the Divine Worship Missal “gives expression to and preserves for Catholic worship the worthy Anglican liturgical patrimony, understood as that which has nourished the Catholic Faith throughout the history of the Anglican tradition and prompted aspirations towards ecclesial unity .....

“ .... The Anglican liturgical tradition draws on the English monastic tradition and develops entirely out of the context of the Roman Rite. The celebration of the Holy Eucharist expressed by Divine Worship is at once distinctively and traditionally Anglican in character, linguistic register, and structure, while also being clearly and recognisable [sic] an expression of the Roman Rite.”

In reference to language, the Congregation says “the liturgical texts found in Divine Worship are in English, but an idiom of English best described as ‘Prayer Book English’ ..... the texts are broadly representative of the classic Prayer Book tradition while also attempting to avoid undue preference for wordings distinctive to any particular country. The texts provide for a certain adaptability to local custom such as, for example, using ‘Holy Ghost’ interchangeably with ‘Holy Spirit’ throughout the celebration of Mass.”

The Rite for the Ordinariate Mass is one that most Anglicans will find familiar. A number of alternatives and variants in the texts [following Anglican tradition!] enable the Rite to be celebrated according to local traditions and allow for variations and customs which existed in the former Anglican jurisdictions of the three different Ordinariates.

For example, among the familiar prayers are:

* The Collect for Purity: [Almighty God unto whom all hearts be open .... etc.”

* The Prayer for the Church [yes, including prayers for the monarch in the UK., Australia and Canada!]; [“Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church .... etc.”

* The Invitation to Confession, and the form of general Confession from the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins ...’ & ‘Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, maker of all things’ etc.

* The Prayer of Humble Access: ‘We do not presume ... etc’

* The Prayer of Thanksgiving: ‘Almighty and everliving God .... etc.”

* The Blessing: ‘The peace of God which passeth all understanding .. etc.’

* The texts of the Collects, the Gloria, the Nicene Creed , the Sursum Corda, and the Sanctus [and Benedictus] are those of the Book of Common Prayer.

* The response to the priest’s greeting ‘The Lord be with you’ is the traditional ‘And with thy spirit.’

* There is provision in the Eucharistic rite for the Ten Commandments [the Decalogue], the Comfortable Words and the Offertory sentences.

* The familiar Prayer Book words of ministration for Holy Communion: [‘The Body ... and Blood ... of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee ... etc.’] are among the alternatives permitted.

* The traditional Ember and Rogation days are observed.

* Two Prayers of Consecration [Eucharistic Prayers] are authorised. These are the traditional Roman or Gregorian Canon [in Prayer Book English] which is always said on Sundays, and a second Eucharistic Prayer which may be used on weekdays and other occasions, but not on Sundays. This Prayer is based on the second Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman Missal, which is in turn a variant of the oldest known Eucharistic Prayer, the Canon of Hippolytus [c. 210AD].

* The Calendar of the Ordinariate found in the new Missal is the universal Calendar of the Catholic Church, but with the addition of certain commemorations with an English or Anglican ‘flavour’, such as – for instance - St Alban the first English martyr, or St Thomas of Hereford, or St Edward the Confessor, St Frideswide of Oxford, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, and various canonised Archbishops of Canterbury, including of course St Augustine of Canterbury. More recently recognised holy persons, such as St Elizabeth Seton and Blessed John Henry Newman, both with an Anglican background, are also found in the Ordinariate calendar.

* The Sunday cycle follows that of the older Anglican tradition. Sundays are numbered ‘after Trinity’ as in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than as that of ‘Ordinary Sundays’ in the Roman Missal and the later revised Anglican Prayer Books.

* The Pre-Lent Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima are restored. Major feasts such as The Epiphany and the Ascension, are normally to be kept on the actual traditional day of commemoration, rather than transferred to the nearest Sunday, as has become the custom in some parts of the Roman Church and some Anglican jurisdictions.

From this brief overview of the new ‘Divine Worship Missal’ for the Ordinariates, you will agree that the establishment of the Ordinariates by the Papal Constitution, and the production and authorisation of liturgies for use within the Roman Catholic Church with a distinctive Anglican identity, is a remarkable if not radical development in Church history.

Certainly, it is a situation which our forebears would hardly have dreamed about, let alone considered. Who would have thought that the sacral English of the Book of Common Prayer and many of the liturgical traditions of the post Reformation English Church would find an honoured place in the life of the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century?
Of course, these developments have not occurred without difficulties on both sides of the fence – centuries old prejudices are not easily bypassed. Nor will they suddenly disappear.

But thanks to the vision of Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, in the spirit of the Seventeenth chapter of St John’s Gospel, and with the ongoing support and involvement of Pope Francis, that unity for which Christ prayed is a little bit nearer than ever before.
If there are any questions or comments I am happy to respond.