Gifts & Treasure

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Deborah Mullan (2014)

As the season of gift giving approaches, gifts which should remind us of the preeminent Gift of the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, let us recall, too, the gift of the Ordinariate and its form of the Mass, Divine Worship, wherein daily we encounter the same Christ Jesus, Who gives Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist for our salvation.

With the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus, there is now a structure within the Catholic Church that both gives that English tradition concrete expression as well as fosters is growth. The Ordinariate, with its “catholicized” English liturgical patrimony, is being invited to be a guardian and promoter of its own long and varied tradition as a gift to be shared with the whole Church. The institutional importance of Divine Worship for the Ordinariates is considerable. More than simply giving the Ordinariates an outward distinctiveness that creates a profile for their parishes in the vast sea of Catholic parochial life, Divine Worship gives voice to the faith and tradition of prayer that has nourished the Catholic identity of the Anglican tradition. There is much in this tradition that remains to be recovered: the zeal for sacred beauty, parochial experience of the Divine Office, a robust devotional life, a developed biblical piety, the vast treasure of sacred music.
Antiphon 19.2 (2015) 109–115: Divine Worship and the Liturgical Vitality of the Church. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P.

Perhaps you are a wandering Catholic, or a continuing Anglican, or a bible Christian, or a seeker with no affiliation. Perhaps the above paragraph barely speaks to your immediate needs. Perhaps the same paragraph is for you merely an academic essay with seemingly little colour to seize the eye or sweetness to bend the ear. Read deeper. The patrimony of which the author speaks is a legacy of the Holy Spirit, the movement of the Holy Spirit in history. The Spirit blows where He wills (John 3:8).
The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.”
That same Spirit may be leading you, dear Reader, to a place where you will discover the truth, goodness and beauty of God.

Consider, then, this humble blog a compass pointing to a much greater reality. If you click on the following link, you will find another website. It is a link to a Catholic parish, a community of faith, hope and love, a community of ordinary people who are discovering the extraordinary gift of faith and new life offered by God.


Victoria Ordinariate

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