Forward in The Faith

Christ With Martha and Maria, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1886

Rather than add another lamentation to the vast porridge of complaints bubbling messily against misguided clergy and laity (whose actions certainly merit condemnation), let's draw attention to the irresistible movement that is reclaiming the celebration of the transcendentals and offering a way into a future of hope and goodness.

Moving

The Personal Ordinariates offer a way forward for English speaking Catholics and for all lovers of truth, goodness and beauty. The Ordinariates established by the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus are gathering up people into a mission to please God, a mission that remembers and enacts a vital cooperation with God for the salvation of souls. That cooperation is oriented and elevated in and through that glorious arena of living ecumenism and, because of God's grace offered freely to souls who humbly seek Him, divinization or deification offered in and through the sacred Liturgy, Divine Worship.

Dr. David Fagerberg:

Liturgy is the perichoresis of the Holy Trinity kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification. 

The great Athanaisus:

For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. - Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπισεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 25, 192 B De incarnatione Verbi, 54: literally, "... that we might become ...".

And, of the Patrimony, Lancelot Andrewes (1843):

Whereby, as before He of ours, so now we of His are made partakers. He clothed with our flesh, and we invested with His Spirit. The great promise of the Old Testament accomplished, that He should partake our human nature; and the great and precious promise of the New, that we should be "consortes divinae naturae", "partake his divine nature," both are this day accomplished. - Ninety-Six Sermons, Oxford: J H Parker, p. 109.

The Fellowship of the Saints

A generous hospitality issues forth from a faith sustained in confidence by a rich liturgical life. Matins, Evensong (and Benediction), and, of course, Divine Worship, offer a banquet of encounters with the Risen Lord.

While angry protests occupy and define deviating and defiant Catholics, and complacency freezes the imaginations of many others, the faithful in the Ordinariates are blessed to be able to focus on the one thing necessary that Mary chose.

The Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke 10:38-42

Now it came to pass, as they went, that He entered into a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His Word. But Martha was encumbered with much serving, and came to Him and said, “Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.” And Jesus answered and said unto her, “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Gifted with Divine Worship, the Mass of the Ordinariate, we, like Mary, sit at Jesus' feet, contemplating His Presence in the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life (Lumen Gentium 11). And! - we, like Mary, listen to and hear His saving word.

Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with It. Thus both by reason of the offering and through Holy Communion all take part in this liturgical service, not indeed, all in the same way but each in that way which is proper to himself. Strengthened in Holy Communion by the Body of Christ, they then manifest in a concrete way that unity of the people of God which is suitably signified and wondrously brought about by this most august sacrament.

Beyond the categories appropriated from the political sphere - liberal, conservative, progressive, etc. - and too often applied haphazardly to Catholics by commentators unable or unwilling to assign the more accurate terms heterodox and orthodox, Ordinariate Catholics - i.e., Roman Catholics of the Anglican Patrimony - are enabled to keep Jesus' commands (St. John 14:15) by being immersed in and supported by the same Patrimony, now preserved in communion with Holy Mother Church, through which God orients us in the sacred Liturgy to seek His enlivening grace. Grace that is the very life of God.

Magna Opera Domini
Great are the works of the Lord

Motto of His Excellency Steven J. Lopes, Bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter

The Ordinariate mission is one of unity in the truth. The Ordinariates established by Anglicanorum Coetibus, promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI, offer an invitation to Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and non-believers - pre-Catholics? - to come and see the work of God manifest in the Personal Ordinariates.