TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION It’s Independence Day week, and there is a link worth tracing between the Declaration of Inde-pendence and the language of liturgy. One of the signers of the Declaration on that July 4 long ago was Charles Carroll, probably the wealthiest man in the colonies and one of the few Catholics on the political scene. As a flourish to…

Because you are the image of God our Father on earth, and you have the mission to take care of those you love the most. On this Father Day and always may God Bless you abundantly. Amen. Por que tu eres la imagen de Dios nuestro Padre en la tierra, y tienes la mission the cuidar a los que mas amas, que…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION If you could somehow transport a third-century Christian into your twenty-first-century Sunday Mass, once the initial shock wore off he or she would be more or less at home with the structure of the first part of the liturgy, the Word. The second part might be more difficult to comprehend. The stumbling block would be the book. We have a book, a missal that…

The origins of the custom of burning a lamp before the tabernacle are in Jewish worship, where a lamp called ner tamid or “eternal flame” burns before the ark in every synagogue. The ark contains the sacred scrolls of the Torah. The flame represents the menorah in the Temple, and therefore is never extinguished. In fact, the word “tabernacle” itself is derived from Hebrew, as taber is the Hebrew…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Customs surrounding the naming of babies are interesting, and over time the Church has tried to offer some motherly advice to direct parents in this necessary chore. The ritual book used for baptism from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries advised priests to guard against giving ridiculous or pagan names to babies consigned to their ministry. In 1666 the diocesan ritual of Bourges in France…