Light On Dark Water

No More Posts Till Easter Monday

As is fairly usual with me, I started off pretty well with Lent and gradually got slacker and lazier. I'm going to make an effort during Holy Week to attend more to the occasion. It seems especially important this year since I can't actually go to Mass. So I won't be posting anymore till Monday April 13. I'll still participate in conversations, if there are any, but there won't be any new posts. 

Today for the first time since public Masses were cancelled I watched one on television. As I said in a comment here a couple of weeks or so ago, a televised Mass just seems all wrong to me in some fundamental way that I haven't made the effort to articulate. I don't mean religiously wrong, just off. Unreal. Weird. But I have already noticed a tendency on my part to start drifting without the anchor of weekly Mass (and also in my case a weekly holy hour–which I still do at home but of course it's not the same). I keep thinking of what Janet said about the Japanese Christians who held on to the faith for…what was it?…250 years without priests, and I'm ashamed.

Maclin Horton
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43 responses to “No More Posts Till Easter Monday”

  1. Grumpy

    I dont want to watch mass on tv. I read the typica and the lessons for the Sunday.
    I have never felt any wish to be a priest or consecrate the whole host or anything like that. But. Im surrounded by priests and seminarians and there are moments of annoyance. Last week I was having a zoom class with the seminarians and also the lay students. One very young guy was talking about how hed been quarantined for two weeks away from the seminary. He said with open candour and cheer that he was out of quarantine and back celebrating the liturgy. I thought I could hear the sound of gritting of teeth from half the class.
    On saturday I zoomed with a much older priest who was heading out when we finished class to a convent of Poor Clares where is aunt is a nun. He is spending whole week at the convent because for some reason they’ve lost their priest and they haven’t had the sacraments for two weeks. No liturgy envy there!
    We will never forget this strange Holy Week

    Reply
  2. Mac

    That’s for sure. Strange it most surely is.

    Reply
  3. Janet

    Well, when you think about the Poor Clares, what else do they have?
    I am sure that some of you pray the novena to the Divine Mercy every year. We usually do, but some years I just forget, and I have never really paid much attention to the feast itself. I am beginning to see this as a real ingratitude. Anyway, I just want to encourage everyone to pray the novena this year and observe the feast day in some way.
    AMDG

    Reply
  4. Mac

    Good counsel. Thank you.

    Reply
  5. Janet

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J6RgaPTo4hE
    AMDG

    Reply
  6. Mac

    That’s beautiful. Thank you.

    Reply
  7. Mac

    Off-topic and not apropos, check out some of the author names in this Penguin ad, the mostly ancient ones who are known to us only by one name, like Homer:
    https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/20-off-penguin-classics/
    (Courtesy of the Dappled Things blog:
    https://dappledthings.org/blog/
    )

    Reply
  8. Janet

    That’s hysterical. If the names were actually on the books, I would buy them just to have them.
    AMDG

    Reply
  9. Mac

    I wonder how they got there. Somebody having fun? Some automated process?

    Reply
  10. Janet

    It could be somebody having fun, but I am wondering if the database won’t tolerate a blank field and grabs something from the previous record.
    If I am an expert at anything, it’s abberent databases.
    AMDG

    Reply
  11. Rob G

    “I am wondering if the database won’t tolerate a blank field and grabs something…”
    That was my guess too. In any case, it’s pretty funny — very Python-esque.

    Reply
  12. Mac

    Yeah–assuming it’s not a prank, which I would sort of like to think is the case, but is probably quite unlikely, it’s almost certainly a really basic programming oversight, what you might call a rookie mistake. Whoever wrote the code didn’t fully cover the case where an author’s first name is blank, so something like this:
    There’s a data structure where the information for displaying a particular book is being assembled, and one component of that is the first name. When a book where the author’s first name is blank comes along, it doesn’t put that piece into the structure. But the preceding author’s name is still there. It should be cleared before or after each book.

    Reply
  13. Janet

    Isn’t that exactly what I said?

    Reply
  14. Janet

    😉

    Reply
  15. Mac

    [desperately trying to suppress pickiness]
    Pretty much.
    🙂

    Reply
  16. Janet

    I just said it more succinctly.
    AMDG

    Reply
  17. grumpy

    I think its added the names of the translators as the authors’ first names. In my memory, Jonathan something is an expert on Aristotle.

    Reply
  18. Janet

    Yes! That must be it. Desmond Lee translated Plato’s Republic.
    AMDG

    Reply
  19. Mac

    Or some other participant. Jonathan Barnes wrote the intro for the Aristotle book. Others are more mixed up. I’m pretty sure “Of Monmouth” didn’t translate or write a preface for Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.

    Reply
  20. Marianne

    It all sounds very HAL 9000 in 2001 to me. 🙂

    Reply
  21. Mac

    HAL is the best AI ever in sci-fi, because they didn’t have him magically become conscious. I always hate that. But everything HAL does is explainable in software terms. I don’t think you find that out until one of the sequels, though.

    Reply
  22. Grumpy

    They do look funny to me but not totally surreal because I get listed on amazon as a co-author of books I translated.
    I know Lent technically end when the Triduum starts but Ive never ended before the vigil. This year I ended at 6.30 last night and so far Ive listened to five podcasts. Not eating meat until Sunday. Im sure I will return to the vigil as end point next year. Its just having no liturgy schedule

    Reply
  23. Mac

    I’m having a big problem with it, too. Among the lesser things is that my wife and I like to go to the Easter vigil at the cathedral and eat a big breakfast at Waffle House at 2am. Any kind of celebration is going to seem kind of lame in isolation.
    I didn’t know you did translations. I’m somewhat in awe of that level of fluency in another language.

    Reply
  24. Janet

    That’s sounds so great–the breakfast. It occurs to me that I should have planned something celebratory, but I haven’t.
    We are going to get all the family together on Zoom, so that should be nice, if confusing.
    AMDG

    Reply
  25. Mac

    I think we’re going to FaceTime with one of the offspring. After sleeping late.

    Reply
  26. Mac

    An interesting Holy Saturday reading:
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/holy-saturday-christ-harrowing-of-hell/

    Reply
  27. Janet

    Χριστός Ανέστη!
    AMDG

    Reply
  28. Mac

    He is risen indeed..I think is the right response….

    Reply
  29. Janet

    Indeed.
    AMDG

    Reply
  30. Grumpy

    I watched a Nigerian priest-colleague zoom the vigil, together with 45 Nigerian zoomers around the world.
    I had an illicit Easter lunch wwith my lidger and three former grad students. The leg of lamb was much enjoyed by all except one. No more meat except leftovers, until Sunday, since the lodger has a week to go until orthodox Easter.
    Im down to end of season three on line of duty.

    Reply
  31. Mac

    I would say it was an ordinary Sunday for me except that it didn’t include Mass. Watching tv now.

    Reply
  32. Mac

    And when I say “watching tv”, I don’t mean liturgy.

    Reply
  33. Janet

    Did you have bad weather?
    AMDG

    Reply
  34. Mac

    No. It was kind of windy but I don’t think it rained at all. How about you?
    We’re having a drought, actually. Driest spring I’ve ever seen.

    Reply
  35. Mac

    I just looked at news for the first time today. 19 dead from tornadoes?! Wow. I had no idea.

    Reply
  36. Janet

    Well, we sat in the safest corner of the house with our keys and phones and LED lights in case we had to leave, but it passed us by without any damage.
    AMDG

    Reply
  37. Mac

    I’m glad to hear it.

    Reply
  38. Janet

    I want to say that we have never done that before. We usually just go to bed, and find out if we’re dead in the morning.
    AMDG

    Reply
  39. Mac

    Tornadoes are not to be messed with. But they’re so sudden and unpredictable that it’s hard to know when you should be watchful and when you should be really afraid.

    Reply
  40. Janet

    We really don’t have any inside spaces. So, there’s no good place to go.
    AMDG

    Reply
  41. Mac

    We have one small bathroom that has no outside walls. But then tornadoes are relatively rare here, unlike where you live.

    Reply
  42. Janet

    https://thethreeprayers.blogspot.com/2020/04/month-2-divine-mercy-and-real-mitigation.html
    Once a month posts, I guess.
    AMDG

    Reply
  43. Mac

    I want to say that in the KJV one of those passages says something like “no flesh would live.” Much more dire sounding.
    I think I’m getting a cold so of course I’m wondering if it’s the plague.
    Anyway, good post, and I join you in your prayer. I have managed not to miss a day of the novena so far.

    Reply

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