“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.” ― St. Antony the Great
I wish you all a blessed Christmastide for 2025 and give you this from two years ago.
I'm very honoured to have Angela Malek as a reader of this blog. Angela is a wonderful singer who recorded a lovely Christmas album with Crystal Jarrell Johnson in 2019. I was to post about it then, but something happened just before Christmas that year—a foul wind from Wuhan. Well, better late than never.
The recording includes some real gems among them, There is No Rose, which my choir will be singing before the Vigil Mass of the Nativity on the Lord, this Sunday, before Mass.
1.
There is No Rose of Such Virtu, Trad./ arr. Deux
2.
Veni, veni Emmanuel, Trad./ arr. Jerome Malek
3.
Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, Trad. Gerald
Self, recorder; Alison Fletcher, violin
4.
Hodie Christus natus est, SWV 315, Heinrich Schütz
5.
Laudamus Te, Gloria, Antonio Vivaldi, Alison
Fletcher, violin
6.
He Shall Feed His Flock/Come Unto Him, Messiah, G. F. Händel
7.
Maria Wiegenlied, Max Reger
8.
Ave Maria, Camille Saint-Saëns
9.
Il est né le divin enfant, Trad./ arr. Gabriel Fauré/ Deux
10.
Quand Dieu naquit a Noël, Trad./ arr. Claude Balbastre/J. Malek
11.
Gesù bambino, Pietro Yon
The exquisite rendition of Pietro Yon's Jesu Bambino is below.
No boring Christmas letter. Just a prayer and a hope from my wife, Francoise and me for a blessed and holy Christmastide. Blogging is less now, I've said and written most of it already. More to come, no doubt, but Substack and Podcasts dominate now, and readership is fractured. For those who still stop by, God bless you. Thank you for all your kindness and prayers over the years. To those who have wronged me, you all know who you are, and so do I. I'm still here, you're not, but I forgive you anyway. However, coal is all you will get in your stocking, and that's what you deserve.
To the rest of you, God bless you and Merry Christmas!
Robert Parsons fell into the River Trent and drowned; he was only 37. At this funeral, the eulogy included:
"Qui tantus primo Parsone in flore fuisti, quantus in autumno
in morerer flores."
"You who were so great, Parsons, in life's springtime,
how great you would have been in autumn, had death not intervened."
From the Sermons of St. Jerome, Priest at Bethlehem.
Who and what was the blessed and glorious Mary, always a
Virgin, hath been revealed by God by the message of an Angel, in these words:
Hail, thou that art full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among
women. It was fitting that a fullness of grace should be poured into that
Virgin who hath given to God glory and to man a Saviour, who hath brought peace
to earth, who hath given faith to the Gentiles, who hath killed sin, who hath
given law to life, who hath made the crooked ways straight. Verily, she is full
of grace. To others grace cometh measure by measure; in Mary grace dwelleth at
once in all fullness. Verily, she is full of grace. We believe that the holy
Fathers and Prophets had grace; but they were not full of grace. But into Mary
came a fullness of all the grace, which is in Christ, albeit otherwise than as
it is in Him. Therefore, is it said: Blessed art thou among women, that is,
Blessed art thou above all women. The fulness of blessing in Mary utterly
neutralized in her any effects of the curse of Eve. In her praise Solomon
writeth in the Song of Songs, ii. 10,: Rise up, my dove, my fair one, for the
winter is past, the rain is over and gone. And again: Come from Lebanon, my
Spouse, come, thou shalt be crowned. ~iv. 8.
Not unjustly then is she bidden to come from Lebanon, for
Lebanon is so named on account of its stainless and glistening whiteness. The
earthly Lebanon is white with snow, but the lonely heights of Mary's holiness
are white with purity and grace, brilliantly fair, whiter far than snow,
sparkling with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, she is undefiled like a dove, all
clean, all upright, full of grace and truth. She is full of mercy, and of the
righteousness that hath looked down from heaven and therefore is she without
stain because in her hath never been any corruption. She hath compassed a man
in her womb, saith holy Jeremiah, but she conceived not by the will of fallen
man. The Lord, saith the Prophet, hath created a new thing in the earth; a
woman shall compass a man. xxxi. 22. Verily, it is a new thing. Verily, it was
a new work of power, greater than all other works, when God, Whom the world
cannot bear, and Whom no man shall see and live, entered the lodging of her
womb, breaking not the blissful cloister of her virgin flesh. And in her body,
He was borne, the Infinite enclosed within her womb. And from her womb He came
forth, so that it was fulfilled which was spoken of the Prophet Ezekiel,
saying: This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter
in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore
it shall be shut. xliv. 2. Hence also in the Song of Songs it is said of her
iv. 12,: A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden enclosed, a
fountain sealed, thy perfumes are a garden of delights. Verily a garden of
delights, filled with the perfumes of all flowers, rich with the sweet savour
of grace. And the most holy Virgin herself is a garden enclosed, whereinto sin
and Satan have never entered to sully the blossoms, a fountain sealed, sealed
with the seal of the Trinity.
The bleeding of the Catholic Church in Canada and, in particular, Quebec continues. An utter tragedy and a disgrace. The curse of the "Quiet Revolution," the "bloodless," Christ-hating, tradition-hating Marxist revolution in Quebec continues.
As you now doubt, I am deeply involved in church music. As Director of Music, I have built a choir of 12 and developed a training program for them, even though we come from miles apart. Our sacred music program over the Advent and Christmastide features classic chant hymnody and polyphony by Palestrina, Victoria, Handl, Charpentier, Witt, Gibbons and others as well as medieval folk carols. Our community has grown from about 40 after the lockdown insanity to almost 200 today. Do the math. We have babies galore, so many young families. We would have 16 altar "boys" except we lost 2 in September to a Catholic College in Eastern Ontario. More? How about 2 former young men, a Master of Ceremonies and the one he trained, both now ordained priests and one more in seminary!
Bishops of Canada! Here me well. The power to fix this lay in your hands!
