Why Is Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday?

Jews count days as beginning at sundown because that's what Genesis says, "Evening came and morning followed, the first day" (Genesis 1). Catholicism is the completion and perfection of Judaism, so for purposes of liturgy, Catholics calculate days the same way.

That's why you can go to Mass on Saturday evening, but it counts for Sunday - the Saturday evening Mass is technically supposed to be after sundown, so that Sunday has already begun, liturgically and Scripturally speaking. Now, this poses a problem for modern man. After all, sundown varies from season to season, but people have a hard time scheduling an event whose start time might vary literally day to day. What to do? The Church allows the local bishop  to unilaterally decree a set time for "liturgical sundown" that holds throughout the year for when Sunday liturgy may begin. So, Saturday evening Mass can only start after 4:30 PM or 5:00 PM, or whatever time the bishop has set. Anything prior to that only counts for Saturday, not Sunday. Anything prior to that uses Saturday's Mass readings, not Sunday's.

And this is precisely how we calculate that Jesus' body spent three days in the tomb:

• 1st day: Jesus died on Friday before sundown, so He is dead on Friday. Nicodemus has to get His corpse into the tomb before sundown in order to honor the Sabbath rest. We assume that he, being a good Jew, managed this. Mosaic law decreed that anyone hung on a tree should not hang overnight, but should be buried before sundown (Deut 21:23).
• 2nd day: Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.
• 3rd day: Once the sun is down on Saturday evening, the third day has already begun. Jesus rises some time after Saturday sundown, possibly around midnight or 3 AM, so He rises on the 3rd day.

This is why none of the Jewish contemporaries to the apostles contested the fact that Jesus was in the tomb for three days. By everyone's count, He had been.

This also explains Easter Vigil Mass. Easter Vigil Mass is any Mass that begins after Holy Saturday sundown. As long as it begins after Saturday sundown, it begins on the third day. In fact, the rubrics indicate that the Easter Vigil Mass is not to begin until the first star can be seen in the sky.

Incidentally, there are actually three different Easter Masses: the Easter Vigil Mass, the Mass at sunrise and the Mass for the day. Each Mass has different readings and a different significance in the life of the Church. But it is the Easter Vigil Mass that all Catholics are encouraged to attend.

Only the Easter Vigil Mass has not one, but two different plenary indulgences attached: the renewal of baptismal vows at Vigil Mass is a plenary AND the fact that you attended a Mass wherein someone received First Communion is also a plenary. Now, you can only win one plenary indulgence a day, but the fact that there are two in operation here is kind of neat. The Easter Vigil is considered the Mother of All Feasts - it is the Mass from which all other Masses draw power and grace. It is the conduit of grace into the full liturgical year.

It's also a lot of fun to watch the candidates get baptized, if only because baptismal water is supposed to be running (thus "living" water) and cold ("we are baptized into His death"). The ancient instructions preferred a river to a lake (living water over still water) and cold water to hot. I have been to baptisms where the candidate accused us of having put ice into the water. To which, I don't see the problem, because we took the ice out before the Mass started, so...

Scalfari and Pope Francis

There has recently been much brouhaha about the Italian journalist Scalfari's mis-reporting of Pope Francis' words. Scalfari is 93, an atheist, and has a history of mis-reporting facts when it comes to the Pope.

The Pope continues to allow him personal access, continues to speak with him. Now Scalfari reports that the Pope says there is no hell. Many Catholics, disgruntled with the Pope, have insisted that Scalfari must be reporting correctly, that this is merely one more instance of the Pope's heretical leanings.

Normal, sane Catholics smile and shake their heads. We recall all the times the Pope has taught on hell, and the need to avoid it, and we laugh at the poor memory, the foot-stamping anger, of some of the Church's smaller children.

So, why does  the Pope keep speaking to an atheist who is so near death? To sane Catholics, the answer is obvious. In Les Miserables, when the bishop hands the silver to the thief, the old maidservant can't understand why the bishop is doing this. But we in the audience applaud the bishop for doing the Catholic thing. With every meeting, the Pope hands the silver to a dying atheist journalist, a thief who steals the truth with his words instead of his fists.

So, we can be the sane Catholics who applaud the Pope.
Or we can be the old maidservant, who can't understand what the bishop is doing.


Choose

Confession on Good Friday and Holy Saturday

The Congregation for Divine Worship issued the document Paschales Solemnitatis in 1988 which states:

"59. On this day [Good Friday], in accordance with ancient tradition, the Church does not celebrate the Eucharist: Holy Communion is distributed to the faithful during the Celebration of the Lord's Passion alone, though it may be brought at any time of the day to the sick who cannot take part in the celebration." 

"61. All celebration of the sacraments on this day is strictly prohibited, except for the sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick. Funerals are to be celebrated without singing, music, or the tolling of bells." 

"74. On this day [Holy Saturday] the Church abstains strictly from the celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass. Holy Communion may only be given the form of Viaticum. The celebration of marriages is forbidden, as also the celebration of other sacraments, except those of Penance and the Anointing of the Sick."

If your priest thinks he is forbidden to hear confessions during Triduum, he is sadly misinformed.

A Skillful Liar

My son sent me an interesting piece from Chronicle of Higher Education about what a modern scholar thinks the university should be. 

The author of that Chronicle piece is a liar.

First, he fails the very first test of a true humanities scholar: he refuses to define his terms. When faced with the problem of defining what constitutes humanities, his response is, "We know it when we see it." That is a lie.

Take Shakespeare, for instance. He is the cornerstone of English literature, yet it is possible to get advanced degrees in many places without ever taking a course on Shakespeare.

Conservatives want the humanities, but they define the humanities as including the Great Books, among which Shakespeare is extremely prominent. Liberals (who control the actual delivery of humanities course content at universities), refuse to build their "humanities" program around the literature of dead white European males. They instead think the cornerstone of the humanities is identity politics, and they build their courses accordingly.

So, the author wants to pretend there is some kind of paradox between conservatives espousing the humanities and those same conservatives refusing to fund it. However, once you realize the problem that the author refuses to engage, to wit, there is a huge disagreement about what the humanities really are, then you realize there is no paradox at all. Conservatives don't view university liberal humanities courses as actually having anything to do with the humanities, therefore they refuse to fund the farce.

The author's matching paradox, the idea that liberals defend the humanities, but have gutted it of Western European values, is also not a paradox once you realize how the left defines "humanities." From their point of view, they are cleansing the humanities of bias and taint, not gutting them

And liberals have successfully redefined the humanities into their own image simply because they do control the course content. Of course, by redefining the humanities, they've destroyed any reason there might have been for taking any courses. After all, if humanities is merely identity politics, I don't need to pay $40,000 a year to have a university professor tell me who I am. I can simply look in the mirror. My own life experience is worth much more than any dead white European male's introspections. I don't need to go to university to know what my own life experience is. So, the liberal definition is self-destructive. If the liberals are correct, if the humanities really are nothing but identity politics, then the humanities courses have no reason to exist.

But the author can ignore this entire problem and construct fake paradoxes if he doesn't engage the definition. And he KNOWS this, so he deliberately doesn't engage the definition.

Second, this allows him to make absolutely absurd remarks like this, "A school — be it a Gymnasium, a Realschule, a lycée, a grammar school, or a public school — exists to teach. The university is a different kind of thing. It was founded as a corporation or union of masters, both to allay the pernicious effects of competition for students and to exercise some sort of quality control on the doctrine propounded. "

This is simply incorrect. In the original university setting, the students hired the professor directly. Students pooled their money to bring someone in to teach them. If the professor turned out to be a bust, the students fired him and hired someone else. The "union of masters" came into existence to prevent this. Everyone in the union agreed to work only for a contract that the students couldn't break. This mean professors didn't have to worry about being fired because they stunk.That's where the tradition of "tenure" arose. The "pernicious effects" and "quality control" nonsense ("We're here to help YOU!") was all introduced as an excuse to the rubes, that reasoning was used to hide the fact  the professors had gotten together to protect their rice bowls, their income.

He kind of even admits that this was the situation when he says, " Indeed, some universities, like Cambridge, supported a vast ecosystem of teachers who played a vital role in the actual education of students (for pay), but who had no formal connection to the university itself." Yeah, no kidding.

Third. But this yahoo doesn't stop there. He then simply makes up nonsense out of whole cloth about the university curriculum. Part of "travers[ing] the arts curriculum" was always education in Catholic theology. Is the author advocating that? If not, why not? He wants the arts, he should have ALL the arts, right?

Again, he half-way admits this when he says, "Alongside the arts were the three highers — theology, law, and medicine." But he couldn't bear to admit this without deliberately lying again. After all, since theology, law and medicine are HIGHER arts, then the other seven (the trivium and quadrivium) sat BELOW the three major arts and drew their authority from them. 

And, actually, medicine was an also-ran. The original reason for the universities were theology (making God's ways known to man) and law (making man's ways in accordance with God's ways). Medicine was added later. Theology and law were NOT "alongside." Theology and law were central.  The trivium and quadrivium were not alongside, they were BELOW and DERIVATIVE.

This allows him to tell the biggest lie, "The reality is that the humanities have always been about courtoisie, a constellation of interests, tastes, and prejudices that marks one as a member of a particular class." Which is a careful half-truth. The humanities have always been about being CATHOLIC, being universal, having a universal palate, able to absorb all the things of men, weigh all the things of men, because all of mankind is called to Christ.

Compare the universal call to holiness to the modern "humanities" of identity politics. The modern humanities is not about binding everything back together again to make one harmonious whole, it is not about universality or university, it is instead about identity politics and fragmentation.

Again, the author pretty much admits this when he explicitly SAYS that the humanities are about fragmentation, not universality, "Deep down, what most humanists value about the humanities is that they offer participation in a community in which they can share similar tastes in reading, art, food, travel, music, media, and yes, politics" The emphasis here is on the "similar tastes." All the blacks sit at this table, all the Mexicans at that one, the whites can go sit by the kitchen, and keep the Asians near the door, because they should really just leave. The modern humanities don't want similar tastes, but similar distastes - hate the white guy, hate the Asian, hate the "privileged", hate the hetero.

The author is a liar, but a skillful one.

I can only wonder if he is a true believer in his own lies.

The 10-Second Fast

The Ten-Second Fast

A lot of people want to test themselves during Lent by learning how to fast. That is a laudable endeavor. But not everyone can fast.

Diabetics, children, the aged, pregnant women... there is a long list of people who, for various medical reasons, simply cannot fast. Or, you might not have a medical reason, but you might still be unable to fast. For instance, you might find yourself in a social situation where it would insult the host if you did not consume food. Catholic Faith is not meant to insult people. As long as you break no Church law, then breaking your fast with your host is the charitable thing to do. The person you interact with is an image of Christ, the Bridegroom. You don't want to let your personal fast turn you into the man at the wedding feast who refuses to eat.

So, does this mean that if you have a medical condition or are in an awkward social situation, you cannot fast?

No, not at all.

Remember, apart from the prescribed fasting times, such as Ash Wednesday, Good Friday or the Eucharistic Fast, there is no "minimum length" to a fast. There are people who have tried to fast for 40 days (the Church recommends against this, by the way). Bully for them. But that is really not necessary. The Eucharistic fast used to be a lot longer than the single hour we now observe. But the fact that it is shorter is not really the problem people make it out to be.

As St. Thérèse of Lisieux observed:

I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. [...] Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.

In honor or her brilliant, insightful way of presenting the ancient teaching, we recognize the truth: it isn't the length or difficulty of the task that makes it holy, it is the love which with the task is done. The rich man may give away his wealth, but if the beggar woman throws her penny into the collection with great love, than her contribution is greater than that of the rich man who loves less.

And so we find the meat of the matter. If the length of the fast isn't really relevant (and, apart from the Church's prescribed fasts, it isn't), then a Catholic's voluntary fast can be of any length. Even ten seconds is enough. And anyone can do a 10-second fast.

Have you just become aware that you are thirsty?
Then, while you contemplate God with love, simply refrain from drinking anything for a count of ten.

There.
You have fasted.
Now take your drink of water, satisfy your health needs, make your host smile, and no one is the wiser but you.

Done with great love, this ten-second fast is a greater accomplishment than a 40-day fast. You can fast for the whole of Lent, in ten-second, five-second, one-second increments, here and there, scattered throughout your day. Diabetic, pregnant, child - it matters not. You still consume all you need for health of the body, while fasting as you need for the health of the soul.

And so the day becomes holy, and God is woven into your life, and Lent fulfills its purpose.

Laissez-Faire Capitalism is a Unicorn

Everyone goes on about how chimerical socialism is. The defenders of socialism always insist that it has never actually been implemented anywhere. The opponents of socialism point out that every attempt to implement it results in economic collapse and a slew of body bags. Opponents are therefore correct to point out that socialism is a complete failure.

But laissez-faire capitalism is no better. Supporters insist that small government is really best, as small government encourages the free reign of capitalism. But every time capitalism is tried, we get big government, not small government. The only time anyone ever got small government was right after a revolution turned over the apple cart. As soon as the revolution is over, government grows, because it can't do anything else. 

Just as socialism always leads to big government and body bags, so laissez-faire capitalism always leads to big government and bureaucracy. It cannot do anything else. The very definition of how to be a good capitalist involves maximizing all streams of revenue. Government is, and always will be, one of those revenue streams, so it is always in the interest of capitalists to grow the government, just as he would grow any other aspect of his business.

Big government allows successful capitalists to suppress the competition, via government's law-making ability, and to increase revenue, via government's taxing ability. Any good capitalist is going to take advantage of those attributes. If he doesn't, he isn't a good capitalist.

This is why there is always a revolving door between business and government. Business needs ex-government leaders in-house, so they have experts available in how to co-opt government. Government needs ex-business leaders in-house so it knows how best to facilitate income generation and tax revenue streams. A good businessman always tried to capture government, and government will always allow itself to be captured, because it is run by businessmen who came in through the revolving door.

Laissez-faire capitalism ineluctably grows the government. Precisely because capitalism leads to the best businessmen getting the best outcomes for their businesses, it cannot do anything else.