Friday, February 06, 2009

Fired-up Catholics: the fervor must glow...

A great object of this blog has been to convert the Catholics to Catholicism. Where are the unreservedly fired-up warriors that we read about in the lives of the saints?

Images can help to inspire, but it's a colossal task. Of all the youth I knew while growing up through all Catholic schools maybe just a few still go to church today. How do we induce others to care?

Since early childhood I have had an intense interest in religious "fervor." I always wondered why it had been stronger in former years and why it was dead now. Catholic fervor is a very beautiful thing and it's great to meditate upon.

Liturgy plays a part in fervor. We cannot be ignorant of the extent of the liturgical favors that we have received from God through the Church. Through the gift of faith we are enabled to understand so much through and in the context of the liturgical rites. The liturgy teaches us and we can send and receive our fervor in that direction. Teach your kids. Mothers, teach your sons. Fathers, teach your daughters.

Let us be a deeply liturgical people, a people of liturgical fervor.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not possible with the Novus Ordo.
Plain and simple.

Vernon said...

Liturgy - or rather the absence of one unified and dignified liturgy - has been the downfall of the Church over the past 40 years or so.

THE Liturgy - the Extraordinary Form as the Pope has had to call it - will be the salvation of the Church and thousands of souls.

Anonymous said...

"We cannot be ignorant of the extent of the liturgical favors that we have received from God through the Church. "

Your statement is very true. The Church has been blessed with thousands of liturgical favors and treasures from God,
Until Vatican II and it's 40 yr. aftermath that is.

Der Herr Alipius said...

I agree, up to a point. I wouldn't zero in on VCII and pull the trigger. It is - in my humble opinion - more important to never forget the motherhood of the church. No sane mother gives to her children anything that is contradictory to their growth and education. Seeing VCII under this light, it becomes apparent, that the blame does not lie solely with the council itself but also (or rather mainly) with whoever thought they needed to interpret the council's decisions in the "hermeneutics of discontinuity" kind of way.