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                 July 17, 2007

Liturgy: The Final Frontier

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Although I was never a "Trekkie" and am not a "science fiction" fan, I did watch a few of the episodes of the original Star Trek between 1966 and 1969 (its original airtime of Thursdays between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in the 1966-1967 season was taken over by Ironside when it started its eight year run on September 14, 1967, staying on Thursdays throughout those eight years save for ten weeks in the Fall of 1971 when it was moved to Tuesday nights), becoming familiar with William Shatner's narration over the opening theme.

Space: The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

 

The Starship Enterprise's original voyage didn't quite last five years. Cancellation came to Star Trek at the end of its third season (1968-1969), only to revived in 1978 as a series of theatrical motion pictures that spawned a seemingly endless number of sequel and prequel television series (actually four in number) between 1987 and 2005. Thankfully, I never watched a single moment of the motion pictures or the succession of Star Trek television programs.

There is quite an analogy, however, between the Star Trek "franchise" and the liturgical revolution wrought by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, starting with the fact that both were busy at work in the 1960s. The creators of Star Trek saw "space" as the "final frontier." The revolutionary creators of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo Missae saw "liturgy" as the "final" frontier to serve as the vehicle to promote Modernist conceptions by means of its radical and ever ceaseless changes. The goal was simple: to so bewilder the Catholic faithful by the unpredictability with which what purported to be "Mass" was offered in order to convince them that everything about the Faith, including doctrine, was subject to re-evaluation and reinterpretation to suit the "needs" of "modern" man.

The opening narration to the 1966 series Liturgy: The Final Frontier could have been as followers (with the voice over being done by Annibale Bugnini):

Liturgy: The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Consilium. Its three year mission: to explore strange new liturgies, to seek out the approval of Masonic and Protestant and Jewish critics of the Catholic past, to boldly go where no Pope has allowed us to go before.

 

Unlike the revisionist history being spun by Father Joseph Ratzinger and his apologists, including the new Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., the Novus Ordo Missae was seen by its revolutionary propagators as a decisive break with the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, something that Ratzinger himself admitted in the French foreword to the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, something he seems to have forgotten or (perhaps) never meant in the first place. More likely, however, is the fact that Ratzinger, ever the Hegelian, sees no contradiction between what he wrote in 1992 and what he is saying now, believing that both have substantial "elements of truth" that can be reconciled with each other. This is what Ratzinger wrote in th preface to the French edition of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it--as in a manufacturing process--with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, oppose this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery.

 

Obviously, there are "elements" of the Ratzinger in Summorum Pontificum in the passage quoted from the preface to the French edition of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, especially the sentences making reference to his belief that the liturgy "can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves with its mystery." There are also "elements" of rank contradiction in the passages that speak of a "fabricated" and "manufactured" liturgy, no mention of which is made in Summorum Pontificum, as one can see quite plainly:

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal.  In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture.  What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.  It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.  Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books.  The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.

Modernism leads to insanity. It spins the principle of non-contradiction on its head so much that one has to believe himself imprisoned in the late Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone to behold the plethora of contradictions. Ratzinger referred in his preface to the French edition The Reform of the Roman Liturgy to the new order service as a "fabrication," which means that it is not, to be use his own language, a "mature," "organic" development from what had preceded it. What he terms as no "rupture" was called that very precisely in the pages of Monsignor Gamber's book with which he was so impressed and praised so highly. How can one praise a book that called the Novus Ordo a rupture with the past and then turn around and say that no such rupture took place? I suppose this is easy when one is a Modernist steeped in the illogic and absurdity of Hegelianism:

Here is what Monsignor Gamber, who was in favor of the "reform of the reform," wrote in The Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

Not only is the Novus Ordo Missae of 1969 a change of the liturgical rite, but that change also involved a rearrangement of the liturgical year, including changes in the assignment of feast days for the saints. To add or drop one or the other of these feast days, as had been done before, certainly does not constitute a change of the rite, per se. But the countless innovations introduced as part of liturgical reform have left hardly any of the traditional liturgical forms intact . . .

At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old and until now the heart of the Church, was destroyed. A closer examination reveals that the Roman rite was not perfect, and that some elements of value had atrophied over the centuries. Yet, through all the periods of the unrest that again and again shook the Church to her foundations, the Roman rite always remained the rock, the secure home of faith and piety. . . .

Was all this really done because of a pastoral concern about the souls of the faithful, or did it not rather represent a radical breach with the traditional rite, to prevent the further use of traditional liturgical texts and thus to make the celebration of the "Tridentime Mass" impossible--because it no loner reflected the new spirit moving through the Church?

Indeed, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the prohibition of the traditional rite was announced at the same time as the introduction of the new liturgical texts; and that a dispensation to continue celebrating the Mass according to the traditional rite was granted only to older priests.

Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form; and in no way a liturgy that represented what the Council Fathers had envisioned, i.e., a liturgy that would meet the pastoral needs of the faithful.

Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example, references to a God who judges and punishes.

At the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy created after the Second Vatican Council is identical in essence with the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point, and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting rid of elements of no particular interest.

Most priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform of the Divine Office and of the liturgical chant introduced by Pope St. Pius X.

Following this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while, in many cases, they themselves refused to obey. . . .

The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church, the inspiration of countless Catholics over many centuries. Will someone, some day, be able to say the same thing about the new Mass? (Monsignor Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy," p. 39, p. 99, pp. 100-102.)

 

Why would one praise the text of a book that spoke about the destruction of the traditional Mass while contending a mere fifteen years later that no rupture had taken place? What would one contend that no rupture took place when those who planned the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service did so repeatedly. Consider these words of Father Joseph Gelineau, who served as an adviser to Annibale's Bugnini's Consilium:

Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Quoted and footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)

 

Bishop Karol Wojtyla spoke of the immense nature of the "liturgical reform" in a conversation with a friend in 1965:

Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense. (Quoted and footnoted in Assault on the Roman Rite. This has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)

 

Did not Father Gelineau and Bishop Wojtyla know what they were taking about? The former spoke of the destruction of the Roman Rite, the latter spoke of the fact that "all else will be changed" apart from the bread and wine. How can anyone speak of a continuity when discontinuity was being spoken about by the very revolutionaries who planned and implemented the synthetic concoction known as the new order service?

Undaunted by little things such as facts, however, Father Joseph Ratzinger and his spokesman, Father Lombardi, asserted for himself that the Novus Ordo Missae represented no rupture with the Mass of Tradition. (Anticipating the critics out there, I know full well that the Missal promulgated by Angelo Roncalli in 1962, which codified a number of changes he had made in 1960, including the suppression of feast days of saints, is a precursor of the Novus Ordo while retaining the basic form and prayers of Tradition, save for the breaking of the Roman Canon, that were obliterated even further in the Ordo Missae of 1965, which went into effect on Sunday, November 29, 1965. As Father Cekada noted in his excellent sermon  (July 07, 2007    The Motu Mass Benefits And Dangers (27 Minutes), there is nothing doctrinally heterodox in the 1962 Missal even though it is a true truncation of the authentic Mass of Pope Saint Pius V.)  This is what Father Lombardi noted in an interview with Izvestia, otherwise known as Zenit, published on Sunday, July 15, 2007:

"We have two forms -- one ordinary and the other extraordinary -- of a single rite of celebration of the Mass. The mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ is so great that it cannot be identified in a definitive and exclusive way with one form or the other of the rite that is celebrated," the Vatican spokesman emphasized.

The liturgy is "a continual journey, without ruptures, guided in faith and charity by he who has supreme responsibility for the unity of the Church," he said.


That's not what Giovanni Montini/Paul VI said in his general audience address of November 19, 1969, prior to the implementation of the Novus Ordo for use in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Does Father Lombardi want to contend that Montini was ignorant about which he was speaking, that he, Montini, did not know his mind insofar as the purposes of the liturgical revolution were concerned? Here is what Montini said in 1969:

We wish to draw your attention to an event about to occur in the Latin Catholic Church: the introduction of the liturgy of the new rite of the Mass. . . . This change has something astonishing about it, something extraordinary. This is because the Mass is regarded as the traditional and untouchable expression of our religious worship and the authenticity of our faith. We ask ourselves, how could such a change be made? What effect will be given to these questions and to others like them, arising from the innovation. (Giovanni Montini, November 18, 1969, General Audience address, quoted in Christopher A. Ferrara, The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church, Remnant Press, 2002, p. 163.)

 

Montini reiterated this point in his General Audience address a week later, November 26, 1969:

We ask you to turn your minds once more to the liturgical innovation of the new rite of the Mass. . . . A new rite of the Mass: a change in a venerable tradition that has gone on for centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled. . . . We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. . . . So what is to be done on this special and historical occasion? First of all, we must prepare ourselves.This novelty is no small thing. We should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, of its exterior forms. As intelligent persons and conscientious faithful we should find out as much as we can about this innovation. . . .

It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why? What is more precious than those loftiest of our Church's values?

The answer will seem banal, prosaic. Yet it is a good answer, because it is human, because it is apostolic. Understanding of prayer is worth more than silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more--particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech. (Giovanni Montini, General Audience address, November 26, 1969, quoted in The Great Facade, pp. 163-1964..)

 

Noting that Montini's assertion that the vernacular languages needed to be used to make prayer "understandable" was a thoroughly contemptible slap at the millions upon millions of Catholics who worshiped in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition over the course of most of the history of the Roma Rite of the Catholic Church and understood perfectly that the perfect prayer, the Mass, was the unbloody representation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's one Sacrifice of Himself to the Father in Spirit and in Truth as a propiatory offering for our sins (how many Catholics in the conciliar structures understand or accept that today after nearly forty years of the Novus Ordo and its "plain," "banal" language?), does Father Federico Lombardi and his superior, Father Joseph Ratzinger, expect us to believe that Giovanni was wrong to speak of a "new rite of the Mass" and of an "innovation," signifying, of course, a rupture, a break with the Tradition of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church? Are we supposed to be that stupid to accept an assertion as being true simply because it is asserted as being true?

Ah, Father Lombardi's rewriting of history, which is very similar to Father Ratzinger's constant rewriting of the history of the Faith, did not confine itself to the laughable assertion that the Novus Ordo Missae concocted and promulgated by the counterfeit church of conciliarism did not represent a break with Tradition of the Catholic Church. The Zenit report of July 15, 2007, also included the following statements:

Father Lombardi continued: "Neither the Missal of Pius V and John XXIII -- used by a small minority -- nor that of Paul VI -- used today with much spiritual fruit by the greatest majority -- will be the final 'law of prayer' of the Catholic Church.

"In the Church's journey through history, there is also the journey of the liturgical celebration so that we may more and more perfectly encounter the Lord, his death and resurrection, source of our life. This is the central point, that draws us toward unity."

 

A liturgical rite is supposed to communicate the transcendence and permanence of the Most Blessed Trinity, Who is the Object of our worship in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The transcendence and permanence of God is not communicated in a "liturgy" that is subject to ceaseless change as such a fungible "liturgy" communicates a God Who is evolving as our own understanding of Him evolves over time. While it is true that there was genuine organic growth in the Mass in the first centuries of the Church and that there were some regional variations in its offering even after the age of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, there was never a period in the history in the Catholic Church that the offering of a true Catholic Mass varied so much from priest to priest and from time to time and from place to place as to make it unrecognizable to someone from a different part of the world (or even from a neighboring parish).

One of the reasons that the Missal Romanum promulgated by Pope Saint Pius V was adopted by dioceses that could have opted out of it because of local usage dating back more than two hundred years was because it was such a fitting, perfect and beautiful expression of the one, immemorial Mass of Tradition that goes back in all of its essential elements to the Apostles themselves. Although there is some debate on this point in traditional circles, there are some thoroughly Catholic liturgists who believe that the Missale Romanum of Pope Saint Pius V represents the zenith of liturgical development. There was nothing in it that represented the sort of rupture, break or destruction spoken of by Father Joseph Gelineau or Giovanni Montini when comparing the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo Missae they invented, replete with Talmudic Jewish "table prayers" in the place of the traditional Offertory, thereby helping to obliterate the sacrificial nature of the Mass, to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.

The late Father Adrian Fortescue explained in the early part of the Twentieth Century that the Missale Romanum of Saint Pius V was nothing new and represented no break at all with the past:

Essentially, the Missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is formed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine collection. We find prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis and allusions to it in the [Fourth] Century. So the Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest Liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that Liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world, and thought he could stamp out the Faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of some unresolved problems, in spite of later changes there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.

 

Hand it to the original conciliar revolutionaries: at least they had the personal integrity to admit openly, well, sometimes, that is, that their liturgical "reform" was indeed a break with the past. Gelineau spoke about the destruction of the Roman Rite. Montini spoke about a brand new rite, an innovation. Why the monstrous efforts on the parts of Fathers Ratzinger and Lombardi to hoodwink Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that what was termed an "innovation" by the "pope" in 1969 is now considered to be simply the "ordinary" form of the "one" Roman Rite? (And this raises a point I don't think I've raised in the last ten days since Summorum Pontificum was released: Is the "Anglican Use" "Mass" a third form of the "one Roman Rite," a sort of extra-extraordinary form?)

The internal contradictions of the conciliarists are incredible to behold. They are in the official documents of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Consider these two passages from Paragraph 15 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal, the document that supposedly governs the offering of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service:

The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church.

 

Here is an admission that the texts of ancient tradition were being changed so that they "would be more in accord with the language of modern theology." What is modern theology, you ask? Modernism, thank you. How can anyone claim that tradition was preserved when the revolutionaries admit that they changed it in light of "modern theology" and the "actual state of the Church's discipline," no less to disparage, as I have noted in other articles, practices of "outward penance" that are said, quite arrogantly, "to belong to a different age in the history of the Church"?

According to Father Lombardi, therefore, we can look forward to Liturgy: The Next Generation (perhaps we've already lived through this series, eh?) and Liturgy: Deep Forms Two and Liturgy: Voyage to Truth and Unity and Liturgy: Positivism (you better believe it is so if we say that it so). Then again, those who believe in the evolution of dogmatic truth, which is at the crux of the whole conciliarist revolution, can believe that liturgical evolution is necessary and that we are on a "cosmic" journey that ends in the "search for truth and unity," which is nothing other than Hegelianism (the belief that truth contradicts and clashes with itself to produce new truths that contradict and clash with themselves until we arrive at the stage of ultimate truth) by way of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

What about the press report that surfaced yesterday, July 16, 2007, that Father Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI offers Mass according to the 1962 Missal of Angelo Roncalli? Yes, what about this curious press  report that surfaces just days after Summorum Pontificum and William Levada's reiteration of the heresy of the new ecclesiology that is being spun even in some Society of Saint Pius X circles as a return to tradition? It means nothing. Nothing.

The timing of the report is first all to help to quash all opposition to conciliarism and to the Novus Ordo Missae once and for all, trying to make Ratzinger appear as the best friend that traditionalists have ever had. Father Joseph Ratzinger was suspected of heresy by the Holy Office of the Inquisition when he was offering the Missal in use at the time of the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. He used the pre-1956 Missal, replete with all fifteen octaves and second and third collects on various ferial and feast days, for five years after his ordination on June 29, 1951, while he was propagating the work of the new theologians that had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis on August 12, 1950. The man likes the Mass of Tradition as an expression of beauty, not as the most perfect and fitting way to communicate and safeguard the Holy Faith. Am I the only one who can see that the timing of this report is aimed at providing Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of Saint Pius X with further cover to neutralize any opposition from priests and members the laity in the Society to what appears to be a submersion of the Society into the counterfeit church of conciliarism?

The spin doctors are busy, therefore, not only in the Bush White House (who must think that I am ignoring them these days, which I am not; they'll get some more attention in about ten days or so), but in the conciliar Vatican. We must recognize false claims made by Father Joseph Ratzinger and his band of spiritual robber barons to be what they are: positivist attempts to assert that conciliar falsehoods are actually in accord with Catholic Truth. They are not. 

Yesterday was the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Let us continue to wrap ourselves in the mantle of her Brown Scapular and to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit so that we can be fortified to defend the Faith as we reject out of hand all efforts to reconcile Catholicism with its antithesis, conciliarism. Our acts of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary will help to bring about the day when conciliarism will be vanquished and Catholicism restored as the voices of all men in the world exclaim as one:

Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Alexis, pray for us.

Saint Simon Stock, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Camillus de Lillus, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Gertrude the Great, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Maximilian Mary Kolbe, pray for us.

Padre Pio, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.  

 

 




© Copyright 2007, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.