Today's we're celebrating the birthday of the Virgin Mary. Usually a saint's feast is the day of his death, since that's the day he was born into Heaven, but there are three people who were so important in salvation history that their deaths and their births are on the Church calendar: John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and... I'll let you guess the other one. Think really hard. :)
Here's a sweet video of a whole bunch of people at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, singing Las Mañanitas, the Mexican version of "Happy Birthday", to the Blessed Mother. This was taken just a few months after I visited the place a couple of years ago. What a wonderful trip that was.
Hey... Wait a minute... The priests have THEIR BACKS TO THE PEOPLE! That's SO insulting and backwards and patriarchal and outdated! They're lording it over the laity and distancing them from the service and not allowing them to actively participate! It's much, much too difficult for the people to understand that the priests are only standing that way so they can face the image of the Virgin Mary and sing to her together with the congregation. No, those priests need to turn around right now!
(Just some snark from a TLM-lover. Pay me no mind.)
4 comments:
Hmm, yes, and consider how ODD it would be if our priests knelt on the other side of the altar, facing the monstrance and facing the people, to lead us in the rosary after Mass. One does wonder how the altar ever got "turned around" in the first place.
Good point, Linda!
Someone was asking Fr. John once about the NO, and he said the one change he'd most like to make is to say it ad orientem.
And he did you know.......once upon a time, when the "new" church was brand new, there was a week in the summer where the sun lined up just right to be "blinding" at the altar at noon Mass. Fr. John suffered through Monday and then celebrated the rest of the week ad orientem :-) They've tinted the skylight right above the altar since then.....
I didn't know that! Wish I'd been there. :)
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