Have a rocking Catholic Year 2013

Feast of the Innocents - Trinidad Tradition

 The 28th of December is the feast of Holy Innocents. Remembering the Slaughter of the innocents (children) in Bethlehem by King Herod 2000 years ago. It is also called Holy Innocents' Day,  Childermas or Children's Mass. In  Trinidad. the children come to Mass (brought by the parents)  to be blessed, but they also bring their toys to be blessed. The Saturday December 29 2012 edition of the Trinidad Guardian Newspaper has a wonderful article written by Camille Clarke.- Priest prays for children at Feast of the Innocents

 

Scores of children visited St Ann’s RC Church, St Ann’s, yesterday hoping to be blessed bountifully at the Feast of the Holy Innocents service. Also known as Innocents’ Day, it is a mass that commemorates the massacre of children by King Herod in his attempt to find and kill the baby Jesus. Yesterday, the children and their families brought their toys along to be blessed by Monsignor Esau Joseph.

 

The children clutched their Christmas gifts, which included Ernie from Sesame Street, Bratz and Raggedy Ann dolls and construction trucks. The choir and parishioners sang an upbeat version of Joy to the World, Little Drummer Boy, Let There Be Peace on Earth, Away in a Manger and Long Time Ago in Bethlehem.

 

Joseph told parishioners: “The lights on the Christmas tree remind us that God is our light. As followers of Jesus we live as followers of the light. Jesus takes away the sins of the world.” Joseph then quoted from the gospels of Matthew and John about Herod’s slaughter of the Jewish children.

 

He said Jesus’ father, Joseph, fled to Egypt with his wife Mary and Jesus after an angel visited to warn them that Herod intended to kill the infants in that area.

 

“Today, we ask God to bless the children and their toys...that Jesus will lead them on the right way of light. 

 

“Nobody knows how they will turn out and we want them to have the guidance of Jesus so that his light will always be with them. “We want to protect them from the Herods that live in this world—danger and violence,” Joseph said.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL - PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TO ALL MEN

The Mystical Nativity is a painting  by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. 

The Greek inscription at the top translates as: "This picture, at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, I Alessandro, in the half-time after the time, painted, according to the eleventh [chapter] of Saint John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three-and-a-half years; then he shall be bound in the twelfth [chapter] and we shall see [him buried] as in this picture". Botticelli believed himself to be living during the Tribulation, possibly due to the upheavals in Europe at the time, and was predicting Christ's Millennium as stated in Biblical text.

The Mystical Nativity depicts a scene of joy and celebration, of earthly and heavenly delight, with angels dancing at the top of the painting. At the top of the painting Sandro Botticelli's name – but also the apocalyptic and troubling words. And there are dark premonitions – the helpless child rests on a sheet that evokes the shroud in which his body will one day be wrapped, while the cave in which the scene is set calls to mind his tomb. The Kings on the left bear no gifts, but their own devotion. At the top of the painting twelve angels dressed in the colours of faith, hope and charity dance in a circle holding olive branches, and above them heaven opens in a great golden dome, while at the bottom of the painting three angels embrace three men, seeming to raise them up from the ground. They hold scrolls which proclaim in Latin, "peace on earth to men of goodwill". Behind them seven devils flee to the underworld, some impaled on their own weapons. In Renaissance times Last Judgment paintings showed viewers the reckoning of the damned and the saved at the time of Christ's Second Coming. In echoing this kind of painting the Mystical Nativity is asking us to think not only of Christ's birth but of his return.."

O CLAVIS DAVID, O KEY OF DAVID, O ANTIPHONS

O Clavis David

Latin:

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;

qui aperis, et nemo claudit;

claudis, et nemo aperit:

veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,

sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;

you open and no one can shut;

you shut and no one can open:

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Isaiah had prophesied:

• "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open." Isaiah 22:22
• "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore." Isaiah 9:7
• "...To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."Isaiah 42:7.

Trinidad Catholic Carnival Band 2013

Word & Associates, the creators of the Trinidad Catholic Carnival band has launched it's presentation for Carnival 2013: The Book of Leviticus, the Book of Law, Love and Promise

Below the ladies model costumes for the following sections: The Bird Offerings, Rejoice and Celebrate and Fruit Offerings.

The photo was taken by Nicole Drayton at the band launch,  Assumption RC Parish Hall, Long Circular Road, Maraval,  and appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Newspaper on 23rd September 2012.

O Radix, O Root of Jessie, O Antiphon - Wednesday 19th December 2012

O Radix Jesse

Latin:

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,

super quem continebunt reges os suum,

quem Gentes deprecabuntur:

veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

English:

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Isaiah had prophesied:

• "A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." Isaiah 11:1
• "On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious." Isaiah 11:10

Jesse was the father of King David, and Micah had prophesied that the Messiah would be of the house and lineage of David and be born in David’s city, Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Also compare Isaiah 45:14, Isaiah 52:15 and Romans 15:12.

O Adonai O Antiphon - 18th december

Tuesday 18th O Antiphon

 

O Adonai

Latin:

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,

qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,

et ei in Sina legem dedisti:

veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

English:

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush

and gave him the law on Sinai:

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Isaiah had prophesied:

• "[...] but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins." Isaiah 11:4-5
• "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our ruler, the Lord is our king; he will save us." Isaiah 33:22

Also compare Exodus 3:2 and Exodus 24:12