Heavenly Dominican Rite Mass in Covent Garden
On a much more positive note, I was fortunate enough to attend a sung Mass in the Dominican Rite at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane on Monday. This is one in a series of special liturgies which form part of the London Eucharistic Octave for 2022.
Corpus Christi, a London Church of great provenance, has recently been restored and dedicated as the Diocesan Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, making it a particular place of pilgrimage and devotion to the Eucharist.The Eucharistic Octave runs from 11th - 19th June 2022, leading up to Corpus Christi. Each day, Mass is celebrated in a different tradition of the Catholic Church. Full details at https://catholiclondon.org/
I had to rush up to London after work, but it is quite an easy run for me from Essex. It was a beautifully sunny day, and I brought a friend with me who has found their own faith greatly deepened through attending the Traditional Latin Mass, so I had someone to chat with on the train and share the experience with. Entering Corpus Christi, you are immediately struck by the restoration and refurbishment work that has gone on. The work beautifully integrates original elements of the building with new elements.
The side chapels draw you in, with beautiful details that speak to your own interior prayer life and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacred Heart and our Blessed Mother.
The Lady Chapel has had its Altar returned and restored, and a new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was commissioned to sit within the redesigned chapel, modelled upon the Holy House of Loreto. I particularly love the stained glass image of Our Lord crowing Mary, redolent of the Davidic Queen Mother (1 Kings 2:19).
But perhaps most of the sanctuary – its reredos and walls redecorated and gilded, its carved stonework highlighted and repainted, and its old paint cleaned off and stripped away. Today the sanctuary shines brightly with fresh colours and shimmering gold leaf, resembling the inside of a tabernacle and standing in constant reminder of the splendour and majesty of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The Celebrant & Preacher at the Mass was Fr Lawrence Lew, OP, Rector of the Westminster Diocesan Shrine of the Most Holy Rosary at St Dominic's Church - The Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.
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This Mass was so beautiful - the music was perfect and the whole experience was a glimpse into heaven. The atmosphere was perfectly conducive to worship and really allowed me to open my whole heart and soul up to the experience of joining with the priest offering the eternal sacrifice to the Father.
The church was very well attended, we ended up sitting in a side aisle even though we were a good 30 minutes early. I even found the congregation inspiring. At least 50/50 men and women, which is very unusual these days. A lot of smartly dressed young men, all bowing at the name of Jesus. I felt so inspired and uplifted by the clear love, devotion and faith so openly and evidently displayed. It made me wonder, how could Pope Francis be against this? How could this be what is stifling the faith? This is what the faith IS! This is what is good and true and beautiful. This is what we seek with our hearts, a sacred space, a place to encounter Him whom our whole being longs for, a place to be with other worshippers, other seekers, other disciples on the journey to be with Him for whom our hearts long!
I have to say, I thought Fr. Lawrence gave an absolutely superb homily. He wonderfully linked the Dominican order, St Anthony of Padua and the Real Presence together. His homily made me feel comfortable and confident in my Catholic belief; embedded in the faith. This is the faith. This is our faith. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi!
Fr Lawrence has allowed me to post his homily here for your study and reflection. He has also posted on Tumblr here where you can follow him.
Which is why in Scripture the donkey has something to teach Man in his unbelief or disobedience. In Isaiah, therefore, the Lord exclaims: “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people does not understand.” (Isa 1:3) Sacred art depicting the Nativity of Christ thus shows the infant Lord Jesus between an ox and an ass. For the donkey knows that the One lying in the manger, lying on the straw is the Master of all things. But Man is slow to believe, and does not understand the Incarnation, does not want to know. And so, our scepticism and caution leads us not to wisdom but to genuinely stubborn incredulity. Thus we risk, dare I say, making an ass of ourselves! As the psalmist says: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’… Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord?” (Ps 14:1, 4)
St Anthony was empowered by God, therefore, to work a Eucharistic miracle through his prayer and fasting that led a certain incredulous fool of his time to acknowledge the living God. St Anthony was, like our holy father St Dominic, preaching against the Albigensian heretics, the so-called Cathars; the Dominican Order was founded, indeed, to combat this heresy. Surely, the Cathars can be called “evildoers who eat up [God’s] people as they eat bread”. For theirs was a death cult - anti-Life, anti-family, and pro-suicide by starvation. They denigrated the material creation as the work of an evil deity, and believed that only the spiritual was good; death, therefore, released the spirit from the prison of the flesh. This kind of dualistic heresy has never really been completely eradicated, and it remains among us today, which is why the Dominicans and Franciscans still exist. For the Holy Spirit raises up religious Orders to combat certain heresies and errors, and to serve specific needs. Hence St Dominic preached against the Albigensians in the south of France, and St Anthony was at work in northern Italy.
Almost 800 years ago, in 1223, in Rimini, St Anthony encountered the heretic Bonovillo. He disbelieved the doctrine of the Eucharist. After all, why would God, who is pure spirit and therefore good, imprison himself in bread, which is matter, and therefore bad? Indeed, why would God become Man? For faith in the Eucharistic Presence of Christ is fundamentally linked to faith in the Incarnation. For the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and so, through the miracle of the Holy Mass, the Word wills to become flesh in the Eucharist species so as to dwell within us, through the sublime gift of Holy Communion. Whereas the evildoers, and the fools who know not their God, will eat up people as they eat bread, those who know God and who know his Word, will eat him, not as mere bread but rather as divine food. Thus St Augustine recounts that a divine voice told him: “I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me.”
The Eucharist is the food of the fully grown, the truly mature. Often the sceptic or the cautious thinks that he is being mature and grown-up. But to remain distrustful and sceptical, even in the face of evidence or without properly assessing the situation, is not to be prudent – not as Aristotle understands prudence at any rate. Rather, it is to fall into the vice of unbelief or obstinacy.
Therefore, when we consider the Eucharist, we must consider who it is who causes it to be. It is God. God who is the cause of all things, and who continually and constantly holds all things in being likewise causes and holds in being the substantial Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. This is why it is called ‘The Real Presence’ because the Reality of the Eucharist, its res in Latin, is the Presence of the Incarnate Word. And it is God who holds all Reality in being, as he is Reality itself, and so in the Eucharist it is God’s own being, his Real Presence, that is being communicated. Thus, when we receive the Eucharist, when we see the Eucharist, when we adore the Eucharist, it is God whom we receive, see, and adore.
But the heretic disbelieves this. Why? Because he does not believe the Word of the One who spoke it into being. Why? Because, in the first place, he does not believe in the Incarnation. Bonovillo, being an Albigensian, refused to accept that God would choose to become Man, let alone bind himself to the Sacraments, and to something as lowly and friable as bread. But even the ox and the ass know their Master. And so, just as Isaiah prophesied that the Incarnate Lord would be found between an ox and a donkey, so now, at Rimini in 1223, St Anthony prophesies that a mule would lead the way to truth and faith. For unlike Man, the donkey isn’t stubborn, it just needs time to assess the evidence! So Anthony lays down a challenge: let Bonovillo withhold food from his donkey for three days, and on the third day, put down hay before the hungry beast. Anthony would say Mass and present the Eucharist to the donkey. The result of this audacious wager, but one that St Anthony enters into with fasting and prayer, is that the donkey turns away from the hay, he overcomes his natural instinct for food, and instead, he kneels before its Master.
For just as the donkey of old knew its Master lying in the manger, so now this donkey recognises, too, that the Master of all is present for us now in the Sacred Host; the One who had been laid in the Manger in Bethlehem, the House of Bread, is now the Bread of Life laid on the Manger of the Altar, and given to us to be our “real food” and “real drink”; to give us who feed on him, eternal life.
Through this miracle, St Anthony thus restores to Bonovillo the heretic something most precious which he had lost, namely, his faith, his trust in God, and thus the acceptance of truth where it may be found. For to have faith is not to be credulous, still less to be superstitious, but it is to believe the One who is Truth himself. We believe God who can neither deceive nor mislead us, but whose Word leads us to abundance of life. We believe Jesus Christ, who, as St Thomas Aquinas says in his Euchristic hymn Adoro Te devote, is Truth himself who speaks truly, for if we cannot believe God’s Word, then we can believe nothing at all for then nothing is true. Isn’t this the relativistic quagmire, the snare of scepticism into which modern Man has descended?
The Eucharistic miracle of St Anthony, therefore, and the donkey’s adoration of the Eucharist, is a lesson from this doctor of the Church, the Doctor Optime, to bring us to our senses and to restore our faith. For the Lord uses the supposedly stubborn mule to teach us, and to prevent us from going the wrong way. Hence the Bible recounts another amazing marvel involving a donkey: the rebellious prophet Balaam was stopped by his donkey when the Lord caused it to speak and berate him! So now, the kneeling donkey converted Bonovillo and many of the onlookers from continuing on the wrong ways of heresy and disbelief.
During this Eucharistic Octave, therefore, we ask for the intercession of St Anthony. May he, who so many people invoke to help them find lost items, restore the true faith to those who have lost it. In particular, may the Eucharistic devotion that is resplendent in this Shrine and in its pious activities convert the incredulous and sceptical and unbelieving onlookers all around it. May we be the donkeys, so to speak, whose faith will penetrate the stubbornness and incredulity of our peers. And so may faith in the living Word of God, and in his Real Presence be restored to the Catholic Church. As St Anthony is often shown holding the infant Jesus so, through his prayers and through our example, may Jesus be seen and discovered and known and loved once more by the people of this land, which is Mary’s Dowry. And to this end, I commend us all to the loving intercession of Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.
Some more pictures of the Mass:
Spot on… beautiful post⚜️
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