No More Posts Till Easter Monday
04/05/2020
As is fairly usual with me, I started off pretty well with Lent and gradually got slacker and lazier. I'm going to make an effort during Holy Week to attend more to the occasion. It seems especially important this year since I can't actually go to Mass. So I won't be posting anymore till Monday April 13. I'll still participate in conversations, if there are any, but there won't be any new posts.
Today for the first time since public Masses were cancelled I watched one on television. As I said in a comment here a couple of weeks or so ago, a televised Mass just seems all wrong to me in some fundamental way that I haven't made the effort to articulate. I don't mean religiously wrong, just off. Unreal. Weird. But I have already noticed a tendency on my part to start drifting without the anchor of weekly Mass (and also in my case a weekly holy hour--which I still do at home but of course it's not the same). I keep thinking of what Janet said about the Japanese Christians who held on to the faith for...what was it?...250 years without priests, and I'm ashamed.
I dont want to watch mass on tv. I read the typica and the lessons for the Sunday.
I have never felt any wish to be a priest or consecrate the whole host or anything like that. But. Im surrounded by priests and seminarians and there are moments of annoyance. Last week I was having a zoom class with the seminarians and also the lay students. One very young guy was talking about how hed been quarantined for two weeks away from the seminary. He said with open candour and cheer that he was out of quarantine and back celebrating the liturgy. I thought I could hear the sound of gritting of teeth from half the class.
On saturday I zoomed with a much older priest who was heading out when we finished class to a convent of Poor Clares where is aunt is a nun. He is spending whole week at the convent because for some reason they’ve lost their priest and they haven’t had the sacraments for two weeks. No liturgy envy there!
We will never forget this strange Holy Week
Posted by: Grumpy | 04/06/2020 at 06:26 AM
That’s for sure. Strange it most surely is.
Posted by: Mac | 04/06/2020 at 08:00 AM
Well, when you think about the Poor Clares, what else do they have?
I am sure that some of you pray the novena to the Divine Mercy every year. We usually do, but some years I just forget, and I have never really paid much attention to the feast itself. I am beginning to see this as a real ingratitude. Anyway, I just want to encourage everyone to pray the novena this year and observe the feast day in some way.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/06/2020 at 10:43 AM
Good counsel. Thank you.
Posted by: Mac | 04/06/2020 at 09:26 PM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J6RgaPTo4hE
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/08/2020 at 11:01 AM
That’s beautiful. Thank you.
Posted by: Mac | 04/08/2020 at 09:57 PM
Off-topic and not apropos, check out some of the author names in this Penguin ad, the mostly ancient ones who are known to us only by one name, like Homer:
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/20-off-penguin-classics/
(Courtesy of the Dappled Things blog:
https://dappledthings.org/blog/
)
Posted by: Mac | 04/09/2020 at 04:16 PM
That's hysterical. If the names were actually on the books, I would buy them just to have them.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/09/2020 at 05:04 PM
I wonder how they got there. Somebody having fun? Some automated process?
Posted by: Mac | 04/09/2020 at 05:53 PM
It could be somebody having fun, but I am wondering if the database won't tolerate a blank field and grabs something from the previous record.
If I am an expert at anything, it's abberent databases.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/09/2020 at 09:32 PM
"I am wondering if the database won't tolerate a blank field and grabs something..."
That was my guess too. In any case, it's pretty funny -- very Python-esque.
Posted by: Rob G | 04/10/2020 at 05:51 AM
Yeah--assuming it's not a prank, which I would sort of like to think is the case, but is probably quite unlikely, it's almost certainly a really basic programming oversight, what you might call a rookie mistake. Whoever wrote the code didn't fully cover the case where an author's first name is blank, so something like this:
There's a data structure where the information for displaying a particular book is being assembled, and one component of that is the first name. When a book where the author's first name is blank comes along, it doesn't put that piece into the structure. But the preceding author's name is still there. It should be cleared before or after each book.
Posted by: Mac | 04/10/2020 at 10:18 AM
Isn't that exactly what I said?
Posted by: Janet | 04/10/2020 at 12:14 PM
;-)
Posted by: Janet | 04/10/2020 at 12:20 PM
[desperately trying to suppress pickiness]
Pretty much.
:-)
Posted by: Mac | 04/10/2020 at 01:48 PM
I just said it more succinctly.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/10/2020 at 03:47 PM
I think its added the names of the translators as the authors' first names. In my memory, Jonathan something is an expert on Aristotle.
Posted by: grumpy | 04/10/2020 at 03:48 PM
Yes! That must be it. Desmond Lee translated Plato's Republic.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/10/2020 at 04:36 PM
Or some other participant. Jonathan Barnes wrote the intro for the Aristotle book. Others are more mixed up. I'm pretty sure "Of Monmouth" didn't translate or write a preface for Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.
Posted by: Mac | 04/10/2020 at 05:00 PM
It all sounds very HAL 9000 in 2001 to me. :)
Posted by: Marianne | 04/10/2020 at 05:37 PM
HAL is the best AI ever in sci-fi, because they didn't have him magically become conscious. I always hate that. But everything HAL does is explainable in software terms. I don't think you find that out until one of the sequels, though.
Posted by: Mac | 04/10/2020 at 07:45 PM
They do look funny to me but not totally surreal because I get listed on amazon as a co-author of books I translated.
I know Lent technically end when the Triduum starts but Ive never ended before the vigil. This year I ended at 6.30 last night and so far Ive listened to five podcasts. Not eating meat until Sunday. Im sure I will return to the vigil as end point next year. Its just having no liturgy schedule
Posted by: Grumpy | 04/11/2020 at 03:36 AM
I’m having a big problem with it, too. Among the lesser things is that my wife and I like to go to the Easter vigil at the cathedral and eat a big breakfast at Waffle House at 2am. Any kind of celebration is going to seem kind of lame in isolation.
I didn’t know you did translations. I’m somewhat in awe of that level of fluency in another language.
Posted by: Mac | 04/11/2020 at 09:11 AM
That's sounds so great--the breakfast. It occurs to me that I should have planned something celebratory, but I haven't.
We are going to get all the family together on Zoom, so that should be nice, if confusing.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/11/2020 at 11:47 AM
I think we're going to FaceTime with one of the offspring. After sleeping late.
Posted by: Mac | 04/11/2020 at 06:27 PM
An interesting Holy Saturday reading:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/holy-saturday-christ-harrowing-of-hell/
Posted by: Mac | 04/11/2020 at 10:10 PM
Χριστός Ανέστη!
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/12/2020 at 06:42 AM
He is risen indeed..I think is the right response....
Posted by: Mac | 04/12/2020 at 10:00 AM
Indeed.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/12/2020 at 11:13 AM
I watched a Nigerian priest-colleague zoom the vigil, together with 45 Nigerian zoomers around the world.
I had an illicit Easter lunch wwith my lidger and three former grad students. The leg of lamb was much enjoyed by all except one. No more meat except leftovers, until Sunday, since the lodger has a week to go until orthodox Easter.
Im down to end of season three on line of duty.
Posted by: Grumpy | 04/12/2020 at 06:42 PM
I would say it was an ordinary Sunday for me except that it didn’t include Mass. Watching tv now.
Posted by: Mac | 04/12/2020 at 07:43 PM
And when I say "watching tv", I don't mean liturgy.
Posted by: Mac | 04/12/2020 at 11:30 PM
Did you have bad weather?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/13/2020 at 09:16 AM
No. It was kind of windy but I don't think it rained at all. How about you?
We're having a drought, actually. Driest spring I've ever seen.
Posted by: Mac | 04/13/2020 at 09:54 AM
I just looked at news for the first time today. 19 dead from tornadoes?! Wow. I had no idea.
Posted by: Mac | 04/13/2020 at 12:42 PM
Well, we sat in the safest corner of the house with our keys and phones and LED lights in case we had to leave, but it passed us by without any damage.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/13/2020 at 09:59 PM
I’m glad to hear it.
Posted by: Mac | 04/13/2020 at 10:45 PM
I want to say that we have never done that before. We usually just go to bed, and find out if we're dead in the morning.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/14/2020 at 08:48 AM
Tornadoes are not to be messed with. But they're so sudden and unpredictable that it's hard to know when you should be watchful and when you should be really afraid.
Posted by: Mac | 04/14/2020 at 10:46 AM
We really don't have any inside spaces. So, there's no good place to go.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/14/2020 at 01:20 PM
We have one small bathroom that has no outside walls. But then tornadoes are relatively rare here, unlike where you live.
Posted by: Mac | 04/14/2020 at 05:08 PM
https://thethreeprayers.blogspot.com/2020/04/month-2-divine-mercy-and-real-mitigation.html
Once a month posts, I guess.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 04/15/2020 at 03:21 PM
I want to say that in the KJV one of those passages says something like “no flesh would live.” Much more dire sounding.
I think I’m getting a cold so of course I’m wondering if it’s the plague.
Anyway, good post, and I join you in your prayer. I have managed not to miss a day of the novena so far.
Posted by: Mac | 04/15/2020 at 05:26 PM