District Newsletter – October 2008

My Dear Brethren,

I am happy to report that since I last wrote to you Bishop Tissier de Mallerais has successfully completed his visit to most of our chapels in Australia and administered the sacrament of Confirmation. We are now awaiting the forthcoming visit of Bishop de Gallereta who will ordain two priests at Goulburn on 27 December. One of these, the Reverend Jordan Stephens is an Australian and the other, the Reverend Gregory Noronha, is an Indian. Please keep these young Levites in your prayers as the momentous day approaches!

Time passes quickly and it will soon be the month of November which signals that yet another year draws to its close. Well may we pray with the Psalmist, “Lord, make me know my end and what is the number of my days: that I may know what is wanting to me. Behold, thou hast made my days measurable and my substance is as nothing before thee.” (Ps. 38.5-6).

This is also the month in which the Church encourages us to pray for those of her children who have already died. Oftentimes we tend to forget that the life of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is not restricted to this world. Not only does she have members on earth (the Church Militant) but she also numbers amongst her members the saints in Heaven (the Church Triumphant) as well as the souls in Purgatory (the Church Suffering). These all form one body in Christ and love and care for each other through prayer. This reality is known as the “Communion of Saints” and takes on a special significance in November when the Faithful on earth pray and have Masses offered for their deceased friends and relatives and hopefully even for their former enemies; offering sacrifices on their behalf. It is indeed for this purpose that you will find an envelope enclosed with this letter so that the souls of those whose names you inscribe will be remembered at the altar during this time. The love, which binds us together, is itself truly “as strong as death” (Cant. 8.7). Indeed it participates in the very love of Christ, which has triumphed over death.

Surely the words “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live; and everyone that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die forever.” (Jn. 11.25-26) are amongst the most beautiful and comforting that Our Lord ever uttered. For us therefore, there is no real death but merely a change of circumstances to our lives as is so marvelously expressed in the Preface of the Dead, “for to Thy faithful people, Lord, life is changed, not taken away”. Accordingly, as St Paul exhorts us, in the face of death we are to be “not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope” (1Thes. 4.12). We should therefore face the fact of death with peaceful trust, resignation and confidence in God’s good and gracious mercy. As with anything else in life, our attitude to death should be balanced and reasonable.

How easily we human beings can go to extremes and seemingly pass from one to the other! Death is so momentous that it is not difficult to become either obsessed with its grim reality or make an heroic attempt to ignore it altogether.

Our Victorian era ancestors were greatly preoccupied with death and elaborated complicated rules of mourning and other extravagant manifestations of grief. Mourners dressed in black for months after a death, the blinds of the windows were drawn, mirrors covered etc. Even the poor would sometimes spend a lifetime’s earnings on a magnificent funeral conducted with awesome solemnity. I know a grand old country house in England where, in the late nineteenth century, the master of the house had an enormous mausoleum built for himself which almost dwarfed the village church. Quite regularly he would hold rehearsals for his funeral procession from the house to the mausoleum – a distance of about two miles. Sitting in his coffin on the funeral hearse he would bark out instructions to his servants and retainers as to whether the procession was moving too fast or too slowly and where the different mourners should be standing etc. All of this was, of course, a grotesque exaggeration and we might legitimately wonder if the extreme attempt to impress the public by the magnificence of his obsequies was matched by similar zeal to implore the favourable regard of his Creator.

If in the Victorian period death was constantly emphasised and sex never mentioned we have now certainly moved to the opposite extreme! Death, of course, cannot be completely ignored and when it can no longer be conveniently forgotten due to the brutal fact of the demise of a person near and dear to us, it is quite frequently trivialised. No longer are there any rules for ritualised mourning and the unavoidable funeral is made into the occasion of an entertainment in celebration of the life of the deceased. As this is the result of the contemporary lack of faith in God and eternal life, with its consequent emptying of the eternal significance of our present life, such an occasion inevitably must be shallow. As the favourite song of the deceased is sung and his former pastimes eulogised, it becomes clear that it is an occasion for the consolation of the living rather than for the spiritual profit of the dead. When at last it is concluded, there are no longer any gentlemen soberly dressed in the black of mourning to bear the remains of the deceased on their shoulders to its final resting place but rather ladies dressed in white, tottering on their high heeled shoes, push a trolley to the sleek silver hearse which will most likely proceed to the crematorium.

We Traditional Catholics, filled as we should be with an unshakeable faith and an indomitable hope, are nevertheless conscious that death remains a punishment for our sins and a tragic visible separation, albeit temporary, from those whom we love. It therefore behoves us to have a due reverence for the momentous reality of death, which brings us before the judgement seat of our Heavenly Father. In this, as in everything else, we take as our model our Divine Saviour Who wept at the death of His friend Lazarus and did not find it fitting to engage in a joyful celebration. This spirit is to be emulated by us likewise and the genious of the Church and her liturgy has been to harmonise faith and confident hope with a wistful sadness and restrained, but no less authentic, mourning.

This traditional liturgy really demands a corresponding funeral in its own image. Please ensure that when you make arrangements for this that you choose undertakers to whom you explain and who fully understand what is required, so that when the time comes they will be dressed in black like the priest at the altar and be preferably male in order to be able to carry the body respectfully to the grave. Please do not on any account arrange a cremation. This is entirely contrary to Christian tradition and was strictly forbidden by Canon Law until the time of the Second Vatican Council. Our Society holds to the traditional discipline in this matter and our priests will be unable to officiate at such a funderal.

Finally, I beg your prayers for the repose of the soul of Miss Magdalen McArthur of Singelton who died recently. This lady was one of the earliest supporters of our Society in Australia. Although she always downplayed the fact and never made any reference to herself, it became well known that it was thanks largely to her generosity that we acquired our property in Singleton with its fine Federation house and the attractive new church which was built in its grounds. Such indeed was her generosity, that she made many other very substantial contributions to other important institutions of our Society in Australia which have never been revealed. Coupled with her great largesse she led a life of extreme simplicity and frugality herself, so that none would ever have suspected how much we owe her. Truly, the following words may be applied to her: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours for their works follow men”. (Apoc. 14.13)

With every good wish and blessing,

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Father Edward Black – Superior