January 10, 2014

Dipped in the Petrine Magisterium

Here in Rome the proper calendar includes several blessed and canonized popes that don't appear in the General Roman Calendar. The Pope, after all, is our local bishop. It's a town of Popes. I think of it each time I'm on the 881 bus and it announces, "next stop [the corner of] Gregory VII [and] Pius XI."

Yesterday and today in the liturgy we get two popes in row, yesterday having been the optional memorial of Pope Blessed Gregory X and today the obligatory memorial of Pope St. Agatho. Not knowing if there are proper readings for their Offices of Readings and not knowing anyway where to look for them if they did indeed exist, this led to me praying over the same second reading two days in a row, a passage from the sermons of that mainstay of the breviary, Pope St. Leo the Great, which the Liturgy of the Hours provides for popes in the Common of Pastors.

At the end Pope Leo provides a wonderful definition of Petrine primacy:
In universa namque Ecclesia, Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi, cotidie Petrus dicit, et omnis lingua, quae confitetur Dominum, magisterio huius vocis imbuitur. 
In the whole Church, Peter says each day, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesses the Lord is dipped in the magisterium of his voice.

2 comments:

mary camilleri said...

i hadnt read your blog for a while and wandered into it this morning. Since you live in Rome, not too far away from Malta, I wonder if you would like to attend one of our Life in the Spirit Seminars specially for priests coming up next week. They are every Tuesday evening. We could definitely put you up while you are here. Just a thought. I belong to the Praise the Name of Jesus Prayer Group and the Seminars are being held at the Archbishop's Seminary with the kind permission of His Excellency. The first talk, on God's love, promises to be excellent. God bless you

Brother Charles said...

Dear Mary,

Thanks for the invitation; I'll pray for the success of the seminar! Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to make it myself.