Bulletin 117

SAINT AGNES CATHEDRAL 533 South Jefferson Springfield, MO 65806

EXTRAORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS (LATIN)

CELEBRANT Rev. Jeffery A. Fasching

September 2, 2012; 14th Sunday after Pentecost

Epistle: Gal. 5:16-24; Gospel: Mt. 6:24-33

Mass Schedule September 3rd through September 7th

Monday –Saint Pius X, Pope & Confessor-- NO LATIN MASS

Tuesday-Requiem Mass +Mr. Xavier

Wednesday-Saint Lawrence Justinian, Bishop & Confessor

Thursday-Feria

Friday-Sacred Heart of Jesus

There will be a Potluck dinner Sunday, September 9th immediately following the 2:30pm Mass in the Saint Agnes school cafeteria. All are invited.

The best reasons for praying the Holy Rosary are the following:

1) For world peace… “Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world.” (Our Lady of Fatima, 1917). The Popes have highly recommended the Rosary to promote peace throughout the world.

2) A means for preserving the home…”There is no surer means of calling down God’s blessings upon the family…than the daily recitation of the Rosary”… Pope Pius XII

3) For courage in the hardships of life …”a powerful means of renewing our courage will undoubtedly be found in the Holy Rosary”…Pope Leo XIII

4) As a ready and easy means of preserving the faith…”We have elsewhere brought it to the attention of the devout Christian that not least among the advantages of the Rosary is the ready means it puts in his hands to nurture his faith, and to keep him from ignorance of his religion and the danger of error”…Pope Leo XIII

We should pray the rosary for the intention of making sacrifices in order to save sinners and ourselves from hell. What are the sufferings of the damned? What is the nature of the pain of sense? Theology has traditionally distinguished two kinds of torment suffered by the damned, the pain of loss and the pain of sense. Both are exemplified in the words which Christ will speak to the damned at the general judgment: “Depart from me (pain of loss), you condemned, into that everlasting fire (pain of sense), prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25.41).

The pain of loss is the intense suffering experienced by the damned because of their eternal separation from God. We can explain it in this fashion. God has given the human person, as a rational creature, a radical craving for unlimited goodness, beauty, love, and life, and the happiness that their possession would bring. But these goods can be found only in God. He alone is the fullness and the source of all goodness, beauty, love, life, and of all beatitude. To reject God is to close oneself off from these riches and to condemn oneself to the pain of a deep-seated craving that can never be satisfied. Think of a drug addict who cannot get the drug he craves. Only one who has known the torment of such unsatisfied craving can have any idea of how painful can be the frustration of a deep human longing. But nothing can compare to the need that the human person has for God, and nothing can equal the pain that comes from losing Him.

The pain of sense is the suffering experienced by the damned expressed in the worlds, “Depart from me you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” The image of fire is found frequently in both the Old and the New Testament to describe the pains of hell. Traditional theology has understood scriptural hell fire to be an element analogous to material fire that would have the capacity to inflict pain not only upon material bodies, but also upon pure spirits. It understood this element to be extrinsic to the human person and to be inflicted by God as vindictive punishment. In this understanding, God’s justice requires that the sinner who has disobeyed God in seeking disordered pleasure from creatures must suffer punishment in proportion to the offense.

In Christ,

Fr. Jeff Fasching