Wednesday, October 12, 2005

I'm a blogger myself: I think my weekly audience may run as high as two digits on occasion.
—John R. Harris

There are pleasures, no doubt, to be had in crying in the wilderness, in being a man who thinks he has seen further and more keenly than others, but they grow fewer with time. The wilderness has lost its charms for me.
—Theodore Dalrymple

But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good.
—Romans 2:10

. . . ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
—Luke 11:46

By trying to see and tell truth, we work good and touch the burdens, and help men to bear them. And—a lifetime of thinking might prepare us to do one saving act. Even if not, even if nothing on earth is better for what we do, we obey and love Jesus. Dayenu.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.
—Luke 11:44

Eric Booth said that 80% of what is taught is the teacher. The Magisterium should take this to heart.

If I save another, I may be saved; and if I am not saved, at least one is saved.

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According to General Instruction 43,

The faithful . . . as circumstances allow, they may sit or kneel while the period of sacred silence after Communion is observed.

It is not stated what the non-faithful should do, though likely they will sit. Nor is it clear what the period of sacred silence after Communion is, though a Prayer after Communion (89) is specified, and before that (88),

when the distribution of Communion is finished, as circumstances suggest, the priest and faithful spend some time praying privately. If desired, a psalm or other canticle or a hymn may also be sung by the entire congregation.

Whatever “circumstances allow” or “circumstances suggest,” a sitter directly in front of a kneeler makes both uncomfortable. In such a case, either the sitter leans forward or the kneeler leans back, or one or the other shifts to the left or right—none of which motions conduces to prayer. All should sit, kneel, or stand. The spirit of the rite suggests standing during the distribution of Communion and after, since we are now one body. A Protestant has felt this:

I then received, I hope, with earnestness, and while others received sat down, but thinking that posture, though usual, improper I rose, and stood.
—Samuel Johnson, Easter Day, April 4, 1779

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O complained of a sore throat before going to school this morning, and in the afternoon came home early.