Christus surrexit nobis! Alleluia!

After a solemn and almost grim Good Friday, we had the Paschal Fire, the Exultet and the Vigil Mass of Easter. It was a magnificent two and half hour long experience, and was done prayerfully and with great concentration by all concerned. (We even had the privilege of a visit from the Guild of Choristers of St Mary - Haddington Road which is nowadays a rare but wonderful thing.) It was an enormously edifying end to the Triduum, and Fr's Larkin, Deighan and Nevin were on top form.

The only strange thing was afterward as I stood outside with my wife, chatting to friends and acquaintances, a man driving out, wound down the window of his car and asked "Are you Opus Dei?". Says I "What???". Him: "Are you a member of Opus Dei?" Me: "No, sorry to disappoint." Him: (In an incredulous tone) "Well, you could have fooled me!" From me came only the sound of loud laughter.

Now flattery will get you everywhere but as a fairly ordinary, muddle-through kind of Catholic I've always wanted to be half as holy or half as charitable as some of the Opus Dei men and women I've known. So whoever you were, you succeeded in being very rude indeed but you gave me a good laugh and a warm glow that I might be mistaken for a really serious Catholic after all! Thank you and Happy Easter!

Christus Surrexit Nobis, Alleluia!

Getting married?

Those getting married in the newer form of the Roman Rite have lots of resources available, including Wedding Mass texts and readings downloadable from various sites. Those getting married in the Traditional Roman Rite have relatively few. One can, of course, buy the Nuptial Mass equivalent of the Famous Little Red Book. Unfortunately the form of vows in that text are not those approved by the Irish Bishops and are thus not usable in Ireland. Also, the booklet is (understandably) generic rather than personalised. A solution has been cobbled together by your truly, together with Lowdenclear and various others.

So if you need a Nuptial Mass booklet in MS Word or OpenOffice, leave a comment below including your contact email and I'll send it along. Please note that the Mass (Ordinary and Proper) is good anywhere for the Traditional Roman Rite BUT the vows are usable only in the Dioceses of Ireland. The text is complete, in Latin and English but does NOT include any extra Civil declarations (e.g. about absence of impediments or the like). If you need to have it in PDF format for a printing firm, download OpenOffice from here, open the file in their Writer and then hit the PDF button. You will also need Old London font to display the section headings correctly. I'll attach a zip file with the email, just in case the download location won't work for you. Et voilà!

Lastly, once you get the .doc or .odt file, it's up to you what you do with it; in other words it's a free gift that entails no responsibility on my part. Use it, edit it if you need to, delete it if you like or pass it on to anyone else who needs it. The texts are in the public domain so all I've put in is formatting. Enjoy!

PS If you find mistakes, please let me know; the fewer typos, the merrier!

UPDATED: I've uploaded the .doc version to www.scribd.com; you can get it here. Use the "Download" button to get an editable Word version and don't forget to get Old London from Fontennium.org to make it display correctly.