Fr. Michael Winn

The New Testament says nothing about the early life of Jesus’ Mother. But in the Church’s tradition, Mary, like other significant people in the history of Israel, was born by the direct intervention of God. According to the second-century Protevangelium of James, her parents, Joachim and Anna, were righteous but childless. Once when Joachim, a rich man, went to the temple to offer his gifts to the Lord, he was not allowed to do so, because he had not raised up offspring in Israel. Saddened by this rejection, he researched to see whether all the righteous in Israel had had…

In an ongoing effort to provide liturgical texts in English for our visitors, we provide today the 1983 English translation of The Small Trebnyk (or Abbreviated Euchologion) produced by the now defunct St. Joseph's Institute of Detroit, Michigan. The Preface is included here: Preface A Trebnyk or Euchologion is a book of Prayer-Rites used by the priest for the administration of the church sacraments and various blessings and sacramentals. Some call it a Book of Needs, because it provides for the important spiritual needs of the faithful. Moreover, it is a service book used by the priest who is the…

Rev. John Sembrat, O.S.B.M. July 1995 One specific factor that is especially detrimental to the beauty and mystical character of our church music is the introduction of musical instruments in church services where they exert an uncontrollable secularizing influence, distracting the mind and heart of the faithful by diverting their attention from prayerful contemplation to a worldly and carnal kind of entertainment which certainly cannot be called authentic liturgical music. It was not by some pure coincidence of historical circumstances that the Catholic Church of both East and West has regarded, down to the present day, unaccompanied chant to be…