here comes everybody

1. Fr. Z talks about getting blessed by an extraordinary minister at communion, but I find this whole part to be the most interesting, especially the bit in bold:

... it strikes me that this whole blessing thing at Communion time evolved from a overly sentimental notion that no one should be excluded from being able to go forward.

Fourth, a great deal of psychological pressure is placed on people who for one reason or another have no reason to go forward at Communion time. The practice of row by row Communion increases the psychological pressure. In my opinion it should be slowly by surely eliminated.

Fifth, I think the shortened Eucharist fast also played its part in putting undue psychological pressure on people to go forward at Communion time. In the past, if a person was in the state of sin, it was possible for people assume that she had eaten something rather than that she had committed some black and unspeakable delict.

Sixth, if you know you are not in the state of grace, then I recommend that you make a spiritual communion while remaining in your pew. You may not have ever heard of "making a spiritual communion". I am sure that the readers will chime in about this in the combox, below.

Seventh, we must help people shake the idea that they are obliged to go forward, on the one hand, or that, on the other, they have the right to receive even if they know they are not in the state of grace.

2. I was at this ordination in Erie and you can see me process into the church in this video.

3. "Gather Us In" in Latin. I'm not sure if it helps.

4. This article has some interesting points on the liturgy, the new missal translation and the priest's role at Mass. I love the quote from Cardinal Newman.

While I am glad for the new and more accurate translation of the Mass, which is not perfection but closer to it than one deserves in an imperfect world, a far more important reform would be the return of the ad orientem position of the celebrant as normative. It is the antidote to the tendency of clerisy to impose itself on the people. When a celebrant at Mass stops and says, “This is not about me,” you may be sure he thinks it may be about him. It would be harder for him to harbor that suspicion were he leading the people humbly to the east and the dawn of salvation.

John Henry Newman was the greatest master of English letters in his century of brilliant English, but he gave no countenance to his vernacular replacing the sacral tongue. That is another matter for another day. But he knew the meaning of cupio dissolvi, and he taught that without such self-abnegation the gift of personality reduces the Passion to pantomime. It was because his priestcraft was also soulcraft, that he solemnly invoked the Sacred Heart at the altar in order to speak "heart to heart" with the people in the street:

“Clad in his sacerdotal vestments, [the priest] sinks what is individual in himself altogether, and is but the representative of Him from whom he derives his commission. His words, his tones, his actions, his presence, lose their personality; one bishop, one priest, is like another; they all chant the same notes, and observe the same genuflections, as they give one peace and one blessing, as they offer one and the same sacrifice.

“The Mass must not be said without a Missal under the priest’s eye; nor in any language but that in which it has come down to us from the early hierarchs of the Western Church. But, when it is over, and the celebrant has resigned the vestments proper to it, then he resumes himself, and comes to us in the gifts and associations which attach to his person.

“He knows his sheep, and they know him; and it is this direct bearing of the teacher on the taught, of his mind upon their minds, and the mutual sympathy which exists between them, which is his strength and influence when he addresses them. They hang upon his lips as they cannot hang upon the pages of his book.”

5. A fantastic piece on administration by Bishop Tobin:

I recall, a few years ago, while I was knee deep in administration in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, having dinner with a young Catholic couple. We had a mutual friend, a priest who was doing missionary work in Latin America. During the conversation I was asked, “Doesn’t it bother you being stuck behind a desk while ‘Fr. John’ is doing the real work of the Church?” I replied that while “Fr. John” was doing his heroic work, I was home raising funds for his mission, arranging his health care insurance and scheduling vocation programs so that other young priests would someday continue his missionary work. “Oh,” said my young friends; “we never thought of it that way.”

The point is that administration serves a very necessary purpose. It’s not at all extraneous to the work of the Church and its priests; it’s an essential part of our ministry.

6. A writer for the New York Post is heading to the seminary.

"I think my time at the Post has been a great education in a lot of ways," Wilson said. "It taught me how to be really brief, to write concisely, to convey a point effectively. I am not going to say it's similar to preaching but it might come in handy down the line."

More precisely: "In very different ways and in front of very different audiences, you are trying to sniff out the truth and communicate it."

...

"The phrase you hear a lot of in priestly circles is 'Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable,'" he said. "At the very least I hope I've managed to afflict some powerful and comfortable people at the Post."

7. Pope’s Glasgow Mass in "the scholarly language of" Latin

"What the Holy Father intends by using Latin is to emphasise the universality of the faith and the continuity of the Church."