The rubrics, I would know when the suffragium de Cruce occurs at Lauds and Vespers; my practice is to presume that the Divinumofficium.com people get it right. I pray it when it appears and don't when it doesn't. It struck me, ten minutes ago, that the 'enemies' of the antiphon are, in my life, all of them in me, my own demons, as it were: nobody is persecuting me for going to Mass or walking down the street or making the sign of the Cross or failing to sacrifice to the people's gods. The plural is used and most of the time I read 'the Church's enemies' there; the things that cross one's mind at half past three in the morning. The birds are awakening.
Ant. Per signum Crucis de inimícis nostris líbera nos, Deus noster.
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Had to laugh last evening (or it was perhaps the evening before) at someone on Twitter admonishing us (the entire audience for his texts) that we were addicted, more than likely, and should find something better to do. I wrote an originally quite acid response but then toned that down because he is, in my limited experience, a decent fellow who does a lot of travelling in North Africa and elsewhere and posts interesting and amusing tweets. In private life of course he may murder people in order to satiate his depraved cannibalistic lust-- but I rather doubt it. The most amusing aspect of the admonition (beyond the basic misuse of the term 'addiction') was his presumption that I am interacting with Twitter via the mobile telephone; I do use that device for that purpose-- about 1% of the time. My fingers are too immobile and fat, they tremble at inopportune moments, and I have the laptops in front of me when I want them. It is true that when I had to regularly commute on the bus I used the mobile to 'like' and retweet often enough but that was then and was certainly not evidence of 'addiction'. I had forgotten: it was his adumbration of 'addiction' that irked me in the first place. Do I have a tag for Twitter?
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