On the Tuesday in the first week of Lent: yesterday afternoon was brilliantly sunny, in spaces, with a bit of a cold breeze. The sparrows, wrens, and chickadees (and whatever other little brown and red and black birds are eating the sunflower seeds outside my window) made a lovely chorus indeed, as dusk approached.
Venerable Dom Prosper, in his pages today for the feast of Saint John of God:
Philanthropy may be generous, and its workings may be admirable for ingenuity and order; but it never can look upon the poor man as a sacred object, because it refuses to see God in him. Pray for the men of this generation, that they may at length desist from perverting charity into a mere mechanism of relief. The poor are the representatives of Christ, for he himself has willed that they be such: and if the world refuse to accept them in this their exalted character, --if it deny their resemblance to our Redeemer,-- it may succeed in degrading the poor, but this very degradation will make them enemies of its insulter.
In fact, I'm saying the ferial Office, and tomorrow too, probably; I have no great personal or particular devotion to Saints John of God and Frances of Rome and rather deplore having to abandon the Lenten cycle almost immediately it is begun-- did say the Hours of Saint Thomas Aquinas, yesterday, however.
That is Byrd's setting of the responsory Emendemus in melior; I'll add Cristobal de Morales's infra if I can find it on YouTube. It will be recalled perhaps that this responsorium was sung on Ash Wednesday but it is proper to the 1st Sunday of Lent, and so is repeated also on these ferial days following.
The other responsoria used at Matins on these feriae are Derelínquat ímpius viam suam and Paradisi portas aperuit. Thomas Tallis's setting of the former, and the Old Roman chant of the latter.
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