Rest in Peace, Benedict XVI. We will miss you.

He left us on the last day of 2022, taken home on the Feast Day of Pope St. Sylvester. We will surely miss him, and we will always be grateful for Summorum Pontificum, the motu proprio which he promulgated in 2007.

Wikipedia tells us that Summorum Pontificum granted greater freedom for priests to use the Tridentine liturgy in its 1962 form, stating that all priests of the Latin Church may freely celebrate Mass with the 1962 Missal privately. It also provided that “in parishes where a group of the faithful attached to the previous liturgical tradition stably exists, the parish priest should willingly accede to their requests to celebrate Holy Mass according to the rite of the 1962 Roman Missal” and should “ensure that the good of these members of the faithful is harmonized with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the governance of the bishop”.

What Wikipedia doesn’t tell you is how very critical the Traditional Latin Mass is to so very many of us! In the years since 2007, the TLM has grown and flourished. If you’ve attended one–even just once–you know its majesty, its beauty, its reverence, and its power to transform lives and facilitate spiritual growth.

Please remember the soul of Benedict XVI in your prayers.

“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.“ —  Pope Benedict XVI