TTMS-UNA VOCE TORONTO featured on world's leading Catholic blog!

One of the world's leading blogs, Rorate Caeli, has asked us for a full report on the situation in Toronto with regards to the traditional liturgy. We are humbled and grateful that our work has been recognised internationally.

We Report: Rorate Mass at St. Patrick's Kinkora

The word "Rorate" has its place in the Advent liturgy of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in both Forms of the Roman Rite. It is the Advent Prose - as highlighted in this video; it is also the first word of the Introit or Entrance Antiphon for the Mass on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (in the Ordinary Form - Novus Ordo as well) and it is the first word from the same Introit used in the Votive Mass for Our Lady in Advent and it appears frequently in the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours.

When there is no feast on the day, the Votive Mass can be celebrated. In the new rite, the Ordinary Form, the lectionary specifies the Readings consistent with the Temporal Cycle, but in the old rite or Extraordinary Form, the Sanctoral Cycle specifies the readings for that feast or Votive Mass. As the Mass can reasonably take its name from the first word or words of the Introit -- Missa Quasimodo, Missa Suscepimus, Missa Puer Natus Est -- this Mass is known as the "Rorate Mass."

While it is not a rubrical requirement, there is a tradition from Bohemia, Poland and Bavaria that the Mass be celebrated in the pre-dawn hours by candlelight ending just as the light from the East shines softy from below the horizon and the windows are softly revealed. From darkness into light - the darkness without Christ to being in His light.

The Blessed Mother is the bearer of that light. It grew in her womb for nine months. It was God, the very God come to earth as a baby, taking the flesh and blood of this pure and immaculate young girl of probably 15 in the little town of Nazareth. This woman was the one who would crush the serpent. She is the new "ark of the covenant" that carries within it the law of God as in the Ten Commandments, the power of God as in the Rod of Aaron and the Bread of Life which came down from Heaven, just as the manna in the desert. When this baby was  born he was laid in a manger. Why a manger? Aside from the obvious it is because from that manger the creatures were fed. We are fed the Bread of Life and that He was laid by this new mother in a manger is of no coincidence. This mother is Our Mother, this woman is the Woman. She is the truly the Mother of God, the God who came to earth as a baby to save us.

As Father Paul Nicholson of St. Patrick's Kinkora said in his homily, "the virginal work of the bee, manufacturing wax and producing honey is a prophet of nature, pointing to the Work of the Immaculata. She gave us more than honey, She gave us the BREAD of Life and "it is sweet to taste". She gave us more then wax, she gave us LIGHT"

This is the truth of the faith and this is why we offer Sacrifice to God in the Holy Mass and why we honour His most perfect creature, the one who bore Himself.

In the little hamlet of Kinkora in the Diocese of London in Ontario and 160 kilometres from Toronto, a Rorate Mass was celebrated. In the cold and dark of a December morning they came. From Toronto, Kitchener, Cambridge, London, Walkerton, Waterloo and from places in between. At 5:30 A.M, they gathered to pray and to honour the truth of God and His Mother. Some rose three hours earlier, children in tow to a drive to a beautiful church in the middle of farming country including half of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Traditional Mass Society-UNA VOCE TORONTO who are honoured to have assisted the priest of this parish with the organisation and promotion of this Mass. Three years ago, seven people attended and we gathered for breakfast around the generous table of the Kinkorites Sharon and Patrick. This year there were more than ten times that number and all gathered in the local school gymnasium for a community breakfast. The TTMS-UNA VOCE TORONTO has in its mandate, the assistance to the suffragan dioceses of the Toronto Metropolitan See with the development and support of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

Let us pray that the words of that prose; "Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the clouds rain down the Just One."

We Report: Immaculate Conception Mass at St. Joseph's, Mississauga

Bordering Toronto’s western boundary is the City of Mississauga which means in Anishinaabe – the language of the aboriginal people of this area, “those at the great river mouth.” It reminds one of Canada’s motto on its Coat of Arms from the 72nd Psalm, "Et dominabitur ‘a mari usque ad mare,’ et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae"  At the most westerly church in the Archdiocese of Toronto and one dedicated to St. Joseph, Canada’s Patron Saint, over 450 people gathered on the feast of the Immaculate Conception  to give glory to God and to honour the great Patron’s Immaculate Spouse with the celebration of a Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

This was the first Solemn Mass in the "Old Rite" in this City of over 700,000 in almost half a century. The pastor of St. Joseph’s Church is a very dedicated and welcoming priest and in September 2011 a Missa Cantata was held there on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and the parish was used for the first Anglican-Use Mass celebrated in Canada the previous March during a diocesan conference on the Anglican Ordinariate. Built in the early 1990’s the church is typical of its time but it has undergone a beautification using high quality altar-ware, frontals and tabernacle veils, vestments, beautiful statues, colour and stenciling and of course, adherence to the rubrics of the GIRM in the Ordinary Form - there is here, truly a love of the holy liturgy. The choir is, without a doubt, the most skilled and most liturgically correct of any Catholic parish in Mississauga; they utilise the Propers in English and Latin for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, the Parish Book of Chant and polyphony. Last year, the parish and its pastor hosted a Chant Workshop with Father Samuel Weber, O.S.B.

After Mass, a woman remarked to the Pastor, that “it was as if we were transported to heaven.” A young Altar Server told of dozens of people coming to receive Holy Communion with tears in their eyes, some were quivering. When these kinds of comments are heard, it is a joyful but incredibly humbling experience for all involved with this work at the Toronto Traditional Mass Society—Una Voce Toronto and it reaffirms to us all, why it is that we do this work.

A great blessing to Toronto was the erection, almost 35 years ago, of the Toronto Oratory of St. Philip Neri who began celebrating the Usus Antiquior under the former indult, only the second in the entire Archdiocese of Toronto the first being said by a kind and humble priest that was once alone in this work. He is still going strong with two Masses on Sunday at nearly 80 and the Oratorians celebrate daily in their primary parish, on Sundays in their second and within their various chapels at the Oratory and St. Philip’s Seminary.

The former Cardinal Ambrozic, rejected our repeated request to invite the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to Toronto.  The Society was joyous when Archbishop, now Cardinal Collins acceded to our request and invited the FSSP to Toronto. The Fraternity, shabbily treated whist here, left Toronto after a short 19-month Apostolate and it was up to the laity to pick up the pieces to ensure that the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite was brought far and wide. In the months since then, the Society has organised Sung or Solemn Masses on Corpus Christi, Assumption, Holy Cross, Christ the King, Immaculate Conception, Epiphany, Candlemas, Ascension, All Saints and All Souls and we are now in our second year of doing this. These Masses have been celebrated in parish churches and even the beautiful chapel at Loretto Abbey where we will return next year for the Ascension of the Lord. We are deeply grateful for the five Priests and even the Permanent Deacon who have helped us to fill the vital need of the faithful. The Cardinal Archbishop has also ensured that the former indult/FSSP apostolate was moved to a beautiful church with a Chaplain appointed and now the Mass is there daily as well in the eastern part of Toronto, known as Scarborough.

The Toronto Traditional Mass Society-Una Voce Toronto was established in 2004 and is a Chapter of Canada’s original Member of FIUV, the International Una Voce Federation. We have a strong, united and elected Board of Directors and we continue to grow our membership and acquire liturgical items including custom made catafalque candles, vestments and Missals and altar-ware. As a registered charity we have raised funds and provide financial support and stipends to seminarians at home and those from the Archdiocese studying abroad having a devotion and commitment to the full expression of the Roman Rite. Given our own statutes to aid the suffragan dioceses of the Toronto Metropolitan See where no organised laity is formed, we are working in the Diocese of London and this coming Saturday at St. Patrick’s in Kinkora we are assisting with the organisation of a “Rorate” Mass at 5:30 A.M.

For more information or to support our work we invite you to visit www.unavocetoronto.com (which you will shortly find, re-constructed) or write us at unavocetoronto@gmail.com.

Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite

Regularly Scheduled Masses in the Archdiocese of Toronto

St. Patrick’s Church

91 Church Street,

Schomberg

905-939-2256

Sunday at 9:00 A.M.

Read Mass with Music

Toronto Oratory Church of St. Vincent de Paul

63 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto

416-535-7646

Sunday at 9:30 A.M.

Read Mass

Toronto Oratory Church of the Holy Family

1372 King Street West, Toronto

416-532-2879

Sunday at 11:00 A.M

Solemn Mass (Sept-May)

Sung Mass (June-July)

Read Mass (August)

Monday to Friday 11:30 A.M.

Saturday 8:30 A.M.

Carmel of the Infant Jesus

12519 2nd Concession Road, Zephyr

905-473-9801

Sundays at 11:30 A.M.

Read Mass

St. Lawrence the Martyr Catholic Church

2210 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto (Scarborough)

416-759-9359

Sunday at 1:00 P.M.

Read Mass with Music

Monday to Wednesday at 11:00 A.M.

Thursday at 7:00 A.M.

Friday at 7:00 P.M.

Saturday at 10:00 A.M.