The Christian Year

In these modern days of the six-minute homilette, some may question the use of translating musty old sermons. Why bother with the past? Wouldn't we be better off walking hand in hand into the future, leaving what is dead and buried behind us? Yet I think that if we want to move ahead with our faith, we also need to know what went before us. In these confusing, often demoralising times where some in the Church seem to be trying their hardest to erase older forms and distance themselves from a reminder of the past by creating a "parallel Church" where truth and tradition are being assailed and threatened from outside the Church and, sadly, even more from within her, it becomes all the more necessary to review our faith, in order to be able to explain what we believe and why, especially to the younger generation which is (re)discovering its Catholic inheritance. These sermons can help us in our quest. Written during a time when the Catholic Church was under siege from Protestantism, the sermons are clear examples of how we might strengthen our own faith in the face of adversity. The author, Joseph Rivius (1607-1666), was a Norbertine canon regular from the abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium. He was a faithful religious, a zealous prior, and a dedicated pastor of several parishes in northern Flanders. His sermons were written up as notes and later published in 1668 as a book of sermons for the entire year by his good friend and confrere Ludolphus van Craywinckel, himself a writer. The 113 sermons follow the usus antiquior of the Missal and comprise sermons for the Sundays of the liturgical year, as well as some for Saints' feast days and one for the Dedication of a Church. Because of the size of Rivius' original book, the translation has been published in five volumes for ease of reading: Volume I: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany; Volume II: Septuagesima, Lent, Eastertide; Volume III: Pentecost and Time after Pentecost; Volume IV: Sanctoral cycle I; Volume V: Sanctoral cycle II.