ANY TIMES in the past, I’ve spoken about a phenomenon I refer to as “learn a new word, see it within 24 hours.” If you care to read my other entries on this topic, a simple Google search should yield most of them. This phenomenon used to happen to me once a week, but these days it seems to occur every few hours.
In the past, I’ve mainly shared examples that relate to Church music, but instances need not conform to this limitation. For example, a few days ago, my wife pointed out a cute little message sent by a wife to her husband via social media: “I love ewe” with a little sheep image. Less than two (2) hours later, we were picking out some books for our daughter at Half Priced Books and what do I see on the shelf? Take a look in the upper right corner, and you can view the picture I took with my phone. What are the odds of that?
OF COURSE, IT HAPPENS with liturgy all the time, too. The other day I wrote an article about ad orientem and within hours, I happened to come across this article by Msgr. Richard J. Schuler, which includes this statement:
The altar versus populum is not a new idea brought in by the reforms of Paul VI. The Mass could always be celebrated with the priest facing the people, as indeed it was in Rome and in many other places for centuries. True, it was not the usual way, but it did exist.
