Five years ago (well, five years and a few months), the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter was given the church of St. Agnes to use as their home base in Amsterdam. The society, more commonly known by its abbreviation FSSP, is a worldwide group of priests who, according to their website, work towards “the formation and sanctification of priests in the cadre of the traditional liturgy of the Roman rite … and the pastoral deployment of the priests in the service of the Church”. In Amsterdam they do so with two permanent priests and under the pastoral care of the bishop of Haarlem-Amsterdam, Msgr. Jos Punt.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the Tridentine Mass being offered at St. Agnes, today’s Mass will feature two musical ensembles. Bishop Jos Punt will be the first Dutch ordinary to attend a Mass in the extraordinary form. Since he doesn’t celebrate the Mass in this form, he will attend in choir dress and give the homily. The Apostolic Nuncio, Msgr. Bacqué, is also said to attend. For him it will be the second visit to St. Agnes, after having presided in August of last year.
The main celebrant of the Mass will be quite high-profile. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Roman Rota, or chief of the canon law courts and legal system of the Holy See. Cardinal Burke has offered Mass in the extraordinary form at several important occasions, and is a great supporter of it. He will be couple his visit to the Netherlands with tomorrow’s visit to the Tiltenberg seminary, where he will be laying and blessing the first stone of a new wing and attending the ‘dies natalis’. There he will speak about the importance of Eucharistic adoration in the education and life of priests. Among others, the nuncio and the metropolitan Archbishop Wim Eijk, will be in attendance there.
It’s a pretty big day, which was originally planned to take place in September. Other commitments of the cardinal took precedence then, so the Mass and celebration was moved to today. I will be heading down to Amsterdam today, and a report will of course be forthcoming here.
“My greatest joy is to teach the faith and celebrate the Sacraments for the flock which God has entrusted to my pastoral care. Having been called by Christ to the priesthood, I am ever more humbled by the reality of the priestly life and ministry. At the same time, I am filled with confidence, because the ministry belongs to Christ Whom I, through no merit of mine, have the privilege to serve.”
[Quotation taken from the website of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where Cardinal Burke was archbishop from 2004 to 2008]
In Caelo et in Terra 