How the Traditional Liturgy Contributes to Racial and Ethnic Integration

Pax at a Solemn Pontifical Mass: the source of our peace

The unrest in the United States in recent weeks has prompted a great deal of soul-searching, though it is not yet clear that the soul-searching has reached deep enough in Catholic circles. An excellent start, from the angle of Catholic Social Teaching, is Kevin Wells’s article at OnePeterFive: “George Floyd and How the Church Abandoned the Inner Cities.”

An observation I recently read—“since the United States was never a Catholic country, it has historically lacked the full means that Catholic nations had to unite the different races”—made me think about the liturgical resources for unity that the Church has historically possessed, and how her postconciliar rulers have squandered those resources thanks to a misguided movement of modernization, lowest-common-denominator localization, and narrowly-construed inculturation.

The old Latin liturgy united nations, clans, tribes, races. Everyone had (more or less) the same kind of liturgy. It was in a high style, said in a language no longer anyone’s vernacular; it was celebrated “just so,” in a way that was distinctively its own, because it came from so many centuries and influences. In an article for the Southern Nebraska Register, Fr. Justin Wylie writes:

Only a language owned by no one in particular belongs to everyone universally. Truly, Latin has rendered our Faith Catholic (which is to say, universal) in time and space. Babel’s curse of linguistic segmentation was remedied by the Pentecost miracle of a Church that evangelizes all nations in a single tongue, with parity of understanding. The pagans of ancient Greece and Rome, Europe’s barbarian tribes, and the New World’s disparate peoples were evangelized by the common denominator of our Latin liturgy.

Even into modern times, one could see very diverse congregations gathered in the same church for the same Latin Mass, engaging with it in various ways depending on their needs and abilities: servants and their employers; rich and poor; “blue-collar” and “white-collar” workers; the educated and uneducated; devout daily Mass-goers and stubbornly dutiful Sunday regulars. Even if parishes were often set up along ethnic lines, there was still, beyond this, a strong sense of belonging to the one Catholic Church, the great equalizer and leveler.

Something greater than the community has to draw us into church.

In Phoenix from the Ashes, historian Henry Sire makes some mordant comments about the sociological results of the reform of the sixties:

By cutting off the life of the Church from a timeless tradition, the Modernists have immersed it in a contemporary social setting. The foible is especially noticeable in Germany, where the radicalism of the reformers has produced a parish Mass of comically bourgeois style; but that is the tone of the modern liturgy in all the Western countries. In an ordinary Mass today the sense one has is not the offering of an eternal sacrifice but a lecture conducted by the priest and two or three women of the public-librarian class, to whom the readings and other duties of the church are allocated. The verbosity and preachiness of the liturgy is itself a middle-class characteristic with which many ordinary parishioners feel little rapport; and the alienation of working-class worshippers, in a way that was never true of the old Mass in poor parishes, has become a peculiar feature of the liturgical reform.

Sire’s critique was empirically verified by the research of Anthony Archer in his 1984 study The Two Catholic Churches, well summarized by Joseph Shaw in a pair of articles: “A sociologist on the Latin Mass” and “The Old Mass and the Workers.” [1] To sum it up: the liturgical reform homogenized and narrowed the reach of Catholic liturgy, in particular cutting off all those people (and they are, and will always be, very numerous) to whom immediate verbal and rational comprehension of people-directed vernacular discourse with obligatory responses was not an appealing mode of engagement, or worse, was an impediment to prayerful engagement.

The imposition of the vernacular and the lack of ritual and rubrical discipline has separated us into little enclaves. You end up with Masses for white upper-middle-class golfers, Mass with African-American Gospel music, Mass for Hispanics, Mass for Vietnamese, etc. etc. How can the Church “unite the different races” if she can’t even unite us in a single recognizably Catholic worship?

Thus the aforementioned Fr. Wylie, who grew up in South Africa, notes with sadness:

Apartheid did less to divide Catholics of many races in South Africa than the introduction of the vernacular in the liturgy, for whereas before, these worshipped together easily in Latin, since its loss, now find themselves deeply divided at diocesan celebrations.

Traditional practices appeal to a universal sense of reverence before God.

My experience with TLM communities around the world has been dramatically different. Almost everywhere I go, but especially in urban parishes, I see different races and ethnicities side by side in the pews: Asians, African-Americans, Africans, whites of all European backgrounds. [2] The commonness of the worship and its deep reverence unite us all. The traditional Latin liturgy chanted by the minister and choir in the church is one and common to all, binding us together as a fixed, stable, reliable external “gold standard.” It is the center of gravity that draws us all towards Christ—and therefore towards each other. Prayer happens within and between the ancient Latin chanted aloud, the modern vernacular quietly available, and the prayer of the worshiper’s heart, which transcends all linguistic differences. [3]

In his masterpiece Democracy in America, published between 1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville describes a Catholic Church that seems almost no longer to exist:

On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and the needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak; it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent more than to render them equal. Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign be removed, all the other classes of society are more equal than in republics.

Churchmen after the Council foolishly abandoned this remarkable power of a single Creed, acknowledged and taught as such; a single observance with real asceticism; and, above all, a common body of Latin liturgy to draw together people of different races, ethnicities, languages, classes, backgrounds, and vocations. We may truly say that the practice of the traditional liturgy has been, and is capable of becoming once again, the Catholic Church’s “secret weapon” for unity among the faithful of the far-flung and demographically highly diverse Latin rite. The Collect of Easter Tuesday beautifully captures this aspiration, reflected in the very externals of traditional Roman rite:

O God, Who dost make all nations, how diverse soever they be, to become one family in giving praise to thy Name, grant unto all them that are born again in the fountain of baptism to live ever in oneness of faith and godliness of works.

The world needs genuine signs and sources of unity more than ever, not farces like white people claiming to “renounce their whiteness” (or, for that matter, Catholics renouncing their own great tradition). We need to find our unity and healing not in social justice campaigns or police reforms, whatever value those may have in their way, but in the grace and truth of the one Savior of mankind and His one Church, vividly symbolized, in the West, by the common Latin liturgical inheritance still embodied—and happily returning—in the usus antiquior.

The iconic outfit of the server: black and white together.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

How Do I Get From the Piano to the Organ?

Dr. Crista Miller tackles this question in the latest bonus episode of Square Notes. After discussing some basic differences in finger technique between the two instruments, she talks about pedaling, registration, and good repertoire for the pianist learning the organ.

For those pianists interested in learning to play the organ, check out Dr. Miller’s class that she’ll be teaching online August 3 to 7 through St. Joseph’s Seminary. 

And if you’re looking for a short list of books that would be helpful in the transition, check out the one she’s provided here.

You can catch us on our website, YouTube, iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. Please note that we have discontinued publishing on SoundCloud.

Trinity Sunday 2020

Duo Seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum: * Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth: * Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus. V. Tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spíritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Sanctus. Gloria Patri. Plena.

R. The two Seraphim cried one to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the God of hosts: * All the earth is full of his glory. V. There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. Holy. Glory be to the Father. All the earth.

This responsory was traditionally very prominent in the Divine Office in the Use of Rome, being sung after the eighth lesson of Matins on all the Sundays between the Octave of Epiphany and Septuagesima, and again on the Sundays between the Octave of Corpus Christi and Advent. This custom was introduced by its author, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), under whom the ordo of the Divine Office was written out which would ultimately form the basis of the Breviary of St Pius V. Odd as this may seem, given its Trinitarian theme, it was not originally written for, or used in, the Office of the Holy Trinity, which in Pope Innocent’s time had not yet been received into the Use of the Papal court; it was only added to the feast in the Tridentine reform. Several composers have set it to polyphony for use as a motet; among the best of these is the version of Tomás Luis de Victoria.

Dubium: Is It Appropriate to Fast during the Pentecost Octave?

Feelin’ Pentecostal now...

A friend of a friend recently posed a question:

I can’t seem to figure out why, during the Pentecost Octave they would insert three penitential Ember days. I truly want to be joyful and singularly reflect on the joy and incredible work of the Holy Spirit during this very high Octave. Why couldn’t they just move the Ember Days to (at least); the week after (if not a few weeks after) the Octave. We already had several somewhat penitential Rogation Days intruding on Ascension Octave, but since that’s only 1/yr (and considering its purpose) it makes sense. And then, the very next week we have to endure this invasion again with three penitential Ember Days in the next sublimely joyful and miraculous octave of Pentecost. Honestly, I feel like it’s liturgical schizophrenia, just too much. There is so much to reflect and mentally pray on within the Pentecost Octave. I just don’t understand inserting three Penitential days in an 8 day Octave; especially when we just did the same thing a week earlier (with the Rogation Days) in the Ascension Octave.

Let me make three general observations and then give four reasons why the traditional arrangement is a good one.

1.  It is appropriate that there be a summer fast. According to Pope St. Leo the Great:

This profitable observance, dearly beloved, is especially laid down for the fasts of the Church, which, in accordance with the Holy Spirit’s teaching, are so distributed over the whole year that the law of abstinence may be kept before us at all times. Accordingly we keep the spring fast in Lent, the summer fast at Whitsuntide, the autumn fast in the seventh month, and the winter fast in this which is the tenth month, knowing that there is nothing unconnected with the Divine commands, and that all the elements serve the Word of God to our instruction, so that from the very hinges on which the world turns, as if by four Gospels we learn unceasingly what to preach and what to do (Sermon 19.2).

Leo also claims that the seasonal Ember fasts were instituted by the Apostles, and he is probably right, for the Hebrews had them (Zech. 8:19) and it would have been fitting to appropriate them for Christian use, as the Church did with so many other elements of Old Testament worship.

Pope Leo says: “Fasting is fun!”

2.  Fasting is not necessarily sorrowful. Indeed, we have it on good authority that when we fast, we  should not be “like the hypocrites, sad” (Mt. 6:16), and even when we are sorrowful, we should still be always rejoicing (2 Cor. 6:10). An important goal of fasting is regaining self-mastery; by “afflicting” the flesh, we reassert our control over it. This reconquest need not be an occasion of sorrow. In fact, it could be, oddly enough, something to look forward to:

Know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run that you may obtain!  And every one that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things. And they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown: but we an incorruptible one.  I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty: I so fight, not as one beating the air. But I chastise my body and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

St. Paul here is not sad; he is a spiritual Rocky Balboa, listening to his awesome theme song as he runs upon the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

3. The Pentecost Ember Days are not sorrowful, and they are barely penitential. As Fr. Francis X. Weiser explains,

This Embertide has assumed a special character which distinguishes it from all the others. Coinciding with the octave of Pentecost, it displays an interesting combination of penitential motives (in some of its Mass prayers) with the celebration of the great feast (Gloria, Credo, Alleluia Sequence, Pentecostal orations, red vestments, omission of “Flectamus Genua”). Because of this joyful note it used to be called “Ieiunium Exultationis” (the Fast of Exultation) in the Middle Ages. Abbot Rupert of Deutz (1130) wrote about it as follows: “It is not a fast to make us sad or to darken our hearts, but it rather brightens the solemnity of the Holy Spirit’s arrival; for the sweetness of the Spirit of God makes the faithful loathe the pleasures of earthly food.” [1]

Here I respectfully side with Fr. Weiser and Abbot Rupert against our friend who writes that “we have to endure this invasion again with three penitential Ember Days in the next sublimely joyful and miraculous octave of Pentecost.” It seems to me that when you read and pray the Ember Days of Pentecost, you do not experience a strong sense of penitence at all. Hence it does not come across as an alien “invasion” but, as Abbot Rupert puts it, an admittedly counter-intuitive way of “brighten[ing] the solemnity of the Holy Spirit’s arrival.”

The fourth prophecy of Ember Saturday of September, Zachariah 8, 14-19, in the so-called Lectionary of Alcuin, an epistolary of the 9th century whose contents represent the state of the Roman lectionary in the early 7th century. “The fast of the first month, and the fast of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall for the house of Judah unto joy and gladness.” (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 9452; folio 99r, image cropped.)

In light of these considerations, we conclude that it is wise and good that the Church of Rome, from a very early time, has observed the summer Ember Days during the Octave of Pentecost, and we summarize our position in the following four points:

1. The custom is a healthy corrective to a common misconception, namely, that fasting is necessarily sorrowful. The joy of Pentecost mingles with the penitence of the Embertide fasting to remind us that fasting, as a form of penitence, is an ascesis, an athletic training for the big fight that may involve pain and sacrifice but also involves a certain glee in anticipation, a getting into the zone, a zest for the upcoming match. “And every one that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things.” So refrain, darn it, and run! When you fast during Pentecost, put on the soundtrack to Rocky and watch the training scenes on Youtube. It’s that kind of fast. You are getting your lazy bum of a soul into shape for fulfilling the Great Commission under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which you will be carrying out during the Time after Pentecost. Bom Bom Bom-Bom-Bom…

2. As just mentioned (and as Gregory DiPippo convincingly argues with the help of St. Leo the Great), the Whitsuntide fasts mix with the grace of the Holy Spirit to prepare us for the Time after Pentecost, which is the season of the Church calendar that corresponds to the age in which we are currently living, that is, the age in between the first Pentecost and the Last Judgment. It is the age of unabashed evangelization, the age of giving courageous witness to Christ, the age of putting the “militant” into the Church here below. You need to train and sacrifice for that kind of combat mission.

3. A case can be made that such a fast is better placed between Ascension and Pentecost, in imitation of the Apostle’s “sheltering in place” in the Upper Room, but the Church insists that there be no fasting during the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost (except during the Vigil of Pentecost), even though some penitential practices (such as the Rogation Days) are allowed. This rule strikes me as wise, for it helps the faithful recover from the austerity of Lent: forty days of fasting, fifty+ days of feasting is a good balance. The Church then places the joyful fast of the summer Ember Days on the earliest possible time available, to help the faithful whip themselves back into shape for the next season but not in a doleful manner. It is also worth noting that although the Blessed Virgin Mary and the disciples were “one mind in prayer” during the first Novena between Ascension and Pentecost, no mention is made of fasting (Acts 1:14).

4. A case can also be made, as does our friend, that the Ember fast be moved to a place after the Pentecost Octave, and indeed there is some evidence that this was the case in at least some places in the early Church (see here). We must therefore ask ourselves: did the Church make a mistake in the late Patristic or early medieval era when she definitively assigned the summer Ember Days to the Pentecost Octave? I would answer no, for the reasons I have already given. Early is good, and it does not violate the spirit of the Octave.

5. Finally, it is worth reflecting on the contrast between Rogationtide and the Whitsun Ember fasts. The former focus on penitence (violet vestments, long litanies, etc.), but they forbid fasting. The latter enjoin fasting, but they are utterly jubilant (red vestments, the sequence, lots of alleluias). There is more to be said on this subject, but one thing to note is that the Rogation Days are, if I may put it this way, not penitential for their own sake but for the sake of petitioning: the (mild) penitential practices are meant to “get God’s attention” so that He will answer a very long list of requests--and appropriately so, for during the Lesser Rogation Days we are basically assembling a great “wish list” and asking Christ to take it with Him and show it to the Father when He ascends into Heaven. So again I would quibble with the way our friend has articulated things: if you were doing things right, that is, according to the mind of the Church, you most certainly did not do “the same thing a week earlier (with the Rogation Days) in the Ascension Octave.” And two small corrections: the Lesser Rogation Days do not occur after the Ascension but on the three days prior to it. And, alas, the Ascension Octave is not in the 1962 Missal.

I hope these reflections help in deepening an appreciation of the traditional arrangement, but the ultimate clincher is to experience it yourself. It is too late now, but next year assist at the Pentecost Octave Masses, pray the Pentecost Octave Divine Office, observe the traditional fast, and see how you fare. This year I had the first and perhaps only opportunity in my life to do all three, and so I did. It has been glorious. As far as I am concerned, our medieval forebears were right: the Whitsuntide fasts are indeed a jejunium exultationis.

[1] Francis X. Weiser, SJ, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (NY: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1958), 35.

The 12th Century Missal of Limoges

Research on some recent (and hopefully future) articles has had me spending even more time than usual in one of my favorite virtual libraries, the Bibliothèque nationale de France; here is a nice thing I stumbled across, a sacramentary produced in the 12th century for the cathedral of St Stephen in Limoges. (Département des manuscrits. Latin 9438) The current cathedral was begun in 1273, and so postdates the book. The manuscript contains 14 major illuminations (not full-page, although they will seem so here because of the way I have cropped the images), and a number of large illuminated letters. The decorations on this page are very typical of what is seen in the rest of the book. Following a very ancient arrangement, the first Mass of the year is that of the vigil of Christmas, and Advent is at the end of the liturgical year; note that the Mass also still has a proper preface.

The Nativity of Christ and the appearance of the angel to the shepherds, before the Day Mass of Christmas. Although the style is very far from the naturalism of the Renaissance, there is an elegance to the figures which is often seen in Gothic art, as opposed to the weirdly disproportionate figures so common in the Romanesque period. Here this is evidenced in things like the gesture of the Virgin Mary’s hand and those of the shepherds, and the drape of the cloth above Her.

Technically, a “sacramentary” is a book that includes only the priest’s parts of the Mass. However, the 12th century is the period when the “missal” properly so-called emerged, which includes the text of all the parts of the Mass. This particular book is transitional; the musical parts are very often indicated before the Masses, but not always, and only by their incipits, not the full text; the Scriptural readings are not indicated at all. (The website of the BnF calls it a missal in one place and a sacramentary in another.)

The stoning of St Stephen gets its own image, since he is the patron of the cathedral. The artist has made an admirable attempt at showing motion in the position of the figures casting the stones, which are hanging around in the air around Stephen.

The Baptism of Christ and the Miracle at Cana; note that in both cases, He is shown younger and beardless, perhaps an example of archaizing based on imitation of much older images.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus (Part 2)

Lost In Translation, #2

 

Last week we examined parts of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the beautiful sequence that is being prayed at every Extraordinary-Form Mass all week during this, the Octave of Pentecost. Today, we take a closer look at just one stanza of this remarkable masterpiece, the sixth:

Sine tuo numine Nihil est in homine,  Nihil est innoxium.

Without Thy numinosity,  Nothing is in man, Nothing is harmless.

Sine tuo numine contains a word that is difficult to translate. Numen is one of the Latin terms for deity or divine majesty, but because it comes from the verb to nod or give approval, it also conveys a sense of command or will: numen is divine sway, divine power. Without your approval and support, our sacred poet is saying to the Holy Spirit, everything we have—our temporal goods, talents, efforts, etc.—ends up harming us. As Augustine puts it in the Confessions: “Without Thee [O Lord], what am I but a guide to my own destruction?” (4.1.1).

By the way, did you know that the motto for the state of Colorado is nil sine numine (“Nothing without Thy Divine Will”) and that it comes from then-Secretary of the Territory L.L. Weld, who was descended from a long line of English recusant Catholics? When asked what the new state’s motto should be, he suggested Nil sine numine, which was his family motto. Perhaps one of Weld’s ancestors had been inspired by the sequence verse Sine tuo numine as he assisted at a Whitsuntide Mass.

The rest of the stanza poses a mild problem. “Nothing is in man (homine)/ Nothing is harmless” is somewhat confusing, and so translators usually simplify it to something like “Nothing in man is harmless.” But why is the Latin here somewhat clunky in an otherwise eloquent poem? The answer is that, unfortunately, somebody along the way changed the wording. The original stanza had lumine (light) rather than homine (man) and thus read:

Without Thy numinosity,
Nothing is in [its proper] light,
Nothing is harmless.

The original stanza is much richer: it loses none of the moral claim that without the Holy Spirit nothing is harmless, and it adds an intellectual observation: without the Holy Spirit we cannot see reality properly, for to see things in their proper perspective is not simply to grasp their natural essences but to see them in light of how God sees them, or at the very least, to see them sub specie aeternitatis. “In Thy light we shall see light,” sings the psalmist (35:10), and rightly so, for if we only aspire to a natural knowledge of things, we will not see reality to the fullest; we will be blind to its providential meaning and its sacramental significance.

And it is the Holy Spirit who is instrumental in enabling us to see reality to the fullest. Several if not all of His seven gifts (especially wisdom, understanding, and knowledge) have as their aim a supernatural view of things. In one of his analogies of the Trinity, Saint Augustine writes that God the Father is He who is, God the Son is He who is understood (like the Word that He is), and God the Holy Spirit is He who makes all things understood (Soliloquies 1.8.15). The distinctions make sense, for as the Collect from the Ember Wednesday after Pentecost reminds us, the Son has promised that the Holy Spirit will lead us to all truth (see Jn. 16:13), and I take it for granted that when one understands all things, one is no stranger to the truth.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 3: The Preface of the Martyrs

We continue our examination of the prefaces which have recently been made optional in the Mass of the Extraordinary Form. See the first article for a brief history of the preface as a feature of the Mass, and explanations of the procedure by which the corpus of them was broadened in the post-Conciliar reform.

The third new preface is that of the Martyrs, which in the OF is the first of two generic prefaces that may be chosen ad libitum for that category of Saints. Like those of the Angels and St John the Baptist, it is based on one found in the very first source of the Roman Rite, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary.

The preface in question, “VD: Quoniam martyrorum beatorum”, converted to the singular (“martyris beati”) and assigned to the feast of St Sebastian (here misspelled as “Sabastian”) in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048.

As noted previously in this series, this document, which is preserved in a single manuscript in the library of the cathedral chapter of Verona, is not actually a sacramentary, the ancient predecessor of the missal, which contains only the priest’s parts of the Mass, namely, the prayers, prefaces and Canon. It is rather a privately made collection of the texts of a large number of “libelli missarum”, small booklets which contained the prayers and prefaces of Masses for specific occasions. The collection was certainly made in Rome itself, since it contains numerous specific references to the city; it is generally dated to the mid-6th century. Its traditional name “Leonine”, in reference to Pope St Leo I, is no more than a fancy of its discoverer, Fr Giuseppe Bianchini (1704-64), a canon of Verona who later joined the Roman Oratory, and in his time, a well-respected scholar of Christian antiquity.

The manuscript is quite damaged, and begins with the sixth of a group of 43 different Masses for several martyrs, which are numbered in the manuscript itself. The preface chosen as the basis of the new preface for the Novus Ordo is that of the 32nd among these. It also appears with a few variations on July 10th in the sixth of seven Masses for the very ancient feast of a group of Roman martyrs known as the Seven Brothers, the sons of the martyr Felicity, whose feast, like that of their mother, has been suppressed on the new calendar. The differences between the two versions are noted in bold.

VD: quorum martyrum beatorum pro confessione tui nominis venerabilis sanguis effusus, sicut tua mirabilia manifestat, qui perficis in infirmitate virtutem, ita nostris et studiis dat profectum, et fragilitatibus prestat auxilium. Per.

VD: quoniam martyrum beatorum pro confessione nominis tui venerabilis sanguis effusus simul et tua mirabilia manifestat, quo perficis in infirmitate uirtutem, et nostris studiis dat profectum, et infirmis aput te prestat auxilium: (July 10)

Truly it is worthy… the venerable blood of whose blessed martyrs, being shed for the confession of Thy name, just as it manifests Thy wonders, who dost perfect virtue in weakness, so also giveth increase to our devotion, and granteth aid to our weaknesses.

Truly it is worthy… since the venerable blood of the blessed martyrs, being shed for the confession of Thy name, doth at once manifest Thy wonders, by which (fact) Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness (infirmitate), and giveth increase to our devotion, and granteth aid to those who are weak before Thee. (July 10)

Note the words “perficis in infirmitate virtutem – who/Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness”, a citation of 2 Corinthians 12, 9; they also appear in a Leonine preface for the feast of St Cecilia. In the Roman Rite, this is the last verse of the epistle of Sexagesima Sunday, in which St Paul defends his work as an Apostle by recalling the sufferings he has undergone to spread the Gospel.

St Paul, ca. 1330, by the Sienese painter Lippo Memmi (1291-1356); now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

After the Leonine sacramentary, this preface also appears in some early Roman sacramentaries; it remains in the Extraordinary form of the Ambrosian Mass to this day on the feast of St Sebastian. In the post-Conciliar reform, it has been modified as follows.

VD. Quóniam beáti mártyris N. pro confessióne nóminis tui, ad imitatiónem Christi, sanguis effúsus tua mirabília maniféstat, quibus pérficis in fragilitáte virtútem, et vires infírmas ad testimónium róboras.

My literal translation: Truly it is worthy… since the blood of the blessed martyr N., being shed for the confession of Thy name unto the imitation of Christ manifesteth Thy wonders, by which Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness (fragilitate), and strengthen weak powers unto witness (i.e. in order that they may bear witness).

Among the subcommittees that worked on various specific aspects of the reform, only one, that which did the hymns of the Divine Office under the direction of Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB, published an account of not just what it did, but why it did it. It is difficult to see, therefore, why any of the changes made to the original version were felt to be necessary, particularly the elimination of the word “venerable”, and the alteration of the Biblical citation in Latin; the latter might be explained by a desire to avoid using “infirmitate” and “infirmas” so close to each other.

Once again, the Biblical and Patristic citations purportedly related to this preface given by Johnson and Ward in their work “The Prefaces of the Roman Missal: A Source Compendium with Concordance and Indices” are vague and of no particular interest. They somehow fail to include the Biblical text which is explicitly cited, either of the occurrences of the words “sanguis effusus” in the Gospels (Matthew 23, 35 and the parallel text in Luke 11, 50), or any of the references to the blood of the Saints in the Apocalypse.

Folio 113r of the Saint-Sever Apocalypse, a mid-11th century manuscript which contains inter alia the Commentary on the Apocalypse of St Beatus of Liébana (ca. 730-800). This page represents the words of Apocalypse 6, 9-11, “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord (holy and true) dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ And white robes were given to every one of them one; and it was said to them, that they should rest for a little time, till their fellow servants, and their brethren, who are to be slain, even as they, should be filled up.” The golden T in the upper right corner of the picture is the altar (labelled ‘ara aurea - the golden altar’) and the birds beneath it are labelled ‘the souls of the slain.’ In the lower part, the caption reads ‘to these were given white stoles.’ (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 8878)

The new English liturgical translation: For the blood of your blessed Martyr N., poured out like Christ’s to glorify your name, shows forth your marvelous works, by which in our weakness you perfect your power and on the feeble bestow strength to bear you witness.

In the Novus Ordo, many new doxologies were invented for the new prefaces, but in this case, this will not be used in the EF. Here is the conclusion for the preface in the OF.

Et ídeo, cum caelórum virtútibus, in terris te iúgiter praedicámus, maiestáti tuae sine fine clamantes: Sanctus...

My literal translation: And therefore, with the powers of the heavens, we proclaim Thee unceasingly on earth, crying out to Thy majesty without end: Holy…

The new English liturgical translation: And so, with the powers of heaven, we worship you constantly on earth, and before your majesty without end we acclaim: Holy…

Introducing a New NLM Contributor - Dr. Michael Foley

New Liturgical Movement is very pleased to announce a new addition to our group of writers. Dr Michael Foley is a Catholic theologian, a professor of Patristics in the Great Texts Program at Baylor University, and the author of twelve books and over 250 articles on topics ranging from sacred liturgy and the theology of St Augustine to reflections on pop culture. His works include The Politically Incorrect Guide to Christianity, Gus Finds God (a children’s book), Drinking with the Saints, and, most recently, Drinking with Your Patron Saints. He lives with his wife Alexandra and their six children in Waco, Texas. Each Friday, he will examine a liturgical text, one of the works of the remarkable poet-theologians from ages past who gave us the Roman rite, and explain details and nuances of the original Latin version which may not be evident even in the best of translations. The series is therefore called “Lost in Translation”; we hope that these brief reflections will foster our readers’ appreciation of the much-celebrated “genius of the Roman Rite” and its wondrous ability to communicate truths succinctly and beautifully. The first installment in the ongoing series was published last week, the next will appear tomorrow under his own by-line. Glad to have you with us, Michael!

Lessons in Selling Beautiful Art in a Secular World

I received an interesting email from a friend the other day, artist James Gillick. Jim, as some regular readers will know, is a Catholic artist who has managed to make a good living by selling his work to the secular market. This is important. If we are going to spread the Gospel, we have to engage with people on the firing line of life. For the Catholic artist, this includes working out how to create demand for what he does even among non-believers, and without compromising on the quality of work. He is bringing beauty into the homes of non-believers, and who knows how the contact with his work and with the artist might affect them?

There is a tendency among some artists to assume that financial considerations are beneath them. I would say that it is as much part of the vocation as the creation of the art. Certainly, you must be able to create a high quality of art, but if your work doesn’t sell, you can’t be an artist. The onus is on the artist to create work that sells, more than it is to demand that people ought to commission or like his work.

Undoubtedly Jim has a special knack for it. Go to his website and see the prices he charges for his work. All I can say is, congratulations Jim!

Here is a tool he is using to help potential buyers consider if a painting is for them. Using your mobile phone to go onto this page of his website, your phone camera can place the new paintings in the correct scale, in 3D on any wall close to you, right now.

If the site “sees” that your phone is suitable, a button will appear beneath each painting that reads “View on your Wall.” Press it and follow the instructions. (See a 1-minute tutorial video here.) My aim is to help you see if a painting suits the space that you have, doing so in an entertaining and informative way. It worked well with my android phone.

Of course, you can see the paintings in the normal way on any other type of screen on his website here. If you want to contact Jim you can call him or even arrange to visit his studio (in Lincolnshire in England). Otherwise, his phone number is +44 7582 190933 and his email is gillickjames@gmail.com.

Photos of a New Priest’s First Mass

For obvious reasons, we have had almost no photoposts in the last few months, but now that restrictions are easing up in some places, and especially with ordination season upon us, hopefully we’ll be able to have them more often, and take some much-needed encouragement from them. Here is something which I am sure all of our readers will find especially heartening to see: this past Sunday, Fr James Dvorak of the diocese of Victoria, Texas, celebrated a Solemn High Mass of Thanksgiving for his priestly ordination in the traditional rite. He was assisted by seminary classmates who will themselves soon be ordained to the priesthood in their respective dioceses: Dcn Michael Cellars of Charleston as deacon of the Mass, Dcn Joe Hernandez of Brownsville as subdeacon, and Dcn Miguel Flores of Austin as master of ceremonies. Fr Tommy Chen, vocation director of the diocese of Victoria, served as the assistant priest. The last two photos show Fr Dvorak giving his mother the manuterge used to absorb the chrism from the ordination rite, and his father the stole he wore the first time he heard Confessions. I am sure our readers are all familiar with the tradition by which the mother of a priest is buried with the manuterge, as a symbol that when she approaches heaven, she will say to the Lord that she gave Him her son to serve as a priest. The tradition of giving the stole to a priest’s father is apparently quite recent, but certainly no less beautiful and fitting for that.

Our thanks to Dcn Armando Alejandro for sharing these pictures with us, and we very happily offer our congratulations to Fr Dvorak, to his family and friends, and to the diocese of Victoria - ad multos annos!

The Vidi aquam

Prayers before the altar; note that the assistant priest, whose job is to help the newly ordained priest through his first Mass, stands at the right, and the deacon moves to the left side next to the subdeacon. (At such a Mass, the assistant priest takes over several of the duties normally given to the MC.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

“Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright” – A New Book by Dr Peter Kwasniewski

Angelico Press has just released a new book by our prolific and long-time contributor Dr Peter Kwasniewski, titled “Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright - The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass.”

From their website: “At the crest of volatile years of experimentation, a new rite of Mass was introduced in 1969 — no mere cosmetic treatment but a radical reconstruction of the Church’s central act of worship. A minority of the faithful continued to hold fast to the traditional rite, which John Paul II and Benedict XVI gradually freed from restrictions. The steady growth of this  ‘traditionalist’ movement inevitably prompts questions in the minds of more and more people. What is it that Catholic laity, clergy, and religious are discovering and falling in love with? Could you — should you— be among them?

“In this engaging book, Peter Kwasniewski draws on decades of experience and, presuming no specialized knowledge, explains why the traditional Mass operates the way it does, what its distinctive features and benefits are, and how it still captures hearts with a beauty deeply rooted and perennially green. Every reader — whether already a lover of the Mass of Ages or a complete newbie, whether committed or curious, perplexed or skeptical, sitting on the fence or bouncing back and forth between old and new — will find life-changing insights in these pages.”

Here is the Table of Contents:

Blurbs from the back cover:

“Dr. Kwasniewski’s comprehensive new book has something for just about everyone seeking an answer to the question why it is so urgent that we take refuge in our tradition and reclaim our birthright as Catholics. Parents and grandparents with an interest in passing on the Faith to the next generation will also find much food for thought.” — ARCHBISHOP THOMAS E. GULLICKSON

“Peter Kwasniewski is the theological master and propagator of the usus antiquior. But never does he lose the common touch that appeals to the non-scholar or the mere onlooker coming to the classical Mass for the first time. Of books defending the usus antiquior, Kwasniewski’s Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright should hold pride of place on your bookshelf.” — REV. JOHN A. PERRICONE

“If you’re looking for carefully crafted, incisive, logical arguments as well as Pascal’s ‘reasons of the heart’ for why the Traditional Latin Mass is a lighthouse both for the Church and for your own soul’s voyage amid stormy seas, this is a book for you.” — REV. WILLIAM J. SLATTERY

“This eloquent work even fulfilled the function of spiritual reading for me, as so many passages rise into prayerful appreciation for the treasures of tradition. And if you love a good donnybrook, you’ll find plenty of deft argumentative pugilism.” — MICHAEL P. FOLEY

“Having recently rediscovered the Traditional Latin Mass, my spirit has been soaring ever since. I found Peter Kwasniewski’s writings to be a wonderful resource, erudite without being academically forbidding. This book could change your spiritual life forever.” — JANET E. SMITH

“Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright has that rare combination of readability and intellectual depth needed for responding to our ecclesial crisis. If you are already convinced of the pressing need to return to the beauty of tradition, it will provide you with sound rhetoric; if you are not convinced, it will draw you toward the truth.” — LEILA MARIE LAWLER

“Dr. Kwasniewski leads those who are curious about the traditional Mass into a thorough understanding of its superiority in language, music, prayers, postures, reverence, and piety. Although written by a scholar, this book is for everyone. Readers will come away with a new appreciation for our sacred birthright, meant to be passed on to all Catholic generations until the Lord comes again.” — JESSE ROMERO

The Feast and Fast of Pentecost

On the vigil of Pentecost, as on that of Easter, the Roman station church is the cathedral of the Most Holy Savior, popularly known as St John in the Lateran. This is, of course, because of the day’s very ancient character as one of the two occasions for the celebration of baptism, following what the Acts of the Apostles say about the very first Pentecost (2, 41), when St Peter baptized about 3,000 people. In ancient times, it was an almost universal custom that a cathedral should have a baptistery right next to it, and Rome was no exception; furthermore, the administration of baptism was principally a duty of the bishop. This is also why the traditional Roman vigil of Pentecost repeats several elements from the vigil of Easter, most significantly, a series of catechetical prophecies, and the blessing of the baptismal font, a custom attested in all of the ancient liturgical books of the Roman Rite. [1] The collect of the Mass refers to the baptismal character of the rite even more explicitly than that of the Easter vigil, and the Hanc igitur of Easter is said, which speaks of those “whom (God has) deigned to regenerate of water and the Holy Spirit”, as also throughout the octave. [2]

The interior of the Lateran Baptistery

After the celebration of the Easter vigil at a church dedicated to the Savior, the stations of Easter week bring the newly baptized to the churches of the most important Saints, arranged in hierarchical order. Easter Sunday is celebrated at St Mary Major, the Virgin’s most ancient Roman church; the Masses of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are held at the tombs of Ss Peter, Paul and Lawrence respectively, the city’s three principal patrons. On Thursday the station is at the church of the Twelve Apostles, and on Friday at the Pantheon, dedicated to all the martyrs; Saturday returns to the Lateran, where St John represents the confessors. As detailed in the first article linked above, each one of these Masses contains clear references to the Saint or group of Saints to whom the station church is dedicated.

Of the seven stations churches of the vigil, feast and octave of Easter, five are also kept at Pentecost, albeit in a different order. Starting from this fact, and from the common station for the vigil, the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster attempts in his book The Sacramentary (vol. 2, p. 397) to explain the stations of Pentecost and its octave in reference to those of Easter, according to a “deliberate design of making the two feasts equal”, and posits various reasons for the change in order. His explanation seems to me, however, to run aground by starting from an a priori assumption that since Pentecost imitates Easter in some ways, we should expect it to imitate Easter in all or most ways, which it clearly does not. For example, at the beginning of the Pentecost vigil, there is no blessing of the fire, even though this would arguably be an especially appropriate rite to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire. [3] But much more significantly in regard to the stations, the texts of the Pentecost Masses, unlike those of Easter, have almost no relationship to the churches where they are celebrated. [4]

The organizing principle of the stations of Pentecost is rather that they are arranged in deliberate imitation of those of the first week of Lent, as shown in the following chart.

	First Week of Lent	Pentecost
vigil		Lateran
Sunday	Lateran	St Peter’s
Monday	St Peter in Chains	St Peter in Chains
Tuesday	St Anastasia	St Anastasia
Wednes.	St Mary Major	St Mary Major
Thurs.	St Lawrence in Panispera	St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls
Friday	Twelve Apostles	Twelve Apostles
Saturday	St Peter’s	St Peter’s

There are two places where the lists differ, Sunday and Thursday, both of which are easily explained. Before the creation of Ash Wednesday as a part of the liturgical year, Lent began on the First Sunday; the station is held at the cathedral as the most appropriate place for the Pope to begin the catechumenal rites which were such a prominent feature of the season. In the case of Pentecost, the station is at the Lateran on the vigil, and so on the feast, it is kept at St Peter’s instead. As the largest church in Rome, this is the logical choice for a solemnity of such importance, which would presumably draw a very big congregation; and indeed, the station is also held there on Epiphany, on the Ascension, originally on Christmas day, and on the city’s patronal feast.

In the case of Thursday, in Lent, it was originally an “aliturgical” day on which no Mass was celebrated, and this was also true of the Thursday after Pentecost. The custom of having aliturgical days was abolished in the early 8th century, for reasons which I have explained elsewhere, and stations appointed for those days; the Thursdays of the First Week of Lent and of Pentecost were then both assigned to churches dedicated to St Lawrence.

The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, by Titian, from the Spanish Royal Monastery of the Escorial. This is traditionally said to have taken place on the site where the church of St Lawrence in Panisperna now stands.

The question naturally arises as to why the stations of one of the greatest and most solemn feasts copy those of the beginning of the great fast. The answer lies, of course, in the Ember days. We have a total of 22 sermons by Pope St Leo I (444-61) preached on these fast days, four on those of Pentecost, and nine each on those of September and December. In them, he states several times that that they were of apostolic institution; we cannot prove that this is in fact the case, but they are unquestionably very ancient. The stations for the Ember Days are always held at Mary Major on Wednesday, at the Twelve Apostles on Friday, and at St Peter’s on Saturday; this being the case, and the necessary exception having been made for Sunday, those of Monday and Tuesday simply reproduce those of the Monday and Tuesday of the First Week of Lent.

The liturgical texts for Pentecost and its octave, including the Ember days, and the stations of the vigil and the first four days of the feast, are attested with a very notable degree of consistency in the oldest liturgical books of the Roman Rite. However, it is also the case that in many early books, the Ember days appear as a feature of the liturgical year separate from the Pentecost octave. In the older version of the Gelasian Sacramentary (Vat. Lat. Reg. 316), they are placed between Pentecost and its octave day, but in the modified form attested in the Gellone Sacramentary, and in the earliest lectionaries, they are not just after the octave, but further separated from it by four feasts and two Sundays. The Mass of Ember Wednesday originally had the following preface, which is modeled fairly closely on a part of Pope Leo’s first sermon on the fast of Pentecost. [5]

“Truly it is worthy… For after those days of rejoicing, which we have kept in honor of the Lord who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, then indeed have holy fasts been foreseen as necessary to us, so that those thing which have been divinely bestowed upon the Church may abide (i.e. continue to be present) in those who keep a pure manner of living. Through Christ our Lord.”

Folio 83v of the Gellone Sacramentary, ca 780AD, with the preface cited above incorporated into the Mass of Ember Wednesday within the Octave of Pentecost in the middle of the page. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

Therefore, just as the Ember days of Lent mark the beginning of the Church’s fast in preparation for the baptismal rites of Easter, this text presents the fast after Pentecost as a preparation for the rest of the liturgical year, the longest part of it, once all of the catechumens have joined the company of the faithful. “Therefore did these teachers (i.e. the Apostles), who imbued all the sons of the Church with their examples and traditions, begin the first service of Christian warfare with holy fasts, so that those who are about to fight against spiritual wickedness might take up the arms of abstinence, by which to cut off all incentives to vice.” (St Leo, ibid. cap. 2)

As in interesting aside, the title of the Ember days in the ancient Roman liturgical books is not “Quatuor Temporum”, as it is in the Tridentine books. Those of Pentecost are called “the fast of the fourth month”, those of September and December, “of the seventh” and “of the tenth month” respectively. [6] These titles come from a verse of the prophet Zachariah, 8, 19, which is included in the fourth prophecy of the Mass of Ember Saturday in September, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts: * The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Juda, joy, and gladness, and great solemnities: only love ye truth and peace.” That this is not mere coincidence is demonstrated by several early epistle lectionaries, in which the words “jejunium primi – the fast of the first (month)” are added to the Biblical text at the place marked with a star above, in order to include the Ember days of Lent.

The fourth prophecy of Ember Saturday of September, Zachariah 8, 14-19, in the so-called Lectionary of Alcuin, an epistolary of the 9th century whose contents represent the state of the Roman lectionary in the early 7th century. The words “jejunium primi” are in the 5th and 4th line from the bottom. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 9452; folio 99r, image cropped.)

It is tempting to speculate that the “fast of the fifth month” may have been fulfilled with the four vigils kept at the end of June, those of Ss Protasius and Gervasius, St John the Baptist, Ss John and Paul, and Ss Peter and Paul, the second and fourth of which are still kept in the Extraordinary Form to this day. The very end of the reading serves as the ferial chapter of Prime in the Roman Breviary, a reminder to continually cultivate the virtues which the Church seeks to instill in us by periods of fasting throughout the year.

✥

NOTES: [1] This is also attested well before any surviving liturgical book, already at the end of the fourth century, in a letter of Pope St Siricius (384-399) to Himerius, bishop of Tarragon in Spain. (Epist. ad Himerium cap. 2: PL XIII, 1131B-1148A) Pope St Leo I (440-461) also asserts that this was the practice of the Church in a letter to the bishops of Sicily, exhorting them to follow the example of the Apostle Peter noted above. (Epist. XVI ad universos episcopos per Siciliam constitutos, PL LIV, 695B-704A).

[2] Further similarities between the vigils of Easter and Pentecost: the rite begins in the penitential color, violet. Six prophecies are repeated from the vigil of Easter, and the three tracts from Easter night are also repeated in their respective places. Each prophecy is followed by a prayer; the six prayers are different from those of the Easter vigil, but express many of the same ideas. At the Mass, the ministers change vestments and color; there is no Introit, and the bells are rung at the Gloria in excelsis. After the Alleluja of the Mass, the same Tract is sung as on Easter night. At the Gospel, the acolytes do not carry candles. Just as on Easter night the Resurrection is watched for, but not anticipated, so also with this same gesture, the Church watches for the coming of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire, as Christ told His disciples to do, but does not anticipate it.

[3] Note further that the Divine Office of Pentecost has only one nocturn at Matins, like that of Easter, but otherwise shares none of the Paschal Office’s unique characteristics.

[4] The Mass of Pentecost Monday, with its station at St Peter in Chains, is a partial exception. The basilica was originally dedicated to both Ss Peter and Paul; the Collect refers to God giving “the Holy Spirit to (His) Apostles”, and the Epistle, Acts 10, 34 & 42-48, to the baptism of the gentiles, a mission fulfilled by both Peter and Paul in Rome.

[5] The Preface: VD: Post illos enim laetitiae dies, quos in honore Domini a mortuis resurgentis et in caelos ascendentis exigimus, postque perceptum sancti Spiritus donum, necessaria etenim nobis ieiunia sancta prouisa sunt, ut pura conversacione uiuentibus que diuinitus sunt aecclesiae conlata permaneant: per Christum dominum nostrum.
St Leo: Igitur post sanctae laetitiae dies, quos in honorem Domini a mortuis resurgentis, ac deinde in caelos ascendentis, exegimus, postque perceptum sancti Spiritus donum, salubriter et necessarie consuetudo est ordinata jejunii: ut si quid forte inter ipsa festivitatum gaudia negligens libertas et licentia inordinata praesumpsit, hoc religiosae abstinentiae censura castiget: quae ob hoc quoque studiosius exsequenda est, ut illa in nobis quae hac die Ecclesiae divinitus sunt collata permaneant. (De jejunio Pentecostes I, 3)

[6] The Roman calendar originally counted only ten months, starting with March, with the days between December and March as a month-less period. Although this impractical system was traditionally said to have been changed less than 50 years after the founding of the city, the Romans were a people who knew how to honor tradition; this is why the names of the last four months, which derive from “septem – seven”, “octo – eight” etc., were never changed. By this reckoning, March is the first month, and June the fourth.

40+ (Mostly Free) Resources for Making Excellent Sacred Music in a Time of Restrictions

In the latest bonus episode of Square Notes, we offer over forty resources for music directors looking for ideas about what to do while there are restrictions on sacred music put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not for the casual listener, and we don’t go into any virology or epidemiology, but for the music director in search of music to sing and play when faced with limitations, we hope you’ll find this helpful. For a link to all the resources mentioned in the episode and more, click here.


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