Devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary originated in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. The feast that emerged as a formal liturgical expression of this devotion was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates, but usually in Passiontide, or just after Easter. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained well into the 20th century by the Dominicans, who also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It also appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” Its popularity continued to grow in the Tridentine period, until Pope Benedict XIII finally extended it to the whole of the Roman Rite in 1727, fixing it to the Friday of Passion week.
The image which introduces the Stabat Mater in a French book of Hours made ca. 1500-1530.
As is often the case with later feasts, there was a considerable variety in its liturgical texts from one place to another, and between the traditions of the various religious orders. But of course, one of the most widespread was the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which is universally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of later medieval devotional poetry. The author of this hymn is unknown, and has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly conjecture. For a long time, many attributed it to a Franciscan friar name Jacopone da Todi (‘Big James from Todi’, about 80 miles north of Rome in Umbria; 1230 ca. – 1306); however, a fairly recent manuscript discovery has made this attribution untenable. Others have ascribed it to Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198-1216, and was certainly a very prolific writer in various genres, but this remains no more than a plausible conjecture.
In the Roman liturgical tradition, it is sung as a hymn in the Divine Office in one melody of the sixth Gregorian mode, and in another of the second mode as a Sequence at Mass, between the Tract and the Gospel.
Many great composers have also put their hand to setting it polyphonically, such as Josquin des Prez.
Palestrina’s version, composed shortly before his death in 1594, was traditionally sung in Rome on Palm Sunday.
One of the best known versions is by the Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (1710-36), who is generally known by the nickname “Pergolesi”, after Pergola, the small town in the Italian Marches from which his family came. This was also composed very shortly before the author’s death, of tuberculosis at the age of only 26. It became the single most frequently printed work of sacred music in the 18th century, and, in the common fashion of the Baroque era, was reused by several other composers, including JS Bach, who turned the music into one of his German cantatas, albeit with a completely different text based on Psalm 50.
Composing, Singing, Conducting Institutes With Sir James MacMillan, Gabriel Crouch, Tim McDonnell, and Peter Carter
The Catholic Sacred Music Project (CSMP), led by Peter Carter, is once again hosting workshops on the Princeton University campus this coming summer. As in 2024, the CSMP is hosting three institutes - composition, singing, and conducting – with unparalleled opportunities to work with an incredible faculty that includes Sir James MacMillan (whose Angels Unawares was premiered by The Sixteen in the Sistine Chapel on March 22nd – see the video below), Gabriel Crouch of Princeton University, and Timothy McDonnell of Hillsdale College. See posters for each workshop below.
The event is co-sponsored by the Scala Foundation, and there will be talks to the attendees by me and Margarita Mooney Clayton. Margarita, Executive Director of Scala, has been giving tours of the Gothic Princeton University Chapel. She will explain the content and the symbolism of the spectacular stained glass and the images depicting the unity of human reason and supernatural knowledge. (Mass takes place for the students in this beautiful chapel on the University campus on a daily basis during the academic year, and the choir director for Sunday Mass is Peter Carter.) I will talk to the young musicians on the faculties of creativity and co-creation with God in the creative process in art and music for the liturgy.
Tim McDonnell directs at the CSMP Institutes, 2024, in Princeton Theological Seminary Chapel
In addition, there will be public events on June 13 and June 19:
Scala Foundation is pleased to once again welcome the musicians to the chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary for a free public lecture and performance on Saturday, June 13th, at 11:30 am.
A second public concert with talks will take place at 7 pm, Friday, June 19th, at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Princeton, NJ.
More details forthcoming, but save the dates for these incredible public events!
Please share this incredible opportunity with young musicians—applications are open until mid-April.
In-depth information about each program can be found on the CSMP website. There will be more details about each program soon, but for now, please look at the programs to see if you would be interested in applying, and forward the information to any musicians you know who may be interested. sacredmusicproject.org
Here is a video of the world premier of Sir James MacMillan’s oratorio in the Sistine Chapel on March 22.
On Thursday, the Church offers spiritual sacrifices, through which it may obtain joy, but because mercy is only obtained by confessing justice, therefore She says in the introit, as a way of confessing God’s justice towards us, “All that Thou hast done to us, o Lord, thou hast done in true judgment.” Which is to say, if Thou hast sent tribulations, it is well done, because we have sinned against Thee. And afterwards, she asks for mercy: “Give glory to Thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of Thy mercy.” …
Introitus Omnia, quae fecisti nobis, Dómine, in vero judicio fecisti: quia peccávimus tibi, et mandátis tuis non oboedívimus: sed da gloriam nómini tuo, et fac nobiscum secundum multitúdinem misericordiae tuae. ~ All that Thou hast done to us, o Lord, thou hast done in true judgment; because we have sinned against Thee, and have not obeyed Thy commandments: but give glory to Thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of Thy mercy.
The same is said in the epistle, which is taken from the book of Daniel (3, 25; 34-45), “Daniel prayed, ‘Lord God, despise us not, etc., because we have sinned, and there is no sacrifice.” Thus did the children of Israel say when they were in Babylon; and so also we can say when we are in sin, “There is no sacrifice, sed with a humble spirit and contrite heart, let us be received by Thee, o Lord.” (The post-Tridentine Roman Missal changes the incipit of this reading to conform it to the Biblical text, “Azarias prayerd...”)
The gradual, “Bring up sacrifices, and come into his courts,” urges us to offer spiritual sacrifices. The verse is, “He will uncover the thick woods,” for one cannot make such a spiritual sacrifice unless God remove darkness from the heart. It is sung in the fifth tone, to indicate that one must make such a sacrifice with the five senses.
Graduale, Ps. 95, 8-9 Tóllite hostias, et introíte in atria ejus: adoráte Dóminum in aula sancta ejus. V. Ps. 28, 9 Revelávit Dóminus condensa: et in templo ejus omnes dicent gloriam. (Bring up sacrifices and and enter into His courts; adore ye the Lord in His holy court. V. The Lord uncovers (or ‘lays bare’) the forests, and in His temple all sspeak of His glory.)
There follows the Gospel (Luke 7, 36-50), which tells of how Mary Magdalene obtained forgiveness by her tears, because she sacrificed everything that she formerly had in delight, and thus offered herself as a spiritual sacrifice to God in her body.
The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1570, by Paolo Veronese; originally painted for the refectory of the Servite church in Venice, gifted by the Venetian Republic to King Louis XIV of France in 1664, and since then, kept in the Chateau of Versailles. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)
The offertory shows how one ought to weep and mourn. There are two things that bring us to this: the memory of past sin, and the remembrance of the heavenly Jerusalem. For when a man compares his miseries with the purity of the angels, he weeps over the rivers of Babylon. (Babylon here means the sinful world in general.) This is sung in the first tone, because this must be first in the memory, the end for the sake of which we exist. The verse “On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments” is said, because after this day, no Gospel is read which tells of the Lord preaching publicly to the Jews. (This refers to one of the added verses of the offertory which is included in the ancient chant books, but not in the missal. ~ Excerpts from William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, VI, 64)
“Super flúmina Babylónis illic sédimus et flévimus, dum recordarémur tui, Sion.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered thee, o Zion.”
One of the most widely used sequences for the feast of the Annunciation in the Middle Ages is known from its opening words as Mittit ad Virginem. It is often attributed to the famous (or infamous) scholar Peter Abelard (1079-1142), but it should be noted that the Analecta hymnica, the massive collection of medieval hymns and scholarly notes about them, makes no mention of him in its entry on this particular text. (vol. 54, pp. 296-98) In some uses, such as that of Sarum, it was not sung on the feast, since the Annunciation usually occurs in Lent (three years out of four), and it was a common custom to omit sequences altogether in Lent; at Sarum, it was used at the Advent votive Mass of the Virgin instead, which shares many of its texts, including the Gospel, with today’s feast. The Latin text with English translation is taken from Sequences from the Sarum Missal, with English Translations, by Charles Buchanan Pearson (Bell and Daldy; London, 1871. Click images to enlarge.) This recording was made by the monks of Clear Creek Abbey.
A polyphonic setting by the mighty Josquin des Prez, in two parts; the second begins at the words “Accede, nuntia.”
The Annunciation, depicted on the doors of a triptych by an anonymous French artist known as the Master of Moulins, within the last two decades of the 15th century. Many altarpieces were designed to be kept closed during Lent, and then opened back up at the Easter vigil. The outsides of the wings were very often painted with images of the Annunciation in shades of black and grey, a technique known as grisaille, since the feast usually occurs in Lent; the absence of color in the image thus did not compromise the austerity of the church’s appearance, but marked the solemnity of the feast in an appropriate manner.
Anatomy of Transcendence is a brilliant work of scholarship that studies the themes of rapture, spiritual transport, and excessus mentis in the theology of St Thomas Aquinas. I found it a totally absorbing read. The author must be congratulated for his meticulous scholarly study of the writings of St Thomas in order to show and detail not only the beauty of the Angelic Doctor’s teaching on ‘ecstasy’ but also that that this teaching was based on Thomas’ own personal experience.
This work is primarily for scholars and fellow academics and must not be seen, as the author himself has made clear, as a spiritual guide for those seeking to pursue contemplative prayer. Yet it is by no means foreign to this aim.
In the mystic way, there is a clear difference between the ‘ecstasy’ that is experienced by a believer who is in what St John of the Cross would call the purification in ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ and the ‘ecstasy’ experienced in what St Teresa of Avila would call the Mystical or the Spiritual Marriage when the purification in the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ has ended. In the ‘Dark Night’, ecstasy is predominantly experienced in the ‘apex mentis’; however, in the mystical Marriage, when the purification of the mind and the body has been completed, the experience of ‘ecstasy’ is also experienced in the body, therefore in the emotions and in the feelings too, when what are called ‘the gift of tears’ becomes commonplace.
This is a far more complete, all-embracing and enthralling experience, the experience that finally impelled St Thomas to put down his pen and refer to all he had previously written as if it were straw. Perhaps we can see here the difference between the two ‘ecstasies’ of St Paul, the one that takes him up and into the third Heaven and the one which takes him up into Paradise. Kwasniewski does an excellent job carefully exploring this experience of St Paul with the aid of the Angelic Doctor.
I was delighted to find that in addition to St Thomas’ devotion to the liturgy, and above all else to the Mass, the author showed how St Thomas gave daily time for the personal contemplative prayer without which all his works could not have been written. True ecstasies are not arbitrary capricious events; they only regularly arise from a long-since experienced contemplative prayer life, such as Aquinas certainly enjoyed, contrary to the vain babblings of Adrienne von Speyr who wrote him off as an unrepentant rationalist.
When in addition to studying and expounding the teaching of St Thomas, his modern disciples follow him into the deep personal prayer that leads to contemplation, then they would receive the infused virtues of wisdom and prudence that would enable them to represent his teaching for the benefit of the modern Church, and the world that it is committed to serve.
Then they will be able to claim to be true Thomists, because like St Thomas they practice what they preach, and so become the long-lost apostles needed to help resurrect a decaying and dying Church, so that God’s Kingdom may once again become on earth, as it is in Heaven.
Dr. Kwasniewski is to be thanked for helping all of us to become much more aware of this vital dimension to the life and work of a theologian who has too often been reduced to a mountain of syllogism. For him, that was only the external skin of the living body, with a heart of love beating within, animated by a soul consumed with love and longing for God.
On the Tuesday of Passion week, the Epistle of the Mass is the episode of the book of Daniel known as “Bel and the Dragon”, the fourteenth and final chapter in the Vulgate. This is one of the deuterocanonical parts of the book, along with the story of Susanna (chapter 13), which is read earlier in Lent, and the long section of chapter 3 known as “the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Children.” Of the latter two, a portion of the Prayer is read as the Epistle on Thursday of this week; the Song is one of the most commonly used canticles in all historical Christian liturgies, known from its opening word in Latin as the Benedicite.
This episode is the second time Daniel is thrown into a den of lions, the first being in the protocanonical sixth chapter. In the Patrologia Latina, more citations of chapter 6 are listed than of chapter 14, but in point of fact, the two stories are very similar, and many of the citations are vague enough that they could really refer to either one. The first verses in the Missal paraphrase the Biblical text, and summarize that the Babylonians rose up against Daniel because he destroyed two of their idols: a statue called Bel, which he unmasked as a fraud that didn’t really eat the food laid out for it every night, and a “dragon” (or “serpent”) which he killed by stuffing a lump of pitch, fat and hair down its throat. (“Bel” derives from the name “Baal”, a very nasty character who is often mentioned in the books of Kings) They therefore force King Cyrus to throw Daniel to the lions, which (as in the earlier episode) have been deliberately starved, but nevertheless do not touch the prophet; after a week he is discovered safe and sound, and his persecutors are themselves then thrown into the pit and devoured. I suspect that the version from chapter 14 was the one chosen for liturgical use because of the picturesque episode of the angel (verses 32-38), who carries the prophet Habakkuk by his hair over 500 miles from Judaea to Babylon, in order to bring food to Daniel.
In ancient Christian frescoes and sarcophagi, Daniel is often shown in the lions’ den nude. His emergence from the den or “pit” represents the Resurrection of Christ, which is the general theme behind so many early Christian artworks; his nudity therefore demonstrates the reality of the human nature and human body in which Christ rose, against the many early heretics who denied them. (The prophet Jonah, who represents Christ’s body in his own, according to the Lord’s own explanation, is also frequently shown nude for the same reason.) However, this theme does not appear in early Christian writings.
Daniel in the Lions’ Den; fresco of the 3rd century in the Catacomb of Ss Peter and Marcellinus
As is so often the case, the Church Fathers’ interpretation of the episode indicates why it was chosen to be read in Lent. Already in the third century, St Cyprian of Carthage explains that “Daniel, when he was compelled to adore the idol Bel that the people and king then worshipped, to assert the honor of his God with full faith and liberty, cried out, saying, ‘I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who made heaven and earth.’ ” (Epistle 61, known as “The Exhortation to Martyrdom”, PL IV 354A) These words, so similar to the opening of the baptismal Creed, reminded the ancient catechumens not only of the Faith which they wished to profess, but also that they might very well have been called to bear witness to it as martyrs, as indeed Cyprian himself did. In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (the first such commentary among the works of the Fathers), the story is read as an exhortation to trust in God. “To those who seek the kingdom and the justice of God, He promises that all things will be added; for, since all things belong to God, nothing can be lacking to him that has God, if he himself is not lacking to God. Thus a meal was arranged divinely for Daniel, when he was closed in the lions’ den by the king’s order; and among the hungry beasts, who did yet spare him, the man of God was fed.” (PL 4, 534A)
Once the era of persecution had passed, Daniel was frequently represented by the Fathers as a moral model. For St Zeno of Verona, a contemporary of St Ambrose, Daniel shows us the power of fasting as a spiritual discipline, an important theme for Lent. “Daniel, unarmed, killed a dragon that was terrible to the peoples, and being thrown to the lions, ate in the middle of his danger, he who was wont to fast (Dan. 9, 3) when he was out of danger. (Tractatus 2.8.3 de Timore, PL XI 324A) For Ambrose himself, this also makes him a model of the virtue of courage. “Daniel … was so wise that, in the midst of lions irritated by hunger, he was not weakened (or ‘disheartened’) by any dread of the beasts’ savagery; so courageous, that he could eat without fear of provoking them by his example to eat him.” (De Officiis, 2.4.11, PL XVI 106C)
In his treatise “On God’s Promises and Predictions” St Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage in the mid-5th century, sums up these various traditions. Daniel by his actions “teaches and shows that only the one true God is to be worshipped, abandoning vain superstitions, by which the prophet saw that not only the Babylonians, but indeed the whole world was held captive under the power of demons. (God) also showed to his herald that in the future it would be freed from their dominion by the grace of Christ the Lord. But because, as someone once said ‘Truth begets hatred’ (the Roman playwright Terence, in Andria, 1.1.68) … the Babylonians put him into the lions’ den to be devoured. … Therefore, when Daniel was brought out … his enemies were given to the lions as food, that they might perish. These things were done as a symbol of Daniel’s Lord, who prayed for His own, saying ‘Hand not over to the beasts the soul that confesseth Thee (Psalm 73, 19).’ For that roaring lion, the devil, who wandereth about seeking whom he may devour, (1 Peter 5, 8), consumes the enemies of our prophet, Christ the Lord, when he finds them, having received power over them.”
Daniel in the Lion’s Den; sculpted capital in the Abbey of Sant’Antimo in Montalcino, Italy, by the anonymous Romanesque sculptor known as the Master of Cabestany, active in the second half of the 12th century. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko.) Daniel in the center, surrounded by lions, raises his hands in a gesture very similar to that of the priest at Mass during the Our Father; the angel, immediately to the right, is the deacon, and Habakkuk holds his basket of food under a veil, as the subdeacon holds the paten. – The Master of Cabestany is named for a small town near Perpignan, France, where he did a particularly beautiful sculpted tympanum over the door of one of the churches. Well over 100 pieces have been attributed to him and his workshop, in a wide range of places throughout southern France and northern Spain. The presence of three of his pieces in Tuscany suggests that he may have traveled as a pilgrim to Rome, and financed the trip by doing sculptures at various stops along the way. In his time, Sant’Antimo was a very rich and important territorial abbey which governed a large tract of Tuscany, fully able to pay him a good price for his work, as well as a popular stop for pilgrims on the via Francigena.
My friend Fr Andrew Marlborough has contacted me recently to tell me about a conference he is helping to organize, which will take place June 25-26 in London, on “Deification and Sacraments: Perspectives East and West.” The line-up of speakers is strong; two names that caught my eye in particular are Dr. Matthew Levering and Fr Uwe Michael Lang, CO.
Fr Andrew is a priest based in England who has previously written for the New Liturgical Movement about items of interest that appear at auction houses throughout Britain and Europe. Before becoming a priest, he worked in the commercial art world.
See the poster and QR code below for more details.
Yesterday, the Roman Rite began the season of Passiontide, in which the focus of the liturgy shifts from penance, fasting, and the preparation of the catechumens for baptism to meditation on the Lord’s impending suffering and death, before His glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Mass chants of the season are mostly taken from Psalms which are evidently about the Passion, and were understood as such by the Fathers, as for example today’s introit, the beginning of Psalm 55: “Miserére mihi, Dómine, quoniam conculcávit me homo: tota die bellans tribulávit me. – Have mercy on me, o Lord, for a man hath trodden me down; all the day he hath made war and troubled me.” A treatise known as the Breviarium in Psalmos, traditionally but incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, which seems to have been read very closely by the unknown composers of many Gregorian chants, explains this verse as follows: “In the one who is a man and makes war, the Psalm shows the attack of the devil and of the other wicked spirits, at whose inspiration the Lord suffered.”
The Man of Sorrows, ca. 1434, by the German painter and Dominican friar Master Francke (ca. 1380- ca. 1440)
The epistle, however, is the third chapter of the book of Jonah, in which the prophet enters the city of Nineveh and preaches to them the fast commanded by God as an act of repentance. Placed on this first feria of Passiontide, it serves as an important reminder that although the tenor of the liturgy has shifted, Passiontide is still very much a part of Lent, and Lent is kept by fasting.
The Gospel, John 7, 32-39, then explains in a very beautiful and subtle way what exactly the liturgy is now looking forward to, and not just in Passiontide, but in what comes from it, and extends beyond it through the Easter season. “The rulers and Pharisees sent ministers to apprehend him”; this foretells our Lord’s arrest in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of Holy Thursday. Jesus’ words to those sent to arrest Him, “Yet a little while I am with you, and then I go to him that sent me,” remind us that we are now very close to the day on which He will die, but also to the time of His Ascension, in which He will brings our human nature, glorified in the Passion and Resurrection, before the throne of God. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me, and where I am, thither you cannot come,” refers to the absence of the Lord’s body from the tomb. The response of the Jews to this, as they say, “Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will He go unto the dispersed among the gentiles, and teach (them)?”, is a prophecy of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, through which the Lord will indeed, in the person of His Apostles, go among the gentiles and teach them.
The conclusion of the Gospel therefore speaks of the baptism of the catechumens both at the Easter vigil, and, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, at the vigil of Pentecost as well. On the latter, the Communio of the Mass is taken from this passage. “And on the last, and great day of the festivity (here, symbolically, on the last day of Lent, i.e. Holy Saturday), Jesus stood and cried, saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him: for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Communio, Jo. 7 Ultimo festivitátis die dicébat Jesus, ‘Qui in me credit, flúmina de ventre ejus fluent aquae vivae’; hoc autem dixit de Spíritu, quem acceptúri erant credentes in eum, allelúja, allelúja. (On the last day of the feast, Jesus said, ‘He who believes in Me, from within him there shall flow rivers of living water.’ He said this, however, of the Spirit, Whom they who believed in Him were to receive, alleluia, alleluia.
The final verse reminds us, as we walk with the Lord in His sufferings, that He is indeed glorified at the end of them, not only in the Resurrection, but in the establishment of His Church, and the fulfillment of the mission which He gave to it to go forth and baptize all nations.
From the Friday of the third week of Lent to the last day of Passion week, most of the Roman Rite’s Gospel readings are taken from St John. They are, however, not arranged in the order of the Gospel itself.
Saturday, John 12, 10-36 (the triumphal entry into Jerusalem)
In the lectionary of the post-Conciliar Rite, not one of these remains in its traditional place. The Gospels of the Samaritan woman, the blind man and the raising of Lazarus have all been moved to Sundays in year A, on the basis of a completely erroneous belief, one that rests on no evidence of any kind, that their analogous position in the Ambrosian Rite attests their supposed original order in the Roman Rite. (Someone managed to realize that within the three-year lectionary system, that this means that these crucial passages are omitted from Lent altogether in two years out of three. A provision is therefore made that they can be resumed on any of the following ferias of the same week in such years, but this is not mandatory.) The rest have been rearranged as part of a semi-continuous series of readings from John which follows the order of the Gospel, but the selection of passages is very different, and no part of today’s reading remains in Lent on either a Sunday or a feria. The official description of the new lectionary claims that this new selection of readings “corresponds more fully to the characteristics of Lent.”
I imagine that many of our readers have read the proposal made by Geoffroy Kemlin, abbot of Solesmes, and sent to the Holy Father, recently published in an English translation on Rorate Caeli, that the Ordo missae of St Pius V be incorporated into the post-Conciliar missal, so that those who celebrate the traditional Roman Rite can benefit from all the worst features of the post-Conciliar Rite: the prefaces, eucharistic prayers and lectionary. In an interview that follows, Abbot Kemlin states that “the current lectionary called for by Vatican II is far richer than the old one.”
I pass over the fact that Vatican II most certainly did not call for the historical lectionary of the Roman Rite to be thrown in the trash and replaced with a new one of the Consilium ad exsequendam’s devising, although the good abbot of all people should know this. But to refer to the new lectionary as “richer” is an embarrassingly shallow assessment. Yes, it does have more readings. But as has been pointed out over and over again for nearly sixty years now, there is hardly a page of it that does not cheapen or substantially mispresent the meaning of the Word of God by censoring it of so-called difficult passages, or shortening it for the sake of mere convenience. (The Gospel of Lazarus, e.g., which was read this past Sunday, can optionally be cut down by omitting 18½ of its 45 verses, more than 40% of it. Next Sunday, the Passion of St Matthew can be optionally cut down to a pitiable 44 verses out of the traditional 141, a bit more than 30%.)
An unimportant part of Lord’s Passion, depicted by the Italian painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), ca. 1730.
But there is the graver issue that the men who created the Roman Mass, including its lectionary, were poets and scholars of the very highest and finest literary sensibility, as evidenced, for example, by the careful selection of the Gospel reading for today, and the subtle way it lays out a program for the rest of Passiontide, and connects it to the Easter season. The notion that their work so desperately needed improving upon that almost no part of it should be left undisturbed would, in a happier age, rightly have been censured as scandalous and offensive to pious ears. The notion that the men who sat on the Consilium ad exsequendam were the ones to improve it is laughable. To paraphrase one of Evelyn Waugh’s best sayings, “To see this committee fumbling with our rich and delicate lectionary is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sèvres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.”
I therefore offer as a counter-proposal that the lectionary of the post-Conciliar Rite be further enriched by the optional use of the Roman lectionary, so that the whole Church may benefit from the marvelous work of these ancient poets and scholars, our forefathers in the Faith, as Vatican II actually wanted.
The first of the following excerpts from William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 6.60.3-4 and 7-9, is based on St Augustine’s division of sacred history into four periods: before the giving of the law to Moses; under the law; under grace, i.e. from the Incarnation to the end of the world; and then finally, in peace, after the Lord’s Second Coming.
The reasons for which the Lord’s Passion is remembered for two weeks before Easter are these: first, because He himself suffered for two peoples, at the hands of two peoples; second, because through those two weeks, we express the two Testaments, the Old, which foretold that the Lord would suffer, and the New, which showed Him suffering; third, because in the two ages of this world, that is, before the Law and under the Law, that same passion was foretold; fourth, so that these two weeks may recall to our memory the murmuring of those who before the law and under the law were in hell (i.e., the Limbo of the Fathers, whose murmuring expresses their longing for Christ), until the time of grace, which is signified in the third week, that is the week of Easter. For from this day, on which “Glory be to the Father...” is omitted, there are two weeks until Easter. But then there is the third week, in which all the glorification that was omitted is restored, for in the third time, which is under grace, all the benefits which our fathers in the Church awaited are rendered to them.
The Harrowing of Hell, depicted in an early 16th-century illuminated manuscript of the history of the Passion in French, known as the Vaux Passional. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
For this reason, “Glory be to the Father...” is omitted, since that verse pertains to the praise of the Trinity, which was dishonored in the Lord’s Passion... for it is clear that Christ, who is the second person of the Trinity, was dishonored. But in the Resurrection, “Glory be to the Father...” is resumed, because through the Resurrection He was glorified with the glory of immortality. ...
(The partial omission of the doxology in Passiontide represents the events leading up to the Lord’s passion, principally, the plotting against Him, while the total omission represents the Passion itself.)
And we should note that it is not said in the introits and responsories, which are about the Passion, and in “Come, let us exult unto the Lord” (the invitatory psalm of the Divine Office), but not in the psalms or hymns, because the psalms symbolize working; but (thus far), they persecuted Him only in their tongues (i.e., in word, but not yet in deed), discussing His murder, and He himself did not cease to do good works. It is therefore not completely omitted... since it was not immediately after the council which they held concerning His murder that the Lamb was handed over to the hands of the wicked.
But in the three days before Easter, it is omitted completely, since then especially was the Trinity dishonored. ...
The Introit begins with the Lord’s prayer in the Passion, “Judge me, o God, and discern my cause,” etc., For in this He instructs us in prayer. There follows, “Send forth Thy light” etc., for he that sees the rewards is made strong in the fight; “and Thy truth”, for he that sees good things, is easily led unto the eternal dwelling places. And it is of the fourth tone because of the form of the Cross, or because of the four things that are asked for, namely, judgement, discretion, liberation and strength.
The Epistle (Hebr. 9, 11-15), “Christ, being a high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle” ... shows the efficacy of Christ’s Passion. For through His passion, we are led unto the eternal dwelling places, of which we must be mindful.
... But the Postcommunion is “This is (My) Body” etc., and the priest intones it, to show that the Great Priest changed the old sacrifice into the new; and it is in the eighth tone, because that sacrifice is the true one which will be perfected in Paradise, when we will rise (i.e. on the eighth day) ...
“This is (My) Body, which shall be given up for you: this is the cup of the new covenant in My Blood, says the Lord; do this, as often as you receive it, in remembrance of Me.” (1 Cor. 11, 24-25)
Listen carefully, my child, to the master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart; willingly receive and effectively fulfill the admonition of your loving father, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you, therefore, my discourse is now addressed, whoever you may be that renounce your own will to do serve under the Lord, Christ the true King, and take up the most mighty bright weapons of obedience. And first of all, as you begin to do any good work, beg of Him with most earnest prayer that it may be perfected, so that He who has now deigned to count us among His children may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds. For we must always so serve Him with the good things He has given us, that He will never as an angry Father disinherit His children, nor ever as a dread Lord, provoked by our evil actions, deliver us to everlasting punishment as wicked servants who would not follow Him to glory. (The Prologue of the Rule of St Benedict.)
Saints Benedict and Bernard, by Diogo de Contreiras, 1542; painted for the Cistercian convent of Santa Maria de Almoster in Portugal. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia.)
The second half of the Hour of Prime is sometimes called the Chapter Office, from the Benedictine custom of reading a part of the Rule of St Benedict at the end of it every day. The text of the Rule was divided into roughly 120 sections, and read in order over the course of four months, making for three full readings a year. At Citeaux, however, this reading began not on January 1st, as in most other houses, but on March 21st, which is both the feast day of St Benedict, and the day the abbey was founded in 1098. Beginning the reading of the Rule on this day became an annual reminder not only of the Order’s founding, but more specifically of the Cistercians’ role as the “strict constructionalists” of Benedictine monasticism, almost as if to say that the observance of the Rule itself began again with the coming of the new Order.
The first two pages of the Rule of St Benedict, with the Prologue to be read on March 21st, from a Cistercian Martyrology printed at Paris in 1689.
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