Sitientes Saturday, The Last Day of Lent

In the liturgical books of the traditional Roman Rite, today is the last day of “Quadragesima”, the Latin word for Lent; since the mid-ninth century, tomorrow has been called “Dominica de Passione”, usually translated in English as “Passion Sunday.” The last two weeks of the season are collectively known as “Tempus Passionis – Passiontide”; the custom of joining them as a liturgical period distinct from the rest of Lent is unique to the Roman Rite. However, the specific liturgical character of this period is older than its formal nomenclature, and the traditional Mass for today marks the transition in several ways.

The Introit, Isaiah 55, 1, is a rare example of one taken from a prophetic book, rather than the Psalms; the text is slightly different from that of the Vulgate. “Sitientes, veníte ad aquas, dicit Dóminus: et qui non habétis pretium, veníte et bíbite cum laetitia. – Ye that thirst, come to the waters, saith the Lord; and ye that have not the price, come and drink with rejoicing.” On the Easter vigil, these words are read as part of the fifth prophecy, Isaiah 54, 17, and 55, 1-11, in reference to the waters of baptism. At the beginning of Lent, on Tuesday of the first week, a shorter version of the same passage is read, starting at verse 6, “Seek ye the Lord, while He may be found; call upon Him, while He is near.” The fuller reading indicates that those who began to seek the Lord by enrolling themselves in the catechumenate, having completed their initiation into the Faith over the course of Lent, will indeed find Him when they come to the waters.

The Epistle is taken from a different chapter of Isaiah, 49, 8-15, and is deliberately chosen to mark the closure of the first part of Lent. On the First Sunday of Lent, the Epistle, 2 Corinthians 6, 1-10, begins with a citation of this passage: “We exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain; for he saith, ‘In an accepted time have I heard thee; and in the day of salvation have I helped thee.’ (Isaiah 49, 8) Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Before Ash Wednesday was instituted in the 7th century, this passage of St Paul was the very first Scriptural reading of Lent. These two readings form the bookends of the first four weeks, which emphasize catechumenal lessons and the discipline of fasting, before the shift in tone towards meditation on the Lord’s Passion that marks the last two weeks much more notably.

Today, the passage from Isaiah continues: “I have preserved thee, and given thee to be a covenant of the people, that thou might raise up the earth, and possess the inheritances that were destroyed: that thou might say to them that are bound, ‘Come forth!’, and to them that are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves. … For he that is merciful to them, shall be their shepherd, and at the fountains of waters he shall give them drink.” The “inheritances that were destroyed” are the various nations of men, lost in the darkness of sin. Three days earlier, the catechumens heard the story of the man born blind (John 9, 1-38), whom the Church Fathers understood to represent the condition of Man before the coming of Christ. As St Augustine writes “… the whole world is blind. Therefore Christ came to illuminate, since the devil had blinded us. He who deceived the first man caused all men to be born blind.” (Sermon 135 against the Arians) In baptism, at “the fountains of waters”, Christ calls them out of darkness, as He did the man born blind.

Christ Healing the Blind Man, from the church of Sant’Angelo in Formis, Capua, Italy, ca. 1080.

The words that follow, “Behold these shall come from afar, and behold these from the north and from the sea, and these from the south country,” (verse 12) would certainly have been read in Rome, “the head of the world”, as a reference to the many nations of the Empire present in its capital. From the very beginning, the Church had always been concerned to assert that Christ came to the Jewish people, to whom the promises of mankind’s redemption were made, but came as the Savior and Redeemer of all nations.

The Gradual is taken from Psalm 9: “To thee, o Lord, is the poor man left: thou wilt be a helper to the orphan. V. Why, O Lord, hast thou retired afar off? why dost thou slight us in our wants, in the time of trouble? While the wicked man is proud, the poor is set on fire.” This text refers to the original Roman station of this day, which was kept at the church of St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls, where the great martyr is buried. He was very famously one of the deacons to whom the care of the poor was left in the Lord’s name; the words “the poor man is set on fire” refer to the manner of his martyrdom, which took place after he had given away all of the Church’s charitable funds.

The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, by Titian, 1567; from the Spanish Royal Monastery of the Escorial.

The station was later transferred to the church of St Nicolas ‘in Carcere’, i.e., in the prison, where, according to a late and unreliable tradition, the Saint was imprisoned by the Emperor Constantius for refusing to accept the Arian heresy. The Bl. Ildephonse Schuster posits in his book The Sacramentary that this change was made in part because the procession to the former station had become inconvenient “in the showery weather of March.” This seems to me a very improbable explanation, since the two stations are almost exactly the same distance from the medieval residence of the Popes at St John in the Lateran, and the weather cannot have been radically different on one route as opposed to the other.

On the preceding Thursday, the station is held at the church jointly dedicated to Ss Silvester and Martin, who were among the first Confessors to be venerated as Saints, and certainly the most popular. On Friday, it is held at the church of St Eusebius, a Roman priest who was also a Confessor, but in the original sense of the term, one who suffered for the Faith, but was not violently put to death. With the addition of this new station, the season of Quadragesima closes with a celebration of the newer Saints, those who came after the age of the Apostles and Martyrs.

The Gospel of the day, John 8, 12-20, begins with another reference to the upcoming ceremonies of baptism, referring back to the words of the Epistle about calling the nations out of darkness. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” But it is the closing words which shift the liturgy’s thought forward to the Lord’s Passion. “These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple: and no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come.” Very shortly, however, when hands are laid on Him to bring Him to trial, He will say, “When I was daily with you in the temple, you did not stretch forth your hands against Me; but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The Gospels read after this day, in Passion week and Holy Week, will all speak far more clearly than those of the first four weeks about Christ’s impending arrest, trial, condemnation and passion, and frequently in reference to the temple. “They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.” (Passion Sunday, John 8, 59) “then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but, as it were, in secret. … And there was much murmuring among the multitude concerning Him, for some said, ‘He is a good man,’ and others said, ‘No, but he seduceth the people.’ ” (John 7, 10 and 12, Passion Tuesday)

The Communion antiphon forms part of a series which begins on Ash Wednesday with Psalm 1, and continues through the Psalms in numerical order until the Friday of Passion week. (The series is interrupted several times for various reasons, and does not include Holy Week.) On this day, it is the beginning of Psalm 22, “The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment.” “Pasture” refers back once again to the Epistle from Isaiah 49, specifically the verses “They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in every plain.”, while the final words speak yet again of Baptism.

My Interview on Holy Week with Christopher Jaspers on Pipes with Augustine

A few days ago, I gave an interview to Mr Christopher Jasper, the founder and director of the online Gregorian Chant Academy. The main subject of our interview is the various reforms of Holy Week, but we touched several related issues as well, such as the mindset of the whole project of liturgical reform in the 20th century. I make bold to suggest that those who have followed my work on this subject over the years will find it interesting. I’d also like to thank Mr Jasper for his time and our enjoyable conversation.

The Offertory Incensation, Part I

Lost in Translation #122

After preparing and offering the gifts and himself, the priest blesses the incense. As he places three spoonfuls of incense onto a live coal, he says:

Per intercessiónem beáti Michaélis Archángeli, stantis a dextris altáris incénsi, et ómnium electórum suórum, incénsum istud dignétur Dóminus benedícere, et in odórem suavitátis accípere. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.

Which I translate as:

Through the intercession of blessed Michael the Archangel, who is standing at the right side of the altar of incense, and [through the intercession] of all His Elect, may the Lord deign to bless this incense of His and receive it as an odor of sweetness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

When the priest incenses the bread and wine, he says:

Incensum istud, a te benedictum, ascendat ad te, Dómine, et descendat super nos misericordia tua.

Which I translate as:

May this incense of Thine, which has been blessed by Thee, O Lord, ascend to Thee, and may Thy mercy descend upon us.

Who You’re Going to Call

The Per intercessionem requests the intercession of all the Saints and an archangel. In the original prayer from the eleventh century, the role went to St. Gabriel, who stood “on the right side of the altar of incense” when he visited Zechariah. (Luke 1,11) But in the thirteenth century, Michael’s name slowly began appearing as a substitute and became obligatory in the 1570 Roman Missal. Even so, as late as 1705 the Congregation of Rites had to remind holdouts to stop using Gabriel’s name. [1]

Saint Michael on Mount Gargano, Cesare Nebbia

Michael may be associated with incense because according to some accounts he appeared on Mount Gargano bearing a censer in A.D. 490, and this apparition may have inspired later generations to identify him as the anonymous angel who stands in front of the altar with a golden censer in Revelation 8,3. But the 1570 version of the prayer only exchanges the names; it does not update the angel’s location. Michael, the angel who ostensibly carries his own censer, is thus portrayed standing at the right side of the altar of incense. In a Catholic sanctuary, incidentally, that would be the Gospel-side, for right and left are determined by God’s view of us from the sanctuary rather than vice versa.

Despite his not having an explicit biblical association with incense, Michael is arguably the better archangel to invoke at this point of the Mass. In the New Testament, Gabriel is the angel who delivers messages of great importance; Michael is the angel who casts out the dragon Satan. (see Rev. 12, 7-9) Invoking Michael is thus an implicit petition for spiritual fumigation in order to expel evil from the sanctuary before the Consecration. “In the liturgy,” writes Fr. Pius Parsch, “incensing has a positive and a negative purpose: to cleanse (to lustrate), and to sanctify. Here it is to free the gifts offered from every unholy influence and envelop them in an atmosphere of holiness.” [2] And let us be honest: Gabriel’s relationship to incense is literally tangential at best. He was there to speak to Zechariah, not to be close to the altar of the incense because it was the altar of incense.

Angel of the Censer, by Lawrence or AnNita Klimecki

Preferred Pronouns

The choice of pronouns in the Per intercessionem and Incensum istud is significant. Whereas English has two demonstrative pronouns, Latin has three. In English, “this” is used to point to things that are near the first person (I, me) while “that” is used to point to things that are near either the second person (you) or the third (he, him). In Latin, on the other hand, there are two different words to distinguish things near the second person and things near the third:

• Hic, haec, hoc is for things near the first person (“this”);
• Iste, iste, istud is for things near the second person (“this or that thing of yours”);
• Ille, ille, illud is for things near the third person (“that”).

One way to visualize this distinction spatially is that hic is for when the object is closer to me, iste is for when the object is closer to you, and ille is for when the object is equidistant from us.

By using iste to designate the incense at hand, the priest is indicating that the incense already belongs to God even before it is blessed. It is easy to concede that all natural objects belong to the Maker of nature, but incense, although it is biotic material, is a human artifact. Frankincense, for example, is made from the resin of the olibanum tree by workers tapping the tree, letting the resin ooze out, and allowing the resin to dry on the tree for several months. The hardened sap is then cut into grains to become incense.

It may seem odd to designate a man-made object as God’s, but it serves two purposes. First, on a more general level, it aligns with a Catholic way of viewing manufactured goods. The production of wine, for example, requires far more human invention and intervention than making incense, and the end-result (wine) is an entirely different substance from the natural materials out of which it was made. And yet in the blessing of wine for the sick, wine is called a “creature” that God gives as a refreshment to His servants. The blessing of wine on the feast of St. John the Evangelist goes even further with its opening line: “O God, who in creating the world brought forth for mankind bread as food and wine as drink…” In Genesis, it is Noah who first brings forth wine without any explicit encouragement or help from God, but the Catholic imagination nonetheless credits God with the win, and sees it as one of His gifts for which we are to give thanks. Instead of construing wine as the “work of human hands,” this pious hermeneutic omits the secondary causes of human agency and focuses on the Primary Cause in an act of gratitude. [3]

Second and more specifically, ascribing incense to God ties into the central paradox of the entire Offertory, namely, that we are offering to God what already belongs to Him, or as the Byzantine Divine Liturgy puts it, “We offer to Thee Thine own of Thine own, in all and for all.” [4] The priest first asks God to bless this incense of His and then asks God to make this blessed incense of His ascend to Heaven in order for mercy to descend to earth. The priest wants God to receive the burning smoke curling its way upwards as an odor of sweetness, but it is God who made incense have these properties in the first place.

Crosses and Crowns

Finally, we note the fulsome manner in which the gifts are incensed, three times cross-wise and three times in a circle. Joseph Jungmann interprets these actions as a performative extension or reinforcement of the Veni sanctificator [5], while Nicholar Gihr sees them as a visual fulfilment of the two prayers. “While the odor of ascending incense denotes devout sacrifice and prayer penetrating to heaven, the clouds of incense floating round about signify the effects of prayer and sacrifice, namely, the sweet odor of grace descending from Heaven or issuing from Christ on the altar.” [6] As for the detailed gestures, the interpretation of William Durandus is especially beautiful. The three crosses betoken the three times that Mary Magdalen brought fragrant spices or ointment to anoint the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, while the three circles are crowns that symbolize the Trinity, the Three Persons to whom the Cross leads us. [7]

Notes

[1] Joseph Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 2, 72, n. 11.

[2] Pius Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass, 179.

[3] This shorthand method is similar to the biblical custom of describing God’s care for His creatures, e.g., Matt 6,26: “Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them.” God the Father does indeed feed the birds of air but through trillions of intermediary causes and not like an old man on a park bench.

[4] Tα σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν σoὶ προσφέροµεν, κατὰ πάντα, καὶ διὰ πάντα.

[5] Jungmann, vol. 2, 74.

[6] Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, 373.

[7] William Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum IV.31.3.

Music for Lent: The Media Vita

The hour of Compline is far more variable in the Dominican Office than in the Roman, often changing the antiphon of the psalms, the hymn, and the antiphon of the Nunc dimittis. This was true of most medieval Uses, and especialy in Lent, a season in which the Dominican Use brings forth some its best treasures. The most famous of these is certainly Media vita, a piece which will always be associated with St Thomas Aquinas, whose biographers note that he would always weep copiously when it was sung, especially at the verse “Cast us not away in the time of our old age, when our strength shall fail, forsake us not, o Lord.” Although written as a responsory, with verses and the repetition of the second part of the beginning, it was sung in many Uses as an antiphon for the Nunc dimittis. As Fr Thompson has noted previously, it may now be used by the Dominicans as a responsory, rather than as an antiphon, and it is thus that we can hear it sung by the Dominican students at Blackfriars.

R. In the midst of life, we are in death; whom shall we seek to help us, but Thee, o Lord, who for our sins art justly wroth? * Holy God, holy mighty one, holy and merciful Savior, hand us not over to bitter death. V. Cast us not away in the time of our old age, when our strength shall fail, forsake us not, o Lord. Holy God, holy mighty one etc.

The Use of Sarum appointed Media vita to be sung at the same time as the Dominicans, during the third and fourth weeks of Lent, but with more verses, and the division of the refrain as follows:

Aña In the midst of life, we are in death; whom shall we seek to help us, but Thee, o Lord, who for our sins art justly wroth? * Holy God, holy mighty one, holy and merciful Savior, hand us not over to bitter death.
V. Cast us not way in the time of our old age, when our strength shall fail, forsake us not, o Lord. Holy God.
V. Close not Thy ears to our prayers. Holy mighty one.
V. Who knowest the secrets of the heart, show mercy to our sins. Holy and merciful Savior, hand us not over to bitter death.

Many composers have put their hand to this text; one of the finest versions of it is the setting by the Franco-flemish composer Nicolas Gombert. (1495-1560 ca.)

Tenebrae: The Church’s “Office of the Dead” for Christ Crucified

The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music cordially invites you to the final event of its 2024–2025 Public Lecture and Concert Series.

Tenebrae: The Church’s “Office of the Dead” for Christ Crucified

Lecture by James Monti (Dunwoodie, New York)

Saturday, April 12, 10:00 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT)

From at least as far back as the sixth century, the Church has begun her daily worship on the three days of the Easter Triduum with a unique solemnization of the Divine Office known as Tenebrae, a sung liturgy hewn from the Scriptural prophecies of the Passion, to form a veritable “Office of the Dead” in which She mourns the death of Christ. The sacred texts of this office inspired a priceless treasury of plainchant, and later, a vast corpus of polyphonic settings, particularly for the Scriptural centerpiece of Tenebrae, the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The purpose of this lecture will be to explore the history, the meaning, the music and the striking ritual actions of this profoundly moving office, which in recent years has undergone an amazing resurgence, fostered by the magnetic appeal of its compelling sights and soundscape.

The lecture is available live via Zoom. An RSVP is required, and space is limited. The lecture is available for free, but if your means allow we are grateful for a donation to support the work of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music.

RSVP here

About the Lecturer

A member of the staff of the Corrigan Memorial Library of Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York, James Monti has authored several books, including A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages (Ignatius Press, 2012), The King’s Good Servant but God’s First: The Life and Writings of St. Thomas More (Ignatius Press, 1997), and The Week of Salvation: History and Traditions of Holy Week (Our Sunday Visitor, 1993). He is also is a columnist for The Wanderer and an essayist and Gregorian hymns translator for Magnificat.

The Twentieth Anniversary of the Death of Pope St John Paul II

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Pope St John Paul II, whose reign of almost 26½ years is the third longest in history, after those of St Peter (traditionally said to be 32 years, one less than Our Lord’s earthy life), and Blessed Pius IX (31 years and nearly 8 months.) In the days leading up to his funeral, roughly 4 million people came to Rome from all over the world to pay their respects; a friend of mine waited in line for 15 hours to enter St Peter’s basilica and pray at his casket. Rome is a city whose normal state is to teeter on the brink of complete logistic collapse, and yet somehow, it was able to welcome such a huge number of people without any real disruption. Very rightly did the city’s mayor at the time, Walter Veltroni, say, “In these days, Rome is writing one of the most beautiful pages in its history of more than 27 centuries.”

Here is some footage from the YouTube channel of the AP, which shows the official announcement of the Pope’s death to the crowds in the Piazza San Pietro, made by then-archbishop Leonardo Sandri (later created cardinal by Benedict XVI), followed by a press-conference announcement by Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, then the ringing of the death knell, and various shots of the crowd with some interviews.

And here is CBS’s reportage of his election on October 16, 1978, including the famous first appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s, when he said, in reference to his ability to speak Italian, “If I make a mistake, you will correct me”, greatly endearing himself to the Romans, as their first non-Italian bishop in 455 years.

On the Sanctification of Time

In “Processing through the Courts of the Great King,” I spoke of how the many courtyards and chambers of the King’s palace prior to his throne room, or the many precincts and rooms of the Temple leading up to the Holy of Holies, could be a metaphor of a healthy Catholic spiritual life that culminates in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but surrounds it with concentric layers of other kinds of prayer, devotion, and piety. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the fons et culmen (font and apex) of the Christian life, but it is not the sum total of it — nor can it bear the weight of every need. I concluded the article thus:

We owe it to our King to prepare ourselves for His royal banquet, His wedding feast, and the Church has given us an abundance of ways in which we can do that: the Divine Office; Eucharistic Adoration; Lectio Divina; Confession; the Rosary; and so forth. The Mass is the crown jewel, to be sure, but it is not the entire crown; indeed, the jewel is given its appropriate place by the other materials that hold it and complement it.

The Divine Office

After the Mass, the most important public prayer offered by the Catholic Church is the Divine Office, a “sacrifice of praise” consisting of psalms, prayers, canticles, hymns, and readings divided into particular “hours” such as Lauds (morning prayer), Vespers (evening prayer), and Compline (night prayer). The shape and content of these magnificent liturgies come down to us from the monks of antiquity — in the West, above all from St. Benedict and the monastic empire inspired by his example and his Rule.

Characteristic of the Benedictine way of life is the sanctification of time through a calmly recurring cycle of prayer that permeates the day and night. In addition to the celebration of the Mass, the traditional Benedictine monk or nun prays communally seven times a day and once in the middle of the night, with the long office called Matins. In this way they fulfill what is said in the Book of Psalms: “Seven times a day I praise you” (118, 164), “I rose at midnight to give praise to thee” (118, 62), and “the just man meditates on the law day and night” (1, 2).

How beautiful is this patient, persevering dedication to set times of prayer, in order that the whole of time — the whole span of the day and stretch of the week, the month’s reach and the cycle of seasons, the passing years and decades and centuries, all of this human time — may be divinized, offered up to its unchanging Lord, penetrated with His grace, pregnant with sacred meaning and fruitful with a host of virtues!

This is the monastic life, this is the angelic life (says the Byzantine tradition), and we lay people are called to imitate it in some fashion, according to our ways and means. While the schedule of most modern lay people does not make it particularly easy to pray the Divine Office, it is often possible to find enough time in the morning for a short office like Prime, or in the evening for Vespers, or before bedtime for Compline. In fact, I am given to understand that before the Council, some used the expression “Prime and Compline Catholics” to refer to laity who made these two short hours the bookends of their day.

Being composed almost entirely from Scripture, the Divine Office is the most natural way to become intimately familiar with the Word of God, which will form our minds and hearts as Catholics. Lectio divina and the Divine Office fit together like hand in glove.

Sacred Conception of Time

It has struck me over the years how infrequently Catholics reflect on, or are even aware of, the difference between the secular conception of time and the sacred conception of time. Isaac Newton introduced the notion of absolute space and time, where space is seen as a giant grid of Cartesian coordinates, and time is seen as an equable ticking of a clock, all seconds, minutes, and hours being equal. This may be called temporal egalitarianism.

The premodern notion of time, in contrast, sees it as hierarchical, organic, and malleable. The day is understood to have a spiritually significant rhythm from dawn to noon to dusk to night, and each one of these parts has its own character, its own “weight” and role in the spiritual life, not to mention its function as a sign. The week has an internal dynamism emanating from the Sunday past and straining towards the Sunday to come, with certain days connected customarily to certain mysteries or saints, above all Friday’s connection to the Passion (hence, the rule of abstinence from flesh meat on the day when the flesh of God was crucified). Into the seasons of the year the great mysteries of the Catholic faith are woven, so that the cycle of nature mysteriously symbolizes the cycle of grace, each providing a key to the other. In short, the Catholic mind sees time as differentiated by days and seasons of feasting and fasting, by Sundays and Solemnities, by memorials, novenas, and processions.

As individuals and as communities, we should strive in big and little ways to live out a properly Catholic sense of time, understanding the calendar of days, weeks, and months as a recurrent cycle of celebrations of different persons—especially Our Lord and His Mother, but also the saints and angels. We should try to be aware of the Church calendar. “Whose feast is it today?” ought to be a question we ask every morning. Do we know when it is a major feast, e.g., the Nativity or Birthday of Our Lady, or the Exaltation of the Holy Cross? On the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, one might choose to pray the Stations of the Cross or the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. If it’s the feast day of a saint, we should invoke that saint in our prayer, think about him or her, and congratulate a fellow Catholic who shares the saint’s name.
 

The traditional Roman calendar

Levels of Time: (1) The Year

At the level of the year, numerous and profound are the differences between ecclesial time and secular time, especially in an explicitly secular country like the United States. For example, our secular year begins on January 1st, but the Western Church’s year begins with the First Sunday of Advent, while the Eastern Church’s begins in September.

The weeks before Christmas are a time of quiet expectancy (even called by the Eastern tradition “little Lent”), whereas they are an orgy of fake Christmas music and commercialism in the surrounding secular culture. Americans celebrate a Puritan Thanksgiving once a year, whereas Catholics celebrate thanks­giving every day with the Eucharistia, a Greek word that means “Thanksgiving.” Nowadays there are witches who dance around on the summer and winter solstices, but we have always celebrated these astronomical events by our own feasts: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in December and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist in June. As St. John himself said: “He must increase, I must decrease.” John’s birthday is observed right around the time when daylight begins to lessen; Jesus is born right around the time when daylight begins to lengthen. Easter, for us, lasts two months, whereas in the secular world it lasts for one weekend of bunny rabbits and chocolate.

The United States gives days off for things like dead presidents, dead soldiers, and labor; we Catholics celebrate the living saints who are at rest in heaven. When you start to think about it, the whole mentality is different. We need to be spiritually attuned to the universal Church calendar rather than taking our bearings from the secular and American. Not that we should disdain our secular holidays, but they are not holydays, and our own true and proper holydays should take precedence.

Levels of Time: (2) The Week

The week has a kind of sacred rhythm, beginning from and culminating in Sunday, the “Little Easter.” The secular world’s week is five days of work and two days of rest and relaxation to kick back and do whatever you feel like doing (which usually means taking it easy on Saturday and mowing the grass or doing other forbidden manual labor on Sunday).

The Christian perspective is different. There are six days of work, and one day of genuine rest—a rest of worship and prayer, of feasting and rejoicing with one’s family and friends. That is more than, and better than, mere “R&R.” We resist the reduction of the Lord’s Day to mere “time off” when we make Sunday Mass the pinnacle not only of Sunday but of the entire week. We get dressed up. We take time to prepare before Mass and make a thanksgiving afterwards, circumstances permitting. Perhaps one can come back to the chapel later on in the day to pray. In any event, one should not be thinking “what’s the most convenient way to get Mass over with so that I can get back to work or get out to play.” Sunday is not merely a means to something else; it is an image or echo of the ultimate end itself. In fact, for the Church Fathers, Sunday is a symbol of heaven and eternal life, so the way we treat Sunday is a bit like telling God what we think of the end or goal of our lives.

Levels of Time: (3) The Day

The day has its own internal rhythm. Not all hours are equal.

The morning, upon first waking, is the best time to consecrate our day to the Lord. When we retire for bed is the best time to examine our conscience, express sorrow for our sins, and commend our day’s work and our soul to God before entering the “little death” of sleep.

The source and summit of the day should be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Eucharist is the sun from which all grace radiates, so if we want to be in the sun, we have to put ourselves in its direct rays. If one goes to morning Mass, one is establishing the day on its foundation, and the rest of the day flows from it. If one goes to Mass at or around noon, one is approaching it as a kind of peak or summit towards which the morning rises and from which the afternoon descends, a centerpoint on which the day is poised. If one goes to Mass in the evening, one is gathering up the day’s work into an offering to be made to the Lord.

It’s good for us to be consciously aware of the meaning that belongs to the choices we make and the actions we perform, so that we can leverage that awareness for our spiritual benefit. Moreover, it is highly praiseworthy to form a specific intention for each Mass one attends: “Lord, I desire to offer up this Holy Sacrifice with you for [X, Y, or Z].” By doing this, you have invested yourself in the Mass—something is at stake for you.

Holiness Above All

A last word about holiness. Blessed Ildefons Schuster, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan until his death in 1954, said this to his seminarians a few days before his death:

I have no memento to give you apart from an invitation to holiness. It would seem that people are no longer convinced by our preaching; but faced with holiness, they still believe, they still fall to their knees and pray. People seem to live ignorant of supernatural realities, indifferent to the problems of salvation. But when an authentic saint, living or dead, passes by, all run to be there…. Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness.

In the battle for souls that is raging in the world around us (and within us), holiness will always take precedence over any other weapon we can fight with. If we want to make the kingdom of God present in time, our holiness, which is inseparably linked with our life of prayer, is truly what comes first and last. Without it, we do not make God’s kingdom present, no matter how much we build, how much we persuade, how much we campaign and conquer the field. With God’s grace in our souls, however, even the smallest things we do gain inestimable value, while the great things we attempt are blessed—not necessarily with success as the world understands it, but with a fruitfulness that touches many souls. In the words of Blaise Pascal:

Do the little things as though they were great things, remembering that the majesty of Christ within us works them and lives our life; and do the great things as though they were no more than little things easily done, remembering the power of Christ within us. 

“Now About the Midst of the Feast” - Christ the Teacher in the Liturgy of Lent

Today’s Gospel in the Roman Rite, John 7, 14-31, begins with the words “Now about the midst of the feast”, referring to the feast of Tabernacles, which St John had previously mentioned in verse 2 of the same chapter. And indeed, the whole of this chapter is set within the context of this feast.

The Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple, the Gospel of yesterday’s Mass, John 2, 13-25; part of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece, by the Tyrolean painter Michael Pacher (1435 ca. - 1498), made in 1471-79. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Uoaei1, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

In the Byzantine Rite, this same Gospel, minus the last verse, is read on the very ancient feast of Mid-Pentecost, exactly half-way between Easter and Pentecost, a custom which was formerly also found in the Ambrosian Rite. In the Mozarabic Rite (which is an outlier among liturgies in many ways), the opening words seem to have been taken instead to mean something like, “When the feast was half-way arrived,” meaning the feast of Easter. The same Gospel is therefore read on the 4th Sunday of Lent, and the words “Mediante die festo” are used as that Sunday’s nickname, as Romans say, “Laetare Sunday.” The Roman Rite, on the other hand, seems to have ignored the timing given by the Evangelist as a detail of no particular importance, and places this Gospel on a day that isn’t halfway between anything noteworthy.

The beginning of the Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Lent in a Mozarabic Missal printed in 1804, with the subtitle, ‘Mediante die festo.’

Most of this text is taken up with a dispute over Our Lord’s authority to teach, since He “had not studied”, which is to say, He had not been formally trained as a rabbi. This dispute ends with Him saying, “He is true, who sent me, whom ye know not. I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent me”, at which they sought to seize Him, but “no one laid a hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” Like the Gospel of the preceding day, St John’s account of the cleansing of the temple (2, 13-25), this reading begins to set the stage for the following week, when the Church shifts the focus of the liturgy to the Lord’s Passion.

The introits of these Masses, which are taken from two psalms in sequence, 53 and 54, also hint at this in their verses: on Monday, “For strangers have risen up against me; and the mighty have sought after my soul”, and on Tuesday, “I am grieved in my exercise, and am troubled at the voice of the enemy.” At Tenebrae of Holy Thursday, the lessons of the second nocturn are taken from St Augustine’s explanation of the latter verse as a prophecy of the Passion, in his great commentary on the Exposition of the Psalms.

A motet by Orlando de Lassus of the words of today’s Introit, the beginning of Psalm 54: “Exaudi, Deus, oratiónem meam, et ne despéxeris deprecatiónem meam: intende in me et exaudi me.” (Hearken, o God, to my prayer; and despise not my pleading; give heed to me, and hearken unto me.)

The epistle for this Mass is Exodus 32, 7-14, in which Moses is told by God to come down from the mountain, where he has been for forty days and nights, so that he may see that the people have rebelled against the Lord and made the golden calf. God offers to destroy them and raise up a new and great nation from Moses himself, but the prophet intercedes for them, “and the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against his people.” This lesson is clearly chosen in reference to Christ’s words in the Gospel (vs. 19), “Did not Moses give you the Law? and none of you keepeth the law.”

In the oldest lectionaries of the Roman Rite, a shorter version of this same reading, beginning at verse 11, was the fifth Old Testament lesson on the Ember Saturday of September, which falls near the beginning of the range of dates for the feast of Tabernacles. As I have described elsewhere, this reading is paired with an epistle from the Letter to the Hebrews (9, 2-12), which says that the Tabernacle of the Covenant was but “a parable of the time present… but Christ, being come as a high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hand, that is, not of this creation: neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption.”

In the article linked above, I postulated that these readings were paired thus for the sake of those among the early Christians in Rome who still felt themselves to be close to their Jewish roots, and remembered mid-September as the time of the High Holy Days. These people may well have seen the refusal of their former coreligionists to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah as a rebellion against God, similar to that of the golden calf episode. The reading from Exodus would thus serve to remind them that God had been merciful at the appeal of Moses, and suggest that He would be similarly merciful through the appeal of Christ, “the high priest of the good things to come, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption by a greater and more perfect tabernacle.” And indeed, the Gospel for today in the Roman version includes the first part of verse 31, which is not read in either the Byzantine Rite, or the oldest lectionaries of the Mozarabic Rite, “But of the people many believed in him,” a reminder that many Jews did in fact accept the Messiah when He came.

The Worship of the Golden Calf, 1518-19, painted by Raphael and assistants in the loggia of the papal palace of the Vatican. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

This idea seems also to have determined the texts of the other chants of the Mass. The Gradual includes the first verse of Psalm 43, “We have heard, o God, with our ears: our fathers have declared to us the work which thou hast wrought in their days, and in the days of old.” As St Paul says at the very beginning of Hebrews, God “spoke at sundry times and in divers manners to our fathers by the prophets, (and) last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son.” This would therefore profess that some of the Jews had in fact heard what God said by His Son when He was sent in the fulness of time.

The Offertory chant is taken from Psalm 39, and in this context, speaks of the longing of the Jewish people for their redemption: “Eagerly did I await the Lord, and He looked upon me and heard my prayers”, i.e. prayers for the coming of the Messiah. The next words, “And He put into my mouth a new song”, therefore refer to the establishment of a new people, a new Israel, and a new manner of worship. And thus the Communio is sung from Psalm 19, “We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we shall be exalted”, “salvation” being the meaning of the Holy Name of Jesus.

The Offertory Exspectans exspectavi, which is also sung on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost: “Exspectans exspectávi Dóminum, et respexit me, et exaudívit deprecatiónem meam, et immísit in os meum cánticum novum, hymnum Deo nostro. ~ Eagerly did I await the Lord, and He looked upon me, and put into my mouth a new song, a hymn to our God.”

The Communio Laetabimur in salutari tuo, recorded by the mighty brothers of OP Chant. “Laetábimur in salutári tuo, et in nómine Dómini, Dei nostri, magnificábimur. ~ We shall rejoice in Thy salvation, and in the name of the Lord, our God, we shall be glorified.”

In the oldest surviving sacramentary of the Roman Rite, known as the Old Gelasian Sacramentary (ca. 700 AD), the prayer “over the people” at the end of this Mass is as follows: “Pópuli tui, Deus, institútor et rector, peccáta, quibus impugnátur, expelle: ut semper tibi placátus, et tuo munímine sit secúrus. – O God, founder (or ‘teacher’) and ruler of Thy people, cast out the sins by which it is assailed, that being ever reconciled to Thee, it may also be secure in Thy protection.”

“Placatus” is one of the most commonly used words in the prayers of the Roman Rite, occurring nearly 60 times in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and more than 80 in the recent editions of the Missal of St Pius V. (In the former, many of these are within variable texts of the Hanc igitur for special occasions.) Ordinarily it refers to God, and means “placated” or “appeased.” However, in this one prayer, it refers to the people, for which reason, I have translated it as “reconciled” instead. [note]

This same word is used in the last sentence of the Epistle of this Mass, “and the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against his people.” In the context of this Mass, this expresses the hope that the Jewish people will indeed be reconciled to their teacher and ruler, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, whose hour has not yet come, but draws nigh.

“I am the light of the world”. Apsidal mosaic in the cathedral of Pisa, Italy, begun by Cimabue in 1302, completed by Vicino da Pistoia in 1321.

[note] At the end of the 8th century, this prayer was moved by the Gregorian Sacramentary, one of the ancestor texts of the modern missal, to the Mass of the following Thursday. The anomalous use of the word “placatus” described here was either felt to be inappropriate, or perhaps simply misunderstood, and is already found changed to “placitus – pleasing” in the Sacramentary of Hildoard (Cambrai, Bibl. Mun. 164) in 811-12. This latter reading is found in the majority of the early manuscripts, and carries through to the Missal of St Pius V.

The Apple of Her Eye

“The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. From the soil, the Lord God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 2, 8-9) 

This 17th century painting by an anonymous follower of the Flemish artist Ambrosius Benson (1490-1550) portrays the Madonna and Child with the soft gaze of loving maternal devotion. Mary’s facial features are idealised in the manner of ancient Greek sculptures of goddesses such as Venus, by the convention of artists in the Renaissance period to draw inspiration from classical forms. The idealisation of Mary was not done to present her as a goddess, but rather to emphasize that she is a person of great beauty and holiness who is worthy of our veneration.

The white swaddling clothes that envelop Christ remind us of his future burial shroud, linking his infancy to his ultimate sacrifice through his passion and death before the Resurrection. As is common in oil paintings of this period, the sharp contrast between the luminous figures and the dark background emphasises that Christ is the Light that overcomes the darkness (cf. John 1, 5).

The painting shows two fruits: Mary holds a pear, while Christ has an apple. The juxtaposition of the pear and apple suggests that the fruits’ symbolism relates to the different trees of Eden described in the book of Genesis, and referred to in the quoted passage above.

First, the apple alludes to the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the fruit that Adam and Eve ate, although God had forbidden them to do so. Scripture does not name the fruit as an apple, but the connection arose because the Latin word malum means both “apple” and “evil”; it therefore became a symbol of the fruit of this tree, and hence of the Fall. The Church Fathers suggest that this malum - bad fruit - was presented by God as a test of obedience for Adam and Eve, which, of course, they failed spectacularly. Their disobedience in eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil brought about the Fall, subjecting mankind to the effects of sin and evil thereafter.

When the apple is in the hand of Christ, the New Adam, it is transformed into the fruit of salvation. This additional interpretation is based on a passage from the Canticle of Canticles 2, 3:

“As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my love among young men. In his delightful shade, I sit, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.”

In Christian tradition, the pear as a sweet fruit symbolizes divine love. In this context, in juxtaposition with the apple, it might also be considered the sweet fruit of the Tree of Life. Mary holds the pear in her left hand and supports Jesus, connecting the two in our minds. As members of the Church, we eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, which is Jesus, present in the Eucharist, and are, as a result, promised eternal life.

Church Fathers such as Ephraim the Syrian speculated that Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden to prevent them from eating the fruit of eternal life, which, after the Fall, would have condemned man to eternal misery:

“For if he [Adam] had the audacity to eat of the Tree of which he was commanded not to eat, how much then more would he make a dash for the Tree concerning which he had received no command? Lest therefore he eat of it after having transgressed and live forever bearing the shame of the transgression, God expelled him from Paradise.”— (Commentary on Genesis, Section II, 31).

Through his Church, God now invites all people to enter the life initially intended for Adam and Eve, but from which they were initially barred. Thus, humanity has gained more than Original Paradise. God offers us the path to eternal life in heaven, representing not just the redemption of man but also the elevation of human nature to something higher. The naturally sweet pear and the redeemed or, one might say, supernaturally ripened apple can be allusions to the Eucharist, perhaps indicating that through the Church, we are offered both what would have been without the Fall and what came from the Fall through Christ’s intervention.

The Exposition of the Holy Lance at St Peter’s Basilica

The YouTube channel of EWTN recently published a video about the exposition of the Holy Lance at St Peter’s basilica on the first Saturday of Lent. This was formerly done on the Ember Friday, which was long kept as the feast of the Holy Lance and Nails, but since this feast is no longer observed, the exposition of the relic has been transferred to the following day, when the station is at St Peter’s. Each of the four massive pillars which hold up the church’s dome is dedicated to one of its major relics (apart from those of the Apostle himself, of course): the True Cross, a piece of which is kept there; the Holy Lance; the skull of St Andrew; and the veil of Veronica. The last of these is shown to the faithful on Passion Sunday, when the station is also at St Peter’s. Our good friend Jacob Stein from Crux Stationalis is interviewed, and talks about the importance of the station and the relic, the veneration of which starts Lent off by looking forward to the Passion on Good Friday.

Here is Jacob’s own video about the station of that day: as a reminder, his YouTube channel has new videos about the stations and other Roman customs several times a week at least.

The Feast and Sunday of St John Climacus

In the Byzantine liturgy, each of the Sundays of Lent has a special commemoration attached to it. The first Sunday is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, because it commemorates the defeat of iconoclasm and the restoration of the orthodox belief in the use of icons; many churches have a procession in which the clergy and faithful carry the icons, as seen in this video from the Sacred Patriarchal Monastery of St Irene Chrysovalantou, in Astoria, New York.

The Third Sunday of Lent is called the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross; in place of the Trisagion are sung the words “We venerate Thy Cross, O Lord, and we glorify Thy holy Resurrection.” A cross is placed in the middle of the church, and “We venerate Thy Cross” is sung again three times, as all prostrate themselves before it, and then come forth to kiss it. The traditional Church Slavonic melody is in my opinion one of the most beautiful pieces in the repertoire.

The Fourth Sunday is dedicated to St John of the Ladder, whose Greek title (“tēs klimakos - of the Ladder”) is often improperly Anglicized as “Climacus”; he also has his own feast day on the calendar, March 30, which can falls on his Sunday, as it does this year, or near it, when Easter is later. (In 2019, on the Gregorian calendar, his feast day was on Saturday, and followed immediately by the Sunday dedicated to him.) The title refers to his popular and extremely influential spiritual treatise, the Ladder of Paradise, still commonly read, and especially in Lent, among Eastern Christians. The treatise is also known as the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and outlines thirty steps by which, through the acquisition and exercise of the various virtues, one may seek to ascend to attain to salvation. The icon of his feast shows him indicating the ladder by which a group of monks ascend to Heaven; with an important touch of realism, all versions of this icon show some of the monks being pulled off the ladder by devils with grappling hooks, and falling into the mouth of hell on the lower right.

Very little is known about St John’s origins and life, and even the exact period in which he lived has been the subject of academic debate. A letter of Pope St Gregory the Great in the year 600 is addressed to one John, the “abbot of Mount Sinai”; John Climacus certainly held this office at one time, and he is traditionally said to be the recipient of letter, and to have died at around the age of 75 a few years later. Others place his life at a later period, from roughly 580-650.

The Troparion: With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barren desert, and with sighs from the depths of thy soul, thou didst render thy labors fruitful a hundredfold, and became a shining light for the world, resplendent with miracles. O John, our holy father, entreat Christ our God that our souls be saved.
The Kontakion: The Lord truly set you on the heights of abstinence, to be a guiding star, showing the way to the universe, o our Father and Teacher John.