The parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will pray St Alphonsus Liguori’s Stations of the Cross today at 1pm, accompanied by a full performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. The Saint and the composer were Neapolitan contemporaries, so this pairing provides a wonderful immersion into the spirituality of the Italian Baroque. The church is located at 151 Garfield Avenue.
Friday, March 29, 2024
Stations of the Cross with the Pergolesi Stabat Mater in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Today
Gregory DiPippoThursday, March 28, 2024
The Roman Mass of Holy Thursday
Gregory DiPippoCompared to other ancient liturgies, the Roman Rite is unusual in treating the Mass of Maundy Thursday as a feast of the Lord, vesting the clergy in white, and saying the Gloria in excelsis and the Creed. It is far more unusual in not reading one of the Synoptic accounts of the Lord’s Supper as the Gospel, but rather John 13, 1-15, the washing of the disciples’ feet. In the Ambrosian Rite, for example, the vestments are red for the whole of Holy Week, including both Holy Thursday and Good Friday, a custom which the church of Milan received from antiquity, when red was a color of mourning; the Gloria and Credo are not said. The Gospel is Matthew 26, 17-75, which goes from the preparations which the Lord orders the disciples to make for the Last Supper until the crowing of the rooster after Peter’s betrayal.
The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet, 1308, by Duccio di Buoninsegna (ca. 1255/60 - 1318/19), part of the great altarpiece of the cathedral of Siena known as the Maestà. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) |
The Ambrosian Mass of Holy Thursday
Gregory DiPippoThe rite begins with the regular lucernarium, a responsory originally to be sung during the lighting of candles and lanterns in the church. This is followed by a hymn, and another responsory called the “responsorium in choro”; in the Duomo itself, this chant is to be sung by the archbishop. A reader then sings the entire book of Jonah, a custom which, as Nicola de’ Grandi has noted before, is attested in the writings of St Ambrose himself; this is followed by a psalmellus, the Ambrosian equivalent of a gradual. The Mass then begins without an introductory chant, (the Ambrosian Rite has no Kyrie), starting from the collect, the same that of the Roman Rite; the epistle which follows is of course St Paul’s account of the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Mass from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 11, 20-34, which is read in the Roman Rite at both Mass and Tenebrae.
There follows a cantus, the Ambrosian equivalent of a tract; its text is taken partly from the reading of the Passion according to St. Matthew which follows, (chapter 26, 17-75), and partly from St. Luke 22, 47-48.
You are come out as it were to a robber with swords to apprehend me. Daily I was with you, teaching in the temple, and you laid not hands on me, and behold you hand me over to be crucified.All the readings for the principle services of the Triduum are taken from the Gospel of St Matthew; the Passion therefore stops with the cock-crow which reminds St Peter that Christ prophesied his betrayal, and resumes in the morning service after Terce at the beginning of chapter 27. (The other three Passions, of Ss Mark, Luke and John, are read in the second of two nocturns at Matins of Good Friday.)
V. As He yet spoke, behold a crowd, and he that was called Judas came, and drew near to Jesus to kiss him. And Jesus said to him: Judas, dost thou betray the Son of man with a kiss to be crucified?
The Mass continues as normal, with a few modifications similar to those of the traditional Roman Rite. The normal antiphon “after the Gospel” is sung; its text is taken with slight modifications from the Byzantine Rite, which on this same day sings these words in the place of the Cherubic hymn at the Divine Liturgy.
Thou receivest me today, Son of God, as a partaker of Thy wondrous Supper. For I will not reveal this mystery to Thy enemies; I will not I give Thee a kiss as did Judas; but as the thief, confessing to Thee: remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom.
The prayer “over the Offering” is the same as the Roman Secret; the Mass has a proper preface, as do most Masses in the Ambrosian Rite.
Truly it is worthy and just etc. … Through Christ our Lord. Who though He was God in heaven, descended unto the earth to cancel the sins of men; and He that had come to liberate the human race, was sold in an unlawful purchase by His servant, like a debtor and a guilty man, even the Lord; and He that judgeth the Angels, was set in the judgment of man, that He might deliver from death man, whom He Himself had made. And therefore with the Angels etc.The Canon of the Mass is the normal Ambrosian Canon, which is in most respects fairly similar to the Roman Canon, but today is said with several very long interpolations. The first of these is in the Communicantes:
Communicating, and celebrating the most sacred day, on which Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was betrayed. Thou, o Lord, didst command us to be partakers of Thy Son, sharers of Thy kingdom, dwellers in Paradise, companions of the Angels; ever provided we keep the sacraments of the heavenly army with pure and undefiled faith. And what may we not hope of Thy mercy, we who received so great a gift, that we might merit to offer Thee such a Victim, namely, the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ? Who for the redemption of the world gave himself up to that holy and venerable Passion; Who instituting the form of the perennial sacrifice of salvation, first offered Himself as the Victim, and first taught that It be offered. But also venerating the memory etc.The words “keep the sacraments of the heavenly army – caelestis militae sacramenta servemus” refer to a common pre-Christian sense of the Latin word “sacramentum – a military oath of allegiance”.
The first part of the Ambrosian Canon of Holy Thursday, in a missal printed in 1548. |
We therefore beseech thee, o Lord, graciously attend to this offering, which we make to Thee because of the day of the Lord’s Supper, on which Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, instituted the rite of sacrifice in the New Covenant, when He transformed the bread and wine, which Melchisedech the priest had offered as a prefiguration of the mystery that was to come, into the sacrament of His Body and Blood; and so for the course of many years, in health and safety may we merit to offer our gifts to the Thee, o Lord; and may Thou order our days in Thy peace etc.The Qui pridie is then interpolated as follows:
Who on the day before He suffered for our salvation and that of all men, that is, on this day, reclining in the midst of His disciples and taking bread etc.
The second part of the same canon. |
We do these things, we celebrate these thing, o Lord, keeping Thy commandments: and at this inviolable communion, by the very fact that we receive the Body of the Lord, we also announce his death. But it belongeth to Thee, almighty Father, to send now Thy only begotten Son, whom Thou didst send willingly to them that sought Him not. Who though Thou art infinite and unknowable, didst also beget of Thee God infinite and unknowable; so that Thou may now grant His Body unto our salvation, by whose Passion Thou didst grant redemption to the human race. Through the same.In the Ambrosian Rite, the fraction of the Host is done before the Our Father, accompanied by an antiphon called the Confractory, which on Holy Thursday reads as follows:
This is the Body, which shall be given up for you: this Chalice of the New Covenant is in My Blood, sayeth the Lord. As often as you shall receive these things, do this in memory of Me.The Lord’s Prayer is then preceded by a special formula of introduction used only on this day, in place of the usual formula common to the Roman and Milanese rites.
It is His commandment, o Lord, which we follow, in Whose presence we now ask Thee. Give to the sacrifice its Author, that the faith of the matter may be fulfilled in the loftiness of the mystery; so that as we carry out the truth of the heavenly sacrifice, so we may draw in the truth of the Lord’s Body and Blood. Through the same Christ Our Lord, saying: Our Father etc.The Transitory, the Ambrosian communion antiphon, also refers to the Passion Gospel of Matthew 26.
My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me. Now you shall see the crowd that surroundeth me, and take flight, and I will go to be immolated for ye.The Post-Communion prayer is different from that of the Roman Rite.
Lord, our God, grant in Thy mercy; that we who have received the Body and Blood of Thy only begotten Son may be set apart from the blindness of the faithless disciple, we who confess and worship Christ our Lord as true God and true man. Who liveth etc.As in the Roman Rite, the Blessed Sacrament is taken to the Altar of Repose in solemn procession at the end of the Mass; afterwards, the end of vespers is sung. This consists of psalm 69, sung together with the two psalms 133 and 116 added to it, sung with a single doxology, according to a common custom of the Ambrosian Rite on feasts. The rite then concludes with four prayers, the Magnificat being omitted as noted above.
Palm Sunday 2024 Photopost (Part 1)
Gregory DiPippoPhotopost Request: The Sacred Triduum and Easter 2024
Gregory DiPippoOur first Palm Sunday photopost will be put up later today. In the meantime, as we traditionally do, we will plan on having a whole series of photoposts of your Holy Week liturgies, with individual posts for Tenebrae, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. As always, we are glad to receive images of the OF, EF, Eastern Rites, the Ordinariate Use, etc., including any part of the liturgy. Please send your photographs to photopost@newliturgicalmovement.org, and remember to include the name and location of the church, along with any other information you think important.
Please read this! – I would ask people to do a few things to make it easier for us to process the photos. The first is to size them down so that the smaller dimension is around 1500 pixels. The second is to send the pictures as zipped files, which are a lot easier to process, (not links, and not as photos attached to an email). The third is to not mix photos of one ceremony with those of another, and to put the name of the ceremony (“Tenebrae”, “Holy Thursday”, “Good Friday”, “Holy Saturday”, and “Easter Sunday”) as the subject of the email. Your help is very much appreciated.“Beauty is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation.” – Pope Benedict XVI.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
The Mass of Spy Wednesday
Gregory DiPippoAs I noted in articles published yesterday and the day before, the Gospel of Holy Monday was originally John 12, 1-36, and that of Holy Tuesday was originally John 13, 1-32. This meant that the Passion of St Luke, which has always been the Gospel of Spy Wednesday, would originally have been the first retelling of the Passion during the Roman Holy Week, after the Mass of Palm Sunday. (As I have also noted on various occasions, this anticipation of the events of the Passion before the liturgical days on which they actually happened is a custom almost unique to the Roman Rite.)
This connection between the Masses of Palm Sunday and Spy Wednesday is highlighted by the introit of the latter, which is taken from the epistle of former, Philippians 2, 5-11.“ ‘The prayer of the poor man, when he shall be anxious, and pour out his supplication before the Lord.’ Who is this poor man whose prayer is noted in this psalm, if not he of whom the apostle said, ‘who when he was rich became poor for our sakes’? (1 Cor. 8, 9) For He, that He might make us participants in His riches, took on the necessities of our poverty; for ‘He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.’ (Phil, 2, 7-8) And just as He became poor for us, so also was He made anxious for us, and at last was handed over to death for us, and for us hung upon the Cross. For He died, as the Apostle, says for our sins (1 Cor. 15, 3) and rose for our justification. (Rom. 4, 25) Now He was able to be anxious from His human nature, from which also He was able to die. Therefore, our (mystical) Head prays in this psalm that through grace we may be led back thither, whence we fell through the fault of our first parent.”
The Risen Christ and the Mystical Winepress, by Marco dal Pino, often called Marco da Siena, 1525-1588 ca. Both of the figures of Christ in this painting show very markedly the influence of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. |
Thus sayeth the Lord God: Tell the daughter of Sion: Behold thy Savior cometh: behold his reward is with him. 63, 1 Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength? I, that speak justice, and am a defender to save. Why then is your apparel red, and your garments like theirs that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the gentiles there is not a man with me: I have trampled on them in my indignation, and have trodden them down in my wrath, and their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my apparel. etc.
The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the laborers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood.
The angels, too, were in doubt when Christ arose; the powers of heaven were in doubt when they saw that flesh was ascending into heaven. Then they said: “Who is this King of glory?” And while some said “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.” In Isaiah, too, we find that the powers of heaven doubted and said: “Who is this that comes up from Edom, the redness of His garments is from Bosor, He who is glorious in white apparel?”
The icon of the Virgin Mary, known as the “Salus Populi Romani”, in the reredos of the Borghese chapel of the basilica of St Mary Major. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Fallaner, CC BY-SA 4.0) |
(Attributed to the Spanish painter Alonso Cano, 1601-67. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) |
A New Setting of the Stabat Mater by Peter Kwasniewski
Gregory DiPippoJust in time for Holy Week, Peter has posted to his YouTube channel a recording of his setting of the Stabat Mater, which was premiered by the ensemble His Majesty’s Men on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at St John Cantius Church, Chicago. Although the Stabat Mater hymn is not officially a part of the liturgy of Holy Week, it has long been customary to sing it as an offertory or communion motet; at St Peter’s basilica, for example, Palestrina’s version was sung at the principal Mass of Palm Sunday.
“In this work, I set ten of the verses (1–3, 5, 9–11, 16–17, and 20) for five-part men’s choir, interspersing them with the Gregorian chant for the remaining ten verses (4, 6–8, 12–15, and 18–19); the latter verses are sometimes sung plainly and sometimes with an ison and contrary organum. The purity and simplicity of the chant lines contrast well with the intricate texture and dense harmonies of the polyphony parts.
“This is, moreover, a very live recording — complete with car brakes, city buses, and honking horns, courtesy of the busy neighborhood of St John Cantius! John Cage, Edgard Varèse, and Henry Cowell would no doubt be pleased.”
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
The Mass of Holy Tuesday
Gregory DiPippoIn the oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, ca. 650 AD [1], the Gospel of Holy Tuesday is not the Passion of St Mark, as it is today, but John 13, 1-32: Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet (1-11), His words to them immediately afterwards (12-20), the revelation of Judas as the betrayer (21-30), and Christ’s declaration that “Now the Son of man is glorified, etc.” The Divine Office preserves a relic of this in today’s antiphon for the Benedictus, which is the first verse of this Gospel: “Before the feast day of Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come, having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.”
The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet, ca. 1305, by Giotto, in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) |
Therefore, the original Gospels of Holy Monday (John 12, 1-36) and Tuesday (13, 1-32) supplemented the Passion narrative of Palm Sunday with material which is not included in any of the synoptic Gospels. This includes the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, since the ancient lectionaries do not indicate any use of the Gospel which is now read at the blessing of the Palms, Matthew 21, 1-9, or its parallels in Mark and Luke. (The evidence for how Palm Sunday was celebrated in Rome in the early centuries is very scant; we cannot dismiss the possibility that such a reading was part of a blessing of palms, but we have no proof one way or the other.)
St Jerome in His Study, by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1587-1625). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. |
A statue of an angel holding the sponge and reed by which the Lord was given vinegar to drink while he was on the Cross, by Antonio Giorgetti (1635-69), working as an assistant of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This is one of ten statues of angels holding instruments of the Passion which Pope Clement IX commissioned from the elderly Bernini in 1669, to decorate the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, the main bridge by which pilgrims crossed the Tiber to get to St Peter’s basilica. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pol Grandmont, CC BY-SA 3.0) |
Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Labels: Holy Week, Lectionary, Liturgy of the Passion, Passion of Christ
Workshops in June for Composers, Conductors and Choristers, with Sir James MacMillan
David ClaytonDetails are given in the three posters below, one for each workshop; also see the Catholic Sacred Music Project website: sacredmusicproject.org.
Monday, March 25, 2024
The Mass of Holy Monday
Gregory DiPippoAt the Mass of Holy Monday, three of the four chant propers, the introit, gradual and communion, are taken from the same Psalm, the thirty-fourth. (The tract, Domine, non secundum, is not proper to this Mass, since it is sung on most of the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent, and for the last time on this day.) Like most of the texts from the Psalms which speak in the person of a man suffering or in distress (“Judge them that harm me, o God,” etc.), this Psalm was taken by the Church Fathers as a representation of Our Lord in the midst of His Passion. For example, a treatise known as the Breviarium in Psalmos, traditionally but incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, says that the opening words are “the voice of Christ in His Passion, and of the Church in tribulation”, and explains verse 13, “I was clothed with haircloth, I humbled my soul with fasting” as follows: “For the Lord put on the roughness (asperitatem) of the Passion. … He celebrated a fast unto the evening, when in the evening of the world, He was offered for its salvation.” (PL 26, 923D; 926D) Cassiodorus (ca. 485 – 585) begins his commentary on the same Psalm by saying, “Through this whole hymn, the words are those of Christ the Lord, spoken from the dispensation by which He suffered.” (In Psalt. Expos.; PL 70, 241B)
The Man of Sorrows, with the instruments of the Passion, ca. 1345-50; part of an altar in the cathedral of Cologne, Germany. |
A page of an Ambrosian Missal of 1594, showing the end of the prophetic reading (Isaiah 53, 1-2), the psalmellus, the epistle (2 Thess. 2, 14 – 3, 5), the cantus and the Gospel (John 11, 55 –12, 11). |
The Mocking of Christ, ca. 1617, by the Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. |
The Anointing of Christ’s Feet at Bethany, depicted in the Vaux Passional ca. 1503-4. Mary and Martha are shown serving at the table; the Lord has stuck one of His feet out from under it, looking forward to the anointing. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) |
New Printing of “The Liturgical Rosary”
Peter KwasniewskiI wish that I could wish my readers a blessed feast of the Annunciation, but this year, as happens often enough, the feast is catapulted to the Monday after the Easter Octave, so, April 8. Nevertheless, our Byzantine brethren continue to observe it, and a Marian post does not seem unfitting.
Back in October 2023, I announced at NLM the publication of Arouca Press’ unique devotional book The Liturgical Rosary. (You can read about its contents there.) The popularity of the book was such that within weeks the first printing had been sold out.
Happily, Arouca has done a second printing of the book, but this time, with an imitation leather cover, thin Bible paper, and gold edges. It is more compact than the first edition. Here are some photos.
Order exclusively here from Arouca Press. Shipped from the USA. International shipping available. Bulk discount prices are calculated automatically during checkout.
God bless Arouca Press and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary!
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Passiontide 2024 Photopost (Part 2)
Gregory DiPippoAs always, we are very grateful to all everyone who has shared their photographs of their churches veiled for Passtiontide, and two very nice sets of rose-colored Laetare vestments. We are looking forward to see pictures of your Palm Sunday liturgies. Please send them in to photopost@newliturgicalmovement.org, and remember to include the name and location of the church, and any other information you think important. Keep up the good work of evangelizing through beauty!