Proposal for the Revised Apostolic Liturgy (RAL) of John Chrysostom - Part 1

Since the post-Conciliar reform of the Roman liturgy has been such an outstanding pastoral success, and such a monument of scholarly erudition, well might one wonder why the Eastern churches have not availed themself of its wisdom and similarly renewed their liturgies. Wonder no longer! A consortium of liturgical scholars has final come together to bring all the benefits of the great renewal to the Byzantine Rite. In this first post, we have an outline of the general principles of renewal; a second post next week will give us the text of the “Divina Liturgia Normativa”, as it is currently being called, following the principles outlined here.

Regalia of this sort have been abolished

MOTIVATION

We, the liturgical scholars of the Pisti Kai Agapi Synodal Committee (PIKASCO), have developed the Revised Apostolic Liturgy (RAL) as a standardisation and reform of early, diverse, apostolic Eastern Roman worship forms that were celebrated at the present Ayasofya Grand Mosque in 4th to 5th century Istanbul. We prioritise forms codified with the anaphora attributed to John Chrysostom.

Now, it is simply not the case that recensions after the 5th century are less valid. Rather, they represent forms of worship that had become excessively intertwined with secular expressions, worldly expressions that may have forgotten about the poor, the sick, and the suffering, and that have forgotten how to look with the merciful and loving eyes of Jesus Christ.

We have sought to de-Latinise the Ukrainian-Rusyn recension of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, as well as to decolonise and prune centuries upon centuries of imperialist and nationalist accretions. Some of these accidentally resulted from efforts to de-Latinise the Ukrainian-Rusyn liturgy in the 1900s through liberal insertions of Polish-Lithuanian sources by Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky (born Count Roman Aleksander Maria Szeptycki) of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who was a highly-educated nobleman.

We should never hesitate to acknowledge and praise Sheptytsky’s contributions to the Ukrainian identity, state, and culture; however, it would do no one justice to view any person of wealth and influence uncritically.

Now, it may be true that St Pius X allegedly told Sheptytsky, who was also in charge of the Russian Greek Catholic Church at the time, that the Nikonian and pre-Nikonian rites should be celebrated “Nec plus, nec minus, nec aliter.” (Neither less, nor more, nor other.) However, this was a non-magisterial, non-binding remark which Sheptytsky conveniently adopted, enabling Russian rite prelates under him such as Mykolai Charnetsky to celebrate hierarchical divine liturgies that were identical to imperialist Russian Orthodox forms.

Ultimately his tolerance for imperialist forms, whether the Tsarist Russian recensions or his own native Habsburg Ruthenian/Galician recensions, is insufficiently apostolic. We should also acknowledge the tragedy of the refusal of countless Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy and laypeople to dialogue, listen, and discern with the lawful Marxist authorities. This rigidity and stubborn adherence to human traditions ultimately led to needless conflict and casualties on both sides.

And of course there were limitations in the resources, geopolitical conditions and sciences of the time that ultimately led to thicker layers upon layers of Habsburg and Tsarist accretion. Thus, we conservatively adhere to sources before the 5th century. Careful pruning and reconstructions were implemented based on extensive, advanced research and the scholarship of liturgists from top pontifical institutions.

Nevertheless, there were necessary adaptations and accommodations made in keeping with modern sciences and ethics. However, aggiornamento is permitted only for improvement. And there were some simplifications made to enable the purpose and message of the liturgy to be made clearer. In the end, the spirit of the original Liturgy of St John Chrysostom at its zenith and in all its splendour is fully intact in the RAL, even more powerfully and vigorously than in the imperialistic and ethnocentric Nikonian, pre-Nikonian, Greek, Antiochian, or Ruthenian recensions.

Having codified the RAL, we shall humbly defer to the lawful authorities, namely the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, Dicastery for Divine Worship, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and ultimately the Roman Pontiff himself for their wise counsel and decision. We pray for successful implementation of the RAL in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest Eastern Catholic body, to gradually replace their current Ukrainian-Rusyn recension of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, which we advise should eventually be pastorally restricted for the purpose of a more faithful adherence to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

Most importantly, the RAL is a labour of love, it is the fruit of a committee which understands that love and obedience towards the Holy Father and the Magisterium are necessary in order to truly appreciate and worship according to the Eastern patrimony. Our passion for synodality drove us to deeper study, discernment, and listening to the Spirit. As a result, we feel an intensely strong conviction to humbly assist the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in recovering its venerable traditions.

GUIDELINES

Prayers

To foster active participation and improve catechesis, no prayer is allowed to be said silently, repetitions are removed, lengthy prayers are shortened for clarity, and late accretions are deleted for purity. Prayers that require excessive explanation and context are either removed or simplified. For example, the prayer “O Heavenly King” prayer is removed for potentially insensitive language.

Any non-essential exaggerations of supernatural events in the liturgy are corrected or removed to maintain a high standard of intellectual honesty.

Orders

The minor orders obscure the priesthood of the lay faithful, instead there should be more emphasis on laypeople leading several liturgical parts. Hence this liturgy will assume that the minor orders are abolished in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which they should be.

Architecture

The holy table or altar should be free standing and always oriented versus populum, as per early Eastern Christian practice. Instead of a cube-shaped altar, a lower hemisphere would convey tenderness and care for our common home. Likewise, the iconostasis should be absent as per early Christian practice.

This altar set up for World Youth Day in Lisbon in early August of 2023 represents the best of the original and apostolic tradition. “Two spritzes and a G&T, please.”

Images

Traditional iconography is only allowed when it does not obscure the altar, become an object of worship, nor have convoluted theology. Its use should be extremely limited. Instead of venerating icons, congregants are advised to acknowledge each other as living icons of the Imago Dei.

Icons such as Rublev’s Trinity require extensive explanation and catechesis to understand, hence they should not be displayed.

Needlessly obscure.

Icons of the Theotokos tend to overemphasize her role as a mother, which may alienate people of diverse backgrounds. Instead, pastorally sensitive depictions of Mary should promote feminine strength.

Domes that have the Christ Pantocrator image often depict Jesus with toxic masculinity, instead our Lord should be depicted as a tender, loving, inclusive rabbi who embraces all.

Incense

Burning incense on a bowl is permitted, however the use of swinging thuribles, especially the Eastern Orthodox form with twelve bells, can become noisy spectacle and distract, thus all thuribles are highly discouraged.

Candles and liturgical fans

Few candles are permitted around the altar, but not on top of the altar. Over-decoration by candles should be avoided to prevent distraction.

The trikirion and dikirion are later innovations, and liturgical fans are excessive decorations; it is better to not utilise those ornate objects. Baroque decadence does not express solidarity with the poor.

Liturgical crucifix and blessings

The liturgical use of the crucifix for blessing is a later pious innovation. However, priests are consecrated to act In Persona Christi, to confect the gifts. And the use of the liturgical crucifix for blessings, however pious the intention, may obscure the Church’s true teachings about consecrated hands.

Instead, priests should bless with a relaxed right hand, with an open palm, without forced contortions of the fingers to spell out IC XC, which can foster superstition.

Rightly consigned to the museum.

Oblations

Wine and unleavened hosts are used for the RAL. While the Eastern Orthodox use leavened prosphora to symbolise the risen Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit within the Eucharist, the proskomedia service associated with its preparation is needlessly convoluted, full of nonessentials, and superstitious. Hence, we remove the proskomedia liturgy completely, and use unleavened hosts to minimise the spread of crumbs.

Pontificals

It is inappropriate for bishops to vest in sakkos and mitre, as these accretions originated as the regalia of the Eastern Roman Emperor. The epigonation originated as a thigh shield awarded to officials, thus it should also be done away with. The liturgy is not meant to be a pompous, decadent, secular court ceremony, but a simple communal meal wherein all the people of God actively participate in solidarity with the poor and those in the peripheries.

An undecorated phelonion with plain omophorion that is sewn into shape is preferred for bishops. The full ceremonial omophorion that requires it to be passed around the neck, folded in the front, and hung down past the knees in both the front and the back should not be worn, as it has become excessively decorative and time-consuming to put on, failing to convey the symbol of the Good Shepherd, who should smell of the sheep.

If there are no such omophoria available, bishops can instead wear their epitrachelion on top of their phelonion. For the hands, liturgical cuffs may restrict movement, so they should be discarded.

Attire outside of liturgy

Bishops who enter the temple vested in monastic habit must not wear the klobuk or mantiya, as these kinds of attire may indirectly foster clericalism.

All religious should be encouraged to be clean-shaven, as beards may contribute to clericalism.

The preferred habit for monks and hieromonks should be determined by the principle of the via media. In this day and age that may even manifest in wearing a modest semi-casual suit with jeans.

Fr Karl Rahner SJ, a great Western leader in the synodal path of renewal, photographed during an interview in 1974. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jesromtel, CC BY 3.0)

Music

The use of Eastern Roman, Kyivan, Galician, and Prostopinije chants for the more melismatic lines are unsuited and unpalatable to modern ears, hence inconducive to discerning, responding, and listening to the Spirit. Instead, simpler chant is preferred for active participation and intelligibility.

Furthermore, classical compositions such as those by Bortniansky, Leontovych, Stetsenko, etc., may reflect an unhealthy obsession with imitating Western European styles. And, their complex harmonies may distract, becoming more of an idolatrous spectacle.

The Cherubic Hymn (“Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim”) in a setting by the Ukrainian composter Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825). Insufficiently fostering of active participation.

Any song in the liturgy must have simple, singable melodies to encourage active participation. Musical instruments (piano, guitar, keyboard) as accompaniment should be permitted.

Gestures

Making excessive signs of the cross is potentially superstitious and vain repetition, thus we reduced its frequency in the RAL to emphasize sobriety, solemnity and foster healthy catechetical formation.

Instead of the usual Eastern sign of the cross with three fingers, a small sign on the forehead with the thumb is made as per early Christian practice, and will be rubrically indicated by a ✣ within the liturgical text. If ✣ is not indicated, then it is spiritually dangerous and possibly prideful to make the sign of the cross.

The normative way to worship in the East is always to stand up with confidence, as humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Bowing and prostrating were historically understood to have been penitential gestures, however these may appear to undermine human dignity, and may even be weaponised for performative piety by those struggling with spiritual pride. Thus, only sitting and standing are permitted throughout the liturgy. And we can express penitence through our own interior disposition.

Kissing icons, diskos, chalice and altar may spread germs, so such gestures are better avoided.

Learning to Speak the Ritual Mother-tongue of Old Europe: An Interview with Dr Miklós Földváry

Hungarian liturgical researchers have been in touch with New Liturgical Movement for nearly 20 years now. Recently, the research group behind the Usuarium database won a 5-year grant from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to move on from the processing of mediaeval missals to rituals – books that deal with the extraordinary ceremonies of the liturgical year, or have the formulas for sacraments and sacramentals, blessings, exorcisms, and various other rites. We are therefore very happy to share these excerpts from a recent interview with Dr. Miklós Földváry, the founder and principal investigator of the research group, in which he speaks about inculturation, mediaeval heritage, the Church’s ambiguous relationship with its European history, and what academic research has to offer to those who wish to implement tradition in practice. (Pictures courtesy of Usuarium Database and Domonkos Orbán-Katona © ODPictures Art Studio.)

Why is it important to study medieval liturgy today?

I would like to highlight two factors. One is the question of European identity. While we study ancient or distant cultures with great respect, we often fail to love what is ours. Of course, we preserve, restore, make catalogues: but all this only leads to forgetting, to building a cemetery of memories, if we do not find a living, personal connection with our own past.

Europe is not limited to the otherwise respectable level of prosperity, security and civilisational values we represent. It is also a symbolic reality, which means preserving, creatively carrying and being touched by a fascinating tradition.

The other is the discovery of ritual. Just think of familiar concepts like thoughtful branding of companies and products, group dynamics and identity formation in sports, the press, public life or social media, the almost mythical possibility of archetypal representation and grand narratives offered by movies and series. All of these are fragmented, uncoordinated manifestations of a deeply hidden human tendency. Compared to this, we are lagging behind when it comes to our own organic ritual heritage.

What message does a centuries-old rite convey to modern man?

Europeanness and ritual meet in the medieval liturgy of Latin Christianity. This is the ritual mother tongue of Europe, founded in late antiquity, developed in the Middle Ages, and has not completely ceased to function and influence since then.

There was nothing in pre-modern Europe that mobilized such resources, was so persistent and so comprehensive in every corner of the continent, and encompassed such a broad social spectrum. This is true even if one does not necessarily identify with either Christianity or the Latin, or Roman, tradition. We are all the heirs to this tradition.

There is no pure past or pure present. Culture is always like a performance: the creative re-experiencing of things created by others; the attribution of new meanings to objects, texts, gestures that we have received ready-made but which cannot survive without us, and indeed, with every re-enactment, we add something to them.

What are some of your more notable findings so far?

This research is so comprehensive that it is actually difficult to talk about results in the usual sense. Rather, it’s like discovering the periodic table or the taxonomy of living things.

It creates a framework against which a source, a rite or an institution can be effectively and correctly analysed and interpreted. Studies could be written from almost every query in our database, and doctoral dissertations could be written from every item in our drop-down list of categories. This is partly the case already: among my doctoral students there was one who dealt with the Codex Pray (pictured below), an influential early Hungarian Sacramentary; others chose baptism, penance, royal coronation, the liturgy or agricultural rites as their topics.

But we do not want to monopolise the opportunity, and indeed, more and more people are recognizing the usefulness of the approach and tools outside the research group. Wherever we go, the case studies that are prepared in the spirit of this concept and in the context of the knowledge we have accumulated open up new horizons in the research of the given topic.

And not to avoid the question, so far we have managed to form a complete picture of the material of the liturgy of the mass. Its main result is the survey of tendencies characteristic of regions and eras. I explained the basic outlines in the manual related to the Usuarium database, but we are currently working on a Missale synopticum that presents the overall picture in a structured and clear way: a manual-like edition of the missal that shows together the similarities and differences of 250 traditions.

The beginning of the canon in the 1506 Missal of the Order of St Paul the First Hermit (Paulines), the only Hungarian-founded religious order. (OSPPE Czestochowa, sygn. III-3, olim R. 589)

What exactly does the title of the second Momentum project, which is now underway, mean: “The culminating points of the church year and human life”?

The highlights of the church year are the special, memorable rites mainly around the feasts of Easter and Christmas. Holy Week is full of these, above all, but also Candlemas and Ash Wednesday. On the one hand, they have a specific structure: things happen and are said in a way that is characteristic of that day, and not at other times. On the other, these rites leave the closed clerical spaces, they seem to inhabit the entire church space.

They even go out into the world. They often feature blessings of objects and processions, which establish a direct connection between the clergy and the laity. These have made the great narratives of Christian salvation history tangible to the widest possible audience in European cultural memory.

The special highlights of the year are those that are not so much about the grand narrative as about medieval society’s relationship with nature and farming. In an agrarian world, every harvested crop was blessed, and every crisis or risk was neutralised with rituals. Even if many people today find such things strange, they say a lot about the perception and feeling with which the ancient European man related to the weather, the land, animals, and plants.

Of course, the relationship between Christian sacraments and sacramentals and life cycle rites is complex, but it is a fact that in the Middle Ages, when we can already count on an essentially completely Christian society, sacraments almost automatically accompanied significant changes in biological life and social situations. Even today, these are the situations in which the widest circles of society have a need for church rites.

What do the occasional rites, the objects of your current research, have to say to us? What does the way baptisms, marriages, or funerals are celebrated reveal about medieval man?

Medieval man did not create his own rites. He inherited their most basic elements from late antiquity. The framework of occasional rites is already present in the sacramentaries of the 7th century, and even in some patristic texts. So, what I said about the reliving of patterns inherited from the past was also valid for medieval man. He was not the subject, but the object of his own rites. When he was baptised, married, buried someone or was buried, he rather actively appropriated the meaning of the situation he was going through at that time.

These were moments of cultural acquisition. The words spoken, the gestures performed, integrated him and those around him into the interpretive tradition they inherited and carried forward. All changes, whether in theoretical emphases or in dramaturgy, occurred almost involuntarily, slowly, with respect for the antecedents.

Two pages of a rituale of the Use of Esztergom, the primatial see of Hungary, printed in 1490.

How can these research results be made public – for example in education, church practice or for the wider public?

As I mentioned, the research group itself is an educational institution. It is like a kind of dual training: the students start working with me and find themselves learning Latin, getting to know palaeography, coming into contact with music and ritual. Since they do not come from the same place, the Latinist gets to know the art historian, the ethnographer the theologian. The new project has not yet officially started, but a doctoral student colleague of mine is already forming a group of enthusiastic volunteers who are learning the digital processing of rituals.

Church practice is a more delicate issue: from the Church’s perspective, mainly because the uncertainty that characterises the relationship of Old Europe and its old rites is also present in the Church. Catholicism today is trying to appear globally, and therefore, as it were, consciously separate itself from the European heritage. In church discourse, to be called a Cultural Christian is practically an insult, but I believe that the cultural, that is, the formal, aesthetic side of Christianity is not something inferior.

Without this, the “essence” is just a lifeless X-ray image that is difficult to connect with. It is not very credible for the Church to encourage the Eastern communities, i.e. Byzantine, Slavic, Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, to cherish their own heritage, and even to encourage inculturation, i.e. for newly converted non-European peoples to preserve the valuable elements of their past, if the majority of Catholicism is almost ashamed of everything that ties it to Rome and Europeanness. This division and uncertainty were completely understandable in the generation after World War II, then with the dissolution of the colonial empires, and especially since peoples outside Europe have begun to make up the majority of Christianity. But every tradition is made up of layers, and just as the European tradition incorporated first the biblical and then the classical Greco-Roman layer, we can consider the medieval layer as a similar, if not necessarily final, layer.

From a secular perspective, the issue is delicate because, as educators and scholars, we must maintain a certain distance from religious institutions. Christianity still exists, the rituals we research have modern equivalents, and it is clear that most people who are interested in the Christian past are no strangers to the Christian present. Without it, we would be like the armchair anthropologists of the 19th century, who are now looked down upon. I also make no secret that as a publisher of practical books, an organiser and a singer, I have been supporting and performing the traditional Roman liturgy and – as far as the framework allows – its Hungarian, Esztergom version for about twenty years. We also have bilingual and musically notated publications for practical use, and anyone who visits St. Michael’s Church on Váci Street in Budapest can encounter the old liturgy and its medieval Hungarian singing tradition live. But I do not advertise this in a university or scientific environment. Anyone who does not do his research on me will not even know about it. I do not expect or require my colleagues or students to be committed and to what extent. Of course, there are those who start from a religious background and those who do not. This is also the case in study groups of the profession outside of Hungary. Church practice can be a catalyst, an experimental field and a beneficiary of scientific work, but it is in their mutual interest not to mix them up.

Solemn Mass at the church of St Michael in Budapest, Hungary

The Altar of St Francis Xavier in Rome

St Francis Xavier, whose feast is kept today, died on December 2, 1556, on the island of Shangchuan off the south-eastern coast of China. His body was taken to the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, and now rests in a silver casket in the Jesuit church there, the Bom Jesus Basilica. However, the main Jesuit church in Rome, which is dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, and popularly known as the “il Gesù” in Italian, (literally “the Jesus”), possesses a very notable relic of the Saint, namely, his lower right arm and hand, which are displayed on the altar dedicated to him in the church’s right transept. This is the arm with which he personally baptized somewhere around 300,000 people in the course of the years he spent as a missionary in Asia.

The chapel, which dominates the church’s right transept, was built in the 1660s according to a design by one of the most prominent artists of the Roman High Baroque period, Pietro da Cortona. The main altarpiece by Carlo Maratta depicts St Francis’ death; the darker lower part of the chapel with the colored marbles represents this world, and the brighter upper part, heaven. Within the “broken” cornice above the painting, St Francis is represented just as he leaves the world and ascends into the glory of heaven.

The stucco figure of St Francis in the cornice is oriented in such a way that it rises towards this painting of the Holy Trinity in the ceiling above it, a work by Giovanni Andrea Carlone. The interaction of the various artistic forms, painting, sculpture and architecture, in such a dramatic setting was one of the most admired and widely imitated aspects of Rome’s Baroque churches, serving as a model and inspiration for countless other works throughout the Catholic world.

To either side of the central painting, Carlone depicted some of the Saint’s missionary activity: here, he baptizes an Indian princess,

and here, he is shipwrecked during his travels.

The altar seen from the opposite transept of the church, the altar of which contains the relics of St Ignatius of Loyola.

The Feast of the Prophet Habakkuk

In the Byzantine Rite, December 1st, 2nd and 3rd are the feast days of the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk and Sophonias (Zephaniah) respectively, whose books are placed next to each other in the Bible, the 7th, 8th and 9th of the twelve minor prophets. When Cardinal Cesare Baronius revised the Roman Martyrology in the later 1560s, he added the first and last of these on their Byzantine dates. Habakkuk, however, is noted together with his fellow prophet Micheas (Micah) on January 15th, a date connected with the discovery of their relics in the time of the Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379-95; Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. 7, 29)

The Prophet Habakkuk, by Girolamo Romanino, from the Sacrament Chapel of the church of St John the Evangelist in Brescia, Italy. (1521-4.) The quotation on the banderole, the opening words of his canticle in chapter 3, follows the Old Latin text, which was translated from the Septuagint, rather than the Vulgate version of St Jerome.

Of these three, Habakkuk is by far the most prominent in the liturgy, because the canticle which forms the third chapter of his book is used in the Divine Office of all the historical Christian rites. In the Roman Rite, it is said at Lauds on Friday, one of the very ancient series of seven Old Testament canticles already mentioned in the Rule of St Benedict; the beginning of it forms the first tract of the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday. In the Ambrosian Rite, it is said from the first Sunday of October until Palm Sunday as the third of three Old Testament canticles at Matins of Sunday, and of feasts of the Lord that occur within that period. In the Byzantine Rite, it is the fourth of the nine odes of Orthros which form the basis of that hour’s longest and most complex feature, the canon. (It should be noted that in Greek his name is either “Ambakoum” or “Abbakoum”, the latter of which becomes “Avvakum” in Church Slavonic.)

Unlike most of the other prophets, major and minor, Habakkuk gives no biographical details about himself, but he can be dated to the end of the 7th century BC, or beginning of the 6th, since his book is concerned with the rise of the Neo-Babylonian (or Chaldean) Empire in that period. He also appears in the deuterocanonical addition to the book of Daniel known as the story of Bel and the Dragon, chapter 14 in the Vulgate.

Habakkuk and the Angel, by Gian Lorenso Bernini. ca. 1656-61; in the Chigi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Bede735)

The prominence of his canticle in the liturgy is due especially to the Septuagint version of part the second verse, which reads, “In the midst of two living beings (or ‘animals’) thou shalt be made known.” As I have explained on various other occasions, this was understood by the Church Father from the very earliest times as either a reference to the ox and the ass at the manger in which Christ was laid when He was born, or to Moses and Elijah appearing alongside Him at the Transfiguration, or to the two thieves crucified with Him.

However, this reading does not correspond to the Hebrew text, as St Jerome notes in his commentary on the book, and he therefore wrote in his translation, “thy work, in the midst of the years bring it to life.” Perhaps to compensate for the resulting loss of what was already in his time an old exegetical tradition, he then translated the word “yish‘i – my salvation” in verse 18 as “Jesu meo – my Jesus.” The Roman Rite, however, still uses the older version in the aforementioned tract of Good Friday, and in one of the responsories on the feast of the Circumcision.

The first tract of the Mass of the Presanctified, Domine, audivi, Hab. 3, 1-3.

The Byzantine tradition simply presumes that like all the prophets, Habakkuk foresaw the coming of the Redeemer as God in the flesh. Thus we read at Vespers of his feast, “Standing on divine watch, the venerable Habbakuk heard the ineffable mystery of Thy coming unto us (vs. 1), o Christ, and he prophesied most clearly the proclamation of Thee, foreseeing the wise Apostles as steeds roiling the sea of the many gentile nations (vs. 15).” And at Orthros, the sessional hymn after the third ode of the canon: “Thou didst stand on the divine watch, o blessed and divinely inspired one, and with prophetic eyes thou didst perceive the coming of God; wherefore also thou didst cry out with fear, o Habakkuk, ‘O Lord, I have heard of Thy dread coming, and I sing of Thee, Who didst will to bear the flesh of earth which Thou didst receive from the Virgin!”

Since his canticle is part of Orthros every day, Habakkuk is mentioned in the canons of many feasts. On Christmas, for example, the second canon speaks of him as follows: “In song did the Prophet Habbakuk of old proclaim beforehand the renewal of the mortal race, ineffably deemed worthy to see the type; for the Word came forth from the mountain (vs. 3), the Virgin, as a new Babe, for the restoration of the people.”

The prophet Habakkuk depicted in a Greek liturgical psalter of the 11th century. On the right he is shown standing and praying, with a female figure representing Babylon sitting on the ground behind him. In the upper part, the angel is carrying by the hair, as narrated in Daniel 14. (Bibliothèque national de France, supplément grec 610)

The Icon of the Transfiguration as a Symbol of Cultural Transformation

In this essay, I explore how beauty and culture led me to Catholic faith well over thirty years ago, using an icon of the Transfiguration as a metaphor. I was drawn to the Church not primarily through theological arguments, but indirectly. I was drawn to Christ by the light of Catholic culture – its art, music, and the graceful lives of believers – which served as heralds pointing toward something greater. The icon’s mandorla, with its bands that darken toward Christ at the center, illustrates my journey: initially I could perceive only the outer rings of divine light reflected in the beauty of Creation and Christian culture. Only after taking my “leap into the blinding Light” by entering the Church’s sacramental life could I encounter Christ more directly. Now, as part of His mystical body, I too contribute to the cultural beauty that draws others toward God in some small way, along with all other Catholics – revealing how Christian cultural transformation is both an effect and a cause of faith.

Mosaic of the Transfiguration in the apse of the katholikon (main church) off St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai, 6th century.

I am a convert to Catholicism. Becoming Catholic was a decision as important as any I have ever made, and one I have never regretted. I became Catholic because I believed that if I did so, I would be happier in this life and have the possibility of perfect happiness in the next. Being Catholic has more than fulfilled my hopes and expectations for this life and so increased my conviction that it will deliver in the next!

People often ask me why I made the decision. How could I know what the future would hold for me as a Catholic? How did I come to the conviction that being a Catholic was a route to happiness? For all the good reasons one might present for being Catholic to persuade me of its truth and goodness, and there were many, I could never really know whether the proposition was true until I tried it. And I can’t fully experience the life of faith until I am received into the Church. At some point, I have to decide that I am ready to put aside my doubts, take the plunge, and give it a go.

One might liken that final decision to one that is, at least partially, a leap into the unknown, or into the dark. I prefer to think of it as a leap into the Light, albeit a Light so bright and dazzling that it temporarily blinds and appears dark.

Until I was Catholic and participating in the Church’s sacramental life, that Light – the Light of the World, Jesus Christ – was too bright for me to grasp directly. But once I was part of the Church, my eyes of faith could by degrees focus more clearly on and perceive its source, and be transformed by it supernaturally.

However, before I became Catholic, there were ways I could perceive the Light, but only indirectly and dimly. I interpreted these glimmers as promises of what I might receive. Some powerful signs of the Light were the grace, love, beauty and happiness in the lives of Catholics. Another sign was the beauty of Catholic culture. A third was the beauty of Creation, which spoke to me of the One who had created it, the Creator.

Within Catholic culture, it was the art and the music in particular that drew me in. Each person is unique and will likely respond to different aspects of that culture differently, but the wonderful thing is that Catholic culture is so rich; there is something there for just about everyone.

St John the Evangelist tells us in his gospel (chapter 1, 6-8) of the emergence of St John the Baptist, also known as John the Forerunner, acting as a herald of that Light:

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that Light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the Light; he came only as a witness to the light.”

In many ways, the beauty of Catholic culture acted for me just as John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the light, did for the Jews of the 1st century AD. Like John the Forerunner, the beauty was not the Light, but it bore witness to it, powerfully and irresistibly. The beauty of Catholic works of art, music and architecture, for example, was a sign of what inspired their creation by the Christian artists, composers and architects of the past.

Those who contributed to that culture were participating in God’s governance, I now realize, by creating beautiful manifestations of the Light. Their beauty, the creation of which I now know was inspired by the Faith and by God, stimulated my desire for the source, Beauty itself. I was aware that beauty was creating in me a yearning for something more early on, but I didn’t immediately realize that it was God I was yearning for. I have heard this yearning described as a ‘wound’ of beauty because it creates in us an awareness that what we have is not enough, for, of its beauty, we are missing out on something even greater, and we yearn for whatever that might be.

Initially, I responded by seeking greater beauty, which began as a deep interest in Western culture. As I was to discover, traditional Western culture is, at root, a Christian culture, and all Christian culture is, at root, Catholic culture. All the beauty that I found was a reflection, a sign, of a whole new worldview —the Faith.

Consider now this painting of the Transfiguration, an icon of the 16th-century.

In the portrayal of this event, which took place just before His passion, we see Christ on the mountain flanked by the two prophets and with the three disciples stunned by the sight of the transfigured Christ. Their vision was a glimpse given to the disciples of His heavenly glory, which had hitherto been unseen. Jesus revealed to Peter, James, and John who He is—God and man—and what all Christians will become in Him. All of us are invited to embrace that joyful path that He has prepared for us.

This icon is also a good illustration of how a Christian culture is simultaneously the effect and a cause of Christian faith.

The nimbus that surrounds Christ in this picture is called a mandorla. It is called a mandorla because it is often depicted in an elliptical, almond shape, and mandorla is the Italian word for almond. The mandorla surrounding Christ usually shows concentric bands of shading, which get darker toward the center rather than lighter. It is painted in this way to communicate to us, pictorially, that we must pass through stages of what seems like increasing mystery to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. This encounter, which takes place most profoundly in the Mass with the Eucharist at its heart, transforms us supernaturally, so that we can now begin to grasp the glory of Christ both directly and indirectly.

This encounter with Christ present in the Eucharist in the liturgy is made possible by the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, by which we have ‘put on Christ’ as St Paul calls it in Galatians (Gal 3, 2;7). God’s actions are not in any way restricted by the sacraments, of course, but as a general rule, until we become Catholic, we are dazzled into blindness. We are blind to the transfigured Christ, so to speak, so that the mandorla prior to our being in the Church is perceived as a jet-black envelope with a heart of darkness. Only when we take that leap into the blinding Light and are received into the Church are we able to participate in the sacramental and supernatural life of the Church. As a result, we can, in a new way, see Christ directly with our eyes of faith. Only then does his person become visible to us as he was suddenly, to the three disciples.

To ‘see Christ’ in this context does not mean, for most people in this life, literally seeing with their eyes a human figure, but rather to be able to know Him deeply, as one does when one loves someone. To love Christ is to accept His love and return that love to Him. We return that love to Him most profoundly in our acts of worship in the Church, and we glorify Him by leading a life of virtue and beauty and loving Him through our interactions with our neighbors. In the next life, we will see God as the angels and saints in heaven see Him now and as the disciples saw him in glory on Mt Tabor.

Theophan the Greek, 15th century

Returning to consideration of the icon, before being fully part of the body of Christ and the Church, although we cannot see Christ we can perceive the outer rings of the mandorla. These represent the Light of Christ reflected in the cosmos, in Christian culture, and art, and in the loving and graceful lives of good Christians. This is what I was seeing in the beauty of the world and culture before I became Catholic. It is the beauty and grace of the effects of the Christian life in a beautiful Christian culture, and in the work of God in Creation, that tell us there is always more to know and love. If we allow this message to touch our hearts, we yearn for the source of all beauty, grace, and love, who is God and who is portrayed at the heart of this image.

Beauty is, in this sense, a perceptible sign of the source of all good things, Almighty God. It calls us to itself and then beyond to Him who inspired it, who is Beauty itself. Creation is beautiful because it bears the thumbprint of the Creator, and the culture or any aspect of it, whether mundane or sacred, high or simple art or even everyday Christian activity, any of this is beautiful – graceful – if God inspires it. The rings of the mandorla represent the Light reflected in the beauty of the world, of Christian culture, and in the lives of Christians.

The Christian life well lived is one in which potentially every action contributes to the increasing brightness of those outer rings of the mandorla, and which in turn draw people, just like me, into the Church. We contribute to the intensification of that brightness by creating beautiful things and living graceful lives as best we can.

As Christians, we are part of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Each of us, therefore, is mystically a pixel of supernatural light in the person of Christ depicted in the heart of darkness in the mandorla! To the degree that we lead the life of a good Christian, we become part of the source of Light as much as the reflections in the cultural Light. This is the paradox of Christianity. Both the artefacts we create and the lives we lead that enable us to create them, participate deeply in the beauty of the Light. The Christian painter is called to create beautiful art and to lead a virtuous life. But it is also true that every Christian, through just about every human activity, can create beauty if he cares to, which gives glory to God and joy to our fellow man.

The icon of the Transfiguration speaks of the whole mission of the Christian life. It reminds us that if we want to transform the culture, our lives must begin and end with Christ himself. He is both the end and the means by which we attain that end. By keeping our sights firmly on Him, we become icons of Christ and draw people to Him through our lives of grace and virtue, participating in God’s governance. We are part of the mystical body of Christ, and we contribute to the creation of the concentric rings of the mandorla that draw others to Him also.

Aidan Hart, England, 21st century

The Orthoflex Patriarch of Alexandria

I am sure that many of our readers have seen this photo or others like it, which show the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Theodore II incensing Pope Leo XIV. (Purely by coincidence, the current Coptic Pope is called Tawadros, which is Coptic for Theodore, and is also the second of his name.) This was taken during a liturgy celebrated yesterday in the church of St George in the Phanar, the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, during the Holy Father’s Apostolic visit to the New Rome, as part of the 17th centenary celebrations of the First Council of Nicaea. And yesterday was the feast of the Apostle St Andrew, who is honored as the founder of the see of Byzantium.

Note that His Beatitude is wearing a triple tiara almost identical to that which was traditionally worn by the Roman Popes, until it was cast off by Paul VI in one of those very modern and counter-productive gestures of which he was so inexplicably fond. A lot of memes have already come out of this, of which my favorite has the Pope saying, “Wait, was I supposed to bring mine too?”

Of course, I am not seriously suggesting that the Patriarch was deliberately flexing on the Pope by wearing his triregnum; it is just a normal part of his regalia, and has been for centuries. But at the same time, I cannot help but think of Pope St John Paul II’s oft-repeated words that “the Church must breathe with her two lungs”, i.e. the Eastern and Western churches, because one of the things the Roman Catholic Church desperately needs to relearn from the East is not to be ashamed of its own patrimony and traditions, but to embrace and cherish them once again. Εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη, Δέσποται!

The complete liturgy can be watched via the YouTube channel of Vatican Media.

The Feast of St Eligius

Most of the dioceses of France have traditionally kept today as the feast of St Eligius (“Éloi” in French), who was born near Limoges in about 590, and died on this day in 660 after serving as bishop of Noyon for 19 years. In youth, he was trained as a goldsmith, and has long been honored as the heavenly Patron of that art; his biography attributes to him reliquaries of several prominent French Saints, including Martin of Tours, and Denys and Genevieve of Paris. Under the Merovingian King Dagobert I (629-39), and his son Clovis II (639-57), he served as the royal treasurer, and several coins with his name on them are still extant. When he was elected bishop of Noyon in 641, the majority of the inhabitants in the regions to the north of that city, which are now the southern part of Flanders, were still pagan; it was in no small measure his preaching, and the example of his great charity to the poor and sick, that helped to convert them to Christianity. He was also the founder of several monasteries, including an enormous convent at Paris which housed 300 nuns.

A reliquary bust of St Eligius, in the church of the goldsmiths’ guild in Rome. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by JTSH26, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The church itself was commissioned from the painter Raphael in 1509, but only completed in 1575, 55 years after his death, by Baldassare Peruzzi and Aristotele da Sangallo. Because of its proximity to the Tiber, it was frequently damaged by the river’s winter flooding, and frequently restored. It is now almost never open, one of the many Roman churches that fall under the nickname “Santa Maria Sempre Chiusa - St Mary’s Always Closed.” (Image from Wikimedia Commons by JTSH26, CC BY-SA 4.0)

A reliquary of the Saint in the cathedral of the Holy Savior in Bruges, one of his many relics venerated in various parts of northern France and Belgium. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The National Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona has the doors of a particularly nice altarpiece dedicated to St Eligius, formerly in the chapel of the silversmiths’ guild in the church of Our Lady of Mercy in that city. This was painted by a Portuguese artist named Pere Nunyes, whose work is documented in various parts of Catalonia and Aragon between 1513 and 1557. The outside of the doors are decorated with very colorful images of episodes from the Saint’s life. (Detailed explanations given below.)

(Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Many Renaissance altarpieces with closeable doors had the Annunciation painted in muted colors, or in grisaille, as we see here, on the outside. During Passiontide, or indeed all of Lent, the doors were kept closed, to be opened again at the Easter vigil, just as the statues were unveiled. However, the liturgical austerity of Lent would be to some degree mitigated for the feast of the Annunciation, which falls within it in most years.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The First Sunday of Advent 2025

Introitus Ad te levávi ánimam meam: Deus meus, in te confído, non erubescam: neque irrídeant me inimíci mei: étenim universi, qui te exspectant, non confundentur. V. Vias tuas, Dómine, demonstra mihi: et sémitas tuas édoce me. Gloria Patri. Sicut erat. Ad te levávi.

Introit To Thee have I lifted up my soul: in Thee, o my God, do I trust, let me not be put to shame; nor let my enemies mock me, for all they that await Thee shall not be confounded. V. Show me Thy ways, o Lord and teach me Thy paths. Glory be to the Father... As it was in the beginning... To Thee have I lifted up my soul...

At the Mass (of the First Sunday of Advent), the Introit is Ad te levavi, because through the coming of the Lord into the flesh, hope is most greatly lifted up, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3, 16), and again “He did not spare His own Son” (Romans 8, 32), etc. And note that if some are roused, others nevertheless languish in sleep; therefore the cantor, beginning with “To Thee have I lifted up my soul”, by raising up his voice goes from the lower (note) to the higher, which is typical of one rousing others up. And this is noted also in the Epistle (Rom. 13, 11-14), where it says, “Now is the hour to rise from sleep.” There follows the verse, “Show me Thy ways, o Lord,” because Christ when He comes shows us His ways, whence Isaiah says (2, 2 and 3), “The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be (prepared) etc. Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways.” And the Epistle... shows what those ways are: “Knowing that the hour is nigh for us to rise from sleep.” For in the part where it says, “The night hath passed, and the day approacheth,” the effect (of the Incarnation) is indicated, since day came about when the Sun was born; and therefore it follows, “As in the day, let us walk honestly”, that is, in all good works, “and put ye on the Lord, Jesus Christ”, that we may thus be sons of God, because it was for the sake of this that the Son of God became man, that man might become a son of God. (William Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 6.3.15)

Music for the First Vespers of Advent

In nearly all medieval Uses of the Roman Divine Office, one of the responsories of Matins was sung between the chapter and hymn at first Vespers of major feasts, and on the Saturday before the major Sundays. On the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, the most common choice for this was the third responsory of Roman Matins, Missus est Gabriel Angelus, which is also sung daily in Advent Little Office of the Virgin, and on the feast of the Annunciation.

℟. Missus est Gabriel Angelus ad Maríam Vírginem desponsátam Joseph, nuntians ei verbum, et expavescit Virgo de lúmine: ne tímeas, María, invenisti gratiam apud Dóminum: * Ecce concipies et paries, et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius. ℣. Dabit ei Dóminus Deus sedem David, patris ejus, et regnábit in domo Jacob in aeternum. Ecce concipies. Glória Patri. Ecce concipies.

℟. The Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, a Virgin espoused to Joseph, announcing to Her the word, and the Virgin feared for the light. Fear not, Mary, thou hast found grace with the Lord. * Behold, thou shalt conceive and bear (a son), and He shall be called the Son of the Most High. ℣. The Lord God shall give Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. Behold... Glory be... Behold...

A very splendid polyphonic setting (for use as a motet) attributed to Josquin des Prez. (The video names Petrus Alamire, a Bavarian composer who produced the manuscript on which this recording is based.)

The Vesper hymn hymn for Advent Conditor alme siderum, in the original version. (The original Latin text, the revised version of Urban VIII, and an English translation are all available on Wikipedia.)

Palestrina’s polyphonic version.

The complete ceremony sung a few hours ago by our good friends of the Schola Sainte-Cecile in Paris; the Magnificat antiphon Ecce nomen Domini begins at 21:25.

Aña Ecce nomen Dómini venit de longinquo, et cláritas ejus replet orbem terrárum. (Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from far, and the glory thereof filleth the world.)

From Vespers of this evening until the second Vespers of the Purification, the major antiphon of the Virgin at the end of the hours is the Alma Redemptoris Mater.

The very nice polyphonic setting by the Franco-Flemish composer Joannes Ockeghem (1410 ca. - 1497).

The Strangest Thing You Will Ever Learn about the Byzantine Rite

When I was preparing my recent article about the Little Vespers of the Byzantine Office, I had a chat with one of the wise men I consult about such things, and we got to talking about the length of the service known as All-night Vigil. As previously noted, the term “all” in “All-night” is something of a rhetorical exaggeration, but in large monasteries such as the great houses on Mt Athos, not by much, and this was his description of the order of services for a patronal feast which he attended at one of them.

The katholikon (main church) of the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos, at the beginning of the All-night vigil of the Nativity of the Virgin this year.

“Ninth Hour, Small Vespers, dinner in the refectory with solemn procession from the church and then back afterwards.

Break for confessions

Beginning of All-Night Vigil proper

– Vespers with Artoklasia (4 hours; the troparia at the artoklasia took 30 minutes with the terirems, Psalm 103 took 1.5 hours)

Reading of the Saint’s Life (around midnight)

Orthros

After the Kontakion of the Sixth Ode they passed to a full Akathistos (I went to sleep at that point) (Presumably) First, Third, and Sixth Hours, Divine Liturgy

Then procession with water blessing.

Lunch”

Me: “Terirems?” (This word struck me not only because I had never heard it before, but also because it doesn’t sound Greek at all.)

The wise man explained to me that terirems are nonsense syllables added to the liturgy, which were originally spontaneous expressions of joy added to the texts when sung. Over time, they came to be completely scripted, and it is considered part of Byzantine musical formation to study the codified ones. Not at all surprisingly, theological pseudo-explanations have been created to explain them, e.g., that they are words that the angels sing in heaven, or of a lullaby which the Virgin Mary sang to Christ. There is very little information about them available on the internet, but some of the very few references I was able to find say that they were also used to cover the gaps in the music if the clergy hadn’t finished what they were doing. (The syllables te-, ri-, -rem are not the names of notes, by the way.)

Here are a few of examples. You can find more on YouTube by searching in various languages; in Greek, the word is τεριρεμ, in Slavonic and its derivatives, терирем. 

A Very Useful New Piece of Liturgical Scholarship from Sharon Kabel

One of our most frequently seen and linked posts in NLM’s history is a guest article shared with us by archival researcher extraordinaire Sharon Kabel in 2020, about the mythical indult which supposedly granted a general dispensation from the traditional rule of abstinence from meat, in the United States, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, (i.e. today). Mrs Kabel has recently completely another very interesting project on the history of the wedding Mass, which she was able to do via the incredibly useful Usuarium database, a vast, searchable repository of medieval liturgical books. Surprisingly, it turns out that the wedding Mass in the Missal of St Pius V (known from its Introit as Deus Israel) is actually a new creation which did not previously exist. Sharon’s research reveals that there was a variety of different wedding Masses, and the most common was simply a votive Mass of the Holy Trinity.

The wedding Mass, with the Gregorian propers from the votive Mass of the Most Holy Trinity, in a Missal according to the Use of Arrhas in France, printed in 1508. BNF Paris, B-27899

Her project examines all the different parts of the wedding Mass (Gregorian propers, including the sequences, Scriptural readings etc.) and tabulates which ones were used most commonly in which regions, organized into charts which show the frequency of their use, and maps out the geographical regions where each was most common. You can the whole thing on her website:
https://sharonkabel.com/survey_wedding_masses_983-1617/

or download it as a pdf:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jO65PJmCM1BUKTUCIhTqfXjLxb_EibuE/view

This project is not just a worthy and interesting piece of research in its own right, but a model for similar projects to explore other aspects of our liturgical patrimony. We congratulate Mrs Kabel on her excellent and diligent work - feliciter! 

An Introduction to the Canticle of the Creatures

Lost in Translation #149

The year of Our Lord 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures (also known as the Canticle of Brother Sun), and to honor this momentous occasion we will devote the next several issues to it.

The Canticle was a groundbreaking achievement. Written in the Umbrian dialect, it is believed to be the first work of literature by a known author in the Italian language. The Canticle inspired Franz Liszt (1811–1886) to compose several pieces entitled “Cantico del sol di Francesco d'Assisi” for solo piano, organ, and orchestra. And William Henry Draper’s English hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King,” is a paraphrase of the Canticle. The Canticle beautifully encapsulates Saint Francis’ profound spiritual worldview and has an admirable poetic style.

The Canticle of the Creatures consists of thirteen stanzas. After addressing the Lord, Saint Francis mentions Brother Sun, Sister Moon and the Stars, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth, and Sister Bodily Death. The Canticle concludes with a warning about dying in mortal sin and a call to serve God in great humility.

The tone of the Canticle is overwhelmingly joyful, which is ironic given the circumstances in which it was written. In 1225, Saint Francis returned to the church of San Damiano, a place close to his heart. It was here that he received the calling from God to repair His Church, and it was here that he foresaw the establishment of the Order of Poor Clares, who now had custody of the church. But Francis was not in good condition. His body was racked with pain because of the austerities he inflicted on himself and because of the stigmata he had received on Mount Verna a few months earlier on September 13, 1224. The Poor Clares had built for him “a little cell made of mats,” but the cell was infested with mice and the weather was dreary, making it difficult for him to sleep. To top it all off, Francis was going blind from trachoma, which he may have contracted when he visited Egypt to convert the Muslims.

One night, as he was reflecting on all his ills, he received an assurance from God of “the promise of His kingdom.” Relieved, the next morning Francis told his spiritual brothers how grateful he was for this consolation, and that he should rejoice in all his troubles. He resolved to write a “new praise of the Lord for His creatures” with a threefold purpose: to praise God, to console ourselves, and to edify our neighbor. After meditating for a while, Saint Francis then dictated most of the Canticle. He added more stanzas later, including the stanza about Sister Bodily Death as he lay dying in October 1226.

It may seem strange that a canticle of joy should be the product of pain and misery, but as St. Augustine observes, man has an inbuilt desire to praise God, and that doing so brings him joy. Such is the case even in the darkest of times, which affords a heightened opportunity to let go of oneself fully and to let in God. A French Franciscan priest named Eloï Leclerc wrote a beautiful book entitled the Canticle of Brother Sun, which he concludes by stating that the hymn first came to life for him in a crowded freight train headed for the Dachau death camp, when a fellow friar who was dying of hunger and exhaustion sang it.

This article appeared as “Praised Be You” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:2, international edition (February 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.