“Prayers for the Octave of the Dead”, by John Ryan Debíl

One several occasions, we have shared pictures by Mr John Ryan Debil, who does very impressive work in decorating the little chapel where he prays the Divine Office, as you can see on his Facebook page The Home Oratory, also on Instagram. He has recently put together a collection of prayers for the dead which he has composed; it can be ordered through Amazon at this link. We are very glad to share this presentation of the book with our readers; below you can see some examples of his oratory as he decorated it last year for the triduum of All Saints and All Souls.

In recent decades, many of the Church’s time-honoured devotions surrounding death, judgment, and the faithful departed have faded from daily life, even though November remains the month of the Holy Souls. In an age that has forgotten the Christian remembrance of death – the sober knowledge of judgment and the need for purification before entering Heaven – Prayers for the Octave of the Dead by John Ryan Debíl seeks to invite the faithful to recover an authentically Catholic vision of eternity, one that unites hope with repentance and mercy with truth.

Carrying the imprimatur of the Rt. Rev. Philip A. Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth, this devotional is designed especially for the laity, offering a structure of daily readings, meditations, and prayers. It opens with an introduction and a concise exposition on the Church’s teaching about Purgatory, grounding the practice of praying for the dead in its true doctrinal context. Drawing on Scripture, the prayers are written in a spirit of traditional devotion and reflections on the Four Last Things, contrasting the complacency of the present age with the purifying realism of those in Purgatory, who long for the vision of God. The mystery of death and judgment urge the faithful to resist the modern presumption that Heaven is assured, and renew the ancient charity of praying for the dead.

The book is enhanced with photographs taken by the author at Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini (FSSP) in Rome during the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed in November 2023, with permission of the parish priest, Fr Brice Meissonnier. Printed in a glossy, pocket-sized paperback format, Prayers for the Octave of the Dead is designed for both beauty and practicality. Inside, bold text marks the portions to be read by the leader, making it ideal for use in groups or parish devotions. The booklet includes clear preliminary instructions and several supplementary prayers. Compact and durable, it is easily carried to church, cemetery, or home oratory – an accessible companion for the faithful who wish to pray for the Holy Souls throughout November.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Christ the King Celebration in Bridgeport, Connecticut

The Oratory of Ss Cyril and Methodius, the ICRSP’s Apostolate in Bridgeport, Connecticut, will celebrate a high Mass for the feast of Christ the King tomorrow with Hassler’s “Missa Ecce quam bonum,” accompanied by brass quintet. The Mass begins at 10:15 am; at 6 pm there will be solemn five-coped Choral Vespers. The church is located at 79 Church St. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the promulgation of the feast by Pope Pius XI, with his encyclical Quas Primas, issued on December 11, 1925.

Sadness in the Diocese of Knoxville

Great sadness has descended upon the parishes in the Knoxville diocese where the Latin Mass has been celebrated for the past several years. At the end of this year, the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be banned in the diocese altogether, with the Chattanooga parish changing over at the end of the liturgical year.

During Pope St. John Paul II’s reign, the possibility for the Catholic faithful to experience the liturgy of our forefathers once again became possible in certain places due to the possibility of an indult. This was how I first experienced a traditional (1962 Missal) Latin Mass at the age of 48. No doubt, I attended the Mass in that form when I was a young child, but I had no memory of any Mass except for the Novus Ordo until that time.

During my lifetime, I experienced in many locations the many varied ways the Mass is celebrated since Vatican II. I can say quite sincerely that none of them approached transcendence. Marked by the culture of the priest’s personality (which is hard to avoid with the versus populum liturgies - a Paul VI invention that is not prescribed in the GIRM), really poor music (many times performed by musicians who don’t read music), the faithful Catholics have suffered an insipid and uninspiring Mass all that time.

We could, perhaps, blame the poor music for these experiences in large part. Most parishes even today have only volunteer musicians, bringing their guitars, synthesizers, and other instruments, even such things as tambourines, rain sticks and drums finding a welcome at Novus Ordo liturgies. The skill level of the musicians varies wildly from one parish to another, but generally depends on the generosity of volunteers, since most pastors seem to think that musicians don’t deserve any remuneration for the vast amount of time required to plan, practice and sing for liturgies. Unlike parish secretaries or janitors, musicians are somehow considered greedy if they expect payment for their work.

But it is more than just the poor music that is responsible. The entire liturgy seems to have been designed to be inoffensive to Protestants in its language and the various inventions that were added (Prayers of the Faithful, Sign of Peace, various options to suit every personal taste in the various Eucharistic prayers).

Along with the addition of a second reading at Sunday Masses and a 3-year cycle of readings, the implementation of the new form of the Mass seemed to open the doors to all sorts of incorrect information provided to the faithful after the Vatican II documents were implemented. Somehow, the idea that Latin and Gregorian chant were no longer allowed came into general belief, despite the documents themselves saying quite the opposite. In the recent years, and particularly under Pope Francis’ reign, the traditional norm of ad orientem (the priest facing the altar) liturgy began to be disallowed by bishops around the US, despite that being the norm according to the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM).

The shoddy translation from the Latin that was implemented with the English vernacular liturgy included things that were not even close to the original Latin. For example: “The Lord be with you” answered by “And also with you” is completely inexplicable when the correct translation “And with your spirit” is so simple. Not until the new translation in 2010 was implemented were many of these clear errors corrected. Another obvious example is the completely fabricated English Memorial Acclamation (happily dropped with the newest translation) of “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” There is nothing even close to that in the Latin version. It was completely made up. That lack of beauty in the text of the prayers and in the readings is also striking.

When Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum was announced in 2007, the same summer I first attended an indult TLM in Washington, DC, I truly had no understanding of the differences between the Novus Ordo and the Traditional Latin Mass. It seemed obvious to me that it was far more beautiful and lovely than any Novus Ordo liturgy I had experienced, but at first I thought it was just the care in the music that was at the heart of it. I thought, incorrectly, that the Novus Ordo liturgy could also be as beautiful if the music were done as intended.

Over the next 15+ years of my life, I worked toward that end. I attended Colloquia planned by the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) every year, where we tried to make every liturgy lovely in all forms, English, Spanish, Latin Novus Ordo, and Traditional Latin Mass. It became clear that the very form of the Novus Ordo is incompatible with many of the traditional polyphonic Mass ordinaries. The traditional Latin Mass has the action on the altar continuing in parallel with the music sung by the choir, with the prayers offered on the altar by the priest happening concurrently with the singing of propers and ordinary. It is a perfect union of both integral parts of the liturgy.

When you try to use the same music at a Novus Ordo Mass, because of the way the rubrics are designed, it does not work as well. You’ll find the priest waiting around for the choir to finish singing before the next part of the liturgy can proceed, something that is not a problem in the TLM. Because of that, many priests do not want the choir to sing all the prescribed propers or the full chanted ordinary. It often makes the Mass much longer than it should be because all the various things must happen in sequence – not in parallel.

One thing that is particularly striking when attending a TLM such as the one at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Chattanooga is the discipline, diligence and beauty of the work of the altar servers for the TLM. It is not unusual to have 18-20 altar servers at the Sunday Mass, with various tasks assigned to each in turn. Several of these young men have learned all the various jobs and take turns acting as Master of Ceremony (MC). The movement of the altar servers is carefully planned and executed with a sort of military precision that is beautiful to behold, with the older boys patiently teaching the younger ones. In the TLM, the altar servers not only carry candles, assist with incensation, and assist the priest at Mass. They also learn the Latin responses for the liturgy and make those responses on behalf of the faithful in the pews. There is nothing similar required of altar servers for the Novus Ordo Mass. The rubrics don’t allow for most of the altar server work currently done for the TLM. The sadness of this loss to those boys and young men is palpable, beyond the loss to the faithful who have watched and appreciated their work each week.

When the vernacular liturgy was implemented after the 2nd Vatican Council, there was no suitable vernacular substitute for the Gregorian chants that had been used in the TLM. And how could there have been? The glorious treasure of music built up over a thousand years cannot be replaced with suitable music in a few years’ time. In fact, the Church did not publish any books telling musicians what should be sung for those liturgies for years after the implementation of the vernacular Mass. So… left to their own devices, most parishes jettisoned the lovely Gregorian chant and polyphonic tradition in favor of such lovely pieces as Kumbayah, They’ll Know We are Christians, Morning Has Broken, etc. The idea that the Latin pieces were no longer allowed was common at parishes during that time, so many parishes thought they had no choice. Many places also started using Protestant hymns for the liturgy since at least they were in the apparently preferred language, despite the fact that hymns were not a part of Catholic liturgical tradition for the Mass. Hymns were typically reserved for the Divine Office or devotions outside the Mass.

Most Catholics are completely unaware of this and think that hymns are appropriate and even preferred for the Mass. They have not been taught that the Proper texts are actually prescribed for each Mass and that substituting hymns is the least desirable option. I’ve sometimes tried to describe this to people as equivalent to someone arbitrarily deciding that they don’t want the reading of the day and using some other Bible text of their own choosing. Somehow this knowledge is lacking among many faithful Catholics. The main difference in this analogy is that this substitution for the proper texts for music is actually allowed in the Novus Ordo, as the fourth option - alius cantus aptus (another appropriate song). I daresay many of the choices are not appropriate and that removing this option could greatly reduce the banality of the music that is so often experienced.

In the past 20 years or so, various lay people and a few priests have created Proper settings in the vernacular to try to alleviate the lack of suitable music for the Mass. I have personally worked to create Mass Proper settings in Spanish based on the Gregorian chants for the three-year cycle to try to offer something beyond the simple hymns and poor options we find in such books as Flor y Canto. These settings are made available for anyone to use at no cost.

But this was not at the behest of the Church leadership, but rather individual work taken on by people who saw a need and had the desire to somehow make the Novus Ordo liturgies beautiful. And, in order to not have to negotiate with the Church hierarchy over copyrights and royalties, we must keep the settings 100% free of charge, despite the fact that the texts that are used are those required to be used for the liturgies and the translation to produce those texts was ultimately already paid for by the faithful.

With the last translation of the Missals in English and in Spanish, chanted Mass ordinary settings were included to allow at least some dignity in the liturgies. The work done by ICEL and the USCCB (for the Spanish Misal) was long overdue and a definite improvement, even if 30 years too late.

Can you imagine the joy a person like me has felt when we were at long last able to attend a TLM regularly? Since moving to the Chattanooga area nearly two years ago, this has been the first time in my life I have had the opportunity. For these two years, my family has enjoyed this great gift and tried our best to contribute to the parish, through my participation in the parish choir, through our financial support, and, most recently as sponsors for candidates in OCIA. My husband has volunteered to assist in the Vocations Ministry, hoping that we can follow the diocesan program to build vocations among the young men to become future priests.

At other places over the years, I have served as a choir director, while my husband worked in the prison ministry and we both helped in other small ways at each location. We have tried to lend our time and treasure to the Church as much as we could. Our sons were altar servers and/or lectors at various parishes we attended. We had no option other than the Novus Ordo and we made the best of it.

As I sat in the choir loft listening to our pastor’s homily when he gave the news of the end of the TLM in our parish and in the diocese, tears came to my eyes. The message was a very hard one to hear, especially when the message of submission and obedience seemed so harsh. It was a warning against disobedience and schism rather than a message of shared suffering. Knowing Fr. Carter, I cannot believe that was what he intended. One thing I can say is that the Novus Ordo Latin liturgy that replaces the TLM in our parish will be as beautiful as it can be under his leadership.

None of this means that I do not accept the authority of the Church or that I want to leave communion with the Pope. Nor do I dispute the validity of Communion and the other sacraments in the Novus Ordo. When we cannot attend a TLM due to travel or other commitments, we always attend an alternate Novus Ordo Mass. I simply now understand the pain and confusion that must have been experienced by older generations when, after Vatican II, the long-held, familiar and lovely liturgy they had known their entire lives was banned. For 40 years or so they had no chance of attending Mass in the form they had grown up with and loved. They had no chance to explain the differences to their children or grandchildren.

And the bishops and cardinals who participated in the changes made during Vatican II must surely have had good reasons for making some reforms. I don’t deny that many of those bishops must have had good intentions, despite a few bad characters such as Bugnini, who seems to have had an outsized role in developing the Mass of Paul VI. They may have thought getting input about the liturgy from Protestants as they did might make it more attractive to potential converts. However, I think many, if not most, of the bishops who participated in the 2nd Vatican council must have felt completely blindsided by the liturgy that came after the completion of the council meetings. I don’t think this was what they intended at all.

After the Novus Ordo was introduced, post Vatican II, many people were very happy to have a more relaxed and informal liturgy in the vernacular. Some relished the chance to become church rock singers on Sunday, kicking off the shackles of the strict musical requirements of the TLM. You’ll find these are the people seen at the sparsely-attended Novus Ordo parishes that are on the verge of shutting down due to lack of interest. They are typically also the biggest complainers if any music is sung in Latin. When you visit a typical English Novus Ordo parish anywhere in the country, you’ll often find that most of the pews are uncrowded and the age demographics tilt heavily toward these people - the baby boomer generation (of which I am one). In many places the younger generations are simply absent or nearly so. The main exception to this in the past few years would be at the growing number of Spanish liturgies you’ll see in every city in the country. This group tends to be a younger demographic. This is due to the fact that we have had a huge influx of Spanish-speaking Catholics who have brought their guitars and mariachi-style music to many places. Let’s face it: however much any of us appreciate mariachi music, we have to agree that it is not Sacred Music and does not encourage contemplation or prayer.

A side note: If we want to speak of lack of unity, I dare you to see how much crossover there is at a typical Novus Ordo parish with a Spanish-speaking community and an English-speaking community. Ne’er the twain shall meet. It is a constant problem due to the lack of a common language. Some parishes are forced to have separate parish council meetings, separate Knights of Columbus meetings, etc. At the parish we previously attended before moving near to Chattanooga, the confirmation classes were only offered in Spanish, so the daughter of one of our friends did not receive that sacrament when she was in high school. No provision was made for English-speaking children at the parish.

The mish-mash of Spanish and English that must be used during the Triduum and Holy Days of Obligation is often a terrible thing. At least some portion of the attending faithful are always alternatively annoyed when their language is not the one being used and when the musical styles are so different as to be completely jarring, switching back and forth between Spanish and English. Wouldn’t a unified Latin be a huge improvement? But I digress.

At this point, most people in the world have never experienced a Traditional Latin Mass and think those who are attached to that liturgy are crazy “trads” if they are aware of them at all. Many are completely unaware and disinterested in the controversy. Some are quick to criticize TLM attendees as if we are denying the validity of the 2nd Vatican Council and the Novus Ordo liturgy. Speaking for myself, that is certainly not the case.

But, beauty is beauty. Truth is truth. After Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, more and more priests, and in particular, the younger priests, began to learn how to offer the Mass in the old form. Little pockets of people began to ask for it and work to get it in their parishes around the country and around the world. They spent hours learning the correct way to do it, training young men and boys to serve at the altar, the choir working to learn to read the Gregorian chant notation and to sing it. While still a very small minority in total numbers, the people attending the traditional Latin Mass were sharing information about where they occurred and were often driving hours each week to attend them where they were offered.

This form of the liturgy is marked by the high percentage of young families with lots of children, large numbers of altar servers, many women who wear head-coverings and homeschool their children and have very regular Mass attendance. This is the group of Catholics most likely to believe in the True Presence in the Holy Eucharist, follow the Church teachings on birth control and abortion and receive the sacraments regularly. This group of people have been so appreciative of the availability of the Mass to them that they were generous financial supporters of the parishes and source of many new vocations.

This isn’t nostalgia. This form of the liturgy was never offered to these young parents when they were growing up. But, having experienced it, they could see the beauty of it and wanted it to continue. They were willing to sacrifice to make it available.

Until Pope Francis put forth the motu proprio Traditiones Custodes (TC), which was essentially a complete reversal of Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum after only 14 years, the two forms of the Mass were, for the most part, happily coexisting in the Church. Those who preferred the guitar Mass could have it pretty much anywhere; those who wanted the TLM (if they were willing to drive a bit) could sometimes have that. Many people moved to locations where it was offered specifically with that in mind. This issue had no small impact on our family’s decision to move to the Chattanooga area.

If there is essentially no difference between the TLM and a Latin Novus Ordo, I have to wonder why the Latin Novus Ordo virtually disappeared once the TLM was allowed again. Could it be that the vast superiority of the form and the beauty was unmistakable?

Why it was determined that this form of the liturgy should be again stamped out is a complete mystery to me. And for Pope Francis to issue that motu proprio while Pope Benedict was still living was a rather shocking thing. Knowing he had no love for the traditional sentiments among the faithful, it was not unexpected that he would move to suppress it to some degree, but many (perhaps most) of us thought he would have the courtesy to wait until after Pope Benedict died.

And why did Pope Benedict choose to freely allow all ordained priests to learn to celebrate the “extraordinary form” of the liturgy without the permission of their bishops and to offer it wherever and whenever they wished? What about the argument about the Lefebvre followers and the SSPX and their disobedience? Would allowing the TLM cause faithful Catholics to join the SSPX somehow or to deny the validity of the Novus Ordo? I believe the reason Pope Benedict offered the option was because of the abuses that are so common in the Novus Ordo liturgies - everything from the “Clown Mass” to allowing lay people to preach homilies, to improper use of home-baked bread for Holy Communion (not the correct unleavened bread that is prescribed), the use of improper vessels in the Mass, priests using water pistols to spray Holy Water and so on. I think his hope was that the TLM would inspire and inform the Novus Ordo so that those liturgies could be uplifted in the “Reform of the Reform”.

The people who have grown to love the TLM are good and faithful Catholics. Taking this form of the Mass away is simply cruel. I understand that the TC restrictions on training other priests to offer the TLM has placed an unreasonable burden on those who are celebrating it currently. This, again, is completely unnecessary. If I understand correctly, the restrictions of TC also make it difficult for the records kept by parishes regarding baptism, confirmation, marriage, etc., since only non-parishes are allowed to offer the TLM. This seems to have been part of the rationale for deciding not to declare any shrines or chapels for the TLM in the diocese, although perhaps I misunderstood. All of this seems to just be a way of suppressing the TLM for no good reason.

The most recent letter from the bishop of Knoxville displays either a complete lack of understanding of the differences between the two forms of the Mass or a breathtakingly condescending attitude toward those faithful who are attached to the TLM. To think that simply allowing ad orientem Latin Novus Ordo liturgies is an indistinguishable substitute for the TLM is simply ignorant. Since this is the assumed norm in the Novus Ordo liturgy according to the GIRM, the idea that it would have to be “allowed” seems disingenuous.

Every year since 2007, I have attended conferences where we have endeavored to make the Novus Ordo liturgy as beautiful and transcendent as the TLM through the use of Sacred Music, careful adherence to the rubrics on the altar, lovely vestments, etc.

It never quite makes it.

Certainly, using the traditional chants and following the actual rubrics are a huge improvement on the typical parish Novus Ordo liturgy, but it is clearly not an equal substitute.

In the Knoxville diocese, as was the case in Charlotte, the new bishop seems to have taken the harshest tack possible on implementing TC, without offering a good justification. Even though the allowance for shrines and chapels to offer the TLM could have been allowed, no provision for that has been made. While dioceses more friendly to the TLM have planned for this, creating new shrines and chapels and making at least some provision for a transition, in our diocese, there will be no TLM available at all after the end of the Church year in Chattanooga and the end of the calendar year in Knoxville and Johnson City. Those of us who have been watching to see what would happen locally after Francis’ motu proprio (TC) were fearing it would be more difficult to get to a TLM, if not every week, then at least fairly frequently. We never dreamed it would be this bad.

We, the faithful, strongly suspect our new bishop didn’t really try to get any more extensions from Rome on the allowance of the TLM for a longer period in order to make new provisions. Since no realistic plan for its continuance was made, of course there is no logical place to move the liturgy in place of the current parishes. It is as if the bishop simply let the clock run out and then said there is no solution that allows the continuance of the TLM. I understand the difficulty for the priests who have been offering the TLM up to this point. It seems the bishop is fully in agreement with the late Pope Francis that the TLM has no place in the modern Church and the TLM-attending faithful must choose to either obey or become schismatics outside the Church.

But because those who attend a TLM are such a small minority, it probably seems relatively low-risk to the diocese as a whole. Perhaps the difficulty in dealing with some of the “trads” who have misconceptions about the validity of Novus Ordo sacraments is troubling to pastors and bishops. Our pastor gave a few examples of this in his recent homily including a related story about people from the Traditional Mass that have requested that leftover consecrated hosts from the TLM be stored separately from the Novus Ordo Masses. He also mentioned the fact that his desire to modernize the TLM liturgy with sung vernacular readings was met with rigid disapproval from the faithful. Perhaps this was the type of reform those bishops at Vatican II were actually hoping for and expecting. It was, perhaps, a sad lost opportunity to keep the beauty while offering a reform of the old.

We will remain Catholic. We will attend Mass, despite any lack of beauty, holiness and tradition. We were stuck with this situation for 40 years before the 2007 Summorum Pontificum, wandering in a liturgical desert. We will pray for our bishops and priests and offer up these sufferings, remembering that others have it worse. We will make home sanctuaries, where priests who want to celebrate private Masses in the old form will be made welcome. We will tell our children what they have lost and hope it won’t be another 40 years before we have freedom to have this form of the Mass reinstated again.

But bishops are not bringing peace and unity by doing these things. This is a choice they are making to inflict pain on members of their own flock when they don't try to find alternatives to fully abolishing the TLM. They are bringing bitterness and resentment into the diocese, where it didn't exist before. We have been made to understand that we who love the TLM are not as important as inflicting their will on the liturgical form. Our bishop is quite willing to risk the fact that some will be tempted toward schism. For the vast majority of us, however, that would never be the choice.

We were joyful and appreciative of the generosity of our priests who took the (not inconsequential) time to learn to offer the TLM and prepare different homilies because of the difference in Mass readings on many weeks due to changes in the Church calendar between old and new.

If peace and unity are attained (the stated goal of this by bishops), it will be in spite of their actions. May we all find the grace to forgive them.

Please pray for our priests, who are struggling as we are with these trials. If you are in a place where the TLM is still allowed, rejoice in it and let your pastor know that you appreciate him! And, above all, realize that your Catholic brothers and sisters who attend the Novus Ordo liturgies may not be able to have the good fortune you do. We are all still members of the Church who hope to share eternal life with our Father in heaven.

The Supra quae propitio

Lost in Translation #145

After the Unde et Memores, the priest prays:

Supra quæ propitio ac seréno vultu respícere dignéris: et accepta habére, sícuti accepta habére dignátus es múnera púeri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae: et quod tibi óbtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchísedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculátam hostiam.

And which I translate as:

Upon these [the Host and Chalice], may You deign to look with a favorable and serene countenance, and to have them accepted, as You deigned to have accepted the offerings of Your just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that which Your high priest Melchizedek offered to You, a holy Sacrifice, an unspotted Victim.

The prayer could have used the more direct “to accept,” but instead it uses circumlocution with “to have accepted” twice. This literary device creates a certain distance between the human and the divine at the same time that it invites a space into which we can enter.

A marvelous aspect of this prayer is that it recapitulates, in a way, all of sacred history, and enfolds this narrative into the Paschal mystery. Somehow, the Passion of the Christ builds on and consummates all of the good sacrifices made before Him from the beginning of time to the present day. We, in turn, like dwarves on the shoulders of giants, benefit from this last and perfect and ongoing sacrifice.

Three figures are named from this sacred history: Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek.

The sacrifice of Cain and Abel

Fr. Dieter Böhler, S.J. notices that even though Abel made a genuine sacrifice by immolating a lamb, his offering is called munera (offerings) and not sacrificium. “Abel,” Böhler observes, “is not an Israelite, but a representative of all humanity…. Thus, his sacrifice is an act of natural religion.” [1] The Lord accepts Abel’s offerings, even though Abel has acted only in response to a natural impulse rather than any divine revelation.

Melchizedek is not an Israelite either, but even as a pagan he somehow worships the true “God Most High, the Creator of heaven and earth.” (Gen. 14, 19) Moreover, he is designated as both a king and a priest, and his offering of bread and wine clearly foreshadows the Eucharist. Hence, even though unbloody offerings in the Old Testament (such as grains and vegetables) are not called sacrifices or victims, the Supra quae propitio elaborately refers to Melchizedek’s offering as “that which he offered to You… a holy sacrifice, an unspotted victim.”

Together, the sacrifices of Abel and Melchizedek point to the Eucharist: Israel’s liturgy and the aspirations of all human reverence towards the divine are thus taken up and fulfilled in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The sacrificial matter of Abel (the lamb) and of Melchizedek (bread and wine) lend themselves to this interpretation, since the Eucharistic sacrifice of bread and wine makes present the sacrificed Lamb (see Rev. 5, 6) [2]

But the real mystery is the sacrifice of Abraham. Böhler first establishes that the sacrifice of Isaac was designed by God to be a test not of Abraham’s obedience but of his faith. Specifically, Abraham had to have faith that God would fulfill His promise to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation through Isaac, even though Isaac was to be killed before he could sire any offspring. This meant only one thing: Abraham had to believe in the resurrection of the dead, in this case, the resurrection of his ostensibly-soon-to-be dead son Isaac. That is why Abraham remains our Patriarch, even if we do not share his bloodline; he is a towering figure of great faith in the key doctrine of Christianity.

The sacrifice of Abraham

And his sacrifice? It was not Isaac, who was spared. And for Böhler, it was not really the ram that Abraham substituted for Isaac. Böhler notes that rams had only one meaning in the Levitical sacrifices: “they were the classic sacrificial animal of cult inauguration,” [3] such as initiating priestly ordination. The cult inauguration here on Mount Moriah is an anticipation of the cult that David and Solomon would inaugurate centuries later in the same location (later renamed Mount Zion) and the new cultus that Our Lord would inaugurate again in the same location in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday. Rather, for Böhler, “The sacrifice of Abraham was a sacrifice of himself by himself. He surrendered himself will all his hopes, his love, his faith, into the dark night of God’s will. It was a self-offering.” [4] It is indeed fitting that this knight of Faith be remembered in the Canon.

Patriarchy Properly Understood

A long side-note is in order on why the 2011 ICEL’s translation of Patriarchæ nostri Abrahae as “Abraham, our father in faith” is ill-advised. [5] “Patriarch” and “patriarchy” are, of course, dirty words today, thanks to the influence of feminism, which uses the term to denote men’s systemic oppression of women. [6] Strictly speaking, however, patriarchy denotes not male rule or misrule in general but a specific form of male authority found only in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The word itself is a biblical neologism, appearing first in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in reference to: 1) the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel (1 Chronicles 27, 22); 2) the heads of families within a tribe of Israel (2 Chronicles 19, 8; 26, 12); and 3) Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (4 Maccabees 7, 19; 16, 25)

In the New Testament, St. Stephen confirms this convention by referring to the sons of Jacob as the “twelve patriarchs” (Acts 7, 9) and St. Peter, while preaching during the Church’s first Pentecost, develops it further by also calling King David a patriarch. (Acts 2, 29) Later Christian usage expands the patriarchal franchise to include pre-Abrahamic figures such as Adam, Abel, and Noah (the so-called “antediluvian patriarchs”) and to post-biblical bishops presiding over the chief sees of the early Church, e.g., Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Today, a number of prelates in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches continue to bear the ecclesiastical title of Patriarch. The word was not used outside of Christian circles, and it was not secularized until the eighteenth century to signify any kind of male rule.

All of which is to say is that patriarchy in its true sense is a specific model of fatherly authority tied to Divine Revelation, and anchored in a covenantal bond between God and man that – judging from how the term is used biblically and ecclesiastically – is essentially positive and beneficial. As Jesus admonishes His apostles:

You know that the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that are the greater, exercise power upon them. It shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister: And he that will be first among you, shall be your servant. Even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many. (Matthew 20, 25-28)

Here “lord it over them” signifies not rule per se but exploitative rule, a wielding of power for the sake of selfish gain. Christian rule, by contrast, may involve an exercise of power, but that exercise is directed exclusively to the betterment of the ruled even if it is at the expense of the ruler. The greatest example of this self-emptying and altruistic mode of rule is that of Jesus Christ, who “loved the Church and delivered himself up for it.” (Ephesians 5, 25)

In other words, if generic patriarchy is the problem, Christian patriarchy is the solution. And if Christian patriarchy is the solution, we need to take back the word and not be ashamed to call Abraham our patriarch. [7]

Previous Sacrificers

And as for the rest of the prayer, it is out of chronological order. Historically, Abel came first, then Melchizedek, then Abraham. But the order of the prayer is Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek. Why? Because Abel offered a bloody sacrifice, Abraham offered an almost-bloody sacrifice, and Melchizedek offer an unbloody sacrifice, a build-up to the unbloody sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. As the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom prays:

You became man, unchanged and unchanging. You were appointed our High Priest, and, as Master of all, handed down to us the priestly ministry of this liturgical and unbloody sacrifice. [8]

The sacrifice of Melchizedek

I believe this is the reason why that the Supra quæ propitio dwells on the sacrifice of Melchizedek in such a loving way, not going directly to his offering but lingering in a beguiling way on “that which Your high priest Melchizedek offered to You,” and then elaborating with “a holy Sacrifice, an unspotted Victim.” For Jesus Christ is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, as the Bible insists (see Ps. 109, 4; Hebr. 5, 6; 5, 10; 6, 20; 7, 11) and so is every priest validly ordained celebrating this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Notes

[1] Fr. Dieter Böhler, S.J., “Sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae: The Aqedah in the Bible and the Canon of the Mass,” in The Sacrifice of the Mass, ed. Matthew Hazell (Smenos Publications, 2024), 25.

[2] Ibid, 26.

3] Ibid, 34.

[4] Ibid, 32.

[5] 2011 Roman Missal, 641.

[6] As Iris Marion Young puts it, “The system of male domination, most often called ‘patriarchy’, produces the specific gender oppression of women,” in Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 21, emphasis added. Bell Hooks explains that “patriarchy” has replaced “male chauvinism” and “sexism” as the preferred term for the male oppression of women in “Understanding Patriarchy,” in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 17–25.

[7] ICEL, on the other hand, is correct in identifying Abraham as our father in faith even though the original Latin makes no mention of this fact. Citing St. Paul, Peter Kwasniewski writes: “Not by descent of blood but by imitation of faith, Abraham is our patriarch, the patriarch of orthodox Christians—not the patriarch of the Jewish people as an ethnic or religious group... Abraham is the patriarch of all who have faith in Christ—of the Hebrews, like himself, who longed for the Messiah and who were delivered by Him from the limbo of the fathers, as well as of the Jews and Gentiles from the time of Christ down to the present who have been baptized into Christ.” (Once and Future Roman Rite, 242)

[8] After the Cherubic Hymn.

The Dominican Sequence for the Dedication of a Church

In the Dominican Rite, today is the collective feast of the dedication of all of the Order’s consecrated churches. This is a fairly new custom, instituted when the Dominican calendar was revised in the wake of St Pius X’s breviary reform; prior to that, each such church kept its own dedication feast. In the post-Conciliar rite, the Dominicans have reverted to the older custom, but the feast on October 22nd is retained for those churches whose real date of dedication is unknown; a rare example within the Novus Ordo of a return to an authentic historical custom.

In May of 2022, I addressed the persistent misunderstanding that the liturgical reform of St Pius V removed the great majority of sequences from the Mass. The reality is that the Roman Missal had always had very few sequences, and as various churches and orders adopted it, they adopted its sparse repertoire of them along with it. However, some churches and orders that did not adopt the Roman Missal nevertheless reformed their own missals in one way or another in imitation of it. One of the most common such reforms was to take out of most of the sequences, and in 1687, this was done to the Dominican Missal when the master general Antonin Cloche had a new edition published. (The Premonstratensians had done something similar in the 1620s.)

The Sequence Rex Salomon in the Codex of Humbert of Romans, the prototype manuscript of the medieval Dominican liturgy. (Rome: Santa Sabina MS XIV L1). This manuscript was compiled by the Master of the Order Humbert of Romans, in accord with the commission of the Dominican General Chapter held at Buda in 1254, and approved by the General Chapter of Paris in 1256. The sequence begins with the large blue R in the left column.

Prior to Cloche’s reform, the Dominicans sang the following sequence, Rex Salomon fecit templum, on the feast of a church’s dedication; it is attributed (with some uncertainty) to one of the most prolific authors in the genre, Adam of St Victor, who flourished in the first part of the 12th century. After serving as precentor of Notre-Dame de Paris, he entered the abbey of Augustinian Canons Regular dedicated to St Victor in Paris’ Rive Gauche, very close to the Sorbonne. This abbey was one of the major intellectual centers of the High Middle Ages, and literary works produced by its members were swiftly diffused throughout Europe. Dreves’ Analecta Hymnica (vol. 55) lists a very large number of sources for the piece, including several early manuscripts of the Dominican Use, several from the abbey, and various others from the British isles, the Low Countries, etc. The English translation is taken from The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St Victor (vol. 1), by Digby Wrangham of St John’s College, Oxford. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1881.)

Rex Salomon fecit templum, Quorum instar et exemplum Christus et Ecclesia. Hujus hic est imperator, Fundamentum et fundator, Mediante gratia.	Solomon the king a temple Built, whose pattern and example Christ, with Holy Church, appears: He, its founder and foundation, Sway, through grace’s mediation, As the Church’s ruler bears.
Quadri templi fundamenta Marmora sunt, instrumenta Parietum paria. Candens flos est castitatis, Lapis quadrus in praelatis, Virtus et constantia.	Squarely built, this temple’s bases Are of marble; each wall’s space is Formed of stones cut evenly. Chastity’s fair flower there twineth; Each squared stone therein combineth, Prelates’ nerve and constancy.
Longitudo, Latitudo, Templique sublimitas. Intellecta Fide recta Sunt fides, spes, caritas.	Its far-reaching Length, and stretching Width, and height that tempts the sky, Faith explaining The true meaning, Are Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Sed tres partes sunt in templo Trinitatis sub exemplo: Ima, summa, media. Prima signat vivos cunctos, Et secunda jam defunctos, Redivivos tertia.	Tripartite is this fair Temple, After the Triune’s example, With first, third, and middle floor: First, the living signifying; Second, those in death now lying, Third, those raised to life once more.
Sexagenos quaeque per se Sed et partes universae Habent lati cubitos; Horum trium tres conventus Trinitati dant concentus Unitati debitos.	All the parts together rated, Or alone, are calculated Threescore cubits wide to be: Triply do these three, thus blending, Harmonize with the transcending Trinity in Unity.
Templi cultus Exstat multus: Cinnamomus Odor domus, Murra, stactis, cassia; Quae bonorum Decus morum Atque bonos Precum sonos Sunt significantia.	Gorgeous ritual And perpetual Scents, sweet smelling, Fill God’s dwelling, Cassia, myrrh, and cinnamon; Signifying Never-dying Christian graces, Prayers, and praises, Grateful offerings at His throne.
In hac casa Cuncta vasa Sunt ex auro De thesauro Praeelecto penitus; Nam magistros Et ministros Decet doctos Et excoctos Igne sancti spiritus.	In this palace Is each chalice A gold measure From the treasure Pre-elected secretly: For all teachers’ Minds, and preachers’, Throughly furnished, Purged, and burnished, By the Spirit’s fire should be.
Sic ex bonis Salomonis, Quae rex David Praeparavit, Fiunt aedificia; Nam in lignis Rex insignis Juvit Tyri, Cujus viri Tractant artificia.	Thus with treasure David’s pleasure Had collected Is erected Solomon’s great sanctuary; But the dwelling, All excelling, – Timber sending, Craftsmen lending, – Tyre’s art fashioned cunningly.
Jam ex gente Judaeisque, Sicut templum ab utrisque, Conditur Ecclesia. Christe, qui hanc et hos unis, Lapis huic et his communis, Tibi laus et gloria! Amen.	Formed of Jew and Gentile races, Builds the Church her holy places, As did both the Temple raise. Christ, Who both in one unitest! Corner-stone of each! the brightest Glory be to Thee and praise. Amen.

The Feast of St Hilarion the Abbot

St Hilarion was born in the last decade of the 3rd century to a pagan family, near Gaza in the Roman province of Palestine. He became a Christian when he was sent as a youth to study in Alexandria, which was of course not just a patriarchate, but one of the early Church’s major intellectual centers. Early on in his life as a Christian, he visited St Anthony in the desert, where he conceived a strong desire for solitude in the service of God. (The word “monk” derives ultimately from the Greek “monos – only, alone.”) He therefore left Anthony, who was frequently visited by people who wished him to heal or exorcise them; the continual search for solitude would form the pattern of much of the rest of Hilarion’s life.

Returning to his own country, he first gave away everything he had inherited from his parents, then withdrew into the desert at a place near the sea called Maiuma, and for many years, lived the same kind of harshly ascetic life as Anthony, conceding nothing more than the barest possible minimum to the necessities of the body. Being still a young man, he often felt the temptations of the flesh. On such occasions, he would intensify his fasting, and say to his body, “I will see to it, thou ass, that thou kick not, and feed thee with straw, rather than barley.”

The Temptation of St Hilarion, 1857 ca., by the French painter Octave Tassaert (1800-74). St Jerome describes something of the temptations to which Hilarion was subjected, in a similar vein to which St Athanasius describes those of St Anthony, and the artist here has been inspired by various depictions of those temptations.

After twenty years of this life, he performed his first miracle, the healing of a woman from barrenness. This was followed by others, and in due course, disciples began to gather around him, and form small communities, much as was happening at the same time in Egypt under Anthony’s inspiration and example. As St Jerome writes, “the Lord Jesus had the older Anthony in Egypt, and the younger Hilarion in Palestine.” For this reason, the Roman liturgical tradition honors them both with the title of “abbot”; in the Byzantine Rite, he and Anthony are both called “the Great.”

When Anthony died in 356, Hilarion knew of it by inspiration. He had long been troubled by the constant flow of visitors coming to see and speak to him, and the prosperity (such as it was) of the monastic community that had effectively grown up around him. He therefore determined to abandon Maiuma and go to Egypt. There he first visited the place where Anthony had lived for so many years, and then took up a renewed ascetic life in another part of the desert. But “the poor ye shall always have with you”, and here too, Hilarion was prevailed upon to intercede with the Lord by his prayers, to end a drought, and to heal many sick and injured persons. He therefore withdrew once again, first to Sicily, and then, when his fame also followed him there, to Dalmatia (St Jerome’s native country), and finally to Cyprus, where he ended his days. St Epiphanius, bishop of the town of Salamis on that island, came to know him in his final years, and wrote a brief account of him which St Jerome used in writing his biography.

The Monastery of St Anthony in Egypt, which is located about 210 miles southeast of Cairo, and about 18 miles west of the Red Sea coast. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by LorisRomito, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Before the Tridentine liturgical reform, most churches of the Roman Rite kept October 21st as the feast of St Ursula and her companions, said to number 11,000, and to have been martyred by the Huns near Cologne in the 5th century. St Hilarion’s feast was kept in only a minority of places, but among them was the Papal court, whose liturgical tradition was codified by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) at the beginning of the 13th century, forming the ancestor texts of the Tridentine books. The legend of St Ursula contains a story that she and her companions traveled to Rome, and the Pope resigned to join them in their travels, after which the cardinals expunged all of his acts. The silliness of this must have been evident to the learned men of the Roman curia, who might also have preferred the life of Hilarion as the work of one of their own, since Jerome had been the secretary to Pope St Damasus I. In a Roman breviary printed at Venice in 1481, we find Ss Ursula and Companions noted in the calendar, but in the proper of the Saints, there are no lessons for them, nor even a prayer for a commemoration, while Hilarion has three fairly long historical lessons which sum up what is written in St Jerome’s life.

Saints Gregory the Great and Jerome, 1495-1500 ca., by the Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete (1450 ca. - 1504.) In accordance with a long-standing artistic convention, Jerome is anachronistically dressed as a cardinal, since the secretary of the Pope would ordinarily have been a cardinal. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the Breviary of St Pius V, the virgin martyrs are kept only as a commemoration, a recognition of fact that the traditional account of their lives and martyrdom is full of impossibilities, and must be regarded as historically untrustworthy. St Hilarion, on the other hand, remains as a feast of simple rank, with two proper readings [1], though rather shorter than those of the earlier printed editions. This may seem to be a demotion, but it is not. The lessons retain the substance of what St Jerome reports about him, and are shortened to accommodate two new aspects of the Divine Office introduced by the Tridentine reform. One is that on a simple feast, at least one of the Matins readings must be taken from the Bible. The other is that the psalms of the nocturn are taken from the feria, where they were previously taken from the pertinent Common of Saints. The shortening of the lessons would therefore balance the lengthening of the psalmody. [2]

Although the post-Tridentine liturgical reform was certainly very conservative, Hilarion’s feast was not retained on the calendar merely in function of the Roman church’s habitual liturgical conservatism. The original calendar of the Breviary of St Pius V, issued in 1568, contains six abbots: three of the West, Benedict, his disciple Maurus, and the French Saint Giles, and three of the East, Anthony, Hilarion and Sabbas, the founder of the great lavra outside Jerusalem. Of these feasts, one of each part is a double feast (Anthony and Benedict), one a simple (Giles and Hilarion), and one a commemoration (Maurus, who shares his day with another Saint whose life was written by Jerome, St Paul the first hermit, and Sabbas.)

This returns to one of the most important themes of the post-Tridentine reform, its role as the Church’s liturgical answer to the emergence of Protestantism. The soi-disant reformers rejected as “corruptions” of the true Gospel any number of things that had very deep roots in the Church, roots that went far further back than what we now call the Middle Ages, to which they mostly attributed the supposed corruptions. Among them was monasticism in its manifold expressions, and it goes without saying that in lands where Protestantism prevailed, huge numbers of monastic foundations, many of them very old and important, were destroyed, and their property used to buy the compliance of the local nobility in the establishment of the new religion. The presence of three Western abbots and three Eastern ones on the calendar asserts that the monastic life is not a medieval corruption, but rather part of the common tradition shared by the churches of the East with those of the West.

The ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1132, 3 miles outside the English city of Ripon in North Yorkshire. Image from Wikimedia Commons by WyrdLight.com, CC BY SA 4.0. (I believe that the name “Downton Abbey” was made up by its Catholic creator, Julian Fellowes, in homage to Fountains Abbey, since the fictional estate is also located a few miles outside of Ripon. Many English houses and institutions still bear the names of the original owners dispossessed of them by the avarice and impiety of Henry VIII and his descendants.)

Likewise, the presence in the liturgy of a monastic life written by St Jerome, although the lessons of St Hilarion do not mention this fact. Jerome is the only Church Father to whom the reformers could appeal to justify their rejection of the so-called Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, although on this point, Jerome himself was not at all consistent. But Jerome was also very much in favor of many things to which the early Protestants were wholly opposed, including monasticism. If Jerome is to be taken as an authentic witness to the teachings of early Church on the matter of the Deuterocanonicals, why should he not also be taken as an authentic witness to the value of monasticism? This question cannot, of course, possibly be resolved without a universally recognized authority within the Church that has the right to judge on such matters.

[1] Before 1913, a simple feast could have either one or two proper readings, with the other two or one being taken from the Scripture of the day. This was changed by the reform of St Pius X, so that all simple feasts have only one proper reading.

[2] Before 1568, the psalms of Matins for the feast of St Hilarion would be taken from the common of a simple confessor, nine psalms, totaling 93 verses. In the Breviary of St Pius V, they are taken from the feria; this year, that would mean the twelve psalms of the ferial nocturn of Tuesday, which have 206 verses.

Signs of Hope in Cuba: the Iconography of José Garcia Cortés

A talented artist’s journey from atheist misery to joy in the Faith, and the discovery of his personal vocation,

When my wife Margarita and I checked into the Orthodox Academy of Crete this past August for an iconography workshop taught by Greek master iconographer George Kordis of Writing-the-Light (a full training in iconography offering classes in the US and Europe), Margarita noticed on the list the name of an art student from Havana, José Garcia Cortés. Margarita is Cuban American; her mother came to the United States as a young woman over 60 years ago, so she immediately noticed José’s name. The address José gave was just a few blocks from her mother’s family home. She quickly connected with this young man, whom George described to us as the ‘best iconographer in Latin America’, and wrote about him and his story in detail here in her Substack, The Graced Imagination.

I am delighted to present works by José, still not yet 30. This wonderful painting of the Hospitality of Abraham hangs in our own home in Princeton, New Jersey! 

In brief, his remarkable story is as follows: 

He was born in 1997 into a family that was totally separated from the Faith, and which subscribed to the state ‘religion’ of Marxist-inspired atheist materialism. At 16, he faced a total life crisis – he had no purpose in life or even any dreams and was morbidly depressed. By chance, he entered San Juan de Letrán Catholic Church in El Vedado (run by Dominican Friars) and, through contact with them, converted and was received into the Church. His atheist parents, who might have ordinarily opposed such a move, supported his conversion because they saw how he was transformed and how much happier he became. As he put it, “I knew nothing about Catholicism, but I knew that I, alone, could never make myself happy. I had a hunger for God I just can’t explain.” With the encouragement of those in the Church both inside and outside Cuba, he applied his natural talent and interest in beautiful art to the creation of sacred art. He has since attended workshops in Europe and taken commissions both inside and outside Cuba. Most recently, he has been studying under George.

José García Cortés, Our Lady of Charity. Catedral Ortodoxa Rusa Nuestra Señora de Kazán, Havana

The Early Life of the Theotokos

His dream is to remain in his home country and draw Cuban youth to the Faith through his art. “So many young people have stopped dreaming. They need community. They need inspiration. They need God.”  

Commission work from José: I encourage people here to consider commissioning work from this talented artist so that it will grace more homes and churches and further his mission! For details on how to do so, please visit my wife Margarita’s Substack, The Graced Imagination, here.

Here is a poster of a recent exhibition of his work, featuring his St Joseph with the Child Jesus.

The Vesper Hymn of St John Cantius

Today is the feast of St John Cantius (1390-1473), a priest of the diocese of Krakow, Poland, who spent most of his life as a professor at the Krakow Academy, which is now known as the Jagiellonian University, and counts the astronomer Copernicus and Pope St John Paul II among its other illustrious alumni. The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints recounts two beautiful traditions of the university long observed in the Saint’s honor. (vol. 4, p. 154) He was well known for his generous charities to the poor, and the story is told that once, on seeing a famished beggar pass by the dining hall, he brought the man all of his food; on returning to his seat, he found his plate miraculously filled up again. This was long commemorated by the custom of setting aside a meal for a poor man every day; at the beginning of dinner, the vice-president of the university would cry out in Latin, “A poor man is coming!”, to which the president would reply, “Jesus Christ is coming!”, and the man was then served. The other is that in the ceremonies at which degrees were conferred, the candidates were vested with the Saint’s doctoral gown.

The tomb of St John in the right transept of the church of St Anne in Krakow, the collegiate church of the Jagiellonian University. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Gryffindor.)

When St John was canonized in 1767, and his feast added to the general calendar, his Office was given three proper hymns: one which is said at both Vespers, another at Matins, and another at Lauds. Butler’s Lives states that he is the only simple Confessor whose Office has its own hymns in the Roman Breviary; this is both inexact and irrelevant. It is certainly true that the Roman Rite as observed in Rome itself was always very conservative in its use of hymns, and very few Saints of any class have their own proper hymns. But the feast of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order, who were all simple Confessors, have proper hymns for their collective feast on February 12th, and plenty of Confessors, both bishops and non-bishops, have proper hymns which are used in specific places or by certain religious orders. (See these articles on the hymns of St Augustine, Anthony the Abbot, and Bernard of Clairvaux.) The author of these hymns is unknown, but they were composed around the time of the canonization.

Here is a beautiful recording of the Vesper hymn by the choir of St John Cantius church in Chicago, made at the church of St Anne in Krakow where St John is buried. The English translation given below is by Mons. Hugh Henry, taken from the book The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal, by Dom Matthew Britt OSB. (Benzinger, 1922)

Gentis Polónae gloria, Cleríque splendor nóbilis, Decus Lycáei, et patriae Pater, Joannes ínclite.	O glory of the Polish race, O splendour of the priestly band, Whose lore did thy lyceum grace, John, father of the fatherland.
Legem superni Núminis Doces magester, et facis. Nil scire prodest: sédulo Legem nitámur éxsequi.	The law of the supernal will Thou teachest both in word and deed; Knowledge is naught—we must fulfill In works, not barren words, our creed!
Apostolórum límina Pedes viátor vísitas; Ad patriam, ad quam téndimus, Gressus viamque dírige.	On foot to apostolic Rome Thy pilgrim spirit joyful hied; Oh, to our everlasting home The path declare, the footstep guide!
Urbem petis Jerúsalem: Signáta sacro Sánguine Christi colis vestigia Rigasque fusis flétibus.	Again, in Sion’s holy street, Anew thou wet’st with tearful flood The pathway of the Saviour’s feet Erst wet with His redeeming blood.
Acerba Christi vúlnera, Haeréte nostris córdibus, Ut cogitémus cónsequi Redemptiónis pretium.	O sweet and bitter wounds of Christ, Deep in our hearts imprinted stay, That the blest fruit the sacrificed Redeemer gained, be ours for aye!
Te prona mundi máchina, Clemens, adoret, Trínitas, Et nos novi per gratiam Novum canámus cánticum.    Amen.	Then let the world obeisance due Perform, O God, to Thy high Will; And let our souls, by grace made new, Sing to Thee a new canticle!    Amen.

The Feast of the Dedication of Milan Cathedral

This article is mostly the work of our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi; I translated it from Italian, and added the parts about the Ambrosian arrangement of the Sundays after Pentecost.

In the Ambrosian Rite, there are only fifteen Sundays formally named “after Pentecost”, and if Pentecost is very late, as few as eleven may be actually celebrated. The series is interrupted by the Sundays “after the Beheading of John the Baptist,” of which there may be four or five, followed by the first and second Sundays of October. On the third Sunday, the church of Milan commemorates the dedication of its cathedral, followed by three Sundays “after the Dedication.” This division is found in one of the very oldest surviving Ambrosian liturgical books, the 8th century lectionary of Busto Arsizio. The largest possible number of Sundays after Pentecost is therefore 26, whereas it is 28 in the Roman Rite, since the Ambrosian Advent begins two weeks earlier, on the Sunday following St Martin’s day.

A tradition which is not recorded in particularly early sources states that the dedication commemorated on third Sunday of October took place in the year 453 under St Eusebius, archbishop of Milan from 449-462, after the cathedral had been destroyed by the Huns, and that on the same day, the lesser of the city’s two cathedrals was dedicated in 836. However, there are two things which suggest that the choice of this day as one of the hinges of this part of the liturgical year depends on more than a simple recollection of these events, especially in light of the highly conservative tradition of the Ambrosian rite.

The cathedral of Milan as it stood for many years, before the façade was completed in 1812.

The first, as noted in an article in 2016, comes from St Ambrose himself, in his “Second Apology for David”, a stenographer’s record of sermons which he preached over two or three days in the year 388. This work attests that the Gospel of the Sunday “before the Dedication”, that of the woman caught in adultery, John 8, 1-11, and that of the Dedication itself, John 10, 22-30, were already in their places next to each other in his time. Both of these Gospels take place in the temple in Jerusalem. “At that time, Jesus went unto mount Olivet. And early in the morning he came again into the temple.” (John 8, 1-2) “At that time, it was the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem: and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch.” (John 10, 22-23) This does not seem likely to be a coincidence.

The second comes from a comparison with other liturgical traditions. The rite of Milan is the only Western rite which has a liturgical season marked by a dedication, but the Syrian Rite, in both its eastern and western form, also has a season “of the dedication”, which in turn may derive from the ancient rite of the city of Jerusalem. The Armenian lectionaries of the fifth century, which faithfully reproduce the order of readings used in the Holy City, contain a feast of “the Dedication of the Holy Places” on September 13th, and assign John 10, 22-42, to be read at the “Anastasis”, the great church of the Resurrection built by Constantine. The existence of a liturgical season centered on a dedication, attested in the very oldest Ambrosian sources, may therefore derive from the tradition of Jerusalem.

The Mass texts of the Solemnity of the Dedication refer repeatedly to the Church as the bride of Christ. The Preface, for example, one of the oldest in the Ambrosian repertoire, reads as follows.

“Per Christum Dominum nostrum, qui eminentiam potestatis acceptæ Ecclesiæ tradidit, quam pro honore percepto, et Reginam constituit et Sponsam. Cuius sublimitati universa subiecit: ad cuius iudicium consentire iussit e cælo. Hæc est mater omnium viventium, filiorum numero facta sublimior: quæ per Spiritum Sanctum quotidie Deo filios procreat: cuius palmitibus mundus omnis impletus est: quæ propagines suas ligno baiulante suspensas erigit ad regna cælorum. Hæc est Civitas illa sublimis iugo montis erecta, perspicua cunctis, et omnibus clara: cuius conditor, et inhabitator est idem Dominus Noster Jesus Christus Filius tuus. Quem una tecum...”

The central portion of the apsidal mosaic of the church of St Clement in Rome, with an acanthus vine, symbolizing the Church, springing up from the Cross. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0)

“…through Christ Our Lord. Who handed down to the Church the preeminence of the power which He had been given, and in accordance with the honor (She) received, made Her both Queen and Spouse, and subjected all things to Her majesty, and from heaven ordered that they obey Her judgment. She is the mother of all the living, all the more exalted for the number of Her children, who daily beareth sons unto God through the Holy Spirit. All the world is filled with Her branches; She lifts up Her shoots to the kingdom of heaven, supported by the wood of the Cross. She is that exalted city, built upon the height of the mountain, visible and bright to all; and He that founded and dwelleth in Her is the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son; Whom together with Thee, Almighty Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Angels sing praise…”

The connection between this theme and the Sunday of the Dedication is confirmed at the very beginning of the Ambrosian Rite’s history, in the writings of St Ambrose himself, and indeed, in the same “Second Apology for David” in which he comments on the Gospel of the Adulteress. “Thus did Christ love the beauty of His Church, and prepared Her in order to take Her as His Bride.”

The Duomo of Milan as it stands today is the result of a project which began in 1386, to replace the two cathedrals which had hitherto served the see of St Ambrose. The “winter church”, as it is still called in Ambrosian liturgical books, was the smaller of the two, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and used from the Third Sunday of October, the feast of its Dedication, until Holy Saturday; it stood where the modern cathedral stands, but was nowhere near as large. The Gospel from John 10, which is attested on this day in the oldest Ambrosian liturgical books, was read here; the “dedication” or “renewal” (“enkainia” in Greek) to which it refers at the beginning is the re-dedication of the Jerusalem Temple which took place under Judas Maccabee, as recorded in 1 Maccabees 4, 59.

On this occasion, in the portico of the Temple, the Lord rebukes those who insist that He tell them whether or not He is the Messiah. “I speak to you, and you believe not: the works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me. But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” In contrast to those who do not believe, “My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. That which my Father hath given me, is greater than all: and no one can snatch them out of the hand of my Father. I and the Father are one.” In the treatise cited above, St Ambrose explains this same passage as a reference to the replacement of the old Temple, and the old covenant of which it is the symbol, with the New and Eternal Covenant.

A reconstruction of the cathedral complex of Milan, with the summer church of St Thecla on the left, and the winter church of the Virgin Mary at the right. The octagonal structure in front of St Thecla is the baptistery of St John; the smaller structure beneath it is the baptistery of St Stephen. At the lower right is a partial reconstruction of the interior of the baptistery of St John.

The larger “summer church”, which was demolished in 1543, stood on the opposite end of the modern Piazza del Duomo, and was dedicated to St. Thecla, for which reason her name is included in the Canon of the Ambrosian Mass. In several important liturgical books of the Ambrosian Rite, another Gospel is assigned to the Mass on the same day in this “summer church”, Matthew 21, 10-17.

“Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves: And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.” The purification of the Temple which follows looks forward to the establishment of the Church as the new house of God. In like manner, the basilica of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, built by the Emperor Constantine, is seen in the liturgical tradition of Jerusalem as the replacement of the temple destroyed by Titus in 70 AD.

The Expulsion of the Money-changers from the Temple, 1610-20, by the painter known as Cecco del Caravaggio, from the obvious indebtedness of his style to the works of Caravaggio.

For the many centuries during which the two cathedrals were still in use, the cathedral chapter of Milan, led by the archbishop, would celebrate a particularly interesting rite on both this day and Holy Saturday. All of the liturgical objects used in the cathedral were loaded into an “ark” (arca), and transported from the winter to the summer church on Holy Saturday, vice versa on the feast of the Dedication. The Latin word “arca” was also used for the place where the Scroll of the Law was kept in a synagogue; its use in the Milanese rite perhaps refers to the substitution of the synagogue’s worship by that of the Church, the one replacing the other, as the church building itself replaces the old temple.

A text from Vespers of the Dedication may also be read as a corroboration of this explanation. As on many of the most ancient and important feasts in the Ambrosian Rite, the first Vespers of the Dedication has only one Psalm, to which Psalms 133 and 116 are added at the end, and the three sung as a single Psalm. The Psalm in this case is 85, from which is also taken the antiphon, “All the nations thou hast made shall come and adore before thee, O Lord.” This text is therefore an assertion that Christ came as redeemer and savior not of the Jewish people alone, but for all nations who are called into His Church.

Finally, we may note the epistle of the Sunday preceding the Dedication, Romans 7, 1-6: “Know you not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) that the law hath dominion over a man, as long as he liveth? For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Therefore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress, if she be with another man: but if her husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her husband; so that she is not an adulteress, if she be with another man.” In this context, this passage is taken to mean that the Law of Moses no longer has dominion over the people of God, which now lives under the grace of Christ, the “new” spouse of the Mystical Body.