Lost in Translation #128
Fourth and finally, secreta may refer to the actions or current status of the celebrant, and as such, the oration acts both the ending of the Offertory Rite and the bridge to the Canon, the prologue to which is the Preface (the audible ending of the Secret, which matches the audible dialogue that immediately follows, reinforces this idea that the Secret has a transitional function). Citing a tradition that called the Canon and not this oration the Secret, [5] Claude Barthe goes so far as to suggest that the silence of the Secret prayer is in unison with the silence of the Canon and not the silence of the Offertory prayers, which have “a different sacred character.” [6] “The prayers of the Offertory,” he suggests, “are silent because they are the personal prayers of the minister who is carrying out the action of oblation. But “the great priestly prayers of the Secret and the Canon are silent because of the mystery wrapped up within them.” [7] The underlying idea is that the priest enters into the Canon alone, like the High Priest into the Holy of Holies. In that respect he is also like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying alone moments before His Passion. In the words of Jean-Jacques Olier,
After the Orate fratres and Suscipiat, the priest recites the second proper oration. In the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, it is titled the Oratio super oblata, the “Prayer over the Offerings;” in the so-called Gelasian Sacramentary, it is called the Secreta or Secret. The 1970 Roman Missal uses the former title for this prayer, the 1570/1962 Missal the latter.
The use of the word secreta has given rise to much historical speculation and even more theological reflection.
First, it may indicate the voice of the celebrant. According to Josef Jungmann, the Gallo-Frankish liturgy, like the Mozarabic and Eastern liturgies, had a silent offertory rite, and it was this practice that influenced the terminology of the Gelasian sacramentary. [1] Secreta, in other words, means here “secret” or whispered, and for Jungmann such a rubric stands in tension with what he alleges is the earlier Roman (and perennial Ambrosian) practice of saying the oration aloud, a vestige of which is left in the Tridentine Missal when the priest says the concluding part (per omnia saecula saeculorum) in an audible voice.
Second, even though it is not the likely historical reason for the naming, it is not unreasonable to think of the word in reference to the offerings—that is, the bread and wine that have been designated to become the Body and Blood of Our Lord—since, after all, secreta is from the Latin secerno (to dissociate or set apart). [2] Adrian Fortescue notes that originally, “the amount of bread and wine to be consecrated was taken from the large quantity offered” while “the rest was kept for the poor.” [3] That the hosts and wine on the altar have been truly sacralized at this point is testified by the traditional Roman Missal’s De defectibus X.9, which states that a broken host that has already been made an oblatio but has not yet been consecrated [transubstantiated] should be consumed after the ablution (and hence not returned to profane use).
Third, if the bread and wine at this point are secreta, then so too is the congregation, which has been offered up as well (see the In spiritu humilitatis). Secreta in this case would be an abbreviation of ecclesia secreta, the Church set apart. Historically, the three orations of the Roman Rite—Collect, Secret, and Postcommunion—once corresponded to three processions—a liturgical procession to the church, the offertory presentation of the gifts, and the “procession” of the faithful to the sanctuary to receive Holy Communion. The Collect was said after the congregation processed from another church to the church where Mass would be celebrated: the oratio collecta figurately “collected” the prayers of many congregants into one, but it also concluded the physical collection of peregrinating souls into a single body of worshippers. The Secret, on the other hand, follows the separation of the catechumens from the baptized faithful (which once occurred at the beginning of the Offertory) and the further separation of the latter as a consecrated oblation for the Mass. Thus Pius Parsch concludes:
In the primitive Church the neophytes and penitents were dismissed at the end of the Mass of the Catechumens. The ecclesia collecta, the assembled congregation, becomes now the ecclesia secreta, the congregation of the elect, the community of the saints; it is bound together into the mystical body of Christ, lifted up above the cares of this worldly life—now the sacrifice may begin. [4]
After [the Orate fratres], the priest does not again turn to the people: focused entirely on God, says the prayers of the Secret, something which represents Our Lord entirely hidden and buried in the bosom of God his Father, where he continues to offer prayers and to render to him his dues, of which the heavenly community of the Church knows nothing, and which are hidden from the greatest part of the angels and saints, in the same way that the apostles were not always witnesses of the prayers that he offered while he was alive on earth. [8]
Notes
[1] Josef Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (Benzinger Brothers, 1951), 90-92.
[2] Nicholas Gihr, for example, writes: “Utterly without foundation is the assertion [“found throughout the Middle Age liturgists], that the prayers in question are called Secretae—eo quod super materiam ex fidelium oblationibus separatum et secretam recitantur” (The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained, 5th ed. [Herder, 1918], 550, fn 5).
[3] Adrian Fortescue, The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1912), 299. A similar practice is maintained to this day in the Coptic rite. According to a recent comment from Aquinas138: “In the Coptic rite, the bread offered to the priest before the Liturgy is called "korban," and the best of the loaves is selected to be the Lamb. The other loaves are distributed with unconsecrated wine after Communion as a way to clear the mouth of any leftover pieces of the Eucharist to avoid profanation such as accidentally spitting out a particle of the Eucharist.”
[4] Pius Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass, trans. Frederic C. Eckhoff (St. Louis, Missouri: Herder, 1940), 152.
[5] See William Durandus, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, trans. John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), Appendix A, p. 175: “The temple of old was divided into two parts by a veil hung in the middle thereof. The first part was called the Holy Place, but the inner part the Holy of Holies. Whatever part then of the office of the Mass cometh before the secret is performed as it were in the outer place: but the secret itself within the Holy of Holies.” In his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum IV.35.1, Durandus lists three other valid names for the Canon: actio, sacrificium, and secreta. “It is called the secret,” he explains, “as if it were hidden from us because there is no way that human reason can fully capture so great a mystery: and that it may signify this, it is rightly celebrated in a secret voice” (IV.35.2: Secreta dicitur, quasi nobis occulta, quia humana ratione nequaquam tantum mysterium plenarie capere potest; ad quod significandum, merito secreta voce celebratur.)
[6] Claude Barthe, Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2023).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Jean-Jacques Olier, The Mystical Meaning of the Ceremonies of the Mass (Arouca Press, 2024), 151.
