Sacred Music Workshop, Presented Entirely in Spanish - Feast of St. Cecilia in Northern California

The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California is delighted to present our Fall 2025 term Sacred Music Study Day, to be offered entirely in Spanish.

Saturday, November 22, 2025

St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, California

8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Registration and more information available here.

The event features:

• Rehearsals featuring music participants can take home to their congregations (chant, polyphony, and hymns)
• The opportunity to learn music we can sing together at Mass
• An extended session on developing and teaching healthy vocal technique
• Solemn Mass, sung by participants, celebrated by His Excellency, Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco
• Catechesis on the role of sacred music in the spiritual life
• An opportunity to go to confession
• Lunch, refreshments, and fellowship with area musicians

The event is designed especially for: 

• Parish music directors
• Parish choir members
• Cantors
• Clergy

Singers and music directors of all ability levels will find the event enriching and worthwhile. Group registration rates and scholarships are available. 

I’m especially delighted to be joined by two wonderful musicians and teachers who will lead the working sessions in Spanish. 

Please invite anyone interested in learning in Spanish to this event! Questions about the event registration and scholarships can be sent to mary (dot) vianney (at) stpsu (dot) edu.

Christian Cortés is a Catholic sacred music director and family man. He is originally from Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico. Christian’s professional achievements developed primarily in Mexico, especially in Guadalajara, Jalisco, where he lived for the past fifteen years. His professional interests focus on teaching sacred music, especially choral singing to amateur children and adults.

Christian holds a degree in Gregorian Chant from the Escuela Superior de Música Sagrada of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara and a Bachelor of Music with a focus on Choral Conducting from the University of Guadalajara. He completed postgraduate studies in Liturgical Musical Heritage at the University of Barcelona and the Ateneo de Saint Pacia in Barcelona. He has also completed additional studies, such as a Diploma in Theology at the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac in Guadalajara, and has studied organ, singing, and choral conducting at various seminaries and master classes in Mexico and Spain.

His achievements include the renewal of sacred music in various churches and institutions in Michoacán and Jalisco where he has worked, emphasizing the recovery of traditional Hispanic liturgical and devotional hymns, community singing in Latin, classical polyphony, and Gregorian chant for adult and youth choirs, as well as for children’s choirs.

He founded the Choir of Infants of the Holy Family in Uruapan and the Choir Festival of the same church, which has achieved national prestige. He was also director of the choirboys at the School of Infants of the Cathedral of Guadalajara from 2015 to 2020, during which he was responsible for its restructuring. With this group, he has toured nationally and internationally in Italy and Spain, participating in the International Corearte Festival in Barcelona. With these same groups, he participated in the celebration of the Holy Mass presided over by Pope Francis, held in Morelia in 2016.

He was associate director of the Choir of the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (UNIVA), where he was twice awarded the CALMECAC award for academic excellence. He has been a member of the Mexican Federation of Pueri Cantores since its founding and served as its president from 2022 to 2024, during which time he participated in the 44th International Congress of Pueri Cantores held in Rome, representing Mexico along with the choral delegation that traveled for this congress.

He currently works full-time as Director of Sacred Music at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Goshen, IN, a position he has held since March 2024, having moved to the United States. He collaborates closely with the Liturgy and Hispanic Ministry offices of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, providing resources for the diocese’s Hispanic and bilingual celebrations.

He is happily married to Alma, and they have a beautiful three-month-old baby. They share the same passion for performing and teaching the great treasure of sacred music, especially to Spanish-speaking brethren in the United States.

Sandra Raquel Bengochea, soprano, has established a remarkable reputation for her exceptional performances in the lyric coloratura repertoire. Critically acclaimed for her natural vivacity and undeniable charisma, Opera News describes her as “a performer who brings joy from the first note to the last.” With an extensive career spanning over thirty operatic roles, Sandra has captivated audiences with her remarkable portrayals of characters from headstrong Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro to the iconic title role in Manon. Her talent has graced prestigious companies including Bangkok Opera, Opera San José, Great Falls Opera, Opera Idaho, Intermountain Opera, and Tel Aviv Opera. Sandra’s versatility extends beyond the operatic stage, as she effortlessly commands both concert and recital performances. Notably, she has impressed audiences with her soprano solos in masterpieces such as Orff’s Carmina Burana, Schubert’s Mass in G, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and Mozart’s Requiem. These powerful performances have been hailed alongside accomplished orchestras, including The Winchester Orchestra, The Santa Clara Chorale, The San Jose Chamber Orchestra, The San José Symphony, The Sacramento Chorale Society, and The Midsummer Mozart Festival. Notably, she made last-minute appearances as a replacement for legendary vocalist Frederica Von Stade during a performance with The Midsummer Mozart orchestra at Villa Montalvo. 

Outside of her artistic pursuits, Sandra has enjoyed over a fifteen-year career as an instructor in higher education. Her expertise has been valued at esteemed institutions such as San José State University, West Valley College, Modesto Junior College School of Music, and Stanislaus State University, where she currently teaches applied lessons, Diction, Opera Theater, Art Song Repertoire, and Vocal Pedagogy. She currently serves on the faculty of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music. 

Sandra’s creative vision extends beyond her performances, as she is also an award-winning stage director. Recognized by the National Opera Association, she has received two awards for her outstanding productions. 

Sandra notes her extensive time participating in choral singing all throughout high school and college to her success as a solo performer. Under the direction of Dr. Charlene Archibeque, Sandra was a member of the choral ensemble “Choraliers” that participated and placed first in “The Choir of the World Competition” in Tallinn, Estonia.

Sandra Bengochea received her Master’s Degree from The Manhattan School of Music. She is a devoted wife and mother of two sons and has been active as an advocate for those affected by autism.

The Life of St Jerome, by Alessandro Allori

In 1577, the Florentine painter Alessandro Allori (1535-1607) was commissioned to decorate the ceiling of a chapel recently added by a nobleman named Niccolò Gaddi to the left transept of Santa Maria Novella, the principal Dominican church of their native city. Gaddi had studied Latin and Hebrew in his youth, and certainly chose to honor the great Doctor in this fashion particularly because he had given the Church the Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible which we now call the Vulgate. The central octagon of St Jerome in the Glory of Heaven is surrounded by eight episodes of his life, which are not arranged in chronological order; I shall therefore show them here starting from the one at the bottom of this photograph, and going counter-clockwise. The pendentive shields are filled with symbolic figures of the Virtues; the intrados is decorated with three more episodes from the end of the Saint’s life, and two more symbolic figures. (All images from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

St Jerome served for a time as secretary to Pope St Damasus I (366-84), and is therefore traditionally represented as a cardinal, which the papal secretary normally would be from the Middle Ages on, although the cardinalate per se did not exist in his own time. Here he is represented very anachronistically receiving a red galero from the Pope at a consistory; the Pope is also dressed in the contemporary garb of his office in the later 16th century. – In Allori’s time, the prevalent artistic tendency was what we now call Mannerism, which emerged in the mid-16th century from a general feeling that Raphael (who died in 1520) and Michelangelo (who died in 1564) had effectively exhausted the Renaissance. The Mannerists’ habit was to break all the rules established by their Renaissance predecessors, particularly in regard to the proportions of the human form, which had been something of an obsession with earlier Florentine painters. Here we see the fruit of this in the excessively large figures at the two corners. (An art history professor of mine once described this habit of deliberately distorting proportions by saying, “The Mannerist has only one thought in his little head: ‘This is going to drive the ghost of Leonardo da Vinci up a tree!’ ”)

St Jerome the Penitent, the most common way of representing him in the Counter-Reformation. The torso here is modelled after that of a broken ancient sculpture (now in the Vatican Museums) known as the Belvedere Torso, which was the model for the most important figure of the last Renaissance painting, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. This represents another important shift between the Renaissance and Mannerism; where the former sought to imitate the most beautiful things in nature, the latter sought to imitate the most beautiful things in art. The lion is a symbol of Jerome because of the story that the Saint had once healed a lion with a thorn in its paw.

In one of his most famous letters, St Jerome recounts that in his youth, during a severe illness, he was brought in a dream before the throne of God, who reproved him for his excessive devotion to the study of the great pagan authors like Virgil, Plautus, and above all Cicero. “Asked who and what I was, I replied, ‘I am a Christian’. But He who presided said, ‘Thou liest. Thou art a Ciceronian, and not a Christian.’ ” The Saint then made an oath to never again possess the books of the pagan authors, but nevertheless, continued to read and study them, and indeed, cite them in his works. This of course represents a long-standing tension among humanists throughout Europe, but especially in Gaddi and Allori’s native city of Florence, where many great scholars of the classics fell into severe excesses during the Renaissance.

The Baptism of St Jerome

St Jerome presents his Biblical translations to the Pope. While he was in Rome, he was in fact commissioned by Pope Damasus to revise the Latin text of the Gospels, but the rest of the Vulgate New Testament is not his work. It was not until Jerome had gone to the Holy Land and learned Hebrew from the local Jews that he translated those books of the Bible originally written in Hebrew (with the Deuterocanonical additions to Esther and Daniel), plus Tobias and Judith. (The Vulgate versions of Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the two books of Maccabees are also not his work.) – Note again the exceedingly large figures in the two lower corners. Mannerism is also a very busy style, as evidenced by the fact that there is a total of 13 figures in this fairly small painting. Nowadays, we tend to think of the Baroque style that came after it as a very busy one, but in point of fact, the artists of the Baroque generally reduce the number of figures in scenes like these, and thought of themselves as the creators of a much simpler and clearer style.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Feast of St Michael and All Angels

The traditional title of today’s feast is “The Dedication of St Michael the Archangel”, a term already found ca. 650 A.D. in the lectionary of Wurzburg, the oldest of the Roman Rite that survives, and in the ancient sacramentaries. The Martyrology erroneously refers this feast to the dedication of the famous shrine of St Michael on Mt Gargano in the Italian region of Puglia, following a medieval tradition attested by William Durandus at the end of the 13th century. In reality, the title comes from the dedication of a church built sometime before the mid-6th century on the via Salaria, about seven miles from the gates of Rome, and remained in use long after the basilica itself fell completely to ruin. The traditional Ambrosian liturgy, which borrowed the feast from Rome, has in a certain sense preserved the memory of its origin better than the Roman Rite itself; not only does it use the Roman name, but it also takes several of the Mass chants, as well as the Epistle and Gospel, from the common Mass for the dedication of a church.

The central panel of The Last Judgment, by Rogier van der Weyden, 1446-52, showing Christ above, and below, St Michael weighing the souls of the dead.

Despite the fact that the feast’s title refers specifically only to St Michael, September 29th is really the feast of all the Angels, as stated repeatedly in the texts of both the Office and Mass. The Introit is taken from Psalm 102, “Bless the Lord, all ye his angels: you that are mighty in strength, and execute his word, hearkening to the voice of his orders.”

This text is repeated in part in the Gradual.

The Communion is taken from the Old Latin version of the canticle Benedicite, “Bless the Lord, ye angels of the Lord: sing a hymn, and exalt him above all forever.” (Daniel 3, 58)

The collect of the Mass makes no reference to St Michael at all: “O God, who in wondrous order assign the duties of Angels and of men: mercifully grant that our life on earth be guarded by those who continually stand in Thy presence and minister to Thee in heaven.”

The Lauds hymn of the Office speaks in its first stanza of all the Angels, and in the following three of Ss Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the only Archangels specifically named in the Bible. In the Greek version of the book of Tobias (12, 15), however, St Raphael refers to himself as “one of the seven holy Angels, who present the prayers of the saints, and who go in before the glory of the Holy One.” This gave rise to a Byzantine custom of depicting seven Archangels standing together around the Lord; many icons of this motif give names to the remaining four from various apocryphal sources. One is called Uriel, who is mentioned several times in the Book of Enoch which St Jude quotes in his epistle (verses 14-15). The names of the remaining three are not the same in all sources; in the 19th century icon seen below, they are given as Jegudiel, Selaphiel and Barachiel.

The Byzantine feast of all the Angels is kept on November 8th, and like the Roman feast, originated with the dedication of a church; this was a basilica in Constantinople known as the Michaelion, traditionally said to have been built by Constantine himself. The formal title of the feast is “The Synaxis of the Great Commanders (ἀρχιστρατήγων) Michael and Gabriel, and the rest of the Bodiless Powers.” Curiously, the liturgical texts of the feast make no reference to St Raphael, nor to any of the other Angels, nor to the origin of the celebration.

In the Middle Ages, many places imitated the Roman custom of celebrating a second feast of St Michael, commemorating the famous apparition which led to the building of the shrine on Mt Gargano. In northern Europe, however, we find instead the feast of “St Michael on Mount Tumba”, the Latin name of the celebrated Mont-St-Michel, as for example in the Use of Sarum, which kept it on October 16th. A votive Mass of all the Angels was already in common use in the early ninth century, as attested by Alcuin of York, and is present among the votive Masses in every medieval missal. However, only very rarely does one find a feast of St Gabriel or of the Guardian Angels in the pre-Tridentine period; a Mass of St Raphael is sometimes found among the votive Masses especially to be said for the sick, but I have seen no no more than a handful of references to an actual feast day for him in the medieval period.

In the year 1670, Pope Clement X added to the general Calendar of the Roman Rite a feast of the Guardian Angels, which had been granted to the Austrian Empire by Paul V at the beginning of the century. The feast was kept in some places on the first Sunday of September, but the common date, October 2, was chosen as the first free day after the feast of St Michael.

The Three Archangels and Tobias, by Francesco Botticini, 1470

Pope Benedict XV, who reigned from 1914 to 1922, took a particular interest in devotion to the Angels. At the end of 1917, he raised the feast of St Michael to the highest grade, double of the first class, along with the March 19 feast of St Joseph. In 1921, he added the feasts of Ss Gabriel and Raphael to the general Calendar, the former on the day before the Annunciation, the latter on October 24 for no readily apparent reason. The feast of St Michael’s Apparition was removed from the General Calendar in 1960; in the post-Conciliar liturgical reform, Ss Gabriel and Raphael have been added to September 29th, and their proper feasts suppressed, along with the traditional reference in the title to the church dedication.

A History of the Popes Named Leo, Part 6: Leo XII

This is the sixth installment of a series on the thirteen papal namesakes of our new Holy Father Leo XIV; click these links to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. Let’s pretend that the long delay since the last installment was deliberately made so that this could be published on the anniversary of Leo XII’s election. 

On this day in the year 1823, Cardinal Annibale della Genga was elected Pope, and took the name Leo XII in honor of the previous Leo, who had somehow found the time during his very brief papacy to ennoble the della Genga family. His predecessor, Pius VII, was then the fourth longest reigning pope of all time, at over 23 years and 5 months. (He has since been surpassed by three more, Bl. Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St John Paul II, and dropped back to seventh). Cardinal della Genga had long been in poor health, and was chosen to be a transitional pope; during the conclave, he even said to the cardinals, “You are electing a dead man.” But as happens so often with transitional popes, he recovered his health enough to live longer than expected, dying nearly 5½ years later on February 10, 1829.

A portrait of Pope Leo XII, 1828, by the Belgian artist Charles Picqué (1799-1869). 

He was born in 1760, the sixth of ten children, and embarked on an ecclesiastical career from a very early age, enrolling in the diplomatic academy in Rome when he was only 18; he was ordained a priest by special dispensation at 22. In 1793, he was consecrated bishop and sent as a nuncio first to Switzerland, then to Cologne. In the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, all of Europe was in a state of constant upheaval; relations between Church and state were very difficult, not least because of the gigantic theft of ecclesiastical property taking place everywhere, and the suppression of countless Catholic institutions of every sort. Bishop della Genga served the Church well in these turbulent times, but was disliked by Napoleon; he therefore returned to Italy, and went into a quiet early retirement at an abbey near his native place, a rural area within the Papal State, about 140 miles north north-east of Rome.

A portrait of Ercole Cardinal Consalvi, 1819, by the English painter Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).

With the sudden fall of Napoleon in 1814, and the restoration of the French monarchy, it seemed that his career might be revived, as he was chosen to go to France and deliver the Pope’s message of congratulations to Kind Louis XVIII, However, this did not please Pius VII’s Secretary of State, Ercole Cardinal Consalvi, and he was swiftly sent back to his retirement. Pius VII granted him the cardinalate, with his title at Santa Maria in Trastevere, and appointed him bishop of Senigallia, a town on the Adriatic Coast close to the della Genga’s land (and the birthplace of Bl. Pius IX), but due to his poor health, he never took possession of the diocese, and resigned it after about six months. Two years later, his health had improved enough that he was made Vicar of Rome, and archpriest of St Mary Major; he received the latter title on February 10, 1818, the same date upon which he would die 11 years later. He also served as prefect of various congregations.

When Pius VII died in 1823, attitudes within the Church were sharply divided. One party, known as the “moderati” in Italian, believed in finding and maintaining accommodations between the Church and the new secularized states of post-Napoleonic Europe, which had been very much the policy of Pius VII and Cardinal Consalvi. The other, known as the “zelanti – the zealous”, sought to retrench upon the old ways of the pre-revolutionary world. (Like all such characterizations, this is probably an oversimplification; this is a part of history in which I claim no expertise.)

Leo XII was elected as a representative of the zelanti, after the Austrian emperor had interposed a veto on their preferred candidate, a cardinal named Severoli. He himself predicted almost at once to the candidate of the moderati, the one much preferred by the major European powers, Cardinal Castiglioni, that he would be elected next. This did indeed happen, and Castiglioni’s choice of papal name, Pius VIII, was a deliberate sign of return to the policies and ideas of the moderati.

Pius VIII being carried into St Peter’s Basilica on the sedes gestatoria, 1829, by the French artist Horace Vernet (1789-1863).

Ercole Consalvi was immediately replaced as secretary of state by Cardinal Giulio Maria della Somaglia, who was then almost 80 (16 years older than Leo himself), a choice that was perhaps emblematic of this desire of the zelanti to return to an old world that had passed away. However, in the management of the Church’s affairs, Leo did in fact quite prove successful, and nothing like the fanatic he is often misrepresented as. He had the wisdom to take Consalvi into his counsels, and the latter had the wisdom to let bygones be bygones and offer the pope whatever advice he could. In 1800, amid the universal chaos wrought by Napoleon, no Jubilee was held in Rome, and by 1825, many people, and indeed, many Catholics saw the event as just another relic of a dead past. Leo XII proclaimed it anyway, and it proved a huge success, drawing half-a-million pilgrims. The pope also rallied opposition to renascent persecution of Catholicism in the Netherlands, and encouraged the movement towards Catholic emancipation in Great Britain.

He is, however, nowadays remembered unfavorably in Italy for his governance of the Papal State, which was reactionary and repressive. A dear friend of mine, a priest who is very well versed in the modern history of the Church, once described the Papal States in its latter days as “the Afghanistan of 19th century Europe.” The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Leo XII sums the matter up very nicely: “There is something pathetic in the contrast between the intelligence and masterly energy displayed by him as ruler of the Church and the inefficiency of his policy as ruler of the Papal States. In face of the new social and political order, he undertook the defense of ancient custom and accepted institutions; he had little insight into the hopes and visions of those who were then pioneers of the greater liberty that had become inevitable.”

But writing once again as one with no expertise in this area of history, I make bold to add the following. This article was written in 1910, at a point when the social upheaval and violence let loose by the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, and the “inevitable greater liberty” of European society, had not yet reached its crescendo in the unrelenting massacres of the two world wars. The Church itself is now still recovering from its own dizzy and wholly misplaced optimism about the modern world and its place within it. So perhaps the day will come when the forebodings of Leo XII and the other zelanti about what the new order of things would do to society will seem wiser than they have hitherto.

As noted above, Leo XII’s health had already long been bad at the time of his election, and he is supposed to have received extreme unction 17 times during his papacy. Towards the end of his first year as Pope, he came very close to dying, and was saved only when his close friend, the Passionist St Vincent Strambi, bishop of Macerata and Tolentino, offered his own life to God in exchange for the pope’s recovery. He finally passed away a few days after being taken severely ill in February of 1829. He is buried in the floor of St Peter’s basilica, before the altar which holds the relics of his first papal namesake; those of Saints Leo II, III and IV rest in the altar immediately to the left.

The altar of Pope St Leo I in St Peter’s basilica.

The tomb of Leo XII in the floor in front of it. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gladstone 8, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

The Legend of Ss Cosmas and Damian

Saints Cosmas and Damian are said to have been brothers from Arabia and physicians, who left their native place and settled in the Mediterranean port city of Aegea in Cilicia, modern south-east Turkey. They practiced medicine without taking any fee for their services, for which reason the Greek Church gives them the title “Unmercenary Saints”, (ἀνάργυροι, literally ‘un-moneyed’, Slavonic ‘безсребреники’), a title which they share with several others. During the persecution of Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century, their Christian charity brought them to the attention of the local Roman governor, and they were martyred for the Faith, along with their brothers Anthimus, Leontius and Euprepius. By the 5th century there were two churches named for them in Constantinople, and in 527, Pope Felix IV converted a building in the Roman Forum into a church in their honor. This church is particularly important not only because the original apsidal mosaic is still preserved, although much restored, but also because it was the first “sanctuarium” in Rome, i.e., a church named for Saints, but with no material connection to them. (Churches of the Virgin Mary are an obvious exception.)

The apsidal mosaic of the Church of Ss Cosmas and Damian in Rome. On the far left, Pope Felix IV offers the church which he has built to Christ and His Saints. One of the two brothers is presented to Christ on the left by Saint Paul, the other by St Peter on the right. Peter and Paul, as the patron Saints of Rome, are closer to Christ, and dressed as Roman senators; Cosmas and Damian are wearing clothes that evidently would have look foreign to the eyes of a sixth-century Roman, and their faces are darker. On the far right, St Theodore, whose church is not far away on the other side of the Forum, balances the composition; as a Greek, he is also dressed as a foreigner. Above St Paul’s head, a phoenix, the symbol of the resurrection of the body, perches on a leaf of a palm tree.

They are among the Saints named in the Canon of the Roman Mass and the traditional form of the Litany of the Saints; along with four other Unmercenaries, (Cyrus and John, Panteleimon and Hermolaus), they are also named in the Preparation Rite of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. The Emperor Justinian I (527-65) attributed to their intercession his recovery from a serious illness, and granted special privileges to the city of Cyrrhus in Syria, where their relics had been brought after their martyrdom. Many churches now claim to have their relics, among them the Jesuit church of St Michael the Archangel in Munich.

In the fifteenth century, they became particularly prominent in Florence as patron Saints of the de facto (and later de jure) ruling family, the Medici, whose name means “doctors.” In 1437, the Dominican convent of San Marco, newly established in an old Benedictine foundation, was completely renovated at the family’s expense. The painter Fra Angelico, one of the founders of the community, was commissioned to do a large altarpiece depicting the Madonna and Child surrounded by various Saints, with Cosmas and Damian kneeling before them in front of the group.

The main panel of the San Marco altarpiece, by Blessed Fra Angelico, 1438-40

The predella panels depict events from their story as given in the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacopo da Voragine. In the first, a woman named Palladia, who had spent all her money on doctors without being cured (like the woman with the issue of blood in the Gospels), is healed of an unspecified ailment by the brothers. She then compels Damian to accept a reward, at which Cosmas is so indignant that he states that he wishes to be buried apart from his brother, but the Lord Himself appears to Cosmas in a dream and excuses Damian.

The five brothers are hauled before a proconsul named Lysias, who orders them to worship an idol, shown on the far right. (Fra Angelico shares with his contemporary Piero della Francesca and other Tuscan artists of that era a predilection for depicting people in unusual hats; this comes from seeing Eastern clergymen during the great ecumenical council of reunion (1431-49), which was moved from Ferrara to Florence while he was working on this project.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Legend of Ss Cyprian and Justina

September 26th is the traditional western date for the feast of two martyrs called Cyprian and Justina, who are said to have died at Antioch during the persecution of Diocletian, at the beginning of the 4th century. In the Byzantine Rite, today is the primary feast of St John the Evangelist, and these martyrs are therefore moved forward to October 2nd. Cyprian may be referred to as “of Antioch” to distinguish him from his much more important namesake of Carthage, but, as will be explained below, this very necessary distinction was blurred very early on.

Their legend tells that Cyprian was a magician, highly practiced in the very blackest of black arts (in ways which I would not even think to describe here), which he had learned by traveling all over the East, even as far as India, and eventually settling in Antioch. Justina was an Antiochene convert to Christianity, whom a pagan named Aglaides fell in love with, and being unable to win her over, turned to the magician to bring her around by his art. (In some versions of the story, Cyprian himself also falls in love with her.) But Justina nullifies his every attempt against her by making the sign of the Cross, including a magic potion given to Cyprian by the devil himself. (This detail is included in Jacopo de Voragine’s Golden Legend, but omitted by the Roman Breviary of 1529.)

An illustration of the story of Ss Cyprian and Justina from a 14th century French translation of the Golden Legend. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The devil then admits to Cyprian that he is powerless before the sign of the Cross, at which the latter converts to Christianity. (Aglaides, whose name becomes “Agladius” or “Acladius” in the Latin versions, falls victim to Chuck Cunningham syndrome, but in the Golden Legend, not before he turns into a sparrow by magic and flies up to Justina’s window.) Cyprian is baptized, and becomes such an exemplary Christian, not only in his teaching and living, but also by performing many miracles, that he is chosen to succeed Anthimus, the bishop of Antioch who received him into the Church. The devil then seeks revenge by stirring up persecution against the Christians; Cyprian and Justina are both put to various torments, and eventually beheaded, after which their bodies are brought to Rome. The Golden Legend adds that their bodies were further translated to the Italian city of Piacenza in the Emilia Romagna (about 44 miles south-east of Milan.) This may, however, result from a confusion between this Justina and another martyr of the same name from the city of Padua.

The cathedral of Piacenza, Italy. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Mongolo1984, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

The historical difficulties in this account abound, and do not primarily lie in its miraculous aspects. The biggest difficulty is rather that Antioch is a patriarchate, and its line of episcopal succession is extremely well documented; there was never any patriarch of Antioch called Anthimus or Cyprian, nor any bishop with either of those names in any of the various other Antiochs in Asia Minor. By the 370s, St Gregory of Nazianzus had somehow managed to confuse this Cyprian with his namesake of Carthage, whose life is far too well-documented to have anything to do with any part of this legend. He is followed in this impossible mistake by the poet Prudentius, who writes of him before his conversion thus in his book On the Crowns of the Martyrs XIII: “He was pre-eminent among young men for skill in perverse arts, would violate modesty by a trick, count nothing holy, and often practice a magic spell amid the tombs to raise passion in a wife and break the law of wedlock.” (From the Loeb Classical Library translation by HJ Thompson.)

The aforementioned pre-Tridentine edition of the Roman breviary had already simplified the story considerably; it has nine lessons at Matins, but they are not very long. The breviary of St Pius V reduces these even further to two, cutting out any reference to Cyprian being ordained at all. Inexplicably, the chapel which holds the putative relics of these Saints at the baptistry of the Lateran basilica in Rome has an inscription which calls him a deacon instead.

The inscription above the apse of the chapel reads, “DD (i.e. ‘divis’) Cypriano diac(ono) et Justinae virgini MM (i.e. ‘martyribus’), quorum corpora ara condit. – To Saints Cyprian the deacon and Justina the virgin, martyrs, whose bodies the altar preserves.” (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dguendel, CC BY 3.0)

The Simili modo: Canonical Modifications, Part II

Lost in Translation #143

The greatest surprise of all in the Roman Canon is the insertion of the words mysterium fidei into the Simili modo, for although it does not interrupt the consecration formula (“This is the Chalice of My Blood”), it does interrupt the scriptural narrative. The phrase was added inappropriately (inconvenienter), charges an objection in the Summa Theologiae. [1] Or in the words of Jungmann, “And then, in the middle of the sacred text, stand the enigmatic words so frequently discussed: mysterium fidei.” [2] And Parsch: “The insertion of ‘the mystery of faith’ is most unusual, since it even disturbs the construction of the sentence.” [3]

At least the words are scriptural. When speaking of ideal deacons, St. Paul writes that they should be “Holding the mystery of faith (mysterium fidei) in a pure conscience.” (1 Tim. 3, 9) Perhaps it is this ancient association of the mystery of faith with the diaconate that gave rise to the speculation that the deacon exclaimed the words mysterium fidei! during this consecration before the phrase was transferred to the Canon. The theory, however, is not generally accepted today. [4]

And since Latin lacks definite and indefinite articles, these two words are surprisingly difficult to translate. Is it “the mystery of faith” or “a mystery of faith”? Or is it “a/the mystery of the Faith”? It is not clear whether the faith in question is subjective (my assent to sacred dogma, fides qua creditur or the faith by which I believe) or objective (the content of the dogma – fides quae creditur, the Faith which is believed). For some medieval interpreters, it was the former: “the mystery completed in the Eucharist – the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ – could be understood only by means of subjective faith.” [5] And it is also quite possible, given Patristic literature (as with the Eastern Orthodox today), that mysterium here means not mystery but sacrament, and thus the phrase could be translated, “a sacrament of the Faith.” “The interpolation mysterium fidei would imply that the Eucharist contains all the mysteries of Christ,” writes Abbot Barthe. “It is ‘the mystery of faith,’ the sacrament par excellence.’” [6]

The phrase’s referent also poses challenges. Mysterium fidei is an appositive of calix or chalice. An appositive, if you recall, is a noun phrase placed close to another noun or noun phrase to create an identity between the two. In the sentence, “George, the mailman, walked down the street,” “George” and the “mailman” are one and the same. In this prayer, the Chalice and the mysterium fidei are one and the same. Again the possibilities are manifold. “This is my Chalice, a mystery of faith.” “This is my Chalice, a sacrament of faith.” “This is My chalice, the mystery of our Faith.” Etc.

For St. Thomas, all the additions after “This is the chalice of My Blood” signify the power of the Blood shed during the Passion: “eternal” shows its power in securing our eternal heritage; and “which will be poured forth for you…” shows its power to forgive sins. As for the “mystery of faith,” Aquinas writes, the phrase is there to signify the

justification of grace, which is through faith, according to Romans 3, 25-26: “Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood . . . that He Himself may be just, and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” [7]

Aquinas also notes that the word “mystery” is a reminder that the reality of the sacrament is present but hidden. [8]

Structure

Stepping outside our linguistic questions for a moment, we note the ingenious placement of the mysterium fidei. The phrase is in the exact center of the sentence Hic est enim Calix Sánguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti: mysterium fídei: qui pro vobis et pro multis effundétur in remissiónem peccatórum. Ten words are before it, and ten words are after it. There is a way in which, then, mysterium fidei is at the center of the entire Canon, with the two halves forming a chiasm or chiasmus around it. A chiasm follows a pattern like CBAABC or:

Or in the case of the Canon:

Matthew Gerlach sees this pattern in terms of a moving helix: [10]

Literally at the apex of our worship, then, lies the Mystery of Faith.

Postscript

Or did. Following upon the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and others, Nicholas Gihr places great confidence in the providence of liturgical development:

These additions of the liturgy have emanated from a divine and apostolic tradition and are, therefore, as incontestably true and certain as are the words of the inspired authors [of the Bible]. [10]

But the architects of the Novus Ordo did not place the sacred liturgy on the same level as the Sacred Scriptures. When the Roman Canon was retained only because of the insistence of Pope Paul VI (Bugnini wanted to omit it entirely), the mysterium fidei was plucked from its central place and used as a prompt for the people to make a “memorial acclamation,” possibly in imitation of the uncertain hypothesis that the phrase was originally said by the deacon. [11] Decades later, Vatican II peritus Alphonse Cardinal Stickler would express consternation at this innovation. After noting that all records indicate that mysterium fidei has been a part of the Roman Rite from the very beginning and that therefore there is no historical warrant for making this “quite serious change in the consecration formula,” he concludes:

For this reason, the banishing of mysterium fidei from the Eucharistic formula becomes a powerful symbol of demythologization, a symbol of the humanizing of the center of divine worship, of holy Mass.

Notes

[1] Summa Theologiae III.78.3.ob 5.

[2] Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 2, 199.

[3] Parsch, 236.

[4] Jungmann, vol. 2, 199.

[5] Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 279.

[6] Barthe, Forest of Symbols, 112.

[7] Summa Theologiae III.78.3.

[8] Summa Theologiae III.78.3.ad 5.

[9] Matthew Thomas Gerlach, Lex Orandi, Lex Legendi: A Correlation of the Roman Canon and the Fourfold Sense of Scripture (2009 dissertation thesis, Marquette University).

[10] Gihr, Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, 634.

[11], For the full story, see Peter Kwasniewski’s chapter on the subject in his Once and Future Roman Rite.

Pictures from Mt Athos, Part 1: The Monastery of Simonos Petra

A friend of mine recently visited the monastic republic of Mount Athos, and very kindly agreed to share some of his pictures of the visit with us on NLM, for which we are very grateful. There are enough pictures that they will be spread out over several posts. We begin with the area where pilgrims arrive by ferry, and are welcomed, followed by the monastery of Simonos Petra (Simon’s Rock), founded in the 13th century on a large rocky outcrop by St Simon the Athonite, who lived in a nearby cave. The monastery as we see it today results from a rebuilding in the 19th century, after the complex was destroyed by a terrible fire. Simonos Petra ranks 13th in seniority amongst the twenty main monasteries on Athos, and is noted for its expertise in Byzantine chant. We are particularly lucky to get to see the interiors of some of the churches in this fashion, and of course, the views of the peninsula itself are just magnificent.

The ascent to the main plaza of the monastery complex.

The katholikon, or main church of the monastery...

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Revolution is So Over

Traditionis Custodes did not come as thunder out of a clear sky; rumors of a plan to restrict the use of the Roman Rite had been circulating for weeks before it actually dropped. But when it did drop, on a Friday at noon in Rome, the shabbiness of the whole affair was immediately evident to the entire world, not least because of the absence of a vacatio legis.

The bishop of the area where I was living at the time was far out of town, and unable to return on short notice that weekend, but I have it on absolutely certain authority that he immediately contacted his secretary to have him clear his schedule for the Sunday following. Come the day, His Excellency spoke at both of the traditional Masses in the main church where it is celebrated in his diocese, and said, “I have read this document, and I see nothing in it that applies in any way to this community.” He immediately issued all the necessary dispensations, and the traditional mass remains as it was in that diocese.

In the following months, the reactions of so many of the world’s bishops were so similar that, in the name of collegiality synodality, the Holy See had to do a special end run around canon law, and remove their ability to use canon 87 in this matter specifically. And from that day to this, the would-be defenders of TC have never been able to make up their minds as to why it was necessary. They tell us almost simultaneously that those who attend the traditional Roman Rite are a tiny fraction of the faithful, (the least of the brethren, as it were,) so their concerns and the pastoral care of them need not trouble anyone, least of all their shepherds. But at the same time, they also represent a grave threat to the unity of the Church.

Dangerous counter-revolutionaries threatening the unity of the Faith!

That first year, when NLM’s anniversary came around, instead the usual “happy anniversary to us, and thank you, Shawn!” piece, I wrote an article called, “The Revolution is Over.” The basic point was that TC was a gesture rooted above all else in despair, the despair that overmasters the minds of all revolutionaries when their revolution has failed. Seeing that the rising generations are not interested in their revolution, they attempt to impose ideological conformity by force, because they can no longer do so by persuasion. When that happens, it is already too late, and the revolution is already over.

I have thus far seen no evidence that I was wrong about this, and I write this now because I have just seen a new and very interesting piece of evidence that I was right. The National Catholic Reporter, of all publications, ran an outstanding opinion piece two days ago by a Catholic YouTuber named Roxie Beckles, who uses the handle That Black Catholic Chick. Commenting on the crowds of young people who attended the Jubilee celebration in Rome this summer, she writes, “These young Catholics were not extremists obsessed with nostalgic throwbacks. They were the future of the church – standing tall, unashamed and deeply in love with Jesus Christ. This moment wasn’t orchestrated by branding experts or synodal surveys. It was the Holy Spirit moving through the hearts of a generation tired of being lied to by the world. A generation that’s not content with shallow answers and empty rituals. They want real doctrine. Real reverence. Real formation. Real holiness.”

Turning specifically to the topic of the Latin Mass, she then writes something which has been, of course, obvious to all those with eyes to see and ears to hear, but which is nevertheless always worth repeating. “…when we really listen to the hearts of young Catholics, we see that the desire for tradition is not about ideology, but identity. … Young people want a liturgy that reflects the weight and glory of what we profess. They want to hear sacred music that stirs the soul rather than mimic the culture outside the church walls. They want to see beauty. They want to be caught up in mystery.

To move forward as one body, we have to stop pretending that reverence belongs to the past when, in fact, it’s one of the only things still bringing young people in. The future of the Catholic Church depends not on reinvention, but on deepening. We don’t need to discard what’s still bearing fruit. We need to water it, tend it and let it flourish.”

Even the National Catholic Reporter recognizes that the ideological crusade of frustrated revolutionaries against the traditional Roman Rite is out of gas. This column is part of a series on “Views on the first U.S. pope”, and ends with Ms Beckles saying, “My hope is that this pontificate offers space for that to happen; that we won’t be asked to silence what gives life, but invited to share it freely and joyfully with the world.” That is our hope too. Oremus pro pontifice nostro Leone!

From Pax inter Spinas, the publishing house of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignole, France.

The Feast of Our Lady of Ransom

Domenico Ghirlandaio, “Maria de Mercede,” ca. 1472

September 24 on the 1962 General Calendar commemorates the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St Peter Nolasco, confirming his mission to found a religious order that would ransom Christian captives. In the thirteenth century, Moors in Spain frequently abducted Christians and sold them into slavery. In response to this injustice, Saint Peter collaborated with Saint Raymund of Pennafort and King James I of Aragon to establish the Mercedarians, more formally known as the Order of Our Lady of Ransom or the Order of Our Lady of Mercy. The order included an office of Ransomer, a member designated to negotiate with slaveowners, and a fourth vow required by all members of the order to give oneself up as a hostage in Saracen territory if necessary to emancipate a Christian slave.

They had their work cut out for them. A Mediterranean slave trade fueled by abduction of the innocent is older than Homer’s Odyssey (8th c. BC), as the story of Odysseus’ loyal swineherd Eumaeus attests. In the Middle Ages, the trade was practiced primarily by Muslims, whose religion permitted the enslavement of any non-Muslim. On the western corner of Europe were the Moors; to the East was the Ottoman Empire, which still had slavery when it was replaced by the Republic of Turkey in the 1920s; and to the South, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, were the pirates on the Barbary Coast in Africa, who sailed as far north as Iceland in 1627, killed 50 locals, and enslaved 400. It takes guts to go viking on former Vikings.

It was these same Barbary pirates, incidentally, who inspired the line “the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps fight song. The pirates had been harassing American merchant ships (which were no longer under the protection of the British navy), and the new nation responded with the First Barbary War. It was Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and his Marines who hoisted the Stars and Stripes on the soil of the Old World for the first time during the Battle of Derna in 1805.

Charles Waterhouse, “Attack on Derna”

As for the Mercedarians, they remained active in ransoming Christian captives, but after the discovery of the New World, they also became zealous missionaries in Latin America. Christopher Columbus himself brought the first Mercedarian friars to the Western hemisphere, and before long Latin America had eight Mercedarian provinces to Spain’s three and France’s one.

Today the Mercedarians, as one of their websites puts it, focus on rescuing

others from modern types of captivity, such as social, political, and psychological forms. They work in jails, marginal neighborhoods, among addicts, and in hospitals. In the United States, the Order of Mercy gives special emphasis to educational and parish work.[1]

And as the Order’s raison-d’etre has changed or evolved, so too has its fourth vow, which is now “to free from the new forms of slavery the Christians who are in danger of losing their Faith.”

Devotion to Our Lady of Ransom has changed as well. She of course remains patron of the Mercedarian Order and of Barcelona, Spain, where the Order was first constituted. Sicily has a special devotion to Our Lady under this title because the island suffered much at the hands of the Saracens. And the most important Marian shrine in India is the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom in Vallarpardam, Kochi, in the region of Kerala.

Alanbrindo, “Our Lady of Ransom in Indian Tradition,” 2015

More recently, Our Lady of Ransom has been conscripted to re-evangelize Great Britain, or most of it. In 1887, the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom was established for the “conversion of England and Wales, the restoration of the lapsed, and prayer for the forgotten dead.” The founders saw a parallel between the Mercedarians’ original mission and their own, which is to make England once again Our Lady’s Dowry by “ransoming individuals from the darkness of unbelief and heresy into the light of the Catholic Faith.” [2] The Guild’s first two priests to join were Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Manning and St. John Henry Newman.

The changing missions and clients of the Mercedarians and Our Lady of Ransom remind us that it is sometimes possible and even necessary to put old wine into new wineskins, or at least to apply old devotions to new problems. For instance, one can easily see Our Lady of Ransom being invoked in the war against the global scourge of sex trafficking, the most obvious successor, it seems to me, of chattel slavery. No doubt this new iteration of enslavement must be met with a different skill set than what the Order of Mercy currently possesses, but that should not stop the Church as a whole from offering prayers to Our Lady of Ransom on the behalf of these new victims.

On the other hand, the Collect for the feast reminds us of one kind of enslavement that never changes:

Deus, qui per gloriosíssimam Fílii tui Matrem, ad liberándos Christi fidéles a potestáte paganórum, nova Ecclésiam tuam prole amplificáre dignátus es: præsta, quǽsumus; ut, quam pie venerámur tanti óperis institutrícem, eius páriter méritis et intercessíone, a peccátis ómnibus et captivitáte dæmónis liberémur. Per ejúsdem Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

O God, who through the most glorious Mother of Thy Son hast deigned to increase Thy Church through a new offspring for delivering Christ's faithful from the power of the heathen: grant, we beseech, that we who piously venerate the founding of so great a work may, through its merits and intercession, be equally delivered from all sins and from the captivity of the Devil. Through the same Christ our Lord.

The prayer nicely contrasts the captivity of "the Demon" with the enslaving power of the Muslim captors--who, rather than being seen through the rose-colored glasses of post-conciliar interreligious dialogue, are curtly called pagani or heathen.

But the Collect’s petition is for ourselves rather than the unjustly subjugated. It is a nightmare to imagine being enslaved, to be deprived of basic rights that we take for granted and to be exploited like livestock. And yet in every day and age, there is a horror even worse than the chains and lashes of the slaver. Sin and Satan’s reign constitute an even greater tyranny than the dehumanizing institution of chattel slavery, and so we pray, always and everywhere, to be delivered from the Fiend and his chains of vice as if our very lives depended on it. Our Lady of Ransom, continue to pray for us.

Notes

[1] https://www.orderofmercy.org/about

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160304091611/http://www.guild-ransom.co.uk/index.html

The Jerusalem Motets of William Byrd

The ancient corpus of Matins responsories that accompanies the readings from the book of Tobias, Judith and Esther in the last weeks of September includes one that is actually not Biblical at all, although the verse with which it is sung comes from the book of Judith. (It is repeated on some of the weekdays, including today.)

R. Tribulationes civitatum audivimus quas passae sunt, et defecimus; timor et hebetudo mentis cecidit super nos et super liberos nostros: ipsi montes nolunt recipere fugam nostram; * Domine, miserere. V. Peccavimus cum patribus nostris, injuste egimus, iniquitatem fecimus. Domine, miserere.

R. We have heard of the tribulations of the cities which they have suffered, and we have grown faint; fear and dullness of mind have fallen upon us and upon our children; the very mountains will not receive our flight; o Lord, have mercy. V. We have sinned with our fathers we have done unjustly, we have committed iniquity; o Lord, have mercy.

Folio 98v of the Antiphonary of Compiègne, also known as the antiphonary of Charles the Bald, 860-77 AD, with the texts of three antiphons from the book of Job, six responsories and three antiphons from the book of the Tobias, and the first two from the book of Judith, the second of which is Tribulationes civitatum; all of these are used in the month of September. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 17436) – The original corpus for Tobias included only these six responsories, which cover the first two nocturns of Sunday Matins; responsories for the third nocturn, including Tribulationes civitatum, were usually supplied from those assigned to other books.

This was beautifully set as a motet by the composer William Byrd, but with modifications to the text, which is no longer structured as a responsory. The words “Domine, ad te sunt oculi nostri, ne pereamus” are inserted from one of the responsories of the following month which accompany the books of the Maccabees, and the last part is completely changed, also borrowed in part from one of the Maccabee responsories.

Tribulationes civitatum audivimus quas passae sunt, et defecimus; Domine, ad te sunt oculi nostri, ne pereamus; timor et hebetudo mentis cecidit super nos et super liberos nostros: ipsi montes nolunt recipere fugam nostram; Domine, miserere. Nos enim pro peccatis nostris haec patimur; aperi oculos tuos, Domine, et vide afflictionem nostram. (We have heard of the tribulations of the cities which they have suffered, and we have grown faint; o Lord, to Thee do we look, lest we perish; fear and dullness of mind have fallen upon us and upon our children; the very mountains will not receive our flight; o Lord, have mercy; for we suffer these things for our sins, open Thy eyes, o Lord, and see our affliction.)

This is one of three works known collectively as ‘the Jerusalem motets’, written by the Catholic Byrd in response to the intensification of anti-Catholic persecution in England under Queen Elizabeth I. The “city” in each case is the Catholic Church, and the pleas to the Lord for mercy are made collectively, in the plural, which it to say, on behalf of all the persecuted. The second motet is purely Biblical, taken from Isaiah 64, 9-10.

Ne irascaris, Domine, satis, et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae; ecce, respice, populus tuus omnes nos. Civitas Sancti tui facta est deserta, Sion deserta facta est, Jerusalem desolata est. – Be not very angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity: behold, see, we are all thy people. The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert, Jerusalem is desolate.

The third, Vide, Domine, has only a few words taken directly from a liturgical text, “veni, Domine, et noli tardare”, from one of the responsories of Advent.

Vide, Domine, afflictionem nostram, et in tempore maligno ne derelinquas nos. Plusquam Hierusalem facta est deserta civitas electa; gaudium cordis nostri conversum est in luctum, et jocunditas nostra in amaritudinem conversa est; sed veni, Domine, et noli tardare, et revoca dispersos in civitatem tuam. Da nobis, Domine, pacem tuam diu desideratam, pax sanctissima, et miserere populi tui gementis et flentis, Domine. Deus noster. – See our affliction, o Lord, and do not forsake us in the evil time. More than Jerusalem, the chosen city hath become desert; the joy of our heart is turned to mourning, and our delight to bitterness; but come, o Lord, and tarry not, and recall the scattered ones into thy city. Grant us, O Lord, thy peace, long desired, (o most holy peace), and have mercy on thy mourning, weeping people, o Lord our God.

Byrd’s collaborator Thomas Tallis was a generation older; having grown up in the Catholic Church before the many woes inflicted upon it by the impiety and avarice of the English monarchs, he remained a Catholic all his life. From the liturgical texts of the same period, he drew the words of one of the most famous motets of all time, very much on the same theme, the Spem in alium for forty voices. In the Office, it is sung as a responsory with the book of Esther in the last week of September, but it is another ecclesiastical composition, not an exact citation of any Biblical text.

Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te, Deus Israel, qui irasceris et propitius eris, et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis. Domine Deus, creator caeli et terrae, respice humilitatem nostram. – I have never had hope in any other but in Thee, o God of Israel, who grow wroth, and art merciful, and forgivest all the sins of men in (their) tribulation. O Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, look upon our lowliness.