The Ambrosian Gospel of the Fourth Sunday of Advent

This article is partly based on notes by our Ambrosian expert Nicola de’ Grandi.

In many medieval uses of the Roman Rite, e.g. that of Sarum, the Gospels of the Sundays of Advent are arranged differently from what we find in the Missal of St Pius V. On the first Sunday, the Gospel is that of Palm Sunday, Matthew 21, 1-9, and the other following Gospels of the Roman tradition are pushed forward one week. None of the Roman Gospels is omitted in this system, since that of the 4th Sunday, Luke 3, 1-6, is also read on Ember Saturday.

Part of an ivory diptych made in the 5th century, now kept in the museum of the cathedral of Milan; the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem is represented in the lower part of this section. 

The Ambrosian Advent begins two weeks earlier than the Roman, making today the Fourth Sunday, and the Gospel is this same passage from Matthew 21. In the following table, I have noted the Advent Gospels of the Roman Rite, the Sarum Use (as an example of the common medieval tradition), and the Ambrosian Rite; it also includes the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, which was originally part of the Roman Advent. As you can see, the Ambrosian Rite shares all of its Advent Gospels with the Roman Rite, but orders them differently (as indicated by the red characters), and presents four of them in a longer form. Two Gospels are noted for the Sixth Sunday of the Ambrosian Advent, which has two different Masses assigned to it at two different stational churches.

The placement of this Gospel in Advent is attested in all the most ancient Ambrosian lectionaries; it is also found in the Mozarabic Rite on the 3rd Sunday, and in various lectionaries of the Gallican Rite.

The question naturally arises: Why is the Gospel of Palm Sunday, the beginning of the Lord’s Passion, read in the season which celebrates His Incarnation, and looks forward to the revelation thereof at His Birth?

In the middle days of their republic (perhaps in the 4th century BC), the Romans had instituted the custom of the “triumph”, a formalized procession through the city to celebrate an important military victory. To be voted a triumph by the Senate after such a victory was the pinnacle of a public career. But as the republic devolved into an empire, triumphs came to be devalued by overuse, and the right to hold one was reserved to the emperor alone. Hence, at the very end of the first century AD, the historian Tacitus could write that “the triumphs celebrated over (the Germans) in recent times have been in honor of imaginary victories.” (Germania 37, cited by The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, in the entry for “triumph”, p. 1510.)

A bas relief preserved from the no-longer-extant arch of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-80), showing him in a triumph after his (legitimate) victories against various Germanic tribes. Now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Wilfredor.) 

But the human need for public spectacle and celebration, if denied in one quarter, will reemerge in another, and in late antiquity, even as Christianity was becoming more and more of a force in Roman society, there emerged the “adventus – arrival” as a ceremony to replace the triumph. It is described thus in The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (p. 23).

“The ceremonial ‘arrival’ of a person of high rank, especially an emperor, but also provincial governors, bishops and holy men, and even relics, at a city was ‘the ceremonial par excellence of late antiquity.’ * A procession of dignitaries and citizens met the honorand some way from the city walls. After formal greetings, the honorand entered the festively decorated city to music, hymns, and ritual acclamations; the climax of the ceremony was a formal public panegyric.”

The words noted above with the * are cited from the book Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity by Sabine MacCormack (Univ. California Press, 1981), which goes on to say this about the character of the ceremony under the Tetrarachs, the last emperors before the peace of the Church under Constantine. (pp. 22-23) ~ “… the ceremony highlighted the visible presence and activity of him who was welcomed, for which the Romans used the term deus praesens. (‘god present’; my emphasis) … the emperor able to aid and protect his subjects because he was present and available.”

Seen in this light, the Gospel of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is read in Advent not as a prelude to His Passion, as it is on Palm Sunday, but as a symbolic representation of His two “arrivals”, a constant theme of the Advent season, first to the earthly city in His incarnation and birth, and second to the heavenly city at the end of time.

The triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, depicted in the 6th century Gospel manuscript of Rossano. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Michele Abastante, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

This idea of the Roman adventus ceremony is also echoed in the ingressa of the Ambrosian Mass for this Sunday, the equivalent of the introit, “The voice of one crying in the desert, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.” Likewise the first prayer of the Mass, the only one in the Ambrosian Missal which describes Christ as “gloriosissimi – most glorious”, language very reminiscent of the panegyrics delivered as part of the ceremony.

“Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut adventus gloriosissimi Filii tui et peccata nostra abluat, et populo tuo pacem conferat, et salutem. Qui tecum. ~ Grant, we ask, almighty God, that the coming of Thy most glorious Son may both wash away our sins, and confer upon Thy people peace and salvation; who liveth.”