New Books in Honor of the Kingship of Christ: The Cristero Counterrevolution and His Reign Shall Have No End

The centenary of the institution of the feast of Christ the King by Pope Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas – a feast that therefore saw its one hundredth celebration in the Roman Rite last Sunday – is the happy occasion of the release of two new books whose content hinges on the kingship of Christ over peoples and nations.

The first is The Cristero Counterrevolution and the Battle for the Soul of Mexico.

Published in multiple bestselling Spanish editions and now at last in English, Fr. Javier Olivera Ravasi tells the harrowing tale of the Cristeros War as seen through the eyes of its immediate protagonists on both sides – a story of unbelievable wickedness, corruption, and brutality, opposed by unprecedented Catholic action, bravery, and sacrifice. A tale of simple men, women, and children who fought for their country, their faith, and their heavenly King. A tale of brilliant young intellectuals who debated just war theory with bishops and the pope. A tale of martyrs from all walks of life who died with “Long live Christ the King and the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe!” on their lips.

Quite apart from its value as a detail-rich account of an important but still too-little-known civil war, the parallels to our present situation are numerous and seem to be increasing day by day. The Cristero Counterrevolution thus possesses more than mere historical interest; it is a case study in political action, organized resistance, and Catholic reconquest, as well as a case study of the limits of political and ecclesiastical authority. Fr. Ravasi’s book is widely considered the finest one-volume treatment of the subject ever written.

Of particular interests to readers of NLM will be the discussions of the persecution of Catholic priests, the attempt to outlaw the Mass, and the many underground Masses that sprang up around the country, several photographs of which are included in the book. Some of the eyewitness accounts of what devotional and liturgical life was like between 1926 and 1929 (and at various other points too) make for simultaneously sobering and inspiring reading in our times. 

The second is my latest book, His Reign Shall Have No End: Catholic Social Teaching for the Lionhearted.

In recent decades, Catholic Social Teaching has often been reduced to a grab-bag of catechetical truisms and welfare policies driven by modern secular, egalitarian, and pluralist assumptions. His Reign Shall Have No End repristinates this noble branch of moral theology by tracing it back to the world-changing mystery of the Incarnation, whereby the Son of God became Head and Ruler of mankind in regard to natural and supernatural goods alike. The kingship of Jesus Christ – a revealed truth given consummate formulation by Pius XI in Quas Primas but expounded at length across the remarkable encyclicals of Leo XIII – is nothing less than the master key to Catholic Social Teaching’s coherence; it is, more to the point, the essential condition for the flourishing of nations no less than the beatitude of individuals. Where this kingship is ignored or denied, individuals, families, whole societies decompose like a body deprived of a soul; wherever it is welcomed in faith, Christian life revives and Christendom stirs from slumber.

The reaction of reviewers has been enthusiastic. For example, Dr. C.C. Pecknold, Associate Professor of Theology at The Catholic University of America, writes: “This is the best book on Catholic Social Teaching I have ever read! Not only does Dr. Kwasniewski give a true account of the Church’s perennial teaching on a range of central questions, he helps readers identify and skewer counterfeit versions of the Faith.” Similar are the words of Dr. Sebastian Morello, Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy, St Mary’s University, London: “Whether it is the issue of property rights, or freedom of speech, or democratic processes and the rule of law, or any other issue that plagues contemporary political discourse, Kwasniewski demonstrates that the Lord’s Kingship is the ultimate answer, and that outside His Kingdom there is only chaos and confusion.”

Again, the book contains chapters of special interest for NLM readers, particularly chapters 17 and 18, which concern the theology behind the feast of Christ the King and look closely at its liturgical celebration and the way this changed from Pius XI to Paul VI (a topic both Michael Foley and I have discussed here), and chapter 19, which examines the lex orandi of the old and new liturgies to assess the extent to which each one contains and presents a coherent doctrine of man’s life of self-conquest and world-conquest for Christ.

The Cristero Counterrevolution and the Battle for the Soul of Mexico (6” x 9”, 316 pp.) is available in paperback, hardcover, or ebook directly from the publisher, Os Justi Press, or from Amazon sites around the world.

His Reign Shall Have No End (5.5” x 8.5”, 348 pp.) is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook from its publisher, Arouca Press, from Os Justi Press by special agreement with the publisher, or from Amazon sites around the world.

You can “look inside” either publication at its Os Justi or Amazon page.

May these books help deepen the faith of Catholics in the divinely-revealed mystery of the kingship of the God-Man Jesus Christ—a truth much neglected and even outright denied, yet one that stands at the foundation of the Church as Kingdom of God, about which we are told to pray every day: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The Feast of the Holy Relics

In the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, the entry on Relics states that “It has long been customary especially in churches which possessed large collections of relics, to keep one general feast in commemoration of all the saints whose memorials are there preserved. (As will be explained below, this is something of an overstatement.)

Part of the relics collection of the basilica of St Petronius in Bologna.

An Office and Mass for this purpose will be found in the Roman Missal and Breviary, and though they occur only in the supplement Pro aliquibus locis and are not obligatory upon the Church at large, still this celebration is now kept almost universally. The office is generally assigned to the fourth Sunday in October.” The author, Fr Herbert Thurston SJ, wrote “generally” because there was a variety of uses in regard to the date. I have seen the feast on October 26 in a 19th century breviary printed at Naples, while the Dominicans kept it on the 30th, and the Premonstratensians on November 14th. The Catholic Encyclopedia article was published just prior to the reform of St Pius X, which abolished the custom of fixing feasts to particular Sundays; after that reform, the most common date was November 5th.

The Divine Office for the feast is that of the common of Several Martyrs, with lessons in the second nocturn taken from St John Damascene’s Treatise on the Orthodox Faith, which perfectly summarize the Church’s theology of relics.

“Christ the Lord granted us the relics of the Saints as fonts of salvation, from which very many benefits come to us. … In the (old) law, whosoever touched a dead person was deemed unclean, but these (i.e. the Saints) are not to be reckoned among the dead. For from that time when He who is life itself, and the Author of life, was reckoned among the dead, we do not call them dead who have fallen asleep in Him with the hope and faith of the resurrection.”

This mid-11th century fresco in the lower basilica of St Clement in Rome shows the translation of the relics of St Clement, which Ss Cyril and Methodius discovered while they were evangelizing the Slavs in the region to which Clement had been deported, and where he had been martyred in the early 2nd century. The two Saints are depicted at left with Pope St Nicholas I, to whom they gave the relics; in the middle, St Clement is depicted as a living person, lying on a bier and covered with a red blanket, holding up his head, to indicate that the relics are his living presence among us. At the right, the Pope is celebrating Mass, with the Missal open to the “Per omnia saecula” and “Pax Domini” before Communion. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

He goes on to note various kinds of miracles that are worked by relics: “demons are expelled, illnesses driven away, the sick are healed, the blind regain sight, the leprous are cleansed, temptations and sorrows are scattered, and every best gift descendeth through them from the Father of lights (James 1, 17), unto those who ask with unwavering faith.”

As a theologian and Doctor of the Church, St John is best known for his defense of sacred images against the iconoclast heresy. “Iconoclasm” literally means “the breaking of images”, but in its Byzantine form, it also attacked the Church’s devotion to relics, just as the Protestant form would eight centuries later. Shortly after the Synod of the Hieria, which took place in the Emperor’s palace in Chalcedon in 753, and made iconoclasm the official policy of the Byzantine Empire, the altar of the nearby basilica of St Euphemia was dismantled, and her relics removed from it and cast into the sea. This was the first in a twenty-year long campaign of similar desecrations, and persecution of the iconodules. When the Second Council of Nicea was convoked in 787 to reestablish the orthodox faith, several accounts of miracles worked by both images and relics were adduced in their favor, and incorporated into the Council’s official acts, following the line set out by St John.

The Mass of the Holy Relics found in the supplement to the Missal is a fairly recent composition; its three prayers are all proper to the feast, but the Gregorian propers and Scriptural readings are selected from other Masses. The Introit is taken from the feast of Ss John and Paul, the first martyrs whose relics were buried inside a church within the city of Rome. “Many are the afflictions of the just; and out of them all will the Lord deliver them. The Lord keepeth all their bones, not one of them shall be broken.” The Epistle, Sirach 44, 10-15, is that of the octave day of Ss Peter and Paul, over whose tombs and relics the Emperor Constantine built two of Rome’s earliest public churches; it is here selected for the verse “Their bodies are buried in peace, and their name liveth unto generation and generation.” The Gradual Exsultabunt Sancti and the Gospel, Luke 6, 17-23, the beginning of the Sermon on the Plain, are both taken from the vigil of All Saints, since the feast of the Holy Relics is effectively celebrated as a part of All Saints’ Day. The remaining chants are taken from the Masses of various Martyrs.

A 15th-century reliquary of St James the Greater, the presence of which in the cathedral of Pistoia made that city into one of the major pilgrimage centers of medieval Italy.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of relics in the devotional life of the medieval Church, and a general commemoration “of the relics” is often found in medieval breviaries among the series of votive commemorations known as “suffrages.” However, a general feast of relics per se is actually quite rare in the Middle Ages; one of the few notable examples is found in the Use of Sarum, which kept such a feast on the Sunday after July 7th. This date was chosen because July 7th was the feast of the translation of perhaps the most important relics in pre-Reformation England, those of St Thomas of Canterbury. Translation feasts were also celebrated for St Martin of Tours and St Benedict, and indeed, all three were kept within a single week, with the former on the 4th and the latter on the 11th.

In point of fact, it was a much more common practice to celebrate the translation or reception of a specific relic or group of relics, rather than a feast of relics in general. In 1194, a feast of this kind was established at Paris, celebrated on December 4th under the title “Susceptio Reliquarum – The Receiving of the Relics.” The objects in question were believed to be several of the Virgin Mary’s hairs, three of St John the Baptist’s teeth, the arm of St Andrew the Apostle, some of the stones with which St Stephen was killed, and a large portion of the skull of St Denis. The pre-Tridentine Breviary of Paris has a special Office for the day, which mixes together parts of the Offices of these Saints with others from that of All Saints’ Day, and the hymns of Several Martyrs. Particular emphasis is laid on the Virgin, to whom the cathedral of Paris, where these relics were kept, is dedicated, and on local hero St Denis. This Office remained in use in the post-Tridentine period, with modifications that did not change its basic tenor.

(Many of the relics kept at Notre Dame de Paris were destroyed during the Revolution, one of the most famous ones that survived was the Crown of Thorns, which had its own feast on the Parisian calendar on August 11th. It was rescued from destruction when the church was severely damaged by a fire on April 15, 2019; the following video shows it being formally brought back to the restored cathedral at the end of last year, and installed in an absolutely hideous modern display... thing...)

I am sure that some of those who read this article will smile (or perhaps smirk) at the idea of relics of the Virgin Mary’s hair or the stones used to kill St Stephen. In this, they will not be alone. In the early decades of the 18th century, the church of Paris turned to a general and radical revision of its liturgical books, the reform which we now call “neo-Gallican.” This reform embraced many of the rationalist critiques brought against some of the Church’s traditional stories and legends; in the 19th century, Dom Prosper Guéranger, the great enemy of the neo-Gallicans, complained bitterly of their splitting up of both St Mary Magdalene and St Denis into different personages according to the various parts of their legends.

Likewise, suspicious (to say the least) of the authenticity of these relics, the neo-Gallican reform completely erased the original character of the “Susceptio Reliquiarum”, transforming it into a general feast of relics. Renamed as “the Veneration of the Holy Relics”, and transferred to November 8th, the octave day of All Saints, it was then given a completely new Office, which contains no references at all to the specific relics for which it was originally instituted, or the Saints whose relics they were.

The neo-Gallican liturgical reforms contain a great many lapses in taste and judgment which almost beggar belief; however, the new Office of the Holy Relics, whatever its history may be, is from a literary point of view one of the better efforts of its kind. Like most people who put their hand to changing historical liturgies, the Neo-Gallican revisers were painfully obsessed with making everything “more Scriptural,” and the new antiphons and responsories consist almost entirely of direct citations from the Bible. But they are very well chosen from a wide selection of books, and do demonstrate effectively that the Church’s veneration of relics is a tradition thoroughly grounded in Scripture. Just to give one example, the following responsory cites an Old Testament episode which was later used by Cardinal Newman in his Apologia to justify the veneration of relics.

R. They cast the body into the sepulcher of Elisha, and when it had touched the bones of Elisha, the man came back to life, and stood upon his feet. (4 Kings 13, 21) V. By faith they received their dead raised to life again. (Hebr. 11, 35) And when…

It is also, I believe, the only example of a neo-Gallican Office that was adopted for use outside France, and continued to be used, at least in part, even after the neo-Gallican liturgies were definitively suppressed in the 19th century. The Neapolitan breviary which I mentioned above contains it in almost exactly the same form as it appears in the 1714 edition of the Parisian Breviary. The one feature of the Office which the neo-Gallican reforms could not make into a chain of Scriptural citations is the corpus of hymns, to which a great many new compositions were added. The new Parisian Office of the Holy Relics includes a hymn written by a cleric of the diocese of Paris named Claude Santeul (1624-84) which was adopted by the Benedictines for their version of the feast, and is thus still part of the Antiphonale Monasticum for the Office to this very day. The meter is one used by the classical poet Horace called the Third Asclepiadean, not previously part of the traditional repertoire of Christian hymns. Some of Santeul’s odd vocabulary (e.g. “Christiadum” instead of “Christianorum”) is determined by the need to find words that fit the meter, but his complicated word order is a deliberate imitation of Horace’s style.

Reverence their poor and sadly dear remains!
Folded in peace their earthly vesture lies,
Dear pledges, left below, but thence to rise,
Pledges of heavenly bodies, free from pains!

And here ye may lift up your thankful strains,
Ye Christian companies. The spirit flies,
And hath its recompense in quiet skies,
And leaves with you below its broken chains:

Yet for their bones meek Piety shall plead,
Blest Piety, which honoureth the dead!
Though scatter’d far and wide, yet God’s own eye
Doth keep them that they perish not; and when

The promised hour shall come, their God again
Shall gather them, and as He builds on high
His habitation, each there, moulded by His grace,
Shall live and find a sure abiding place.

To us the places where your ashes be
Shall be as altars, whence shall steadier rise
Our prayers to Heav’n; and that blest Sacrifice,
Where God the Victim cometh down from high,

Shall consecrate to holier mystery;
He here accepts your deaths as join’d with His,
Here builds all in one body, and supplies
Our dying frames with immortality.

And hence your graves become a tower of aid,
A refuge from bad thoughts, a sacred shade;
Until, fresh clad with new and wondrous dowers,
Our flesh shall join the angelic choirs, and be

A living temple crowned with heavenly towers;
Where evermore the praises shall ascend
Of the great undivided One and Three,
And God be all in all, world without end. Amen.

(English translation by Isaac Williams from Hymns translated from the Parisian Breviary, Rivington, London, 1839)

The neo-Gallican use also has a different Gospel from the one named above for the feast of the Holy Relics, Luke 20, 27-38, in which Christ disputes with the Sadducees about the nature of the final Resurrection. The conclusion of this passage is particularly important as the foundation of what St John Damascene says, that the Saints are not truly dead. “Now that the dead rise again, Moses also showed, at the bush, when he called the Lord, The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live to him.” In the Parisian Breviary, the homily that accompanies it is taken from a treatise written by St Jerome against a priest from Gaul named Vigilantius, who had denied the value of praying to the Saints and venerating relics, a work in which we see the Saint at his wittiest and most acerbic.

“Vigilantius is vexed to see the relics of the martyrs covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown down the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped. Are we, therefore guilty of sacrilege when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius guilty of sacrilege when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and those who dwell in Vigilantius (i.e. the devils) confess that they feel their influence. And at the present day, is the Emperor Arcadius guilty of sacrilege, who after so long a time has conveyed the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea to Thrace? Are all the bishops to be considered not only sacrilegious, but fools as well, because they carried that most worthless thing, dust and ashes, wrapped in silk in golden vessel? Are the people of all the churches fools, because they went to meet the sacred relics, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they beheld a living prophet in their midst, so that there was one great swarm of people from Palestine to Chalcedon with one voice re-echoing the praises of Christ? They were forsooth adoring Samuel and not Christ, whose Levite and prophet Samuel was. You imagine he is dead, and therefore you blaspheme. Read the Gospel: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

St Jerome the Penitent, by Titian, 1575; when depicted in this fashion, he is traditionally shown holding a rock with which he is said to have beaten his breast as an act of penance. Given the ferocity of Jerome’s polemical writings, and a general apprehension of his character (he quarreled violently with several of his friends), Pope Benedict XIV is supposed to have remarked on seeing such a representation of the Saint, “If it is true, that would be the only way you got into heaven.”

Liturgical Books in the Abbey Library of Sankt Gallen

We recently published Nicola de’ Grandi’s pictures of the abbey of St Gallen in Switzerland, which is home to one of the most important libraries in the world; among other things, it houses several of the oldest manuscripts of Gregorian chant. Much of the collection is now free to consult via the website https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en, which also includes links to the digital collections of numerous other Swiss libraries. Here is a selection of some of the liturgical books which are kept on regular display in the library (under glass, obviously, which makes for less-than-ideal conditions for photography.)

A collection of sequences by Notker Balbus, a.k.a. Blessed Notker the Stammerer (840 ca. - 912), a monk of Sankt Gallen who was traditionally credited with inventing the genre. Manuscript of the mid-11th century.

The oldest tropar, i.e. a collection of tropes of liturgical texts, copied out in the 2nd quarter of the 10th century.

By the middle of the 11th century, the number of these was greatly reduced at San Gallen; this manuscript contains the ones that were retained, generally the more elaborate ones.

A manuscript of the mid-13th century, brought to Sankt Gallen from the cathedral of Lausanne, with several examples of two-voiced harmony from the cathedral of Paris, where the choir masters were experimenting with this then-new technique.

A manuscript of instruction on how to chant from roughly the same period, which among other things, enjoins the monks not to “neigh like donkeys, or bleat like sheep, or sound like herdsmen”, with threats of sever penalties for doing so.

A 13th century collection of processional chants, with the original box made to protect it from the elements in case it should be raining during the procession.

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The Patronages of Saint Jude

St Jude Thaddeus, by Georges de La Tour, 1620

Saint Jude, who shares a feast today with Saint Simon the Zealot on October 28, is also called “Thaddeus” (the Brave One) in the New Testament. Jude was one of the original twelve Apostles and probably the brother of St. James the Less. It is also speculated that he was the nephew of St. Joseph and hence the legal cousin of Our Lord, one of those blessed few who were considered the “brethren” of Jesus (Matthew 13, 55).

Jude is also the author of the fifth-shortest book in the Bible and one of the seven “Catholic Epistles,” so called because they address a general audience and not a specific person or congregation (like St. Paul’s letters). In his 461-word Epistle, Jude warns the faithful about false teachers who have infiltrated the Church and are spreading a loose morality that disregards the authority of apostolic tradition. This brief admonition is strongly worded and pulls no punches: it calls these false teachers “sensual men” and “grumbling murmurers” who are “clouds without water which are carried about by winds; trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; [and] raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion” (Jude 12).

Jude also mentions in his Epistle the curious detail that St. Michael the Archangel and the Devil fought over the remains of Moses and that rather than risk blasphemy, Michael said to Satan, “May the Lord rebuke thee” (Jude 9). Some speculate that the Devil had wanted Moses’ body to be given a grand monument to tempt the Hebrews into idolatry, but Michael hid it instead.

St Michael and Satan Disputing about the Body of Moses, ca. 1782, by Nicolai Abraham Abildbaard

Little is known of what happened to Saint Jude after the first Pentecost. He is believed to have preached the Gospel first in Mesopotamia and then in Persia, where he teamed up with Saint Simon and “begot numerous children to Jesus Christ and spread the faith among the barbarous inhabitants of that vast region” before suffering martyrdom. According to an Armenian tradition, however, Saints Jude and Bartholomew introduced the faith to that nation; the ancient Monastery of Saint Thaddeus in northern Iran was once a part of Greater Armenia.

Understandably, Jude is a patron of Armenia, but he is most famous for being the patron saint of desperate or hopeless causes, possibly because his name was so similar to that of the traitor Judas Iscariot that people would not pray to the “forgotten apostle” unless all else had failed! The patronage itself is relatively recent, dating back to 1929 when a Father James Tort encouraged the devotion among his parishioners in southeast Chicago, most of whom were laid-off steelworkers. The devotion grew rapidly; on the final night of a solemn novena held on St. Jude’s feast, there was an overflow crowd outside the church. The next day, the stock market crashed, and soon more Americans were turning to St. Jude during the Great Depression and World War II.

Father Tort also organized the Police Branch of the League of St. Jude in 1932; to this day, Jude is the official patron of the Chicago Police Department. And because, it is conjectured, many a person feels desperate or hopeless when hospitalized, Jude is also the patron of hospital workers and the hospitalized. Either that, or because of another client of St. Jude, to whom we now turn.

Danny Thomas, 1957

Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz was a faithful Maronite Catholic, who is better known as the actor and entertainer Danny Thomas. Thomas was down on his luck when he remembered how a stagehand had praised St. Jude for miraculously curing his wife of cancer. A devout Catholic who went to Sunday 6:00 a.m. Mass on his way home from performing all night in a New York club on Saturday night, Thomas prayed to St. Jude and promised him that he would do “something big” if St. Jude helped him out. Jude kept his end of the bargain, and so did Thomas, founding the world-famous St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee in 1962. It was the first fully integrated hospital in the American South, and it has gone on to transform the treatment of child cancer around the world. Thanks in large part to the physicians and scientists of St. Jude, the overall survival rates for childhood cancers have gone from 20% when the hospital opened to 80% today. “Help me find my way in life,” Danny Thomas had prayed to St. Jude, “and I will build you a shrine.” Thanks to Thomas’ gratitude and the patronage of the forgotten Apostle, some hopeless causes are looking less hopeless.

An earlier version of this article appeared as “Who is St. Jude?” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 122:10, international edition (October 2020), p. 37. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its inclusion here.

Solemn Vespers in Rome for the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage

Here are some photographs of one of the liturgical celebrations which took place in Rome this past weekend as part of the annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage. On Friday, October 24th, His Eminence Matteo Cardinal Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna, presided over the celebration of Vespers of St Raphael the Archangel in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina. His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke attended in choir; we will also have photos of the Pontifical Mass which he celebrated in St Peter’s basilica the next day. The church was, of course, quite full, I have seen a report that a number of the faithful had to stand out in the porch in front of the church. These pictures were taken by Don Elvir Tabaković, a former professional photographer from Croatia who is now in religious life, and putting his skills to excellent use in the service of the Church. Our thanks to Cardinal Zuppi for his paternal solicitude for the faithful who love the traditional liturgy - ad multos annos!

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The Feast of Christ the King 2025

Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor. To Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Ps. 71 O God, give Thy judgment to the King, and Thy justice to the King’s son. Glory be... As it was... Worthy is the Lamb... (The Introit of the feast of Christ the King.)

The Crucifixion, and Christ in Majesty among the symbols of the Four Evangelists. From the Gotha Missal, so called after its owners in the 18th century, the Dukes of Gotha; originally made ca. 1375, most likely for the chapel of King Charles V of France (1364-80), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0)

Introitus Dignus est Agnus, qui occísus est, accípere virtútem, et divinitátem, et sapiéntiam, et fortitúdinem, et honórem. Ipsi glória et impérium in sǽcula sæculórum. Ps. 71Deus, judícium tuum Regi da: et justítiam tuam Fílio Regis. Glória Patri... Sicut erat... Dignus est Agnus...

“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.

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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.