The Byzantine Fast of the Dormition

In addition to Great Lent, the Byzantine tradition has three other fasts connected with major feasts. The liturgical year begins on September 1st, so the first of these is the fast of the Nativity, which runs from November 15th to December 24th; this is almost exactly the same span as Advent in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites. Another fast is kept from the Monday after the feast of All Saints (which is celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost) to the feast of Ss Peter and Paul; because of the variable date of the former, this can run as long as 42 days, or as short as 8. The fast of the Dormition is kept from August 1-14, and is the strictest of the three, with no consumption of meat, dairy, fish, wine or oil; the last two may be taken on weekends, and fish on the feast of the Transfiguration. There are also a number of interesting liturgical features connected with this period.

An icon of the feast of the Procession of the Cross

The first day, August 1st, is a feast known as the “Procession of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross”, which is celebrated jointly with one of the most ancient and universal Christian feasts, that of the Seven Maccabee Brothers. In Constantinople, on the evening of July 31st, the relics of the True Cross were brought from the imperial treasury to Hagia Sophia, and laid upon the main altar. Over the next two weeks, they were processed through the streets and venerated by the faithful; this was done also in part to ward off the various illnesses which frequently afflicted the city in the intense summer heat. This procession was last celebrated in 1452, the year before the fall of the city, but the memory of it is still preserved in the liturgical books. As on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and the Third Sunday of Lent, the rubrics prescribe that at the end of Orthros, an icon of the Cross be brought from the sanctuary to the nave, and solemnly venerated, after which the following hymn is sung.

Come ye faithful, let us adore the life-giving wood on which Christ, the King of glory, willingly stretched out His hands, and exalted us unto the ancient blessedness, whom once the enemy, having despoiled us by pleasure, banished from God. Come ye faithful, let us adore the wood by which we were made worthy to break the curses of the invisible foes. Come, all ye nations of the gentiles, let us honor the Lord’s Cross with hymns. Rejoice, o Cross, the perfect release of fallen Adam. In Thee our most faithful kings make their boast, as they mightily subject the Ishmaelite people by thy power. Greeting thee now with fear, we Christians glorify God, Who was nailed upon thee, saying ‘Lord, who wast nailed upon this, have mercy upon us, as Thou art good and love-mankind.’

The words “the Ishmaelite people” mean the Saracens, over whom the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1143-80) gained a major victory in 1158, and instituted the feast in commemoration thereof. The same day is also the anniversary of the Baptism of the Rus’, a crucial event for the Christianization of the Eastern Slavs, which took place in the year 988, in the reign of the king Saint Volodymyr. For this reason, it is the custom of some of the Slavic churches to bless water on August 1st, in the form known as the Lesser Blessing, to distinguish it from the Great Blessing held on Epiphany. In both forms, a hand-cross is passed through the water three times in the form of a cross; at the Lesser Blessing, the following troparion is sung. “O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation!”

(A recording made in September of 2021 at the Greek-Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, on the patronal feast day.)

During the Dormition fast, the Greek tradition also prescribes the celebration of a service known as the Supplicatory Canon, or Paraklesis, modelled on the hour of Orthros; there are two forms of it, the Greater and Lesser, which are said on alternate days, beginning on the evening of August 1st. (In the Slavic tradition, these are shortened very considerably by the omission of most of the long series of hymns which is properly known as a “canon.”) Both of them are supplications to the Virgin Mary to intercede to Her Son on behalf of mankind; the lesser canon may also be sung at any point in the year, especially in times of suffering and difficulty. The following troparia, which are sung shortly after the beginning of the service, give the general theme; these are the same in both versions.

Let us sinners and lowly ones now fervently run to the Mother of God, and fall down in repentance, crying from the depths of our soul: o Lady, have mercy on us and help us; hasten, (for) we are lost in the multitude of our errors. Do not turn Thy servants away, for we have received Thee alone as our hope.
We, the unworthy, will never cease to speak, o Mother of God, of Thy mighty deeds, for if Thou didst not stand to intercede for us, who would have delivered us from such great? Who would have preserved us until now in our freedom? O Lady, we shall not depart from you, for you always save your servants from every sort of tribulation.

Towards the end, the following exapostilarion is sung, looking forward to the upcoming feast. The Virgin Mary addresses the Apostles, who, according to a very ancient tradition, were all present for Her dormition, and laid Her to rest in the same place where Her Son had once been laid.

O ye Apostles, gathered together here from the ends of the earth in the place of Gethesemane, take care of (or ‘bury’) my body; and do Thou, my Son and my God, receive my soul.

The Dormition of the Virgin, by Pietro Cavallini, 1296-1300; mosaic in apse of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

St John Henry Newman to be Declared a Doctor of the Church

Less than an hour ago, the news was published on the Bolletino Vaticano that St John Henry Newman will be formally recognized as a Doctor of the Church. “On July 31, 2025, the Holy Father Leo XIV received in audience His Most Reverend Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, in the course of which, the Holy Father confirmed the affirmative judgment of the Plenary Session of Cardinals and Bishops, the members of said dicastery, concerning the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which will soon be conferred on St John Henry Newman, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, founder of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England; born in London (UK), on February 21, 1801, died at Edgbaston (UK), on August 11, 1890.”

The famous portrait of Cardinal Newman made in 1881 by Sir John Everett Millais. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

With this decree, St John Henry becomes the 38th Doctor of the Church, the first Oratorian to be granted the title, the second Englishman, after the Venerable Bede, and the third cardinal, after Ss Bonaventure and Robert Bellarmine. (St Anselm, the eleventh Doctor, is often called “of Canterbury” because of the episcopal see he held, but he was Italian by birth, from the northern region of the Val d’Aosta.) He is also the first Doctor of the Church who converted from Protestantism. 

The late and greatly lamented Fr Hunwicke repeatedly stated his belief that this honor would be conferred, and almost four years ago, on the new Doctor’s feast day (October 9th), he prophetically guessed at the name of the Pope who would confer it, and wrote,  “S John Henry had to wait for the election of Papa Pecci (i.e. Leo XIII) before he received proper honours (i.e. the cardinalate). May we hope for a Leo XIV? Subito!” Of course, this has been in process for a while, but nevertheless, I cannot think of any occasion on which a Pope declared a Doctor so early in his pontificate, so subito it has been indeed - feliciter!

Institute of Christ the King Opens New Retreat House in Wisconsin

We are glad to share the following news from the Institute of Christ the King. In May of 2023, the Institute acquired a friary in Burlington, Wisconsin, originally built by the Franciscans of the Assumption in 1931, expanded in 1952, which became a popular pilgrimage site. The facility has been extensively renovated as The Sacred Heart Retreat Center; its website is now active, and ready to receive registrations on its calendar of upcoming retreats. The programming for the coming months will consist of silent guided retreats for men or for women, following either a week-long schedule (Sunday evening through Saturday morning) or a long weekend (Friday evening through Monday morning). These retreats are interspersed among retreats for the canons of the Institute of Christ the King and other events for lay people which will be announced in the coming weeks. (Please note that that the center is not receiving anyone for private retreats at this time.)

Currently, the large church on the south end of the building, which seats about 250 people, is being used for all liturgies.

A chapel for retreatants, which will have a capacity of 80, is currently under construction on the top floor, due to be finished in spring of next year. 

This painting of the Immaculate Conception by the Milanese artist Stefano Maria Legnani (1631-1713) will grace the high altar.

Some views of the facility and grounds. (The second and third indoor pictures are the architects’ renderings.)

St Martha Kills a Dragon

At that time, there was in a certain grove by the Rhone, between Arles and Avignon, a dragon, half beast and half fish, bigger than a cow, longer than a horse, having teeth like swords that were as sharp as horns, and fortified, as it were, with two shields on either side; and it would lay low in the river, and destroy all those who passed along it, and sink the ships. … Besought by the people, Martha came to it, and found it in the grove as it was eating a man. She threw holy water on it, and showed it a cross, and so it was immediately beaten, and stood still like a sheep. Martha tied it up with her belt, and the people at once destroyed it with spears and stone. The dragon was called by the inhabitants “Tarasconus”; wherefore in memory of this, that place is still called “Tarascon”… (From the Golden Legend)

St Martha and the Tarascon, from the Hours of Louis de Laval, 1470-85; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms Latin 920, folio 317v 

This story from the Golden Legend was included in the Roman Breviary even so late as 1529, in one of the last editions before the Tridientine reform. All trace of it was removed in the revision of Pope St Pius V, but it survives to this day in the folk traditions of southern France. The monster, also called “Tarasque” in French, appears on the shield of the city of Tarascon, where the legend is commemorated in a folk festival held every year, and an effigy of the creature is carried through the city in a parade.

(Image from Wikipedia by Gérard Marin)

He also appears in some of the Corpus Christi festivals in Spain, as seen here in Valencia.

(Image from Wikipedia by Chosovi)

The Virgin Mary of Glory, A 20th-Century Japanese Madonna and Child

A friend of mine recently sent me a postcard from her holiday in Japan with a beautiful painting of the Madonna and Child. This is a large mural painted in Osaka Cathedral by the Japanese artist Insho Domoto (1891-1975), which I present here for your enjoyment.

It is painted in a traditional Japanese style, and I am told that, over time, the gold leaf will flake off, revealing the red bole beneath. It is deliberately created in this way. I know nothing about the content or the other figures. Here is a detail:

A number of things strike me about the way in which the artist has painted this. There are a couple of things that are consistent with the traditional Christian iconographic style, which, I presume, come from his training in the traditional Japanese style. First is the use of gold leaf for the background, and the second is his use of line, predominantly to describe form. This helps to imbue the image with an otherworldly quality, similar to iconography. It is interesting to note that this is the only painting of a Christian subject that I have been able to find painted by him. He has created numerous works for Buddhist temples, and here is another example of his figurative art, titled “Peasant Woman with Brushwood Bundle.” It seems that his natural style is inadvertently suited to Christian sacred art. 

It is worth noting that the artist has portrayed the figures, including Our Lady and Our Lord, as ethnically Japanese. Every artist, when painting such a subject, faces a choice. He can portray them to look like most of the people who will see it, so that they identify with the subject; or he can try to portray them as Jewish people who lived in Israel 2,000 years ago would have looked. 

The Christian tradition, ever since Christian art has been produced, has conformed to this principle, and Christ is always portrayed according to one of these ethnic groups - that is, of the local ethnicity, wherever that may be, or that of a Middle Easterner. It is a myth propagated by contemporary Marxist ideologues that says pictures of Christ are dominated by images of him as a northern European for reasons of patriarchal domination. Any review of the tradition will demonstrate that this is patently not true. I wrote about this at length here in my blog some years ago. 

A Reliquary from the Time of St Ambrose

Today is the feast of a group of four Saints, the martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, who are traditionally said to have died at Milan in the middle of the first century, and Popes Victor I (ca. 189-99) and Innocent I (401-17). On the Ambrosian Calendar, the two martyrs have the day to themselves, and their feast is kept with a vigil; there is also a feast of the translation of Nazarius’ relics on May 10th.

The high altar of the church of the Holy Apostles and St Nazarius, commonly known as “San Nazaro in Brolo”, with the relics of St Nazarius.

In 395 AD, their bodies were discovered by St Ambrose in a garden outside the city; when the tomb of Nazarius was opened, his blood was seen to be as fresh as if he had just been wounded. His relics were then taken to a basilica which Ambrose had constructed about 15 years earlier, and dedicated to the Twelve Apostles; a large apse was added to the church, and the relics laid to rest in a crypt in the middle of it. In 1578, in the course of building a new altar for the church, a silver reliquary contemporary to the original construction of the basilica was discovered under the high altar, with relics of the Apostles Ss Peter and Paul inside it. St Ambrose himself attests that these relics had been given to him by Pope St Damasus I, for the first dedication of the church to the Twelve Apostles; St Charles was rather disappointed to find that they were not relics of their bodies, but relics “by contact”, pieces of cloth that had touched the Apostles’ bones. Nevertheless, he donated one of his own copes to wrap up the relics of St Nazarius, the Apostles, and four of his Sainted predecessors among the archbishops of Milan, who were buried in the church. The reliquary is now displayed in the museum of the Archdiocese of Milan; thanks to Nicola for all of these pictures.

On the lid of the reliquary are shown Christ and the Twelve Apostles. On the lower left are seen the baskets of fragments collected by the Apostles after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; on the lower right, the six vessels of water turned into wine during the Wedding at Cana. The custom of representing Christ beardless to distinguish Him from the Father was still common in this era, although soon to fade away. The classical style of all five of the panels is very typical of the highest quality artworks of the era, as one would expect from a work commissioned by a man of aristocratic background and high political rank like St Ambrose; this is particularly evident in the pose of the standing figures, which are very reminiscent of the better Roman statues.

Joseph sitting in judgment on his brothers; the young prisoner on the left is Benjamin, the older one on the right is Judah. The hat worn by Joseph and the other brothers, known as a Phrygian cap, was generically associated by the Romans with peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and often adopted by the Christians to represent the characters in the Old Testament.

The Three Children in the Furnace, also wearing the Phrygian cap, and the angel that comes to make the inside of the furnace cool.

The Judgment of Solomon.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Catacomb of St Christina at Bolsena

Following up on Thursday’s post about the church of St Christina at Bolsena, here are Nicola’s pictures of the catacomb next door to it, which was used for Christian burials in the fourth and fifth centuries. Like most catacombs, it has been largely stripped of the decorations and inscriptions that would have filled it in antiquity, and many of the remaining marble plaques are broken. As we saw on Thursday, the relics of St Christina are now in the main church; they were formerly kept in this sarcophagus with an effigy of her, which is set up in this grotto. Below it is the 4th century sarcophagus in which she was originally buried. 

The majority of catacomb burials are slots in the walls of the corridors called “loculi – little places”, which were sealed with plaster, brick or plaques of marble. Marble was, of course, much the most expensive of these materials, but broken scraps of it could easily be obtained from the places where it was worked, much as one now acquires wood scraps from a lumber-yard. Inscriptions could be carved into the marble or plaster, or painted on the bricks, although this last procedure was rare. 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Feast of St Anne 2025

Come, all creation, let us praise the divinely wise Anna on cymbals and with psalms, who from her womb gave birth to the divine mountain, and has passed to the spiritual mountains and the dwelling-placesof paradise, and let us cry out to her: Blessed is thy womb which bore her who truly carried within her womb the Light of the world, and comely are thy breasts which nourished with milk her who with milk nurtured Christ, the Nourishment of our life! Whom do thou entreat, that He deliver us from all tribulation and every assault of the enemy, and save our souls. (A hymn for Vespers of the feast of St Anne in the Byzantine Rite.) 

An icon of St Anne holding the Virgin Mary, ca. 1440-57 by Angelos Akotandos (1400-57)

Δεῦτε, πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις, ἐν κυμβάλοις ψαλμικοῖς εὐφημήσωμεν Ἄνναν τὴν θεόφρονα, τὴν τὸ θεῖον ὄρος ἀποκυήσασαν ἐκ λαγόνων αὐτῆς, καὶ πρὸς ὄρη νοητὰ καὶ Παραδείσου σκηνώματα σήμερον μεταβεβηκυῖαν, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὴν βοήσωμεν· Μακαρία ἡ κοιλία σου, ἡ βαστάσασα ἀληθῶς τὴν τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου ἔνδον ἐν κοιλίᾳ βαστάσασαν, καὶ οἱ μαστοί σου ὡραῖοι, οἱ θηλάσαντες τὴν θηλάσασαν Χριστόν, τὴν τροφὸν τῆς ζωῆς ἡμῶν, ὃν καθικέτευε τοῦ ῥυσθῆναι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης θλίψεως καὶ προσβολῆς τοῦ ἐχθροῦ, καὶ σωθῆναι τὰς ψυχὰς ἡμῶν.

An Italian Festival Revived in New Jersey, Sept. 6

The faithful are invited to attend a celebration in honor of Our Lady of the Torrent on Saturday, September 6th, at St. Aloysius Church in Caldwell, New Jersey, with a High Mass in the Extraordinary Form starting at 11 am, followed by a procession and a light reception with a display of associated memorabilia. For more information, or to RSVP by claiming free tickets, please visit https://MariaSSDellaLavina2025.rsvpify.com or use the QR code. The church is located at 219 Bloomfield Ave.

Over the past few years, Fr. William Rock, a priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter and friend of NLM, has been working with the Italian Apostolate of the archdiocese of Newark to revive devotion to the Blessed Mother under the title of Our Lady of the Torrent (Madonna della Lavina) at his home parish. This devotion originated in Cerami, Sicily, Fr. Rock’s ancestral town through his maternal grandmother, with the abandonment and miraculous discovery of a Byzantine icon of the Virgin around 1630, (as related here.)

When they came to the United States, the Ceramesi immigrants brought devotion to Our Lady of the Torrent with them. In 1912, a Maria SS. della Lavina Mutual Aid Society was established in Caldwell, New Jersey, which had a large Ceramesi population, and a yearly feast was celebrated. The celebration grew into a multiday event with religious celebrations as well as a carnival, but came to dwindle over time. When Fr Rock was a child, the now one-day celebration consisted only of Mass and the procession of an image of the Madonna around town. Until recently, it had been completely neglected for many years, but not altogether extinguished. For example, when he was ordained in 2019, Fr. Rock chose the Maria SS. della Lavina image from his home parish for his holy card, due to the sentimental value it had for himself and for his family. Another devotee, Dr. Rosemary Intili Ferdinand, related the impact this devotion had in her life in this 2022 interview.

In 2023, as part of a larger effort of rejuvenation undertaken by the Italian Apostolate of the Archdiocese of Newark, Fr. Rock was invited to revive devotion to Our Lady of the Torrent, the progress of which he relates in this post from last year. The hope is to build on the events of previous years with the incorporation of customs such as the use of neckerchiefs typically worn at Sicilian festivals, the holding of votive laurel branches during the procession, and providing cavatieddi atturrati, cookies exclusive to Cerami, at the reception.

Incensation of the image of Our Lady of the Torrent during last year’s celebration.

The “T” in Te Igitur

Lost in Translation #133

The De defectibus Missae, which was issued by Pope St. Pius V and is included in every Tridentine altar Missal, lists not only defects that render a Mass invalid (such as the wrong matter, form, or intention) but defects that render a Mass less than ideal, such as celebrating Mass: in an unconsecrated place; without at least one altar server; without a gold or silver chalice; or without a “Missal present, even though the priest may know by heart the Mass he intends to say.” (X.31)

Indirectly, the latter proscription indicates that, in the mind of the Church, the Missal is not an oversized cheat sheet or a primitive teleprompter that helps the celebrant “remember his lines” but a part of the performance itself, so to speak. Rubrics govern its placement and movement within the action of the liturgy; and what is more, when the priest must bow his head at the mention of a holy name, he sometimes does so in the direction of the Missal as the nearest symbol of Christ. He even shows a similar reverence to this object as he does the altar. In the 1962 Missal, “at the end of the Gospel, the priest lifts the Missal with both hands, and bows to kiss it where he signed the cross, saying the Per evangélica dicta.” An almost identical rubric exists in the 1970 Missal: “He then venerates the book with a kiss, saying privately, Per evangelica dicta.” (GIRM, no. 175)

The beginning of the Roman Canon in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD (Folio 143v; Bibliothèque National de France; Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

The Roman Missal--that is, the physical book itself--can therefore be studied as a sacred artifact. And one of the most distinctive features of this sacred artifact (besides, in my opinion, the margin tabs that help a priest turn pages without the use of his canonical digits) is the transformation of the first letter of the Roman Canon into a work of art. As we will see in an upcoming article, the Te in Te igitur is an address to the Father, but that did not stop the pious imagination from seeing that the first letter of the word resembles the cross of the Son and from depicting it as such. The earliest witness to this artistic tradition is from the Gellone Sacramentary, ca 780 A.D., but by the tenth century it was common and by the twelfth it had earned its own separate page. This separate page, which came to be known as the canon page, usually contained the finest illumination in the entire Missal and was often the object of the priest’s osculatory affection. We can tell from the wear-and-tear of several medieval manuscripts that some priests treated the Missal at the beginning of the Canon the same way they did at the end of the Gospel: moisture damage from thumbs and lips indicates that they lifted the book up and kissed the image of Christ’s crucified feet on the canon page.[1]

Opening of a missal at the Canon, Use of Utrecht, ca. 1400–1410 with added sections, Northern Netherlands. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 128 D 29, fols 128v-129r.

As for the rest of the text of the Canon, since the “T” had now taken on a life of its own and moved to another page, a new initial “T” was generated to replace it,[2] much like the eyes of St. Lucy or the breasts of St. Agatha. This new “T” was in a larger font than the rest of the text: to this day in typography, a “Canon” is “the largest size of type that has a name of its own.”[3]

In addition to its similarity in shape to the cross on Calvary, a “T” or “t” in the Roman alphabet resembles a Tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Tau plays an important role in the Book of Ezekiel:

And the Lord said to him: “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem: and mark Tau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and mourn for all the abominations that are committed in the midst thereof….Utterly destroy old and young, maidens, children and women, but upon whomsoever you shall see Tau, kill him not, and begin ye at My sanctuary.” (Ezek. 9. 4, 6)

It is not difficult to see how Church Fathers like Jerome saw this chilling passage as a Passover-like figure pointing to the Elect whose foreheads are signed in the Book of Revelation. (see Rev. 7,3) In a homily at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Pope Innocent III challenged all Catholics to make the Tau their own Passover, ending his exhortation with the stirring words: “Be champions of the Tau!”

One Catholic who took that challenge to heart was St. Francis of Assisi, who often signed his letters with a Tau. Today, it is a part of the Franciscan Coat of Arms.

The Franciscan Coat or Arms consists of a Tau with two crossed arms. The one with nail wounds represents Christ and the other St. Francis of Assisi, who bore the Stigmata.

One may therefore ruminate on the “T” that invokes the Father in the Te igitur as an emblem of the Tau that is the sign of His crucified Son, He who is also the last letter of the Greek alphabet, the Omega. (see Rev. 22,13)

Official translations, of course, make this tradition difficult to maintain, not to mention the Novus Ordo’s plurality of Eucharistic Prayers (none of the new ones in Latin begin with the letter “T” except Eucharistic Prayer “On Reconciliation” II, which is as rare as hen's teeth).[4] ICEL’s original translation of Eucharistic Prayer I begins with us rather than God and with a “W” rather than a “T”: “We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving…”[5] The 2011 ICEL translation is a marked improvement in both regards: “To you, therefore, most merciful Father, we make humble petition and prayer…”—even if the “T” is now only indirectly theocentric.[6] The problem could be solved with archaic English, such as “Thee, o most clement Father, do we humbly beseech and implore…” provided one does not mind the somewhat awkward syntax and the use of “thou.” Or, one can keep the artistic convention (as some well-made new Missals do) despite the disconnect between the image and the letter that follows it.

The Roman Missal: Deluxe Edition, 3rd ed. (Catholic Book Publishing, 2011)

Notes

[1] See Kissing: From Relics to Manuscripts.

[2] Josef Jungmann, S.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (Benzinger Brothers, 1951), pp. 105-106. The development of this convention affected the world of printing

[3] American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking (New York: H. Lockwood, 1894), p. 79. The size varies according to nationality and system. In the United Kingdom, for example, a Canon is font size 48, while the same size in French is a Gros-Canon and in Germany a Kleine Missal.

[4] 2002 Missale Romanum, p. 681.

[5] 1985 Roman Missal, p. 542.

[6] 2011 Roman Missal, p. 635.

The Basilica of St Christina in Bolsena, Italy

Today is the feast of St Christina, a less well-known member of the illustrious company of ancient virgin martyrs whose true histories have been lost in the mists of time. The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary gives three brief lessons about her, which state that she took from her father, the prefect of the area around the lake of Bolsena in northern Lazio, some idols made of gold and silver, had them destroyed, and used the precious metal to benefit the poor. For this, her father had her tortured her in various ways, and then attempted to kill her by drowning her in the lake. As is so often the case in such legends, nature refused to cooperate with the persecution of God’s saints, and Christina was rescued from drowning by an angel; eventually her father’s successor as prefect had her killed by being shot full of arrows. This is said to have taken place during the persecution of Diocletian, at the very beginning of the 4th century.

St Christina Giving Her Father’s Golden Idols to the Poor; first half of the 17th century, by an anonymous Flemish follower of the Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656).

The editors of the Tridentine breviary, recognizing the legendary character of the story, which has likely been confused with that of another Saint of the same name from Tyre in Lebanon, reduced her feast to a commemoration on the vigil of St James the Greater. However, her church in the town of Bolsena (about 69 miles north north-west of Rome) is famous as the sight of the Eucharistic miracle which is traditionally said to have given rise to the feast of Corpus Christi, and one can still see the altar within it at which this miracle is said to have taken place. (As painful as it is to impugn this beautiful story, the bull of Pope Urban IV which promulgated the feast makes no mention of it, nor does St Thomas Aquinas, who composed the Mass and Office of the feast at his behest. The story does not appear in any source, in fact, until quite some time later.) It was originally consecrated by Pope St Gregory VII in 1077, and the interior preserves the form of an early central Italian Romanesque basilica. A lovely Renaissance façade was added to it by the Florentine architects Francesco and Benedetto Buglioni in 1492-94, at the behest of the papal legate to nearby Viterbo, Cardinal Giovanni di Medici, the future Pope Leo X. The bell-tower was added in the 13th century. (All photos by Nicola de’ Grandi.)

The large chapel on the left of the main church is the original site of the Eucharistic miracle, completely rebuilt in the Baroque period.

The oratory on the right is dedicated to St Leonard.

The relics of St Christina are now within the reliquary in this side-altar.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Life Teen Phenomenon: A Guide to Resources

In this article, “Life Teen” should be understood not only as the program known by this name, but also as representative of a certain mentality that can be found in many programs—some officially named, others nameless, local, and spontaneous.

A friend of mine wrote to me as follows.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

What are your thoughts on the Life Teen phenomenon? Often priests will bring in this program because they say they’ve had success with this outreach to youth, who are “energized” through a youth Mass. They might even admit that the Catholicism preached in Life Teen and the youth Masses is dumbed down, but they say, if the young people are going more often to Confession and Adoration, it must be somewhat a good thing.

One wonders if what’s going on is that most young people have experienced very poor liturgy, so anything different seems like an improvement to them. Plus, if they are required to go to Mass for Confirmation prep (as is the case in many places), their attendance cannot be chalked up as a sign of approval.

Nevertheless, is there long-term fruit from Life Teen? Do these young people stay in the Church after high school? Life Teen has been around for a while, but the huge number of young people leaving the Church seems to keep climbing. If this program was so successful, shouldn’t that exodus at least be leveling off? So maybe young people are involved, but then fall away.

At a meeting with the parish team, we got into a conversation about “externals” that can be changed and adapted with the times, so I brought up the issue of communion in the hand vs. kneeling to receive on the tongue to make the case that form and content cannot be separated so easily—that, when certain forms or externals are removed, the truth of the faith can be obscured. The priest, however, insisted that it’s only a matter of the heart and said he couldn’t imagine anything more reverent than receiving Jesus in the hand (!). At this point, I realized that we see Catholicism in a fundamentally different way, though I was already sensing that.

The difficulty that I’m having is that he supports things like Adoration (he wants to try to establish perpetual Adoration), he talks about helping people know Jesus, and about teaching the lost. I certainly can’t be opposed to those things! It’d be one thing if he just didn’t care. But he’s passionate about restoring the faith in our area. Also, I can’t discount the success he’s had at other places. 

However, traditional liturgy is not a priority for him. He speaks a lot about the liturgy, but he’s more focused on it being “meaningful and uplifting.” He prefers the contemporary church music. To my mind, this is fundamentally misguided, but in parishes he’s been at, numbers have improved. What do you make of all of this?

Sincerely,
A Youth Minister
 

Here was my reply.

All of what you describe is familiar to me, and not least because I went to many retreats in high school that anticipated the Life Teen phenomenon. It is the “new paradigm” of liturgy: somewhat informal, upbeat, very contemporary, like the evangelical Protestants, but with some Catholic flavoring added: devotion to the Virgin Mary, Adoration, Stations. Of course, such Catholic elements are good, but they have been ripped from their proper theological and liturgical context and are now free-floating constellations of devotion. We should not be quick to think that a priest has the right idea about what he’s doing just because he follows the Catechism and wants to encourage “good things.”

Let me begin with Adoration. I am passionately devoted to Adoration. But... it has a proper context and can in fact be abused. On this topic, the best thing to read is a pair of articles by Joseph Shaw (here and here).

As for Life Teen, where to begin? First, the history of its founder cannot inspire confidence. Beyond that, I think one needs to question the general assumption that “youth want contemporary things and it’s the Church’s job to give it to them.” An old article at NLM does a great job dismantling that, but it’s a theme many, many authors have returned to (see John Mac Ghlionn’s “Traditional Catholicism, the new ‘cool’ for young Americans”).

Fr Christopher Smith does a thorough job refuting the “praise & worship” musical genre typical of this movement (here and here; cf. this too). I have addressed this topic at some length in my book Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life.

Samuel Gregg offers keen insights in “A Church drowning in sentimentalism.” The assumption at work is that the reality of an encounter can be measured by its emotional impact. The stronger your emotions, the more real your experience was. There is some truth to this. A great musical or dramatic performance will produce strong emotions. Falling in love (eros) is the most perfect example.

But placing an equal sign between reality and feeling, experience and emotion, is part of the legacy of Romanticism, not a self-evident proposition or a truth that can be demonstrated. In fact, it flies in the face of most of humanity’s assumptions through the ages. The romantics were understandably reacting against rationalism, which had made the opposite error by equating reality with idea, or experience with rational consciousness. Rationalism’s account of the human person was too cerebral, too “thin”; it viewed man as if he were a disembodied mind gazing out indifferently on a world of truth. Romanticism’s reactionary account was too corporeal and sensual, too “thick”; it viewed man as if he were a bundle of emotions ready to catch fire. I wrote about this codependency between rationalism and romanticism here.

In spite of the external glitz, Life Teen and most of these rock-it-up adolescent movements, including the charismatics, have a fairly poor track record. Those who get involved mostly either mature into something else or wander away. I don’t have stats to back it up but I hear it so often from clergy and music ministers and people around the country that I consider it to have at least anecdotal value. Many of the criticisms made about charismatics apply exactly to Life Teen and similar programs: see “Confusion about Graces: A Catholic Critique of the Charismatic Movement” and “Why Charismatic Catholics Should Love the Traditional Latin Mass.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s a lot of Life Teen-critical material out there by now, if you search the internet; and there is an equal amount bearing witness to the unexpected attraction of tradition for youths.

Lastly, you brought up communion in the hand. This is truly one of the most wicked abuses that has ever been introduced into the Church’s worship. The practice had gone away for 1,000 years due to an increased sense of reverence; suddenly bringing it back, and in a Calvinist form, sent the contrary message. The best short article on the topic would be this one: “Debunking the myth that today’s Communion in the hand revives an ancient custom.”

Keep on learning. Your instincts and intuitions are right on.

Dr. Kwasniewski

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.