Truly it is fitting… though Christ our Lord. Who after the Resurrection, which is glorious unto all ages, appeared openly to His disciples, visible to their sight and palpable to the touch, unto the fortieth day, and was raised up unto heaven as they watched; from which time they did so profit, that what they believed might become more certain, and that they might learn more fully what to teach. Through the same Christ our Lord. (The Ambrosian Preface of the Ascension)
The Ascension of Christ, from an antiphonary decorated by Lorenzo Monaco, ca 1410
Vere quia dignum et justum est...per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Qui post resurrectionem sæculis omnibus gloriosam, discipulis suis visu conspicuus, tactuque palpabilis, usque in quadragesimum diem manifestus apparuit, ipsisque cernentibus, est elevatus in cælum: in id proficientibus intra has moras primitivas, ut et certius fìeret quod credidissent, et plenius dìscerent quod docérent. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quem majestatem tuam...
The following text is most of section 103 of book six of William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum; a few obscure passages have been omitted. The vigil of the Ascension is one of the relatively few features of the temporal cycle in which there was a lot of variation between different Uses of the Roman Rite in the Middle Ages, and some of the texts which he refers to here differ from those in the Roman Missal. The second part explains the baptismal significance of the Introits of the time after Easter, an appropriate subject for the last day of the Easter season properly so-called, and the beginning of the approach to Pentecost, the other major baptismal feast.
Since fasting, of which we have previously spoken (in the preceding section on the Rogation Days), is not sufficient without the works of mercy, therefore on the vigil of the Ascension, which is the third day of the Rogations, the Church exhorts us to the works of mercy, saying in the introit which is sung in some churches, “The mercy of the Lord etc.” (Repeated from Good Shepherd Sunday in the Use followed by Durandus.) For Gregory (the Great) says “If you want your prayer to fly up to heaven, make two wings for it, namely, fasting and alms.” (This saying is incorrectly attributed.) For with good desires we fly to heaven, whence it is said of the Lord, “Lifting up his hands, he was born unto heaven.” …
The Mass of the Vigil of the Ascension in a 15th century Missal according to the Use of Paris, with the Epistle Acts 4, 32-37, instead of the Roman Epistle, Ephesians 4, 7-13.
But the epistle which is read in some churches, (Acts 4, 32-37) seems not to fit, but rather, to set things in the wrong order, since it happened after the Lord’s Ascension that “the heart and mind of the multitude of the believers were one.” But this is done for two reasons. The first is so that the epistle may fit with the gospel (John 17, 1-11a), in which the Lord says “Father, glorify, (that is, manifest) Thy son”, and afterwards prays, saying “I ask that they may be (one) as we are,” and this unity is shown in the epistle. The other reason is that when alms are given from a true heart, all things are held to belong to all, as the Apostle says about the manna, that he who gathered more did not abound more, and who gathered less did not have less (2 Corinthians 8, 15, citing Exodus 16, 18): for he who is rich, should not for this reason eat more, but share it with others, and this is said in the epistle, “And they had all things in common.”
Now for this reason the aforementioned gospel is read today, because He that prayed when He was about to suffer, became known to men when He ascended (to heaven); or else because at the end it says “I come to Thee.” And in this (gospel) He prays for those whom the Father gave Him, that they may be one in the Father, since all things are one in faith and charity, that is, united to one another in harmony … St Hilary (of Poitiers) explains these words as follows. “I ask that just as I and Thou are one, that is, not only in will, but also in nature; so also may they be one, that is, in unity of spirit, and the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (De Trinitate VIII, 9)
But in other churches, the Epistle is (Ephesians 4, 7-13). …
Therefore, because this Mass is about alms and the works of mercy, in some places, in order that they may acquire for themselves the wings mentioned above, people busy themselves with almsgiving, but they defer this to the feast of the Ascension, as if then to fly unto heaven after Christ…
Now some people fittingly refer the Masses of Easter week to those who are reborn in baptism, according to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so, the one who is reborn, inspired by the spirit of wisdom, says “I have risen.” (The Introit of Easter Sunday) The gospel declares through what he is risen, namely, through the Resurrection of the Lord, and the spirit of understanding instructs him as to what he has gained thereby, saying, “He hath brought us into the Land” (The Introit of Easter Monday), that is, the Church; and the spirit of counsel adds, “With the water of wisdom He gave them to drink.” (Tuesday) The spirit of fortitude indicates what else he ought to gain thereby, saying “Come, ye blessed of my Father.” (Wednesday) The spirit of knowledge teaches him that for these benefits granted to him, he must praise God, saying “Together they praised Thy conquering hand, o Lord.” (Thursday) The spirit of piety indicates what the Resurrection has brought to the reborn, saying “The Lord hath led them out in hope” (Friday), and the spirit of fear adds to this, saying, “The Lord has led out his people.” (Saturday)
For all these benefits conferred in baptism, the angels congratulate men, men confess God, and exhort one another to the praises of Christ; they give thanks, they rejoice, they remember these benefits and the causes thereof, and they confidently aspire to greater things. The other parts of the Masses of Easter are concerned with this …
Notice also that in the Introits of this week, Alleluia is said four times in four of them (on Easter Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday), and three times in three of them, because praise is given to Holy Trinity from the four parts of the world for the resurrection of Christ, and the redemption of man. In the first Sunday, that is “Quasi modo geniti”, the baptized are urged by their mother (i.e. the Church) to live innocently like infants, and to desire the milk of the Holy Scripture, so that by their mores and life they may hold to the Paschal sacrament which they have received through Christ’s resurrection, overcome the world, triumph with him, and obtain rejoicing in body and soul together. Because of this rejoicing, the Alleluja (before the Gospel) is doubled, because they have escaped from death, and merited to have the hope of life; or as a symbol of action and contemplation; or as a symbol of the joy of the preachers and of those whom they convert.
(The Introit of Good Shepherd Sunday: “The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord, alleluia, and by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, alleluia, alleluia.” Psalm 32)
But on the second Sunday, the baptized, being already instructed, sound forth the mercy of Christ, and preach the Trinity; for in the word “mercy”, they announce the Spirit, in “the word” the Son, and in “God” (i.e. the Lord) the Father. First they mention the Spirit, through whom they are sanctified; then the Son, through whom they are redeemed, then the Father, to whom they are reconciled: and because they sing of the Trinity, they sing Alleluia three times.
(The Introit of the Third Sunday after Easter: “Shout with joy to God, all the earth, alleluia, sing a psalm to his name, alleluia; give glory to his praise, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Psalm 65)
On the third Sunday, the baptized invite the whole world to the praise of God, and sound forth the Trinity, … and since through the two precepts of charity they are strengthened in the faith of the Trinity, therefore, first they sing alleluia twice, then three times.
(The Introit of the Fourth Sunday: “Sing to the Lord a new song, alleluia: because the Lord hath done wonderful things, alleluia. In the sight of the nations He hath revealed his justice, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Psalm 97)
On the fourth Sunday, again the baptized invite the converted nations to the praise of God, and commemorate the Trinity, when in “the Lord” understand the Father, through “wonders” the Son, and in “justice” the Holy Spirit. And because the nations received the faith of the Trinity from the four parts of the world, therefore they sing of the Trinity with a fourth alleluia.
(The Introit of the Fifth Sunday: “Announce the voice of rejoicing, and let it be heard, alleluia: and proclaim even to the ends of the earth, the Lord hath redeemed his people, alleluia, alleluia.” Isaiah 48)
On the fifth Sunday, again the baptized announce their liberator to their nations, because they sing of the Trinity with a threefold Alleluia.
Now that we are on the threshold of peak wedding season, it is opportune to publish the following letter, which makes a case for the restoration of a longstanding traditional practice that, in the confusion of recent decades, has fallen by the wayside but deserves to be recovered. We publish it here with minor edits to make it more universal than its original epistolary form. – PAK
Dear Reverend Fathers,
Allow me to present a case to allow spouses at their wedding to make their vows and hear Mass in the sanctuary, in keeping with the immemorial English Catholic custom. This practice, rooted in the Sarum and Gallican traditions, was preserved in English-speaking lands long after Trent and was in continuous use until recently. In just a couple of decades it has disappeared from our churches. It’s restoration would not only honour legitimate tradition but also instruct the faithful in the sacred symbolism of Christian marriage.
I. Personal and Pastoral Context
As the father of 13 children, with one engaged to be married next year, and also a goddaughter scheduled to marry around the same time, this has become a prescient matter. In recent years it has become the practice in our churches for the vows to be exchanged at the communion rail and for the bride and groom to remain outside the communion rail to hear the Nuptial Mass. While this may be normal for the Roman Rite in other parts of the world, it has never been the norm in English speaking countries.
The tradition in Britain, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other English speaking countries was for the bride and groom to make their vows at the altar itself and then to remain in the sanctuary for the whole nuptial Mass, returning to the altar for the nuptial blessing and to receive Communion. These practices derive from the Sarum Rite, and prior to that, from ancient Gallican (French) practices. Thus, we are dealing with a tradition that is centuries old.
When I was a boy in the late 70s and 80s, my mother, a simple lady, with a solid, convent school faith, taught my brothers and me catechism herself before school every morning. When teaching about the sacrament of marriage she made a point of explaining that this unique honour, the only time lay people are the ordinary ministers of a sacrament, rightly takes place at the altar from which all graces flow.
When my wife and I were married in 1998, we continued this unbroken practice as our parents and forebears had done for untold generations.
Vows at the Altar, 1998
Nuptial Mass begins; note the prie-dieus for the bride and groom
Another example at our church, this time from 1999:
This custom wasn’t isolated to the antipodes. Below is a picture of Bishop Fulton Sheen witnessing a marriage in 1962. Note the communion rail behind the couple:
Today is the feast of two Roman Saints named Nereus and Achilleus. An inscription placed over their burial place by Pope St Damasus I (366-84) tells us that they were soldiers who were forced to participate in the persecution of Christians, but threw away their weapons and armor, and were in turn martyred for the Faith. There can be no doubt of the authenticity of their martyrdom, or that their feast is very ancient, but the date of their death is uncertain, and the various details later added to their story are considered legendary. In the pre-Tridentine Roman Divine Office, their Matins lessons amount to barely over a hundred words, which are restated with similar brevity in the reformed version of St Pius V. Their feast was kept at the lowest rank, and shared with another Roman martyr who died on the same day, St Pancratius.
Pope St Gregory the Great venerating a miraculous image of the Virgin and Child, surrounded by Ss Papias and Maurus (left), and Nereus, Achilleus and Domitilla (right); 1606-7, by Peter Paul Rubens. This painting was commissioned for the Chiesa Nuova, the church of the Roman Oratory, which dedicated to both the Virgin Mary and St Gregory; parts of the relics of the five Saints depicted in it are in the high altar.
They were buried in part of the Christian cemetery complex now known as the Catacomb of Domitilla, about 1½ miles from the Aurelian Walls down the via Ardeatina; Pope Damasus then built a small basilica on the grounds over this cemetery. More than two hundred years later, Pope St Gregory the Great preached in this church on the martyrs’ feast day. However, in later centuries, when the empire had fallen apart, and the countryside around Rome was no longer safe for pilgrims to traverse, the relics of nearly all the Saints who had originally been buried in the various catacombs were brought into the city, and placed in churches. The basilicas over the cemeteries were then abandoned and mostly fell into ruin, in some cases, so completely that their exact location is no longer identifiable.
The interior of the modern reconstructed basilica of Ss Nereus and Achilleus, at the catacomb of Domitilla. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY 2.0)
It is not certain when Nereus and Achilleus were brought into Rome. Around 800 AD, Pope St Leo III built or rebuilt a church in their honor next to the baths of Caracalla, and it is possible that this was done specifically to accommodate the translation of their relics. But one way or another, four centuries later, they were brought to the church of St Hadrian in the Roman Forum.
When Pope Clement VIII elevated the great Church historian Cesare Baronio, a priest of the Roman Oratory and close friend of its founder, St Philip Neri, to the rank of cardinal in 1596, he gave him the church of Ss Nereus and Achilleus as his title. Baronio immediately set about giving the building a much-needed top-to-bottom restoration. The following year, the Saints’ relics were discovered at St Hadrian, and solemnly translated to their own church on the day before their feast.
At the time, it was mistakenly believed that this was the church in which St Gregory had preached the aforementioned homily, and the cardinal therefore had the full text of it carved onto the episcopal throne in the apse, where it can still be seen today. The feast itself was raised to the rank of semidouble, and excerpts of the same homily, on the Gospel of the healing of the prince’s son (John 4, 46-53) were added to the breviary. (Another part of the same homily is read on the 20th Sunday after Pentecost.)
Here is the conclusion, starting from where St Gregory mentions the Saints for the first time. If he seems very pessimistic about the state of the world, one must remember that Rome was in a terrible condition after the Gothic wars of the sixth century, and he would have walked through roughly two miles of ruins to get to the place where he preached it. Assuming he took the shortest route from the Lateran, where the popes lived at the time, he would have passed by at least one broken aqueduct, an abandoned bath complex, and a good many large but long-empty houses.
“Behold, this world which is loved flees away. These saints at whose grave we stand trampled the flourishing world with contempt. They had long life, continual health, material riches, many children, tranquility in long-lasting peace, and yet, though it flourishing in itself, this world had already withered in their hearts. Behold, now this world is withered in itself, and still, it flourishes in our hearts. Everywhere is death, everywhere mourning, everywhere desolation; on all sides we are struck, on all sides we are filled with bitterness. And yet, in the blindness of our mind, we love the very bitterness of the tasted fleshly desire; we pursue what flees, we cling to what falls, and since we cannot hold onto that which falls, we fall with what we hold onto. Once, the world captivated us for itself with its delight; now it is now full of such misfortunes that already it sends us back to God.
Consider, therefore, that what happens in time does not count, for the end of all temporal things shows how meaningless is that which can pass away. The collapse of things shows us that something which passes away was almost nothing, even when it seemed to stand firm. Dearest brothers, think of these things with careful consideration; fix your hearts in the love of eternity, so that, while you disdain to reach the heights of earth, you may come to that glory which you hold by faith, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God, and lives and reigns with the Father in unity of the Holy Spirit, through all the ages of ages. Amen.”
The ruins of the baths of Caracalla in Rome, depicted in an engraving by the Swiss artist Louis Duclos (1748-1810), ca. 1780. In St Gregory’s time, the complex was already abandoned, but of course nowhere near so badly ruined.
On this day in 330 AD, the emperor Constantine presided over the dedication of a new capital of the Roman Empire, after six years of building on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium. The Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 485-425 B.C.) places the founding of Byzantium in 656 B.C., and in 334 AD, Constantine also presided over celebrations of its millennial anniversary; this indicates that he did not view his new city as a complete erasure of the old one, and indeed, its older name never dropped out of use. But of course, it was as “Constantine’s city – Constantinople” that it would become one of the greatest cities of human civilization, although its official name was always “New Rome.” It would continue as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and remains the spiritual capital, so to speak, of Orthodox Christianity to this day.
A coin minted in 330AD to commemorate the founding of Constantinople; the image of Romulus and Remus being nursed by the she-wolf on the reverse is clearly a sign of continuity between the new and old Rome. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Ancientcointraders, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Much has been written and debated as to why exactly Constantine felt the need to create a new capital at all, but some things seem very certain. Despite its prestige and antiquity (which were in many ways synonymous concepts for the ancient Romans), the old Rome was no longer the empire’s political center of gravity. And indeed, in the period of the Tetrarchy which preceded Constantine’s accession to the throne, the emperors often kept their capitals elsewhere. Byzantium had never served in this role, but had the advantage of being a Mediterranean port with access to the Black Sea, and the crossing point of major roads running both East and West, by which an emperor could quickly reach the frontiers of either the Danube in Europe or the Euphrates in Asia.
Historians have often represented the founding of New Rome as Constantine’s project to recreate the ancient capital as a purely Christian city. This is unquestionably an exaggeration, although one which has unfortunately driven other historians to the opposite exaggeration, the complete denial of his Christian faith. Constantine unquestionably favored Christianity, granting it a privileged status and acting as its benefactor in a way which is not true of any other religion.
The column of Constantine, built in 328 AD, and dedicated along with the rest of New Rome on May 11, 330; this is the oldest monument that survives in the city from the era of Constantine himself. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dmitry A. Mottl, CC BY-SA 4.0)
In the Byzantine Rite, this foundation of the city is commemorated liturgically on this day. It has often been charged against the Byzantine Church, and not unjustly, that it was and is far too beholden to the imperial power, or whoever happens to hold that power since empires have fallen out of fashion. However, we may note here in fairness that this commemoration is kept at a very low rank, does not have a full office, and that although Constantine is regarded as a Saint among the Byzantines, he is mentioned by name only obliquely in the title of the feast, but not in any of the hymns. Instead, the city is repeatedly referred to as the city of the Virgin Mary, as in the most frequently used of the proper liturgical texts, the tropar:
“The city of the Mother of God fittingly dedicates its establishment unto Her; for in Her it has been made steadfast to remain, and through Her it is saved and strengthened, as it cries out to Her, ‘Rejoice, o hope of all the ends of the earth!’ ”
A mosaic of the Virgin and Child in the apse of Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of Constantinople. This was installed in 867, 20 years after the definitive defeat of the iconoclast heresy which had wracked the Byzantine empire for nearly a century. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0)
“ ‘Take the place,’ said Constantine to Pope Sylvester. ‘It’s all yours. I am leaving and I shan’t come back – ever. When the time comes my sarcophagus … must lie in Christian surroundings. Rome is heathen and always will be. Yes, I know, you’ve got the tombs of Peter and Paul. I hope I have not shown myself insensible to that distinction. (This refers to his construction of the first Christian basilicas over the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul.) But why are they here? Simply because the Romans murdered them. That’s the plain truth. Why, they even thought of murdering me. It’s an ungodly place, your holiness, and you’re welcome to it.
One must start something new. I’ve got the site, very central; it will make a sublime port. (This is a pun on one of Constantinople’s many nicknames, ‘the Sublime Port.’) The plans are drawn. Work will start at once on a great Christian capital, in the very centre of Christendom; a city built round two great new Churches dedicated to – what do you think? – Wisdom and Peace. (Constantine did in fact build a church dedicated to Holy Peace as the new city’s cathedral, but the first Holy Wisdom, or ‘Hagia Sophia’ was built by his son.) … You can have your old Rome, Holy Father, with its Peter and Paul and its tunnels full of martyrs. We start with no unpleasant associations;” …
“Unpleasant associations are the seed of the Church,” said Pope Sylvester. (Another pun, on a famous saying of the Christian writer Tertullian, that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”)
Today is the first day of the penitential observance known as the Lesser Rogations, and also, by coincidence, the feast of St Mamertus, bishop of Vienne in France, who first instituted them around the year 470 A.D. His successor but one, St Avitus, has left us a sermon on the Rogations, in which he describes the reason why they were instituted, in the wake of a series of public calamities.
St Avitus is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as “one of the last masters of the art of rhetoric as taught in the schools of Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries.” His style is florid and prolix in a way that would make a literal translation in English almost unreadable, and much longer than his almost 1500 words in Latin. I have therefore chosen just a few extracts pertinent to the history of the observance. (The complete Latin text is in the Patrologia Latina, volume 59, columns 289C-294C.)
Two points call for special note. One is that St Avitus acknowledges that the Rogations were not originally celebrated by everyone on the same days, and that only later did the various churches settle on keeping them on the triduum before the Ascension. Rome itself at first only celebrated the Greater Rogations on April 25, but received the Lesser ones from Gaul in the Carolingian period, and as part of the Roman Rite they were then extended to the whole of the Western church. The one exception is the Ambrosian Rite, in which they are celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after Ascension, and with greater austerity as far as the liturgy is concerned than in the Roman Rite. The vestments are black, the standard Milanese color for the ferias of Lent, and in the Divine Office, all of the proper characteristics of the Paschal season (e.g., antiphons consisting only of the word “Hallelujah”) are suspended.
The other concerns the term Major and Minor Litanies, by which these days are called in the Roman liturgical books. St Avitus nowhere uses the term “litanies”, but refers in one place to “psalms and prayers” and in another to the “offices of psalms,” indicating that these were the substance of the rite, and that the singing of the Litany of the Saints was a later addition. (See the notes attached to the notice of St Mamertus given on May 11 in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints, quoting Edmund Bishop’s Liturgica Historia.)
Two leaves of the Farnese Hours, showing a penitential procession and part of the Litany of the Saints. Painted by Giulio Clovio for Card. Alessandro Farnese, in 1546; now in the Morgan Library in New York City.
The mighty river of the Rogation observance flows in its life-giving stream, not through Gaul alone, but nearly the whole world, and cleanses the land stained with vices with the rich flow of this satisfaction made every year. But for us (i.e., the church of Vienne) there is a more particular cause for both joy and the fulfillment of duty in this institution, since that which now flows forth from here to the good of all, came first from us … and certainly I know that many of us recall the reasons for the terrors of that time. For indeed, frequent fires, constant earthquakes, sounds in the night, portended and threatened, as it were, to make a pyre for the funeral of the whole world. (There follows a lengthy description of the calamities and portents, culminating with the destruction by fire of a large public building on the very night of the Easter vigil.)
My predecessor, and spiritual father in baptism, the bishop Mamertus, who many years ago was succeeded by my own father, as God saw fit, conceived of the whole idea of the Rogations in his holy spirit on that very night of the vigil of Easter which we have mentioned above, and together with God, silently determined all that which the world cries out today in Psalms and prayers. (St Mamertus then explains his plans to the leading citizens of Vienne.)
Therefore, as God inspired the hearts of the repentant, (his plan) is heard by all, confirmed and praised. These three days are chosen, which occur between Sunday and the feast of the holy Ascension, … (and) he announces the prayer of the first procession at the basilica which was closer to the city’s walls. The procession goes with the fervor of a great multitude, and the greatest compunction, … But when, from the accomplishment of these lesser things, the holy priest recognized the signs of greater things to come, on the following day, the custom which we about to observe tomorrow, if the Lord will it, was established for the first time. In the days thereafter, some of the churches of Gaul followed this worthy example; but it was not celebrated by them all on the same days as it was established among us. Nor was it very important that a period of three days be chosen, provided that the services of Psalms be completed with annual functions of penance. Nevertheless, as harmony among the bishops grew, together with love for the Rogation, their concern for a universal observance brought them to one time, that is, these present days.
Proclaim ye the voice of joy, alleluia, and let it be heard, alleluia, proclaim it unto the end of the earth: the Lord hath delivered his people, alleluia, alleluia. Ps. 65 Shout with joy to God, all the earth, sing ye a psalm to his name; give glory to his praise. Glory be to the Father... Proclaim ye... (The Introit of the Fifth Sunday after Easter,)
Introitus (Isa 48) Vocem jucunditátis annuntiáte, et audiátur, allelúja: annuntiáte usque ad extrémum terræ: liberávit Dóminus pópulum suum, allelúja, allelúja. Ps 65 Jubiláte Deo, omnis terra, psalmum dícite nómini ejus: date gloriam laudi ejus. Glória Patri... Vocem jucunditátis...
On May 9th, the Coptic Church commemorates one of the great early monastic patriarchs, a native Egyptian called Pachom, whose name is Latinized as Pachomius. He was one of the most influential figures on the organization of monastic life in the 4th century; this is true even in the West, (where his feast has only been kept very rarely), since St Benedict adopted many of his ideas into his Rule.
Pachomius was born in 292 to a pagan family in the Thebaid, the Roman province which had formerly been the kingdom of Upper Egypt, with its capital at Thebes, the modern city of Luxor. At the age of twenty, he was conscripted into the Roman army, and sent up the Nile with other conscripts under miserable conditions. When the boat stopped at Latopolis (the modern Esnah), the local Christians came out to take care of them, and Pachomius was so impressed by their kindness that he determined to embrace their faith as soon as he was able. When his unit was disbanded, he returned to his native place, a village called Khenoboskion where there was a Christian church, was accepted as a catechumen, and baptized soon thereafter.
A fresco on the wall of the Trinity Chapel in Lublin, Poland, showing several of the early monastic Saints: Pachomius furthest to the left, with his Rule in hand, then Anthony, Macarius, Spyridon of Trimythous, and Daniel the Stylite. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Hans A Rosbach, CC BY-SA 3.0.)
He then chanced to hear of a man named Palaemon, a very holy and austere hermit living nearby in the desert, much like his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen, Ss Paul the First Hermit and Anthony the Great. Pachomius became his disciple, observing with him a life of strict fasting and abstinence, keeping long vigils, frequently reciting the entire Psalter at one go, and performing a good deal of manual labor. After several years, he visited a place called Tabennisi, about nine miles up the river, and heard a voice telling him to establish a monastery in that place. He is also said to have been visited by an angel, who confirmed this order, and gave him certain instructions as to how the monastic life was to be lived there. With his master’s encouragement, he built a cell at Tabennisi, and having settled there, soon began to attract many disciples, the first among them being his own elder brother. (Palaemon himself, however, withdrew back to his solitude.)
As with many of the early ascetics, Pachomius’ personal austerity was very astonishing, especially to our modern sensibilities. He is said to have gone fifteen years taking only brief rests, always sitting, never lying down, and never to have eaten a full meal. But he had a finely-honed sense of what others could bear, and turned no one away from joining his community, adjusting the discipline according to what was appropriate for each, as determined by his condition and temperament, both spiritual and physical. In due course, he established other monasteries, one of which, at a place called Pabau, grew to be even greater than its mother house, much as in the days of St Bernard, Clairvaux eclipsed Citeaux as the most important house of the Cistercian Order. When Pachomius died in 348, there were a total of three thousand monks in the nine houses he had founded. In the monastic tradition, both eastern and western, the Thebaid has long had a mythical role as a kind of early monastic Paradise. On the last Saturday before the beginning of Great Lent, the Byzantine Rite commemorates “All of the God-bearing Fathers and Mothers Who Shone Forth in the Ascetic Life,” singing the following hymn at Vespers.
“Rejoice, faithful Egypt; rejoice, holy Libya; rejoice, o chosen Thebaid; rejoice, every place, and city, and land that nourished the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and raised them in self-discipline and toil, and showed them forth to God as men perfect in their desires. They were revealed as those who give light to our souls; these very same, by the glory of their miracles, and the wonders of their deeds, shone forth to our minds, unto every corner of the world. Let us cry out to them, ‘All-blessed fathers, pray that we may be saved!’ ”
Scenes from the Lives of the Desert Fathers, or “Thebaid”, by Blessed Fra Angelico, 1420; now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
The lives of the first monks sometimes degenerated into a competition of asceticism, with men vying with each other to think up ever more bizarrely unpleasant ways of living; one Egyptian document even speaks of a “hermit” who lived like an animal in the midst of a herd of wild buffalo. St Pachomius had the wisdom to see that this made for strong temptations to pride, which were best checked by the living of a communal life under a rule and an authority. He is therefore credited as the founder of “cenobitic” monasticism, monasticism “of the common life.” (κοινὸς βίος)
St Jerome was a very small child when Pachomius died, but when he visited Egypt in the later decades of the fourth century, the communities which the latter had founded were still thriving. Jerome, who had a great deal of interest in and admiration for the monks, visited several of these communities, and, working through a Coptic-speaking translator, produced a Latin version of Pachomius’ rule. This Latin translation is considered to be the first and most faithful to the Coptic original, which is now lost, and it was through it that St Benedict came to know of Pachomius’ ideas about the monastic life. Scholars have rightly noted a great many references and even direct quotes of the Pachomian Rule in that of Benedict, who, not by coincidence, calls cenobites the best kind of monk. (cap. 1 in fine)
In his own prologue to this translation, St Jerome writes, “… while I was grieving over the death of the holy and venerable Paula… I received books sent to me by a man of God, the priest Silvanus, which he had gotten from Alexandria, so that he might send them on to be translated. For he told me that in the cenobia of the Thebaid, … there live very many Latins who do not know the Egyptian or Greek languages, in which the Rule of Pachomius, Theodore and Orosius were written. These men are the ones who first laid the foundation of the cenobia throughout the Thebaid and Egypt, according to the command of God, and of an angel who was sent to them for this very purpose. … and we have translated these letters as they are read among the Egyptians and Greeks, setting down the same elements that we found, and imitating the simplicity of the Egyptian language … lest learnèd speech should change (the readers’ impression of) those apostolic men, who were completely full of spiritual grace.”
St Jerome in the Desert, ca. 1476, by the Venetian painter Alvise Vivarini (1447 ca. – 1503/5)
Today is the feast which celebrates the Apparition of St Michael on Mount Gargano in the Italian region of Puglia. I have previously described the circumstances of the apparition in greater detail; there has been a shrine dedicated to him in one form or another on the site ever since it took place at the end of the 5th century. In the entry for his principal feast day in September, the Roman Martyrology describes the shrine as “made in a mean fashion, but outstanding in heavenly might.” In point of fact, much of the church is not “made” at all, at least not by human hands. Gargano is a large massif, rather more like a mesa than a hill, and very steep on the northern side where the sanctuary is, with the town of Monte Sant’Angelo located on top. One enters the shrine through a forecourt in the town, and after passing the doors, descends to the church by a considerable number of steps.
As you descend to the church, you pass this cross, decorated with the symbols of the Passion...
Most of the debates about the liturgical reforms of the twentieth century are understandably concerned with theological or ideological elements. Critics of the 1962 Missal worry that the old Mass is too hierarchical and too aligned with an outdated political ideology, a relic of the days of the Ancien Régime. Critics of the 1969 Missal, on other hand, wonder if the new Mass is too egalitarian, modernist, Protestant, Masonic, etc. My goal in this essay, however, is to focus on the role that honest mistakes about historical facts may have played in the formation and implementation of the 1969 Missal.
Honest mistakes about history are different from theological and ideological convictions, although there can be a thin line between the two, and they often influence each other. It is one thing to believe that Mass facing the people is a better way to worship because it is less alienating and more inclusive; it is another thing to believe that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people. One is a theological opinion that may or may not be true and may be contingent on circumstances; the other is a historical claim that either did or did not happen – period.
But if I believe that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people, then I might be more inclined to conclude that the Church today should do so as well: in this case, my grasp of the facts shapes my opinion. On the other hand, if I fervently believe that the Church today should have Mass facing the people, I may become predisposed to interpret some archeological data as evidence that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people; in that case, my opinion shapes my grasp of the facts.
Granted, the adjective “honest” makes my task more complicated, for it presumes to assess the purity of another person’s intention. To avoid any cynical presumption, I will simply assume that the scholars involved in the following blunders acted in good faith.
1. A Patristic Golden Age
A common feature of twentieth-century liturgical scholarship is the conviction that the liturgies of the Patristic era, from the second to the fifth centuries A.D., constitute a Golden Age of sacred worship. I do not know if this belief is an honest historical mistake or a theological conviction or both, but either way it must be mentioned because it influenced and gave great weight to the other mistakes that I will discuss: indeed, it influenced the Council itself. Paragraph 50 of Sacrosanctum Concilium states:
The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved. For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance; elements which, with the passage of time, came to be duplicated, or were added with but little advantage, are now to be discarded; other elements which have suffered injury through accidents of history are now to be restored to the vigor which they had in the days of the holy Fathers, as may seem useful or necessary.
The Latin is even stronger: instead of the “vigor” of the holy Fathers, the document states that certain liturgical elements are to be restored to the “pristine norm” (pristina norma) of the holy Fathers.
While this passage does not explicitly state that the Patristic era, i.e., the time of the Church Fathers, was a Golden Age, it can easily be used to support such a belief, and as such it stands in tension with Pope Pius XII’s 1947 Mediator Dei, which warns precisely against this lens of interpretation:
The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man (61).
Pope Pius XII lists examples of decisions that would be wrong-headed: the return of the altar to a primitive table form as well as the suppression of black vestments, sacred images, statues, crucifixes of Christus passus, and polyphony (see 62).
The Holy Father offers a theological reason for rejecting Golden Ageism, namely, that it discounts or even denies the ongoing inspiration of the Holy Spirit on liturgical development—that is, it discounts a providentially guided organic development. Golden Ageism is, at the end of the day, an arbitrary attachment, not a historical fact. Objectively and dispassionately speaking, how do we know that one age is better than another, liturgically or otherwise? I had a wise liturgical studies professor who once said that the difference between Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic fundamentalists is that fundamentalist Protestants try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the first century while Catholic traditionalists try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the thirteenth century. Fair enough, yet did not so many twentieth-century liturgical reformers try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the third or fourth century? Perhaps we all need to stop leapfrogging and recognize that we are the beneficiaries of an ongoing and inspired sacred history.
The tug to the Patristic era was strong. The general consensus in the early- to mid-twentieth century was that the early Church was more communitarian, more egalitarian, and more participatory, and that later developments were misguided and alienating “barnacles” on the Barque that obscured the liturgy’s original vision and purpose. Although there are still stalwart proponents of this view (even in the highest echelons of Church leadership), few dispassionate and serious scholars hold it today. In the understated assessment of Albert Gerhards and Benedikt Kranemann:
This idea was often based on the hypothesis of a degeneration in which the “golden age” of patristics was followed by the “dark Middle Ages” leading to a “rigid standard liturgy” in the period between Trent and Vatican II. This way of looking at the history of liturgy is being radically called into question today. [1]
2. Liturgical Orientation
Because of Golden-Ageism, with its myth of a pristine Patristic norm, any mistake made about how the early Church worshiped was given undue weight by scholars in their reconstruction of the past and in their recommendations for the present.
That is certainly true of the orientation of the priest at Mass. The consensus of scholars in the 1930s was that the Church originally had Mass “facing the people”. This consensus was no doubt influenced by ideology, some of it egalitarian and some of it anti-sacrificial – the idea being that “when” the Church thought of the Eucharist as a meal, it had Mass facing the people, and when it came to think of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, it had Mass facing the apse. [2]
But at least two archeological data also shaped opinion: the existence of free-standing altars in ancient churches, and the fact that some of these churches were built on a west-east axis, with the entrance and façade on the east and the sanctuary on the west. In the latter churches, if the priest were to face East to confect the Eucharist, he would have to “face the people” to do so. What they did not consider (which later scholarship discovered) was the possibility that during the Consecration, the people turned around and faced the East, with the Sacrifice taking place behind them. At that moment the priest and congregation resembled sailors on a ship, with the captain at the helm in the rear as they sailed to meet their Lord, who is to come again from the East. Perhaps that is why a church nave takes its name from the Latin word for ship, navis.
The Second Vatican Council only states that future churches should be built with free-standing altars, and the General Instructions for the (new) Roman Missal presupposes that the priest is turned towards the Lord and not the people during the Consecration. Nevertheless, “Mass facing the people” has been treated as a cornerstone of liturgical renewal, with bishops forbidding priests from celebrating in the traditional manner.
Scholarly doubt about the versus populum position began to emerge shortly after Vatican II. The prominent liturgist Fr. Josef Jungmann dismissed it as “a legend” in 1966. That same year, a member of the Concilium that created the Novus Ordo, Fr. Louis Bouyer, rejected the meal vs. sacrifice dichotomy, pointing out that in antiquity “the communal character of a meal was emphasized…[by] the fact that all the participants were on the same side of the table.” [3] Moroever, Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s Die Reform der römischen Liturgie (The Reform of the Roman Rite) includes a scathing critique of both the theological and historical arguments favoring versus populum. But the definitive treatment of the subject came in 2009 with Fr. Uwe Michael Lang’s Turning towards the Lord, which demonstrates that there has always been a tradition of facing East during liturgical prayer and never a tradition of priest and people facing each other. The book received the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. More recently, Luisella Scrosati has a series on the orientation of Christian worship in Italian that was translated last year into English for the New Liturgical Movement website (see here).
3. Concelebration
Twentieth-century liturgists were so convinced that the early Church has Masses regularly concelebrated by two or more priests that the Second Vatican Council was moved to make the following changes:
Concelebration, whereby the unity of the priesthood is appropriately manifested, has remained in use to this day in the Church both in the east and in the west. For this reason it has seemed good to the Council to extend permission for concelebration to the following cases (Sacrosanctum Concilium 57.1).
The Council goes on to allow concelebration for both the Chrism Mass and evening Mass on Holy Thursday, for Masses during Bishops’ meetings, and for Masses for the blessing of an abbot. It also gives Bishops the authority to allow concelebration at parish Masses, and it calls for a new rite for concelebration to be drawn up and inserted into the Missal and the Pontifical (58). The Council Fathers declare that “each priest shall always retain his right to celebrate Mass individually” (57.2), but many priests today feel pressure to concelebrate every Mass they attend.
There was no definitive or extensive study of concelebration prior to the Second Vatican Council; one wonders how everyone was so confident about a conviction based on so little research. Finally, in 1982, Carmelite Father Joseph de Sainte-Marie published an almost 600 page book entitled L’eucharistie salut du monde, which in 2015 appeared as The Holy Eucharist – The World’s Salvation: Studies on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, its Celebration and its Concelebration (Leominster: Gracewing, 2015). The magnum opus covers a range of topics, such as the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, but it is especially concerned with separating fact from fiction regarding concelebration.
Sainte-Marie’s conclusion, as the back-cover puts it, is that the “present practice of daily concelebration, especially among simple priests without their Ordinary presiding, far from being a return to an ancient norm, is in fact a new development.” Earlier liturgists made a crucial mistake, failing to distinguish between ceremonial concelebration and sacramental concelebration, when two or more ministers confect the same sacrament. Sacramental concelebration happened on occasion, especially with a Mass led by a bishop, but in both the East and the West, the preference was for ceremonial concelebrations and for individually celebrated Masses, which multiplied graces flowing into the world.
Sainte-Marie researched the debates the Council Fathers had about concelebration, and he shows how the Council Fathers were unaware of this distinction. If concelebration remains “in use to this day in the Church both in the east and in the west” as the Council claims, then why do most Orthodox churches refuse sacramental concelebration on principle, and why are the only Eastern Churches that practice sacramental concelebration the ones that are in union with Rome, and even then only beginning in the eighteenth century and only under Western influence?
The World’s Salvation did not come out in time to stop the campaign to make concelebrated the Masses norm, especially in religious communities, but it was able to stop further damage. I am told that plans were being made to make it a requirement of Canon Law that all members of a religious community concelebrate the same Mass, but Sainte-Marie’s scholarship changed their minds.
Unfortunately, the Vatican has recently doubled down on this flawed scholarship by forcing the Anglican Ordinariate to adopt concelebration. For recent treatments on the subject, see here.
4. Ordinary Time
Contrary to a popular misconception, Ordinary Time in the new calendar is not “Ordinal” Time but an Ordinary of Times. [4] Ordinary Time was designed to be a generic season in contrast to the special seasons of Christmas and Easter. The architect of this new schema was Fr. Pierre Jounel, who believed that the Masses of the early Church outside the Christmas and Easter cycles had no special “theme” and that the modern Church should return to that model. Each of the new Sundays in Ordinary Time, he writes, “is a Lord’s Day in its pure state as presented to us in the Church’s tradition,” that is, the state in which the primitive Church celebrated it.
The problem with this thesis is that we do not know for certain what the primitive Church did. Second, Jounel linked indistinction with purity and purity with the early Church, but both assumptions are questionable. Third, he is guilty of archeologism or Golden Age-ism, for Jounel wanted to return to a third-century practice and ignore seventeen hundred years of valid development. Fourth, Jounel is also guilty of novelty (ironically), for the way he endeavored to return to “the Lord’s Day in its pure state” was to invent an entirely new season that not a single soul in the Patristic era would have recognized, for no liturgical calendar prior to that of the Novus Ordo had a single-block season that is “interrupted” by the Easter cycle and that then picks up where it left off. Fifth, despite Jounel’s claim that the new season is indistinct, the final Sundays of Ordinary Time retain the distinctive theme that they had in the previous calendar, that of the End Times.
The 1962 Missal
My criticisms have centered on the scholarship that shaped the 1969 Missal, but that does not mean that the 1962 Missal is flawless. I will mention three, though no doubt there are more.
First, the feast day of Pope St. Felix I (269-274) was mistakenly assigned to May 30 instead of December 30 (the day of his martyrdom) because a medieval scribe wrote “III Kal. Jun.” (third day to the calends of June) instead of “III Kal. Jan.” (third day to the calends of January).
Second, according to tradition, September 14, 326 is the date that St. Helen discovered the True Cross during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and September 14, 335 is the anniversary of the consecration of her son Constantine’s basilicas of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary in Jerusalem. September 14 was thus celebrated as the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross. May 3, on the other hand, was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, celebrating the return of the Cross to Jerusalem in 629 after the Persians had stolen it. Over time, however, the two dates were confused and May 3 became the Feast of the Finding of the Cross and September 14 the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The May 3 feast was dropped in 1960, and both the 1962 and 1969 calendars still have September 14 as the Feast of the Exaltation or Triumph of the Cross.
Third, the Tridentine Missal’s use of the Vulgate for its biblical readings is not without controversy, for although we have it on the authority of the Council of Trent that the Vulgate is “authentic,” we also know that “authentic” does not mean “infallible,” nor did Trent tell us which edition of the Vulgate was authentic, and there were several competing versions at the time. In the 1962 Missal, the Epistle reading for Low Sunday (1 John 5, 4-10) is different than what are considered the most reliable Greek manuscripts of that passage, particularly verse 7, which does not exist in the oldest manuscripts. [5]
What I find interesting about the errors in the 1962 Missal is that they seem to be mostly the result of failed efforts to retain, while the aforementioned mistakes from the twentieth century are the result of failed efforts to rediscover. The latter is by its nature more fraught with risk and uncertainty, and so it is not surprising that the failures, when they happen, are more egregious.
Conclusions
Two final clarifications are in order.
First, in and of themselves scholarly mistakes do not disqualify a liturgical practice. It is entirely possible that even if something was done in error, it could turn out to be providential, a sort of felix culpa. That said, when new discoveries expose old mistakes, they should be used to consider – with a grain of salt, of course, lest we keep the same slavish mentality to the “experts” – how to move forward. At any rate, since the cure always begins with an accurate diagnosis of the disease, we need to admit that we live in a world of liturgical upheaval, as Peter Jeffrey puts it, “with its own excesses of competing and fanciful historical claims.” [6]
Second, we should not banish scholarship from liturgical decision-making simply because of these mistakes. Scholarship may have been the rope with which we used to hang ourselves, but it is also the same rope that can pull us out of the ditch. Every example of flawed scholarship that we have mentioned has been brought to light by good scholarship, so scholarship per se is not the problem. Scholarship is simply a form of human inquiry, and like any other temporal good, it is subject to abuse, especially in the hands of the proud. And even if it does succeed in creating an accurate view of the past, that does not necessarily mean that it should be used to overthrow later developments or practices. Let the Holy Spirit and not the absent-minded professor have the final say on what goes on in Christ’s Church.
We will look at more learned blunders at a later time.
This article originally appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:1 (Spring 2025), pp. 38-42. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its republication here.
Notes
[1] Albert Gerhards and Benedikt Kranemann, Introduction to the Study of Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 2017), pp. 81-82. Gerhards and Kranemann argue that Vatican II avoided “Golden Age-ism” by quoting SC 21, that the liturgy “is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change.” One can hold this view, however, and still believe that the Patristic era was the high watermark of liturgy. Moreover, the authors ignore the implications of SC 50’s language of the pristine norm of the Church Fathers.
[2] Such is the contention of Otto Nußbaum, but it is false. The earliest references to the Eucharist, from the second century, refer to it as a sacrifice.
[3] Louis Bouyer, Eucharistie: Theologie et spiritualite de la priere eucharistique (Tournai, 1966) [trans. Charles Underhill Quinn as Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (Notre Dame, Ind., and London: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1968)], p.55-56, quoted in Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger Collected Works: Theology of the Liturgy.
[4] See my “The Origins and Meaning of Ordinary Time,” Antiphon: A Journal of Liturgical Renewal 23:1 (2019), pp. 43-77. A revised version in two parts also appears on this website, here and here.
[5] Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in caelo : Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus : et hi tres unum sunt. “And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one.”
[6] Peter Jeffrey, “Eastern and Western Elements in the Irish Monastic Prayer of the Hours,” in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, eds. Margot A. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (Oxford University Press, 2000), 134.
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