The Chrism Mass: Tradition, Reform and Change (Part 2) - Guest Article by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

This is the second part of an article by Fr Jean-Pierre Herman on the blessing of oils, which is traditionally celebrated at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and the recent reforms thereof; the first part was published on Tuesday. The French original was published on Sunday on the website of the Schola Sainte-Cécile as a single article. Fr Herman is professor of liturgy at the Good Shepherd Institute’s Séminaire Saint-Vincent de Paul in Courtalain, France, and we repeat our gratitude to him for sharing this English translation with NLM. The images are reproduced with the kind permission of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.

A ritual overload foreign to tradition

Over and above these strictly liturgical changes, the Chrism Mass has become a condensed version of conciliar ecclesiology: a celebration of the People of God, an expression of communion between the bishop and his priests, a renewal of ministries and, in some dioceses, even a renewal of diaconal promises.

Mons. Leon Gromier

Among the most enlightened critics of this change is Mgr Léon Gromier. A pontifical ceremonial officer and great connoisseur of the Roman rites, Mgr Gromier firmly denounced the reform of Holy Week in 1955, which he described as a “subversion of Roman tradition under the pretext of restoration.”

With regard to the Chrism Mass, he pointed out a double contradiction: on the one hand, the dislocation of the link between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the consecration of the oils, and on the other, the introduction of new structures with no traditional foundation. In particular, he criticised the idea of a separate Mass for the blessing of the oils, stating that “never in the Roman tradition has chrismation been separated from the very heart of the Sacrifice of the Mass” . For him, any attempt to make this Mass an autonomous ecclesial event risked transforming an act of sacramental sanctification into an institutional event, thereby losing the profound meaning of the rite.

Annibale Bugnini justifies this transformation:

The idea of making the Chrism Mass a ‘priestly feast’ was an intuition of the Pope... A new and attractive element was added in 1965: the concelebration of the Eucharist...

With this in mind, the Chrism Mass was rethought as a collective celebration of the ordained ministry. According to Bugnini, the liturgy had to become the living image of the mystery of the Church and make visible the communion of the presbyterate around the bishop. Thus, the strictly sacramental elements were gradually surrounded by new symbols, mainly aimed at highlighting ecclesial unity and the identity of the diocesan clergy.

Annibale Bugnini, architect of the post-Conciliar reform.

This change was accompanied by a ritual and symbolic overload. The blessings of the oils are inserted into a complex liturgical development, which now includes: the renewal of priestly promises, any commitments of deacons, processions with the oils, acclamations sung by the congregation, narrative presentations of the ministries in the diocese, and gestures of collective homage to the bishop. Far from constituting a homogeneous enrichment, this accumulation of signs creates symbolic competition, in which the sacramental mystery is often overshadowed by the celebration of conciliar ecclesiology.

Bugnini himself describes its contrasting reception:

The most severe liturgists were reluctant to accept the fact. They resigned themselves reluctantly to saying goodbye to the centuries-old liturgy that wove the Missa chrismatis around the consecration of the oils.

The introduction of the renewal of priestly promises, a rite that was completely new to the Roman tradition, reinforced this communal and affective orientation. Bugnini states:

The renewal of priestly vows on this special day is a strong, long-awaited, almost necessary gesture to publicly reaffirm the bond between the priest and his bishop, and their fidelity to their mission.

In several dioceses, this practice has been extended to deacons, who also renew their liturgical commitments. This development, not foreseen by the rubrics, blurs the hierarchy of orders and tends to transform a priestly rite into a simple celebration of the local Christian community. The sacramental meaning is thus buried under an avalanche of pastoral gestures and speeches.

Added to this is the content of episcopal homilies, which are often far removed from any doctrinal explanation of the sacraments and their efficacy. Many bishops choose to focus their preaching on pastoral assessments, calls for diocesan unity or community exhortations, thereby relegating the sacramental dimension to the background. The Chrism Mass then becomes an exercise in ecclesial communication, sometimes political, to the detriment of mystagogy and liturgical catechesis.

This overload seriously undermines the sacramental clarity of the rite. What was intended by Pius XII to be a sacramental catechesis becomes a celebration of institutional identity. Instead of demonstrating the sacraments’ dependence on Christ’s sacrifice, the rite tends to express, above all, the self-celebration of the local Church and its ministers. The liturgical word is fragmented into multiple discourses, often anecdotal or circumstantial, losing sight of the profound unity of the sacred action centred on Christ and his Cross.

Bugnini himself insists on this turning point:

It was worth sacrificing a traditional preference [...] in order to highlight the visible communion of the presbyterate around its bishop, in a liturgy fully adapted to the new times.

This statement sums up the logic of the reform: to abandon the sacramental symbolism inherited from centuries of tradition to make way for a new liturgical rhetoric, based no longer on mystery but on ecclesial visibility. of the rite: instead of a pedagogy of grace, there is an emphasis on affective communion, sometimes to the detriment of doctrine. The liturgical word is fragmented into multiple discourses, often anecdotal or circumstantial, losing sight of the profound unity of the sacred action centred on Christ and his Cross.

The urgent need to find the source

Pope St Alexander I consecrating the holy oils, in an image from a manuscript dated 1300-10. According to a medieval tradition, it was Alexander, the 5th successor of St Peter (reigned ca. 105-15) who instituted the rite of consecrating the oils on Holy Thursday.  

The shift of the Chrism Mass from a sacramental epiphany centered on Christ’s sacrifice to a community celebration with an identity function reflects a profound evolution in contemporary liturgical theology. This shift is not purely formal, but goes to the very heart of the liturgy: its purpose, its language and its theological structure.

While Pius XII, with a clear desire for pedagogical reform, wanted to offer the faithful a liturgy that was profoundly Eucharistic and catechetical, the post-conciliar reforms gradually replaced this logic with a horizontal conception of the liturgy. The liturgy is now presented as a manifestation of ecclesial communion, centred on the bishop and his presbyterate, to the detriment of the catechesis of the sacraments. Josef Ratzinger - the future Benedict XVI - rightly noted:

What was once turned towards God has gradually turned in on the community. Community self-celebration has replaced the act of worship.

This withdrawal is particularly evident in the modern Chrism Mass, where the episcopal preaching no longer focuses on the nature and power of the sacraments, but on pastoral concerns, diocesan assessments or calls for synodality. The bishop becomes less the sacramental minister of Christ than the visible animator of a community on the move.

The liturgist Mgr Klaus Gamber, in his prophetic writings, was already denouncing this development:

Instead of looking at the organic development of the liturgy, new office-born rites have been introduced, cut off from any living tradition and oriented more towards ideology than faith.

Thus, what Pius XII had conceived as a catechetical liturgy, centred on the sacramental grace deriving from the one sacrifice of Christ, was gradually transformed into a symbolic manifestation of an ecclesial communion conceived above all as visible, participative and ministerial. The gradual erasure of the link between the Eucharist and the sacraments, the dilution of theological language in orations, and the inflation of symbolic gestures based on a horizontal ecclesiology have emptied the rite of its mystagogical density.

The time has come to restore the original significance of the Chrism Mass as a sacramental act within the sacrifice of Christ, the source of all anointing and sanctification. The traditional rite offers a sober, majestic expression of this, doctrinally rigorous and spiritually fruitful. Restoring it does not mean going backwards: it means re-establishing a vital link between the sacraments and their Eucharistic source, between liturgical action and the redemption of the world.

To serve liturgical truth is to honour the Paschal Mystery of Christ, celebrated in his Church with fidelity, sobriety and faith.

Bibliography

1. Liturgical and historical sources

G DURAND, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. A. Davril & T. Thibodeau, Turnhout, Brepols, 1995.

Pontificale Romanum (ed. 1595-1596), republished by Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Gelasian Sacramentary, ed. H. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, Oxford, 1894.

Gregorian Sacramentary, ed. Dag Norberg, Paris, CNRS, 1985.

Ordo Romanus I, ed. M. Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut Moyen Âge, vol. III, Louvain, 1951.

2. Historical and critical studies

H. SCHMIDT, Die Formularien der Chrisammesse in den alten römischen Sacramentarien , Ephemerides Liturgicae, vol. 71, 1957, pp. 733-736.

L. GROMIER, Commentaires sur la réforme de la Semaine Sainte, in: Ephemerides Liturgicae (various articles, years 1951-1962).Ephemerides Liturgicae (various articles, years 1951-1962).

A. BUGNINI, La réforme de la liturgie 1948-1975, trans. fr. P.-M. Gy, Cerf, 1998.

K. GAMBER, La Réforme liturgique en question, DMM, 1992.

J.-F. Thomas, La liturgie: art sacré, théologie et vie mystique, Via Romana, 2017.

3. Liturgical theology and mystagogy

J. LECLERCQ, La Semaine Sainte dans la liturgie romaine, Solesmes, 1951.

L. BOUYER, Le Mystère pascal, Cerf, 1945.

P. GUÉRANGER, L’Année liturgique. Le Temps de la Passion et la Semaine Sainte, Solesmes.

J. RATZINGER (Benedict XVI), The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ad Solem, 2001.

J. HANI, Le symbolisme du culte chrétien, L’Âge d’Homme, 1995.

The Chrism Mass: Tradition, Reform and Change (Part 1) - Guest Article by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

We are very grateful to Fr Jean-Pierre Herman for sharing with us this important article about the Chrism Mass and its recent reforms. The French original was published two days ago on the website of the Schola Sainte-Cécile as a single article; it will be published here in two parts. Fr Herman is professor of liturgy at the Good Shepherd Institute’s Séminaire Saint-Vincent de Paul in Courtalain, France. The images from liturgical books are reproduced with the kind permission of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.

The Chrism Mass, from sacramental catechesis to ecclesiological celebration:

tradition, reform and change.

by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

Among the major liturgical rituals of the year, the Chrism Mass today occupies a major place in the liturgical life of dioceses. It is presented as one of the most significant manifestations of the fullness of the bishop's priesthood and the intimate bond that unites him to his priests. [1] It is the moment when the Church sanctifies the oils intended for the sacraments and, in its post-conciliar version, when the link between the ministerial priesthood, the people of God and the Paschal Mystery is publicly manifested. Priests solemnly renew their ordination promises, and the bishop visibly embodies the unity of the presbyterate.

However, it should be remembered that the term “Chrism Mass” did not appear until the reform of 1955. Until then, the Roman liturgy included only one celebration on Holy Thursday: the Mass in Coena Domini, during which the bishop proceeded to bless the oils. Ancient sources, such as the Gelasian Sacramentary, present several liturgical formularies linked to this day, but, as Hermann Schmidt has shown [2], these were not separate Masses, but a single ritual whole. The Gregorian Sacramentary, a century later, proposes only one form for the blessing of the oils. The Ordo Romanus I confirms this tradition of a single rite, [3] which was maintained with notable symbolic enrichments, admirably described by William Durandes, bishop of Mende, in his Rationale (or Manual of the Divine Offices), and taken up again in the Roman Pontifical of 1595, until the reform of the twentieth century.

Frontispiece of a 1511 edition of the Pontificale Romanum.

Pius XII’s intention in the 1955 reform (Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria) was to make this Mass a sacramental catechesis. By isolating the blessing of the oils from the evening Mass, the Pope wanted to emphasize that all sacramental grace flows from the Sacrifice of Christ. However, this reform, while respectful of the traditional canonical structure, paved the way for more radical developments. With the post-conciliar reform, the Chrism Mass became an ecclesiological celebration, centered no longer on sacramental grace, but on communion between the bishop, his priests and the people.

The traditional rite: a strong Eucharistic structure.

In the traditional rite, as codified in the Pontifical Romanum of 1595, the blessing of the Holy Oils is not an independent celebration, but is solemnly inscribed at the heart of the Mass in Coena Domini. Far from being a marginal addition, it is deeply integrated into the Eucharistic offering. This insertion manifests a fundamental liturgical and theological truth: all sanctification in the Church, including that of the sacramental instruments, flows directly from the sacrifice of Christ made present at the altar.

The three blessings - of the oil for catechumens, the oil for the infirm and the holy chrism - are structured around the Roman Canon. This structuring is not arbitrary: it expresses the fact that the mystery of the Cross and the Eucharist is the unique source of all grace. By blessing the oils as part of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Church confesses that Christ, priest and victim, communicates his divine life through the sacraments that these oils are used to confer.

The beginning of the consecratory preface of the Holy Oils in an edition of the Roman Pontifical printed in 1497.

The rite itself is remarkably rich in symbolism. It includes:

• the minister's breath on the oils, evoking the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit in creation and resurrection;
• the anointing in the chrism vessel, marking the intimate link between the oil and the sanctifying grace; 
• the incensing of the sacred vessels, which signifies the ascension of prayer and the consecration of what is destined for God;
• the solemn chant of O Redemptor, a theological and contemplative hymn that magnifies the redemptive work of Christ in the sacraments;
• and the triple acclamation Fiat, taken up by the clergy, a liturgical sign of community assent to the invocation of the Paraclete.

The epiclesis that precedes the consecration of the chrism - Emitte, quaesumus, Domine, Spiritum Sanctum Paraclitum - establishes an explicit link with Pentecost: the chrismal oil is sanctified by the Spirit, just as the Apostles were in the Upper Room. This link shows that the sacramental ministry of the Church continues the work of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Eucharistic sacrifice. The ancient liturgy thus retains a profound mystagogical coherence, rooted in the theology of the Paschal Mystery.

The 1955 reform: a catechetical turning point

The liturgical reform promulgated by Pius XII in 1955 introduced a significant change in tradition: it detached the blessing of the oils from the Mass in Coena Domini and instituted a separate Mass, known as the Chrism Mass, celebrated on the morning of Holy Thursday. This innovation broke with the ancient Roman custom, in which the unity of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the consecration of the oils bore symbolic witness to the fact that the sacraments derive their efficacy from the mystery of the Cross.

However, despite this new autonomy for the Chrism Mass, the internal structure of the celebration remains close to the Tridentine model: the blessings of the oils continue to be inserted at the end of the Roman Canon and after communion. This partial maintenance of the structure aims to preserve the sacramental significance of the gestures, while making them more intelligible to the assembly of the faithful, who are now more involved in the liturgical life.

The aim of this reform is no longer primarily to demonstrate the dependence of the sacraments on the Eucharist, but to highlight the diversity and beauty of the sacramental life of the Church, with a view that is more pedagogical than mystagogical. From a pastoral point of view, the link between the oils and the various sacraments they are used to confer should be made clear: baptism, confirmation, ordination and the anointing of the sick.

The beginning of the blessing of the Holy Oils in an edition of the Pontificale printed in Paris in 1683.

Nevertheless, this reform has led to a significant simplification of the rites:

rich and symbolic gestures are largely reduced or modified;

Traditional orations, long, typically theological and often dense, are giving way to briefer texts, with a more accessible vocabulary, but sometimes less evocative;

The liturgy as a whole gains in clarity, but loses the mystical density that characterised the Tridentine Pontifical.

Post-conciliar reform: an ecclesiological celebration refocused on ministry

The liturgical reform promulgated in 1969, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, brought about a profound transformation of the Chrism Mass, both in its structure and in its theology. The underlying pastoral intention was clear: to make this celebration a visible manifestation of the unity of the presbyterate around the bishop, with greater emphasis on the communitarian and ministerial dimension of the priesthood. But this refocusing entails a significant theological shift: the Chrism Mass ceases to be a Eucharistic theophany of sacramental grace, becoming above all an ecclesiological presentation of the ministry.

The Chrism Mass was henceforth conceived as an autonomous celebration, which could be brought forward to another day in Holy Week, thus breaking with the ancient liturgical integration of Holy Thursday, the day of the priestly mystery par excellence. Most of the time, the blessings of the oils are no longer inserted into the Canon of the Mass, nor are they placed after communion, a possibility still offered by the rubrics, but moved to a separate moment, after the homily, in the form of a "rite of the oils" detached from the Eucharistic prayer. This change is not merely functional; it runs the risk of dissociating the sacraments from the altar, which is their ontological source.

A major innovation was added to this restructuring: the solemn renewal of the priestly promises by the priests. This element, totally absent from the previous liturgical tradition, constitutes a radical innovation introduced without historical precedent or ritual roots. Its inclusion in the liturgy is in keeping with a post-conciliar perspective of valuing the presbyteral ministry as a collegial participation in the mission of the bishop. Although this gesture is not at the heart of the celebration, it has become a high point, often highlighted in contemporary pastoral practice. It marks a turning point: the liturgy no longer celebrates only the action of Christ in his sacraments, but also the subjective commitment of the ministers themselves.

This refocusing has visible consequences in the way the rite is conducted. The Liturgy of the Word is enriched with texts of a catechetical nature, emphasising the prophetic, priestly and royal mission of the People of God, while the blessings of the oils, while retaining their ancient structures, are simplified in their implementation. The breathing, the anointing in the vessels, the acclamations such as the Fiat, the singing of O Redemptor: all these gestures are either abbreviated, made optional, or simply omitted. The symbolic and theological density of the rite is impoverished.

In short, the post-conciliar reform shifts the centre of gravity of the Chrism Mass from the sacramental union of the oils with the Eucharistic sacrifice to a celebration of the ministerial Church and of presbyteral communion. The focus is no longer primarily on the origin of the sacrament - Christ the priest offering his sacrifice - but on the human structure of the Church and the pastoral life of its ministers. The Chrism Mass thus becomes the mirror of a Church that contemplates itself, rather than a Church that receives everything from its Lord at the altar.

NOTES:

[1] Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, quoted by G. TORNAMBE, «Évolution des rites de la Missa chrismatis», Revue des sciences religieuses, 90/1 (2016), pp. 81-103.

[2] H. Sschmidt, «Formularia liturgica Feria V in Cena Domini: Considerationes criticae», Ephemerides Liturgicae, 71 (1957), pp. 733-736.

[3] M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du Moyen-Age, I-V, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 23, 24, 28, 29 ), Louvain, 1931-1961.

The Excision of the Institution Narratives from Pius XII’s Holy Week

This past Holy Week I was once again able to assist at the Roman Rite in its ancient-medieval-baroque plenitude, or, to put it more simply, “pre-55.” I have now attended for several years, and the contrast between it and the rite of Eugenio Pacelli is nothing less than astonishing: I would say it is of the same kind of contrast as one finds between the old and new missals in general, if the new be done in the most conservative way possible. Indeed, the ultimate irony is that there are features in the Novus Ordo Triduum that restore what Pacelli had removed—one of the few times in the year when Tridentine and Montinian rub shoulders, so to speak.

Each year I assist at the pre-55 ceremonies, my love and appreciation for them grow. If I had to use a single word, I would say they are sublime. The texts and actions are coherent in a way that those of the Pius XII remix aren’t. These rites move with a majestic, unhurried inevitability, dense with interlocking symbolism. Something about their sheer massiveness, and their utter indifference to pragmatic considerations, makes it easier to lose the sense of time; one surrenders to something so great that it can just as well exist without you, but you are humbly glad to be a part of it. It is not always the case that shortening and simplifying a rite in fact makes it feel easier and shorter. The flow of a rite, and the sacral atmosphere it creates, is far more important for pulling a man out of himself than anything a clock can measure.

The problems with Pius XII’s “restored” Holy Week—which was officially in force from 1955 to 1969, only fourteen years, not long enough to constitute any kind of custom worthy of preservation, as compared with the many centuries of the traditional Holy Week—begin on Palm Sunday and continue throughout nearly every Mass and office till Easter. I provide an overview of some of these points in chapter 12 of The Once and Future Roman Rite, though of course Gregory’s series here at NLM is already a classic, as is Stefano Carusi’s article, and the critique of Pius XII’s master of ceremonies Msgr. Léon Gromier. A simple comparison may be found here.

This year I was more struck than usual by the jarring absence of the Last Supper from the Passion accounts as read in the ’62 missal (the TLM reads all four Passions in Holy Week every year, unlike the NOM which cycles through the Synoptics on Palm Sunday). Everyone who knows about the Roman Tradition (pre-55) vs. Pius XII’s neo-Holy Week talks about this, but I think it has more of an impact if you can see it visually.

Here is what happened to the Passion according to St. Matthew, from Palm Sunday. The images are taken from my 1948 St. Andrew's Daily Missal.

Here is what Pius XII did to the Passion according to St. Mark, read on Tuesday of Holy Week. The ending is intact, but not the beginning: once again, the institution of the Holy Eucharist is completely removed.

Here are the verses chopped out of St. Luke’s Passion on the Wednesday of Pius XII’s Holy Week. 

The upshot of these cuts is that nowhere in the 1962 missal, except for a rarely-used votive Mass, are any of the institution narratives read.

But were the readings too long?

One objection that has been made to the Roman tradition of reading the Passion narratives in their entirety—a practice done for many centuries prior to 1955, and which was to a large extent resumed with the Novus Ordo (!), albeit with a rotation cycle for the Synoptics—is that these accounts are just too long.

Well, yes, they are very long. However, that hardly seems like a serious objection during Holy Week. Do we have anything better to do during Holy Week than read Scripture and pray? If one is going to read the Passion, then one ought to read about the “Sacrament of the Passion” (as St Thomas calls the Eucharist), in order to underline, as Our Lord Himself did at the Last Supper, the intimate connection between the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrifice of Calvary, and the perfect charity of which the former is a sign and the latter is the principal act. It is hard to defend the theological coherence of skipping out on the sign Jesus gave us of His loving atonement and atoning love. As my esteemed colleague Gregory wrote on social media: “The whole aim of the 1955 Holy Week reform is to divorce the Mass from the Passion and the Cross.”

Regarding length of readings, Gregory added:

Objecting to the length of the Roman Passion accounts is just foolish; the Roman arrangement is the simplest and shortest of all the historical liturgies. In the Ambrosian Rite, the narrative of all the principal services from Spy Wednesday to the Easter vigil inclusive is carried entirely by St Matthew, so the Passions of Mark, Luke, and John are all read at one ceremony: the Matins of Good Friday. The Byzantine Rite does something similar with St Matthew, starting at the beginning of chapter 21 at Matins of Palm Sunday, and getting to the end of the Gospel (chapter 28) at Vespers of Holy Saturday. On Good Friday, there are twelve Gospels of the Passion at Matins, the first of which is more than four full chapters of John (!), then large parts of all four Passions are repeated at the Royal Hours. And this, in the midst of a huge number of other readings, endless canons and other kinds of hymns, etc., with almost none of the typical features of the Divine Office omitted.

A deacon commented:

I remember attending the Paschal Divine Liturgy at an Orthodox monastery one year, which begins with the chanting of the entire book of Acts. The liturgy was about four hours, and since there was no electricity at this monastery (and no pews), two of the monks threaded their way through the church replacing peoples’ candles as they burned down. Nobody complained about the length of the service. When it was over, the people went to their cars or tents to get a few hours sleep while two monks took turns tolling the bells all night long. Early in the morning, we were all up again for Divine Liturgy, followed by a meal. Let’s face it: we’ve become sissies. 

The question is forced: What in the world was going on with Pius XII that he allowed such liturgical tomfoolery under his watch?

The first thing we have to rule out—sorry, conspiracy theorists—is that Bugnini was the “author” of the Pacellian Holy Week. He was no such thing. At the time, he was a lowly secretary to the secret committee for proposing liturgical reforms, but the major players, older than he and more influential, steered the entire project. It was other Vatican officials, not Bugnini, who pushed through the new Holy Week. The secretary, for his part, watched open-eyed, learned the tricks of the trade, acquired the insider rolodex, and prepared for his day in the sun under Paul VI.

Here is how historian Yves Chiron puts it in his biography of Bugnini:

On May 28, 1948, Pius XII set up a Pontifical Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy that was eventually to be termed Commissio Piana. It was created within the Congregation of Rites, with Cardinal Micara, the new prefect of the same Congregation, as its president. Its creation was not made public; for a long time it worked in secrecy. Only when the first of the reforms it had prepared was promulgated was its existence revealed to the greater number, including most liturgists. It numbered few members and, unlike the commissions that later pontificates were to establish, it relied on few liturgy experts.
            With Cardinal Micara as president, the Pontifical Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy originally numbered only six members: Archbishop Alfonso Carinci, undersecretary of the Congregation of Rites; Fr Ferdinando Antonelli, OFM, relator general of the historical section of the Congregation of Rites; Fr Josef Löw, CSSR, vice-relator general of the same historical section; Fr Anselmo Albareda, OSB, prefect of the Vatican Library; Fr Augustin Bea, SJ, rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute; and Fr Bugnini who, in his capacity as director of Ephemerides Liturgicae, was named secretary of this commission.
            Later on Bugnini would exercise the same function of secretary in the conciliar preparatory commission on the liturgy as well as in the postconciliar Consilium for liturgical reform. Yet whereas he played a decisive role in the preparatory commission and in the Consilium, he did not have a leading role on the Commissio Piana. He was an invaluable worker11 and rarely intervened in the discussions. He learned and observed much, probably became aware of certain problems, but never exerted a decisive influence. 

As to what might have been going on with Pius XII, readers may consult two articles of mine:

• “Coincidences during the reign of Pius XII? Political background to Vatican II and liturgical changes”
• “Lights and Shadows in the Pontificate of Pius XII”

Quite simply: it is time to let go of the postwar experiments and return, humbly and gratefully, to the Roman tradition embodied in the 1570 missal and its line of continuous successors.
 

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

Two Ancient Prophecies of Holy Saturday

Of the many ruptures which the 1955 reform of Holy Week introduced into the Roman Rite, one of the most violent is the reduction of the twelve prophecies read at the Easter vigil to four, and the elimination of all the baptismal rituals from the vigil of Pentecost, including the repetition of six of these prophecies. This entailed the complete removal from the entire Roman liturgy of two Old Testament passages that are cited many times by the Church Fathers in connection with the Paschal mystery.

Detail of a Christian sarcophagus of the Constantinian period (ca. 305-35), known as the Sarcophagus of Adelphia, discovered in the church of St John in Syracuse, Sicily, in 1872. From left to right are shown: the Sacrifice of Isaac; the healing of the man born blind; the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; and the raising of the son of the widow of Naim. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Davide Mauro; CC BY-SA 4.0)

The first is Genesis 22, 1-18, the story somewhat inaccurately known as the Sacrifice of Isaac, who is, of course, not actually sacrificed in the end. (Jewish tradition calls it “the binding of Isaac.”) The oldest known sermon on Easter, the Paschal homily of St Melito of Sardis (ca. 170), refers to this as a prefiguration of the Sacrifice of another Son:

“Thus if you wish to see the mystery of the Lord, look at Abel who is likewise slain, at Isaac who is likewise tied up (59), … And he bore the wood on his shoulders, going up to slaughter like Isaac at the hand of his father. But Christ suffered. Isaac did not suffer, for he was a type of the passion of Christ which was to come… (frag. 9)”

Likewise, his contemporary St Irenaeus:

“Righteously also do we, possessing the same faith as Abraham, and taking up the cross as Isaac did the wood, follow (Christ). … For Abraham, according to his faith, followed the command of the Word of God, and with a ready mind delivered up as a sacrifice to God his only-begotten and beloved son, in order that God also might be pleased to offer up for all his seed His own beloved and only-begotten Son, as a sacrifice for our redemption.” (Adversus Haereses, 4, 5, 4)

The foolishness of deleting this reading was realized and corrected in the Novus Ordo, which restored it to the Easter vigil, albeit with one of the optional shorter forms that plague the post-Conciliar lectionary. The shorter form permits the omission of much of what makes the story so dramatic, the part where Isaac says to his father, “where is the victim for the holocaust?”, and Abraham replies, “God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust, my son.” Hopefully, in arranging the celebration of the Easter vigil, people will treat the Word of God with more respect than the members of the Consilium did.

The Vision of Ezechiel, 1630, by Francisco Collantes (Madrid, 1599-1656); Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The second, Ezekiel 37, 1-14, was accepted by the Church Fathers from the most ancient times as a prophecy of the resurrection of the body at the end of the world, and hence of the Resurrection of Christ that makes this possible. Again St Irenaeus:

“Now Isaias thus declares (26, 19), that He who at the beginning created man, did promise him a second birth after his dissolution into earth: ‘The dead shall rise again, and they who are in the tombs shall arise, and they who are in the earth shall rejoice. … ’ And Ezekiel speaks as follows: ‘And the hand of the Lord came upon me, and the Lord led me forth in the Spirit, and set me down in the midst of the plain, and this place was full of bones. And He caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were many upon the surface of the plain very dry. And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I said, Lord, Thou who hast made them dost know. And He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and thou shalt say to them, Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord to these bones, Behold, I will cause the spirit of life to come upon you, and I will lay sinews upon you, and bring up flesh again upon you, and I will stretch skin upon you, and will put my Spirit into you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. … ’ ” (Adv. Haer. 5, 34, 1)

This passage is cited to the same effect by Tertullian, St Cyprian and St Ambrose in the West, by Origen, St Cyril of Jerusalem and St John Chrysostom in the East, among many others.

Unsurprisingly, both readings are also found in the Byzantine Rite on Holy Saturday, although not at the same ceremony. Genesis 22 is the tenth of the fifteen prophecies read at the Vesperal Divine Liturgy, which also shares with the Roman Rite, wholly or in part, readings from Genesis 1, Exodus 12, the book of Jonah, Exodus 14, and Daniel 3. (These last two are much longer in their Byzantine version, and have canticles attached to them, as they do in the Roman Rite. The Byzantines also read the whole book of Jonah, as the Ambrosians do at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.)

Ezekiel 37, on the other hand, is read at Orthros of Holy Saturday, one of the most beautiful services of the year, commonly called Jerusalem Matins. This is the only day on which Orthros ends with a special synaxis of three readings: Ezekiel 37, 1-14; 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8 and Galatians 3, 13-14 (as a single reading, titled to the former); and Matthew 27, 62-66, which tells of the setting of the guards at the Lord’s tomb.

Today is Holy Saturday on the Julian calendar, and this post is in part an excuse to use a video of one of my favorite things about the Byzantine Rite, pertinent to the day, a special setting of this reading. This recording was made at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, seven years ago. (The first few times I attended this service, I knew barely a word of Church Slavonic, and had no idea what was happening most of the time. It was sung rather more slowly than it is here, and the cantor used a score with all the notes printed out, rather than a lectionary, so I thought it was some kind of solo motet, a lamentation for the Lord’s death.)

This English version is also very beautiful; the prophecy is preceded by a chant from a Psalm called a prokimen, like most Scriptural readings in the Byzantine Rite other than the Gospel.

This recording skips the Epistle and its prokimen, and goes straight to the Alleluia before the Gospel (one of the most beautiful in the repertoire), which has a very interesting feature. The three verses between the repetition of Alleluia are taken from the beginning of Psalm 67: “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let those who hate him flee from before his face. As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish, as wax melts before the fire. So let the sinners perish at the presence of God, but let the righteous be glad.”

At the beginning of Orthros of Easter, these same verses are said between repetitions of the Paschal tropar, “Christ is risen from the dead, having trampled death by death, and having given life to those in the tombs.” But to these is added a fourth verse, from Psalm 117, “This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein”, the same verse which is said at every Hour of the Roman Office during the octave. This arrangement is then repeated at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, and at Vespers, and so on through the rest of the week until the Divine Liturgy of Bright Saturday.

UPDATE: about ten minutes ago, the YouTube channel of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church posted this video of the completed live stream of its Easter night service, celebrated by Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv at the Golden-Domed Monastery of St Michael. Even thought it is 4¾ hours long, it would probably take me even longer to write a complete description of everything that happens, so suffice it to say that the feature described in the preceding paragraph occurs for the first time, at the beginning of Orthros, at 52:40.

To all our readers who follow the Julian calendar, we wish you a most blessed feast of the glorious Resurrection - He is truly risen!

Compendium of the 1955 Holy Week Revisions of Pius XII: Part 10 - Conclusion

My very first project for NLM, even before I became a staff writer, was a series of articles that described the changes made to the ceremonies of Holy Week under Pope Pius XII in 1955. It is almost hard for me to believe that they were published 14 years ago, in the spring of 2009. The poet Horace said that if you want to know whether something you have written is good or not, you should put it in a box and not look at it or think about it for nine years. If at the end of that period, you can read it without immediately dying of embarrassment, then it’s good. By that standard, I dare say that the articles have stood the test of time, although they are not, of course, flawless. I know a lot more about the subject now than I did then, and if I were writing them now, I would probably do some things differently; there are also a few minor errors. As a writing project, they began as something quite different, and in the form in which they were published on NLM, they benefited very greatly from some wise editorial decisions made by Shawn Tribe. Since I have never thanked him for this publicly before, I do so now.

The last article ends with a note that says, “The series will conclude in the next and final installment.” Over the years I have received quite a number of inquiries about it, and I would like to thank all of the inquirers for flattering my authorial vanity. I have replied to them all that the planned final article never jelled into anything in my head, and was therefore never published. Now that I have had fourteen more years to discuss the matter with many different people in many different forums, and to research and think about it in greater detail, I think it is finally a good time to say the last word in the series. In 2017, I published a more detailed series on just the Good Friday ceremony, and in 2020 (what with all the unexpected free time on my hands), I did a very detailed series on the rites of Palm Sunday. All the links to these three series will be given below.

Pope St John XXIII venerating the Cross on Good Friday according to the traditional form.

The Long-Overdue Conclusion

The Holy Week reforms of Pope Pius XII can be divided into three categories.

The first and largest category consists of absolute novelties, things that have no precedent in the tradition of the Roman rite, and for which no honest person claims any precedent. Among these would be: the blessing of the palms versus populum on a table, by clergy wearing red vestments; the elimination of all ceremony from the Palm Sunday procession; the mutilation of the synoptic Passions; the comically frequent vestment changes during the Good Friday ceremony; the removal of the rite of the Presanctified; the use of the “small bracket” for the Paschal candle during the Easter vigil; the removal of Vespers from the end of the vigil; the suppression of the baptismal rites from the vigil of Pentecost; etc.

There is simply no good reason why those who love the traditional Roman Rite should feel any particular attachment to these novelties. In their specific 1955 iteration, they were only in general use for 14 years, and many of them were not regarded as worth retaining by even their own inventors as they went on to create the Novus Ordo. Those that have been retained (such as versus populum or the Communion rite of Good Friday) are no less unmoored from the tradition, and no less theologically and pastorally problematic, for being so.

Strangely enough, the best example of the problem is the least theologically problematic, the Tenebrae services. Churches that use the liturgical books of 1962 are bound ad litteram legis to say them on the mornings of the Triduum without any of the traditional ceremonies. Meanwhile, many churches that would not touch the Missal or Breviary of St Pius V with a barge pole celebrate some form of Tenebrae service with many or all of the traditional ceremonies, in the evenings, (while, incidentally, completely ignoring the Liturgy of the Hours.)

Darkness streams through the windows of St Mary’s Shrine, home of the FSSP apostolate in Warrington, England, during a Tenebrae service in 2016.

The second, much smaller category is that of the partial restorations, changes which have some basis in the Roman tradition, but which are incorporated into the 1955 Holy Week reform in wholly novel ways. My favorite example of this is the very beautiful prayer “Deus, qui peccati veteris”, which is added to the beginning of the Good Friday ceremony. This prayer is very ancient, and was still used at the Mass of the Presanctified in some places even as late as the mid-16th century. But in 1955, it is said in a manner completely different from the way prayers are said at Mass, because the whole point of the “Solemn Post-Meridian Liturgical Action” is to divorce the Sacrifice of the Cross from the Sacrifice of the Mass as far as possible.

Another example would be the four prophecies at the Easter vigil, a custom which is attested as far back as the 9th century, and which is found in the Dominican Use. But of course, all Uses that had four prophecies at the Easter vigil also had four at that of Pentecost; the total disappearance of readings like the Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) or Ezekiel’s vision of the bones (chapter 37) from the Roman Missal is an impoverishment without precedent.

Ironically, the best known of these partial restorations is the most partial, the timing of the Triduum ceremonies. It is an authentic and ancient custom to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in the evening, and one to which no reasonable person should object. But the celebration of the Easter vigil during the night, the supposed greatest triumph and restoration of 1955, and the earliest (permitted ad experimentum in 1951), is completely inauthentic, and, like most of the innovations of 1955, based on an historical falsehood.

In this regard, many places have embraced to some degree the practicality that prevails in the Byzantine churches, which do these ceremonies at times which are convenient for the faithful. (I have attended the Divine Liturgies of both Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday in both the morning and evening.) It would be much wiser for the Roman Church to do the same on a general level, and there is simply no good reason why those who love the traditional rite should insist on practices which are often pastorally inconvenient, and historically inauthentic.

A lectionary of the early 9th century, with the end of the 4th prophecy of the Easter vigil (Exodus 14, 24 -15, 1), the text of the Tract that follows, and the first part of the 5th prophecy, Isaiah 54, 14 - 55, 11. The latter was suppressed in 1955, but restored in 1969. (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 365: Lectionarium plenarium: https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0365)

But for the future, there is likewise no good reason why anyone should object to an intelligent investigation of the historical sources of the Roman Rite, of which the Missal of St Pius V is one, but not the only one. And there is no good reason to object to a future authentic restoration of some of what was done inauthentically in 1955. Many scholars believe that the huge collections of prayers for the blessing of palms found in some medieval sources were originally intended to offer the celebrant a choice: so why not restore the better ones to use ad libitum? The Palm Sunday procession could certainly be made more elaborate, as it was in the Middle Ages, rather than less elaborate, as it was in 1955. Prayers like “Deus, qui peccati veteris” could legitimately be restored to use, provided that this be done in an historically authentic manner. The Byzantine church which I attended for many years normally read only 7 or 8 of the 15 readings assigned to the Easter vigil; in theory (although I confess to some misgivings on this point), something similar could be done in the Roman Rite, again ad libitum. In short, there are riches to be rediscovered in the broader tradition of the whole of the Roman Rite, and there is no good reason to object to their legitimate recovery.

The third category consists of authentic restorations of this very kind, the return to traditional customs which through whatever accidents of history, fell out of use, and were brought back by the reform of 1955.

This category is empty.

The Original Series

Part 1 - The Palm Sunday Blessing and Procession of Palms
Part 2 - The Masses of Palm Sunday, Holy Tuesday and Spy Wednesday
Part 3 - The Mass of Holy Thursday and the Mandatum
Part 4.1 - The Mass of Presanctified on Good Friday, Mass of the Catechumens and the Solemn Prayers
Part 4.2 - Good Friday, The Adoration of the Cross and the Rite of the Presanctified
Part 5 - Tenebrae and the Divine Office of the Triduum
Part 6.1 - Holy Saturday and the Blessing of the New Fire, the Procession into the Church, the Exsultet and the Prophecies
Part 6.2 - Holy Saturday and the Blessing of the Font, Litany of the Saints, Mass and Vespers
Part 7 - The Vigil of Pentecost and the Readings from Sacred Scripture in Holy Week
Part 8 - The Hours of the Celebration of the Holy Week Liturgies

Part 9 - The Reform of 1955 and the Post-Conciliar Holy Week

The Theology of Good Friday Series (2017)

Part 1 - The Theology of the Mass of the Presanctified

Part 2 - The Theology of the 1955 Solemn Liturgical Action of Good Friday

Part 3 - The Theology of the Novus Ordo Good Friday Liturgy

Part 4 - The Readings and Solemn Prayers of the Novus Ordo Good Friday Liturgy

Part 5 - The Fraction Rite of Good Friday

The Palm Sunday Series (2020)

– The Blessing of Palms in the Missal of St Pius V (Part 1)
– The Blessing of Palms in the Missal of St Pius V (Part 2)
– The Blessing of Palms in the Reforms of 1955 and 1969
– The Palm Sunday Procession in the Missal of St Pius V
– The Palm Sunday Procession in the Reforms of 1955 and 1969
– The Traditional Mass of Palm Sunday
– The Novus Ordo Mass of Palm Sunday
– Unity and Disunity in the Rites of Palm Sunday
– Bugnini on the Reform of Palm Sunday (Part 1)
– Bugnini on the Reform of Palm Sunday (Part 2)
– The Ancient Form of the Palm Sunday Blessing and Procession
– The Purest Source of the Roman Palm Sunday Rites

An Essential Resource for Restorationists: Detailed Charts Comparing Pre-’55, ’55, and ’62 Mass and Office

In the slow but steady work of restoring the Roman liturgical tradition, it seems that we are never quite fully equipped with all the resources we might wish to have at any given moment. There is work being done today, for instance, that would have been mightily helpful to have decades ago. At the moment there is a burning need for reprints of the pre-55 breviary (both Roman and Monastic) and of the pre-55 altar missal. But things get done when they get done, and all in good time.

The magnificent resources I am posting today at the end of this short article are examples of just such a precious boon, which, once one holds them in one’s hands, will prompt wonder at how it was ever possible that they did not exist before. I speak of the following detailed comparative charts, prepared by expert calendarist and rubrician Paul Cavendish (of St. Lawrence Press fame), and now made available via NLM. Spread the knowledge of them far and wide.

Archdale King has a snippet about the desired/planned changes discussed at Lugano in 1953 (see image below) which he describes as “revolutionary.” The idea that the post-Conciliar changes to the Roman rite (whose solid outline certainly comes from Lugano) just came out of thin air and were all the fault of Vatican II, or Paul VI, or both, is simply impossible to sustain from a closer look of the patterns indicated on Cavendish’s charts.

Here, in Appendix A of H.A. Reinhold’s 1960 book Bringing the Mass to the People, is a summary of the proposals coming out of Maria Laach (1951), Ste Odile (1952), and Lugano (1953). They read as a veritable blueprint of the Novus Ordo.

 

Cum nostra hac aetate and Maxima redemptionis nostrae mysteria, both of 1955, were of course the tipping point, though the 1951 and 1952 “Easter Vigil” permissions presaged something big. There was lesser tinkering too, such as the editio VI post typicam of the Missal in 1953 which anticipated some of the 1962MR changes, such as short conclusions. Bugnini wrote a very useful article in Ephemerides Liturgicae about that.

In any case, the charts should be fairly self-explanatory, and repay close study.

PDF of “Outline of Changes to the Roman Missal between 1955 and 1962”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

More on Holy Week: My Interview with Timothy Flanders on The Meaning of Catholic

About a half-an-hour ago, I finished an interview with Dr Timothy Flanders on the YouTube channel The Meaning of Catholic, returning once again to the topic of the 1955 Holy Week reform. I make bold to say that those who have followed my work on this subject over the years will find this interesting; it covers some ground which I have never written about. I refer a few times to an 18th century so-called rationalist liturgical writer named Claude de Vert; readers can find more information about him on the blog of our good friends at Canticum Salomonis. I’d also like to thank Dr Flanders for his time and our enjoyable conversation.

As was the case with my interview last month with Jeff Cassman, this was done partly in response to an earlier interview with Mr Louis Tofari of Romanitas Press on the same subject. Mr Tofari and I disagree very strongly on this matter, and some of what I say in this interview is in reply to what he says in his. I will only comment that once again, he assiduously avoids almost all concrete discussion of the reform itself in its specific details, which, as Cicero himself noted a very long time, is the best kind of rhetorical feint to employ when one finds oneself defending the indefensible.

Fr Carlo Braga on the 1955 Holy Week Reform (Part 4)

This is the last of the four parts of an address by Fr Carlo Braga CM, given in 2005 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1955 reform of Holy Week, in a translation by Mr Carlo Schena. The first three were published earlier this week: part one, part two, part three. In order to keep each section to a roughly equal and manageable length, it was necessary to break his discussion of Good Friday off in the middle: here he resumes with the adoration of the Cross.

In keeping with the general tenor of his discourse, this part is also filled with important-sounding vaguery, some historical excurses, and a good deal of verbiage about fairly trivial matters such as the definition of the “Triduum” (Thursday to Saturday, or Friday to Sunday?), while almost entirely avoiding any substantive discussion of the changes themselves. I hope to write a more extensive commentary on this whole speech in the coming week.

However, on one point he is absolutely clear: Fr Braga, who was a close collaborator of Fr Bugnini, has no doubt whatsoever that the 1955 reform was the beginning of the process that would culminate in the creation of the post-Conciliar rite. “Its principles, even within their limits, continue to be valid, and we find them, completed and updated, at the basis of the current liturgical books renewed by the post-conciliar reform...” And in this regard, he was, for once, entirely honest.

The second part of the celebration (third according to the Ordo) concerns the adoration of the cross. This is the heart of the celebration on this day. The rite originated in Jerusalem, where it was possible to venerate the true relics of the cross, and was imitated by other churches possessing some of the same relics. We find this rite in Rome already in the fifth century, under influence of the Eastern liturgies. It gradually spread to other churches and, where there were no authentic relics, a simple wooden cross was used instead.

A reliquary of the True Cross presented to the Pope by the Byzantine Emperor Justin II at the end of the 6th century, traditionally used for the Good Friday ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gfawkes05, CC BY-SA 4.0)

In Jerusalem, the adoration was held on Golgotha. Egeria recalls that the community gathered in the early morning. Before the bishop, sitting on the cathedra, was placed a table covered in a white cloth where the silver reliquary with the relics of the cross and the titulus was brought. Everyone would then walk past to venerate them. The bishop and deacons would make sure that no one touched them, lest someone remove some fragment. The whole rite took place in silence, with no singing and no readings: another celebration followed at a later hour.

In Rome, perhaps as early as the 7th century, the adoration of the relics of the cross took place in the church of the Holy Cross ‘in Jerusalem’, where the pope, together with the clergy, solemnly carried the holy relics in procession from the Lateran, walking barefoot and carrying a thurible. Initially it was a very simple rite of veneration, with no accompanying liturgical celebration. This gradually took shape until, in the tenth century, all the elements that remain to this day can be found. The Ordo instauratus introduced no innovations in the rite and chants found in Pius V’s Missal. A curiosity: the rubric that describes the sequence of the procession of the faithful approaching the cross indicates “primum viri deinde mulieres.” (First men, then women.)

In large congregations, individual adoration of the cross would have caused difficulties in terms of the long time it would require. The solution was found in the use of several crosses, spread out in different spots of the church. The clash between this utilitarian solution and the meaning of the rite is evident. The 1957 Ordinationes provided a solution (the worst possible one) in collective adoration. “The celebrant, after the adoration of the clergy, if any, and of the ministrants, shall receive the holy cross from the hands of the ministrants and, from the altar predella, having invited the people with brief words to adore the holy cross, shall present it, raised up, for a brief and silent adoration by the faithful.” (IV 17)

The real innovation of the Good Friday reform was the introduction of the Eucharistic communion of all participants as the final part of the celebration. In the more ancient tradition, Good Friday was devoted to the memory of the bloody sacrifice made by the Lord on the cross on that day. Thus the community abstained from the celebration of the Eucharist as well as from communion of the presanctified, so much so that Innocent I could write to Decentius of Gubbio: “Traditio Ecclesiae habet biduo isto sacramenta penitus non celebrari.” (“The tradition of the Church has it that on these two days, the sacraments are not celebrated at all.” PL 20, 555). For Rome, the first document to provide for the communion of the faithful dates back to the seventh century. In the papal liturgy, however, no one, not even the pope, communicated; the faithful could do so, but only in other churches of the city, the so-called tituli. (cfr. Gelasian Sacramentary) By contrast, in the 9th-10th century, communion on Good Friday was a precept. It would be the 12th century crisis in Eucharistic piety to make communion optional until, at the end of that century, the Ordo suburbicarius would establish that “communicat solus pontifex sine ministris”. And this norm was to flow into subsequent liturgical books until the Missal of Pius V. However, despite explicit prohibitions by the Holy See, the practice of communion of the faithful was preserved in the tradition of some monasteries and dioceses.

The Commission for the reform discussed at length the convenience of restoring communion of the faithful on Good Friday. While in favour, they presented the question to the pope, and Pius XII answered that there did not seem to him to be any insurmountable difficulties. This was not merely an act of devotion, but a way of emphasizing the proclamation of the Lord’s death, not only through the faith expressed in the adoration of the cross, but also through participation in the sacrament of the Lord’s death (cfr. 1 Cor 11, 26).

Now that the fundamental questions had been settled, what remained to be structured was the rite to be used. It was not possible to maintain the existing rite, nor was it possible to merely incorporate the rite of communion outside of Mass. The contribution of different traditions had made this rite a sort of Mass, the so-called “Mass of the Presanctified”, which included the offertory elements of the Eucharistic celebration, i.e. the preparation of the chalice, the incensing of the “oblates”, the lavabo, the Orate, fratres. Then the Pater and its embolism; the fractioning of the bread was preceded by an elevation of the host; the immixtio was performed without any formula, “nisi forte (sacerdos) aliquid secrete dicere voluerit”, one pontifical specifies, while another clarifies its significance: “Sanctificatur autem vinum non consecratum per sanctificatum panem”. This was followed by the priest’s communion and the ablutions of the chalice; then the assembly dissolved in silence, with no concluding formula.

The Ordo instauratus stuck to the truth of signs. First of all, it eliminated the offertory elements; there is no use of the chalice; it begins immediately with the Pater and its embolism, followed by the rite of communion with the confession and absolution as in a regular Mass. To conclude, three prayers are taken from the Gelasian and Verona (i.e. Leonine, so-called) Sacramentaries, but without any indication of their genre. Thus, the one that is an oratio super populum, which should be the last, comes first; the other two are clearly additional texts of prayer after communion.

The linearity and severity of the primitive tradition of the Good Friday rites are preserved. (This is blatantly false on many different levels, the most notable being the comical element introduced into the rite by requiring the clergy to change their clothes three times, and element which was happily abolished from the Novus Ordo.) Added is the sacramental act of communion, a sign of full participation in the mystery of the body and blood of the Lord immolated for us.

6. Easter vigil – I won’t dwell on this chapter. The reform of the Easter Vigil belongs to a different moment of the reform of Holy Week: it inaugurated it; it was the ram’s head that pierced into the fortress of our by then static liturgy; with the gradual running-in it carried out since 1951 it eased the advancement of the liturgical reform of the whole week. By the time the reform of the Easter triduum came into force, it had already been celebrated for the sixth time. However, it had not been substantially modified. Some Ordinationes, added in 1952, had merely specified some juridical issues, i.e. Eucharistic fast, the time of the celebration, the connection with other forms of popular piety. It was in this form that it entered the Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae instauratus, which, in the Instructio, reserves for it a fairly large space of pastoral and spiritual context. After explaining the meaning and value of the liturgical silence of Holy Saturday, it refers to the various moments and elements of the celebration to remind how “the purpose of the vigil is to demonstrate and liturgically recall how our life of grace has flowed from the Lord’s death”. With the Triduum reform, the vigil no longer remained isolated, even in the unique importance of its nature, but was organically linked to the rites that precede it, and which it crowns.

The problem remained, and was left unclear – even in the Ordo of Holy Week – of the extent of the Easter triduum. Traditionally, in the liturgical books prior to the reform, it embraced the day of Thursday, with the sacramental anticipation of the mystery of the cross; Friday, with the memory of the Lord’s passion and death; and the morning of Holy Saturday, with the glory of the resurrection. On the other hand, the decree Maxima redemptionis nostrae mysteria refers to the “triduum of Christ, dead, buried and resurrected” (St Augustine), thus suggesting Friday (death), Saturday (burial) and Sunday (resurrection). But it does not seem that the Ordo of Holy Week had fully grasped this dimension. In fact, it retained the Easter celebration within the three traditional days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and while restoring to Saturday the content of the expectation of the Resurrection, it continued to consider the Easter Vigil a part of Saturday, as if its conclusion. The same had been done by the Ordo of the Easter Vigil, whose title was Ordo sabbati sancti, quando vigilia paschalis instaurata peragitur, and not just Ordo vigiliae paschalis instauratae. The Sunday of the Resurrection was indeed part of the tempus paschatis, but did not belong to the triduum, which ended with the celebration of the vigil. A first correction was introduced by the 1962 Missal, which, while maintaining the Easter Vigil in the context of Holy Saturday, included, before the Mass, the indication “Tempus Paschatis”. Yet in this way the Easter Vigil was split into two parts belonging to different liturgical seasons. The definitive clarification would come with Paul VI’s reform of the calendar: Maundy Thursday belongs to Lent; “the Easter triduum of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, has its fulcrum in the Easter Vigil, and ends with Vespers on the Sunday of the Resurrection” (n. 19). Small but significant corrections that arise from experience.

A concluding general overview

It has been written that the reform of Holy Week was “the most important act in the history of liturgy, from St Pius V to the present day.” We did appreciate this, as we revisited the various parts of the Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae instauratus. We have highlighted the restored or new elements introduced by the reform, illustrating them with numerous references to their history and their topicality. This document is now fifty years old. It is no longer new; on the contrary, it has been revised, corrected and improved. We read it today with a different gaze and heart from those who read it fifty years ago. Let us not stop at the minor flaws: “let us make remembrance of it”, as I noted at the beginning. Its principles, even within their limits, continue to be valid, and we find them, completed and updated, at the basis of the current liturgical books renewed by the post-conciliar reform, and they still influence our pastoral action and our spirituality in living the mystery of Easter. For this, we must give thanks to God who inspired them to the Church half a century ago; for they created a soil in which true liturgical pastoral care and Christian life have grown and borne fruit; and for they have strengthened the foundations of the liturgical renewal we are experiencing today. This is why today we rejoice in reaping their fruits, while acknowledging that the path they marked out was not yet complete.

In conclusion, I would like to return to the fundamental aspect, both in principle and in implementation, of the reform of Holy Week made fifty years ago: its pastoral and spiritual nature. The decree of promulgation states: “The rites of Holy Week not only have a special dignity (because they celebrate the maxima redemptionis nostrae mysteria), but they also possess a singular sacramental power and efficacy to nourish Christian life.”

I can hear in these words of the Decree an echo of the teaching of Pius XII in Mediator Dei and of Pius X in his Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini. Pius XII insisted on a shift from a view of the liturgy as an external rite, a ceremony, an observance of rubrical laws, to an understanding of it as a “memorial”, the action of Christ and of the Church, capable of making present and communicating salvation. And Pius X had taught that conscious and full participation in the liturgy is “the first and indispensable source from which Christians can draw a truly Christian spirit.” We may add: above all in the celebration of the greatest mysteries of the Redemption.

All this urges that liturgical pastoral care see and bring live the liturgical year in its fullness, as well as in the hierarchy of its times and values. The celebration of Easter, by its very nature, is the center of the liturgical year; it has its radiation and projection in Sunday, the Easter of the week, throughout the year. On Sundays, the Church relives the paschal sacraments, especially the memorial of the Lord, and projects them into the life of the Christian.

Liturgical pastoral care must have as its specific aim to incorporate into the life and doctrine of the Christian the fulfilment of the paschal mystery, made lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.

Let us not forget how the reform of Holy Week wanted to initiate the Christian community into a conscious, devout, active and full participation in the liturgical celebration. It simplified the rites, it wanted the assembly to be at the center of the sacred action by seeing, listening, responding, singing. They were the beginning of a journey dreamed of by the liturgical movement and that the liturgical reform was then beginning to achieve.

Above all, let us not forget that these beginnings are to be placed among the first stones of a road which, starting from the rediscovery of the Maxima redemptionis nostrae mysteria, led us to the liturgy as “culmen et fons” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10) of the Church’s life and pastoral action.