I just learned about an interesting documentary which was published two months ago on the YouTube channel of the French-language Catholic television outlet KTO TV, about a Benedictine monastery of the Roman Rite on Mt Athos. (Closed captions are available in English.) When the Athonite peninsula was first settled as a monastic community in the later 10th century, the Italian city of Amalfi, (located on the gulf of Salerno, to the south-east of Naples), was a powerful maritime republic, with merchant ships traveling all over the Mediterranean. The Latin monastery was founded out of Amalfi, and therefore called Amalphion by the Greeks. The investigation in this video begins with documents from the archives of Athos which were photographed in the later 19th century by the French military; the photographs are now kept at the Collège de France, a research institute in Paris. The earliest reference to Amalphion is a document which was approved and signed by the very founder of the Athos community, St Athanasius the Athonite (ca. 920-1005), which means that a Latin presence was was part of the life of the Holy Mountain from the beginning.
Scholars have long been aware of the fact that the Great Schism, the supposed definitive break between East and West in 1054, was not as abrupt or total as later historiography imagined, and Amalphion continued to exist well past it; as one of the Greek monks interviewed here says, the schism was “neither immediate nor absolute.” But the monastery did decline, in no small part because Amalfi (which is very small) declined before the growing power of Venice, the power which led to the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the event which did bring about the definitive rupture between Byzantium and Rome. The last references to Amalphion in the Athos archives (also shown here) is in a document of 1287, by which time it was in ruins and abandoned, and its land had been turned over to the monastery known as the Great Lavra, the first on Athos. The documentary shows the only structure which remains, a tower which was turned into a defensive work against Ottoman incursions on the peninsula.Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Amalphion - A Documentary about the Benedictine Monastery on Mt Athos
The researcher travels to the Georgian monastery on Athos, Iviron, to investigate its connection to the monks of the West. We also see a lot of really nice shots of daily life on Athos, including some (fairly brief) footage of the liturgy, and the natural beauty of the peninsula, which is impressive.
Sunday, January 05, 2025
Morello on Rationalism as Part of Modernity’s Anti-Liturgical Hex
Early in December, Os Justi Press released Sebastian Morello’s Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality. The following 2-minute video sums up its main points:
The book is full of rich reflections on the thought and culture of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity, and the spiritual and liturgical implications of the shifts. Rather than attempt a mere summary, I thought I might offer some quotations chosen specially for NLM readers.
« Part of adopting a premodern mind is first acknowledging that every people in history has accepted that our world is a world pregnant with magical forces and the activity of spiritual beings. And Christianity has never denied that curses, hexes, and many kinds of evil spells exist, or that evil spirits can be contacted and succumbed to, in order to attain evil ends. So too, Christians—alongside their practices of meditation and contemplation—have ever believed in sacred magic, or “theurgy,” but they have held that such magic possesses the power to conquer demons and sacralise the world only when united to the eternal and singular priesthood of Jesus Christ, and to this baptised theurgy Christians have given the name of liturgy. This brings us to the great political work to which Christians ought to be dedicated, namely the endeavour to establish liturgical nations in fraternal union with each other, for the alternative to such a civilisation is the accursed dominion in which nations are first fragmented and then dissolved altogether in the grey mass of a diabolical slave settlement. » (p. 4)
« The pre-eminence of the mystical life understood not as spiritual ascent out of the created order, but rather as embodied induction into shared life with a personal God who meets us in the world that is an emanation of His own inner life, is emphasised by me largely because I observe that in the epoch of ideology—namely, modernity—we have lost a sense of the existentiality and immanence of the Sacred Mystery. Tragically, this spiritual blindness has encroached on many aspects of religious devotion and piety. In turn, religion is understood ever less as ongoing transformation through the liturgical and sacramental life, and it is instead understood as mere intellectual assent to doctrinal propositions and spiritual ascent away from the concrete reality in which we find ourselves. Religion is hence tacitly reframed for a people formed by virtual reality lived from an online existence. Unfortunately, such a life is no life at all. And the upshot is the reduction of Christianity, or whatever we mean by Christianity today, to a base species of ideology, just one among a plethora of squabbling ideologies in the modernist arena of competing “systems.” » (p. 11)
« I dare say we must rediscover our liturgy as a baptised form of “theurgy,” a term largely gone from Christian theology today, but one that was repeatedly deployed to discuss Christian worship by such an eminent authority as St. Dionysius the Areopagite. By Christian theurgy, I mean the fulfilment of all religious sacrifice, during which those offering the sacrifice commune with the divine spirits and call God down into the inner chamber as they chant the sacred words and perform the sacred rituals. » (pp. 38-39)
« Latin Christians have long emphasised “assent,” and hence the possession of ideas, over existential transformation through right worship (an emphasis that has only swelled due to the unexamined acceptance of the rationalist paradigm). It is unsurprising, then, that serious Catholicism is more likely to be found online— where ideas are offered and bought up— than in the local church. And those Catholics who have retained the organic conception of the Church as the institution that gifts to the baptised the virtues of right relationality with God—a conception of the Christian as a liturgical creature—have for some time now been actively persecuted by the incumbents of the Church’s highest offices. Such Catholics are seen as betrayers of the modern project of Enlightened man, whom the Church’s leaders have enthroned in their demotion of Christ the King. And in seeing such Catholics in this way, the Church’s government is entirely correct. » (p. 66)
« Whenever I step foot onto Benedictine grounds, I feel as if I have come home. The chanting of the psalms, the sacrifice offered on the altars, the way of life lived under a Rule that’s over a millennium and a half old— all the sacrality of these abbeys seems to have seeped into the stones themselves. Even after all the scandals, the collapse in vocations, and the ruination of the liturgy following that unhappy Vatican Council that baptised the fleeting fever of the 1960s— from which it will take many, many centuries for the Church to recover— the monasteries still appear as loci of divine grace, by which little parts of the diabolical principality we call the world has been captured and placed under Christ’s kingship.» (pp. 97-98)
« In late modernity, the Church’s supreme office, the papacy, got its first middle-class pope, when hitherto this office had been occupied only by nobles and peasants. Pope Paul VI had all the characteristics of a middle-class manager. He was a social climber with a sympathy for tabula rasa ways of governing. Just as the bourgeoisie, with their privileging of ideas over realities—and their pathological impulse, rooted in rationalism, to conform the latter to the former—had overseen every modern revolution, so too Pope Paul oversaw an analogous revolution in the Church. He reduced the sacred liturgy from a mystical conduit of grace expressed in a sacred language to a vernacularised, didactic exercise to entertain a new, educated population.» (pp. 109-10)
« Tragic it is, then, that the Church’s current hierarchical incumbents seem, generally speaking, to be neither elders themselves nor to love their elders. They appear as frustrated rascals who have undergone all the humane development and civilisational induction of Tolkien’s orcs. Perhaps this ought not to surprise us. After all, the men who fill the Church’s higher offices today were all formed in the crucible of the Second Vatican Council’s progressive theology, and their intellectual habits were fashioned by daily exposure to the so- called liturgical “reform.” The “experts” who subjected the Church’s liturgical heritage to ongoing experimentation did so on the grounds that it was somehow legitimate to call into question— and redact or even reject altogether— huge swathes of prayer and mystical experience inherited from our ancestors in religion, the sum total of elder-wisdom in ritual form. The very Council, then, that claimed power to renew the Church’s youth in fact emptied the churches, and by so doing it aged the Church rapidly, in turn aging the civilisation she once animated.... And this process of aging the Church, far from recovering her charism as the Great Elder of our civilisation, merely rendered her decrepit.» (p. 124)
In the midst of his critique Morello examines the paths of and conditions for renewal or regeneration in the Church, and offers very concrete advice for how tradition-loving Catholics struggling with the hierarchy and the postconciliar devastation can strengthen their faith, love, and perseverance.
N.B. Os Justi Press is running an Epiphany sale from now through January 6, with 10% off sitewide. Discount is automatically applied at checkout.
« Part of adopting a premodern mind is first acknowledging that every people in history has accepted that our world is a world pregnant with magical forces and the activity of spiritual beings. And Christianity has never denied that curses, hexes, and many kinds of evil spells exist, or that evil spirits can be contacted and succumbed to, in order to attain evil ends. So too, Christians—alongside their practices of meditation and contemplation—have ever believed in sacred magic, or “theurgy,” but they have held that such magic possesses the power to conquer demons and sacralise the world only when united to the eternal and singular priesthood of Jesus Christ, and to this baptised theurgy Christians have given the name of liturgy. This brings us to the great political work to which Christians ought to be dedicated, namely the endeavour to establish liturgical nations in fraternal union with each other, for the alternative to such a civilisation is the accursed dominion in which nations are first fragmented and then dissolved altogether in the grey mass of a diabolical slave settlement. » (p. 4)
« The pre-eminence of the mystical life understood not as spiritual ascent out of the created order, but rather as embodied induction into shared life with a personal God who meets us in the world that is an emanation of His own inner life, is emphasised by me largely because I observe that in the epoch of ideology—namely, modernity—we have lost a sense of the existentiality and immanence of the Sacred Mystery. Tragically, this spiritual blindness has encroached on many aspects of religious devotion and piety. In turn, religion is understood ever less as ongoing transformation through the liturgical and sacramental life, and it is instead understood as mere intellectual assent to doctrinal propositions and spiritual ascent away from the concrete reality in which we find ourselves. Religion is hence tacitly reframed for a people formed by virtual reality lived from an online existence. Unfortunately, such a life is no life at all. And the upshot is the reduction of Christianity, or whatever we mean by Christianity today, to a base species of ideology, just one among a plethora of squabbling ideologies in the modernist arena of competing “systems.” » (p. 11)
« I dare say we must rediscover our liturgy as a baptised form of “theurgy,” a term largely gone from Christian theology today, but one that was repeatedly deployed to discuss Christian worship by such an eminent authority as St. Dionysius the Areopagite. By Christian theurgy, I mean the fulfilment of all religious sacrifice, during which those offering the sacrifice commune with the divine spirits and call God down into the inner chamber as they chant the sacred words and perform the sacred rituals. » (pp. 38-39)
« Latin Christians have long emphasised “assent,” and hence the possession of ideas, over existential transformation through right worship (an emphasis that has only swelled due to the unexamined acceptance of the rationalist paradigm). It is unsurprising, then, that serious Catholicism is more likely to be found online— where ideas are offered and bought up— than in the local church. And those Catholics who have retained the organic conception of the Church as the institution that gifts to the baptised the virtues of right relationality with God—a conception of the Christian as a liturgical creature—have for some time now been actively persecuted by the incumbents of the Church’s highest offices. Such Catholics are seen as betrayers of the modern project of Enlightened man, whom the Church’s leaders have enthroned in their demotion of Christ the King. And in seeing such Catholics in this way, the Church’s government is entirely correct. » (p. 66)
« Whenever I step foot onto Benedictine grounds, I feel as if I have come home. The chanting of the psalms, the sacrifice offered on the altars, the way of life lived under a Rule that’s over a millennium and a half old— all the sacrality of these abbeys seems to have seeped into the stones themselves. Even after all the scandals, the collapse in vocations, and the ruination of the liturgy following that unhappy Vatican Council that baptised the fleeting fever of the 1960s— from which it will take many, many centuries for the Church to recover— the monasteries still appear as loci of divine grace, by which little parts of the diabolical principality we call the world has been captured and placed under Christ’s kingship.» (pp. 97-98)
« In late modernity, the Church’s supreme office, the papacy, got its first middle-class pope, when hitherto this office had been occupied only by nobles and peasants. Pope Paul VI had all the characteristics of a middle-class manager. He was a social climber with a sympathy for tabula rasa ways of governing. Just as the bourgeoisie, with their privileging of ideas over realities—and their pathological impulse, rooted in rationalism, to conform the latter to the former—had overseen every modern revolution, so too Pope Paul oversaw an analogous revolution in the Church. He reduced the sacred liturgy from a mystical conduit of grace expressed in a sacred language to a vernacularised, didactic exercise to entertain a new, educated population.» (pp. 109-10)
« Tragic it is, then, that the Church’s current hierarchical incumbents seem, generally speaking, to be neither elders themselves nor to love their elders. They appear as frustrated rascals who have undergone all the humane development and civilisational induction of Tolkien’s orcs. Perhaps this ought not to surprise us. After all, the men who fill the Church’s higher offices today were all formed in the crucible of the Second Vatican Council’s progressive theology, and their intellectual habits were fashioned by daily exposure to the so- called liturgical “reform.” The “experts” who subjected the Church’s liturgical heritage to ongoing experimentation did so on the grounds that it was somehow legitimate to call into question— and redact or even reject altogether— huge swathes of prayer and mystical experience inherited from our ancestors in religion, the sum total of elder-wisdom in ritual form. The very Council, then, that claimed power to renew the Church’s youth in fact emptied the churches, and by so doing it aged the Church rapidly, in turn aging the civilisation she once animated.... And this process of aging the Church, far from recovering her charism as the Great Elder of our civilisation, merely rendered her decrepit.» (p. 124)
In the midst of his critique Morello examines the paths of and conditions for renewal or regeneration in the Church, and offers very concrete advice for how tradition-loving Catholics struggling with the hierarchy and the postconciliar devastation can strengthen their faith, love, and perseverance.
N.B. Os Justi Press is running an Epiphany sale from now through January 6, with 10% off sitewide. Discount is automatically applied at checkout.
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| 17 books released in 2024 |
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
A 17th Century Vesperal from the Abbey of St Gall
Today is the feast of St Gall, a disciple of the great monastic founder of the later 6th and early 7th century, St Columban. He was born in Ireland, educated under Columban at the abbey of Bangor, and accompanied his teacher to the continent, where he assisted him in the founding of the important abbeys at Annegray and Luxeuil. From there, they made their way to the area around the Swiss lakes of Zurich and Constance; when Columban went to Italy, Gall remained behind, and having preached and gathered a group of disciples who lived under Columban’s rule, died sometime around 645 AD. The great Swiss abbey of San Gallen is named after him, since it was built over the site traditionally said to be that of his hermitage, about 70 years after his death. (Further details of this are given below in connection with the founder St Othmar.)
This abbey is the home of one of the most important libraries in the world; among other things, it houses several of the oldest manuscripts of Gregorian chant. Much of the collection is now free to consult via the website https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en, which also includes links to the digital collections of numerous other Swiss libraries. Here is a book from San Gallen which I recently discovered while perusing the site, a magnificently illustrated Vesperal made for the Prince Abbot of San Gallen at the end of the 17th century. This book contains only the intonations of the antiphons and hymns, which were made by the celebrant and dignitaries of the choir, such as the prior and subprior etc. The celebrant’s other parts (the chapter and orations) would be sung out of a different book called a capitularium.
Here are all of the decorated pages of the book; I have cropped those on which the decorations are confined to the margins. (Cod. Sang. 1452B; all images CC BY-NC 4.0) The complete book can be seen by following the links at the following url: https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/1452B
The First Sunday of Advent. The book is not very large, about 14½ by 11 inches; for the intonation of the second antiphon, a server would carry it to the next dignitary of the choir, then to the third, and so on.
The O antiphons. The style of note is known in German as “Hufnagelnotation – hoof-nail notation”, from the resemblance of the notes to a common kind of nail for horse-shoes.
Christmas. At top, the Holy Family turned away from the inn; at the upper right margin, the appearance of the angel to the shepherds.
In the margin of the next page, the angelic choirs sing over the stable at Bethlehem.
Decoration from the following page, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and angels adoring the Christ Child as He sleeps in the manger, which is shaped like the Cross. Below, Ss Stephen and John.
Monday, May 20, 2024
Summer Feasts and Multiple Feasts
On July 11, 2022, I published an article here entitled “The Feasts of St. Benedict and Their Proper Texts in Benedictine Churches,” in which I discussed how certain very eminent saints have multiple feastdays. St. Benedict has at least five proper Masses that developed in the monastic tradition: his dies natalis or transitus on March 21; July 11 as the translatio of his relics; July 18 as the octave of the translation (with different texts); December 4 for the “illation,” that is, rediscovery, of at least some of his relics; and its octave on December 11 for the veneration and reinstatement of the holy relic of the head of St. Benedict. Maybe there are still others I don’t know about.
St. Walburga’s Many Feasts
A reader of this blog notified me that Benedict isn’t the only monastic to enjoy so many feasts. At the glorious Benedictine Abbey of Saint Walburga (founded in Eichstätt, Germany, in 1035), four feasts are still observed for Saint Walburga:
February 25: The Solemnity of Saint Walburga (the anniversary of her death) [see A Benedictine Martyrology, Feb. 25, pg. 54]
Last Sunday of April: The Memorial of Saint Walburga’s remains being found incorrupt in her grave (see A Benedictine Martyrology, May 1, pg. 118]; traditionally, however, May 1st was the feastday, and this is why April 30th earned the name “Walpurgisnacht” (Walburga’s Night).
August 4: The Memorial of Saint Walburga’s arrival from England
October 12: The Memorial of the first flowing of the Holy Oil from Saint Walburga’s bones
Regarding April 30:
Because Walpurgisnacht falls on the same date as Beltane Eve, one of the four great pagan Gaelic holidays, this will be, for some pagans and witches, a night much like Hallowe’en (the Eve of All Saints), when the pagan Samhain coincides calendrically with our Feasts for the dead. In Germany, where sometimes this night is called “Hexennacht,” witches are said to fly to the top of the often mist-covered mountain named the Brocken (or Blocksberg) in order to rendezvous with the devil. And like Hallowe’en, the veil between this world and the afterworld is said to become thin tonight, the damned dead are believed to become restless, and devils are said to cause trouble…. The spooky nature of Walpurgisnacht because of witches’ doings is recalled in Goethe’s Faust, and in his poem The First Walpurgis Night which was set to music by Felix Mendelssohn.Saint Benedict’s summer feast brings mind to the tradition of other saints who have summer feasts in addition to their usual feasts.
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| The translation of St Thomas Becket’s relics. (Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew) |
Other Summer Feasts
July 4: Translation of Saint Martin of Tours, which is also the anniversary of his ordination as a bishop
In German, “Sommerfest des heiligen Martin,” or “Martinus aestivus.” Gregory DiPippo talks about this here. Martin’s main feast is November 11.July 7: Translation of Saint Thomas Becket
According to an article by Dr. John Jenkins:
The organisation of Becket’s translation was the work of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the most important figures in the drafting of Magna Carta. In his own struggles against King John, he saw himself as something of a Becket figure, and in translating Becket’s relics he wanted to make a powerful statement about the importance of the cause—the rights and freedoms of the Church – that the saint had died for. The date chosen for the event, 7 July 1220, was both symbolic and practical. It was the ‘jubilee’ anniversary of Becket’s martyrdom, not simply 50 years but calculated according to the Biblical definition of 49 years, 7 months, and 10 days after the event. It fell on a Tuesday, a day of great significance in Becket’s life as supposedly it was also on a Tuesday that he was born, was condemned by the King’s council, fled into exile, had a vision of his martyrdom, returned from exile, and was martyred.But this next bit is of particular importance, as it verbalizes something one often notices when studying the sanctoral calendar—namely, that summer feasts are often preferred to winter ones for reasons of weather, or a summer feast is added in order to heighten a figure’s importance:
The date of the anniversary of Becket’s martyrdom, 29 December, was awkward as it not only fell during the Christmas celebrations but was at a time in midwinter when pilgrims were unlikely to travel. By establishing another anniversary of equal importance in the middle of summer, at the height of the pilgrimage season, and at a time when it would not clash with other church feasts, Archbishop Langton ensured that the feast of the translation would become one of the highlights of the English religious calendar.July 29: Translation of the Blessed Emperor Charlemagne
Celebrated in Aachen for about a century, ending in 1932. Ripe for integralist restoration? Aachen currently celebrates a Mass in honor of the emperor on the last Sunday of January, which is near to his dies natalis of January 28. (I am not saying Charlemagne was above-board in all his actions; but if the Emperor Constantine can be venerated by our Eastern brethren as “Equal to the Apostles,” then we can make some room for an analogous figure in the West.)
August 3: The Finding of Saint Stephen
Sadly, this is one of many long-observed feasts that was abolished in the 1960 revisions to the Roman calendar that guide the rubrics of the 1962 missal. This feastday commemorates the “invention” or finding of the body of the Protomartyr Stephen:
His relics were found in the year 416 by a priest named Lucian. A church was built and dedicated to him at the site of the discover—outside the Damascus Gate—and his relics were housed there for centuries. In 1882, the ruins of the church were discovered by the Dominicans, and a new church was built there; however, his relics were subsequently moved to the Papal Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls (San Lorenzo fuori le Mura) in Rome, Italy. The church is one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome, and it is a fitting place for Stephen’s relics to reside, as the church commemorates the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, one of the first seven deacons of Rome to be martyred in 258.So, it sounds like Stephen was found not just once, but twice—reminiscent of the entry in the Roman Martyrology for the “third finding of the head of St. John the Baptist”!
August 17: Festival of Saint Agatha
The Festival of Saint Agatha is the most important religious festival of Catania, Sicily, commemorating the life of the city’s patron saint. It takes place annually from 3 to 5 February and (again) on 17 August. The earlier dates commemorate her martyrdom, while the latter date celebrates the return to Catania of her remains, after these had been transferred to Constantinople by the Byzantine general George Maniaces as war booty and remained there for 86 years. (source)
A site devoted to Sicily notes:
The night of the 17th August the sound of bells woke up the people of Catania announcing the return of the mortal remains of St. Agatha from Constantinople. The citizens came out their houses barefoot and in their nightgowns to greet the arrival of the Saint. This is the reason why during the feast devotees wear white dresses (called “sacco”), that represent the white clothes of those citizens…. The celebration starts in the morning with different liturgies at the Cathedral dedicated to St. Agatha. In the evening at 20.30, there is a short procession near the Cathedral and piazza Duomo. The reliquary casket and the half bust of St. Agatha go around from piazza Duomo to Uzeda Door, via Dusmet, via Porticello, piazza San Placido, via Vittorio Emanuele II and then come back to piazza Duomo. As every celebration of the Patron Saint of Catania, this feast is also features spectacular fireworks in piazza Borsellino when the relics leave and return to the Cathedral.However, the February celebration of St. Agatha is considerably more extensive, lasting for days. And that’s good, because I’ll be leading a pilgrimage to Sicily in February 2025, accompanied by a chaplain who will offer the traditional Mass daily (sung whenever possible), and we’ll be in Catania for the feast. Read more about that trip here or here.
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| Sr. Wilhelmina (courtesy of Benedictines of Mary) |
New Summer Feasts?
The tradition continues as a new summer feast seems to be emerging:
August 11: Saint John Henry Newman
Although he died on August 11, his appointed feastday is October 9—but one notices that a number of people privately celebrate August 11 in addition to the official feast of October 9. On the other hand, the weather in most places in early October is pleasant, and the two dates are quite close together, so it would be improbably that an August date would ever attract broad observance, let alone find its way on to a liturgical calendar.
And one may well speculate about this date:
May 29: Death of Sr. Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB
Yes, she is not yet a saint, nor has a process for her beatification been officially opened (as far as I know); and yet, she has four things very much in her favor: (1) a reputation for holiness among the many sisters who lived with her for years at the monastery she founded; (2) an incorruptible body exhumed on April 28, 2023; (3) a steady flow of pilgrims to her body, on a scale that has not been seen in this country since the Council, and who knows how long before that, indicating popular devotion, that once-indispensable adjunct to any valid case for canonization; (4) many stories of healings and other possible miracles attributed to her intercession, which are being carefully collected.
May 29 is already observed on the old calendar as the feast of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, but a future Benedict XVII or Leo XIV could certainly add a commemoration, if it ever comes to that…
Celebrating in style: The Feast of Saint John by Jules Breton (1875)
Lost jewels of May
A last note about the month of May itself.
Given the wonderful, edifying second feasts in the traditional Roman calendar—the Conversion of Saint Paul; the Chair of Saint Peter; the Second feast of Saint Agnes on January 28—it is most regrettable that a number of second feasts were abolished under John XXIII in the 1960 calendar: think of the Finding of the Holy Cross on May 3, Saint John at the Latin Gate on May 6, and the Apparition of Saint Michael on May 8. All of these fall in the merry merry month of May, which, although not technically summer, is, as Newman says at the beginning Meditations and Devotions, “the month of promise and of hope.” He continues: “Even though the weather happen to be bad [at least in the UK…], it is the month that begins and heralds in the summer” (italics in original).
Indeed, even Christmas is reprised in the summer. As Gueranger observers in his Liturgical Year: “The Nativity of St. John Baptist [June 24], indeed made holy [in the womb], is celebrated with so much pomp…because it seems to enfold within itself the Nativity of Christ, our Redeemer. It is as it were midsummer’s Christmas day. From the very outset, God and his Church brought about, with most thoughtful care, many such parallel resemblances and dependences between these two solemnities.”
One might make the same observation about the thoughtful care that went into many other parallelisms between feasts.
It is good to do what we can to remember, to retain, and to celebrate these special feasts, at least for saints that have a connection to our parish or community, or to whom we have a personal devotion, or some other connection such as when one bears the saint’s name.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
A Proper Hymn for St Gregory the Great
The revised breviary issued by St Pius V in 1568 derives from the tradition which the Papal curia followed in the high Middle Ages, formally codified at the beginning of the 13th century in a document known as the Ordinal of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). As I have noted several times, this tradition was in many ways very conservative, much more so than most other Uses of the Roman Rite, and especially in regard to its repertoire of hymns. Thus we find that many real gems of medieval hymnody are missing from the Roman breviary, and even the feasts of very important Saints, such as those of the first four Latin Doctors of the Church, take their hymns from the commons. This even includes the Saint after whom the chant proper to the Roman Rite is named, and whose feast we keep today.
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An inlaid stone panel in the chapel of Ss Gregory the Great and Augustine of Canterbury in Westminster Cathedral, London, depicting the famous story of Gregory’s first encounter with English people in a slave market in Rome, as told by St Bede the Venerable in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, book 2, chapter 1. |
At Lauds
| Mella cor obdulcantia Tua distillant labia, Fragrantum vim arómatum Tuum vincit eloquium. |
Thy lips drip honey that sweeteneth hearts, thy speech surpasseth the power of fragrant spices. |
| Scriptúræ sacræ mýstica Mire solvis ænígmata: Theórica mysteria Te docet ipsa Véritas. |
You wondrously solved riddles deep: The mystic secrets Scriptures keep, For Truth Himself has taught you these: The lofty sacred mysteries. |
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Tu nactus Apostólicam Vicem simul et gloriam: Nos solve culpæ néxibus, Redde polórum sedibus. |
Having obtained the apostolic office and glory, release us from the bonds of sin, and bring us back to heaven. |
| Repeat stanzas O pontifex egregie and Sit Patri laus from Matins. |
The translation by Ms Pluth and the recording both follow the edited version of this hymn done for the Liturgy of the Hours by Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB, which omits three of St Peter Damian’s stanzas, the ones which are accompanied by my own less-than-inspired prose translations. Not all of Dom Lentini’s emendations or ideas for new hymns were bad, and some that were bad I have noted as such only in passing, but his changes here call for something sharper than my preferred description of his work, “cack-handed.”
The first omitted stanza, which begins with the words “Videtur egens naufragus”, refers to the story that when St Gregory was still a monk, one day an angel came to his monastery in the guise of a man who had been shipwrecked, begging for alms. Gregory gave him six silver coins, but the angel returned the next day, saying that he had lost them, at which the Saint gave him six more. The same thing happened on the third day, and the procurator of the monastery informed Gregory that there was nothing left in the house but the silver platter by which his mother, St Silvia, used to regularly send him vegetables to eat. Gregory immediately ordered that it be given to the beggar.
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| The central section of Paolo Veronese’s Supper of St Gregory (1572), which depicts the appearance of the thirteen man at his table, as explained below. In the refectory of the shrine of the Virgin Mary on Mt Berico outside Vicenza, about 43 miles west of Venice. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0) |
As Pope, Gregory was wont to welcome twelve pilgrims or poor people to dine with him every day, but one day, he beheld a thirteenth in their midst, who was visible only to himself. After the supper, he approached the man and asked him who he was, to which the fellow replied, “Why do you ask about my name, which is wondrous? And yet, know that I am the shipwrecked man to whom you gave the silver dish... and from that day... the Lord destined you to become the head of his Church, and the successor of the Apostle Peter.” He then revealed himself to be not just an angel, but Gregory’s guardian, and told him that he would obtain all that he asked through himself.
The lesson here is not at all hard to grasp, namely, that Gregory was deemed worthy of the papacy above all else because of his charity. This is a lesson which St Peter Damian clearly chose to emphasize out of his great concern with the reform of the Church, in an age when the Church was very much in need of reform, precisely because it suffered from so many thoroughly worldly prelates, and no few Popes among them.
Dom Lentini, however, decided that this reference had to be removed because it is “difficult for many who do not know the particulars of the Saint’s life”, as he writes in his account of the reforms of the hymns. This offers us a very neat summary of one of the worst problems with the entire project of the post-Conciliar reform: its operating assumption (a deeply clericalist one) that the faithful are not just completely untaught, but completely unteachable. It was therefore deemed impossible that the original text might offer a good opportunity to teach them something about St Gregory’s life, much less to explain what it was about this particular episode (among so many others that might have been chosen) that another Doctor of the Church thought it worthy of our attention. And of course, in an age of unbridled (and, as it turned out, totally unwarranted optimism) about the general condition of the Church, this lesson brings with it an implicit warning to worldly prelates who choose not to follow the example of Saints like Gregory, one which we forget to our tremendous peril.
Monday, June 27, 2022
A Beautiful Testimony to the Power of the Original Liturgical Movement
Newly released from Arouca Press in collaboration with Silverstream Priory, NLM followers will no doubt want to make a point of reading a book which combines fine art, hagiography, and sound spiritual advice: For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself. I greatly enjoyed and benefited from reading it and consider it to be one of those precious hidden gems, lost in a world of more superficial entertainment and NYT bestsellers, that readers will still be thinking about years after they read it.
The biography of a young Polish nun of the last century, it is a fascinating snapshot of the fruits of the 1950s Liturgical Movement at its finest. “There is a question of equilibrium, of balance, in the supernatural order, as in the physical universe,” writes Abbot Philip Anderson about this book. “It was the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who re-established this balance on the highest level, after sin had unleashed ruin upon mankind. But some souls are called to fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in their flesh for His Body, as Saint Paul tells us. How can this be? Let the story of Sister Maria Bernadette, who was surely one of those souls, lift a corner of the veil and draw you into the mystery. Maybe you too have a part to play.”
Known in the world as Róża Wolska, she was born in 1927. Reminiscent of Pier Giorgio Frassati in many ways, Róża was an avid athlete. In the early ’40s she was introduced to the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec. At that time Tyniec was in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement, in its healthy phase; under the monks’ guidance, Róża’s spiritual life flourished, as friendship, lectio divina, and the sacred liturgy revealed the beauty of God to her.
Somewhat of a surprise even to herself, Róża felt moved to enter the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration in Warsaw after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1951. Those years were very difficult for the monastery, which was being rebuilt after the being bombed in World War II; the Communist yoke weighed heavily on the whole country. During these years, outwardly quiet but inwardly eventful, Sr. Maria Bernadette, as she was known in religion, struggled with how to overocome the old Adam and put on the new; in particular, her secular training in art had to be sublimated to monastic purposes, and in this regard she eventually produced many striking images of various sizes and for varied occasions.
After about ten years of living the monastic life, Sister Bernadette’s health began to fail, and in 1963 she was admitted into hospital for surgery. While there, she offered her life in reparation for the sins of apostate priests about whom she had read, particularly the so-called “Patriot Priests” who were supportive of the Communist government. Complications arose but doctors declared them normal symptoms of recovery; they were mistaken. “Both the sick and the doctors cannot get over the fact that a nun can be so cheerful,” she wrote to her parents shortly before her death. “I think that the glory of the Bridegroom grows through this, so I don’t even care anymore that my stitches hurt from laughing.”
As her strength failed, the wistful Gregorian melody for the Magnificat antiphon for the Ascension ran through her soul: “O King of glory, Lord of hosts, Who hast this day mounted in triumph above all the heavens, leave us not orphans: but send unto us the promise of the Father, the Spirit of truth, alleluia.” Sister Bernadette died on April 30th, 1963, surrendering her life into the hands of God.
Sally Read, poet and author of Night’s Bright Darkness, writes of this book: “The life of Sister Bernadette of the Cross is vividly detailed here. Her role as a child of God, in a world ravaged and abused by war and corruption, comes across as both heroic and ordinary.”
For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is a new translation and revised edition of a Polish biography of Sister Bernadette. It contains numerous photographs and reproductions of her artwork, and extensive passages from her charming, humorous, and spiritually uplifting letters. “As we go through the pages,” Sally Read continues, “[Sister’s] very soul seems to be honed and polished before our eyes; she is both reduced and glorified by her pains. Her story is an illustration of what it means to suffer in Christ, and for the sins of others, and is given great immediacy and vitality by the examples of her beautiful art. Her words are meat for those who wonder about the role of suffering in life.” An epilogue in the book ponders the lessons of victim souls and how we are to make sense of this “scandal” in a world that has so much lost the understanding of the value of reparation and the practice of abandonment to the Father’s Providence.
Perhaps the strongest praise comes from Scott Hahn, who writes: “This book is a roadmap to true happiness, not only in the afterlife, but beginning here and now.” Drawing attention to the remarkable cheerfulness that suffused Sister Bernadette’s often difficult life, Dr. Hahn says: “Sister Bernadette was one of those souls who, while living with the Church, the liturgy, and the Scriptures, allow themselves to be led by the Spirit to pray and to suffer—generously and cheerfully. She made an offering of her life, and in these pages we can learn to do the same.”
For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is available for purchase on Arouca Press’s website, on Silverstream Priory’s shop, as well as Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and other retailers. I hope that many will “take a chance” on this little-known story and find a special blessing in it.
A brief preview of the photos and artwork found in the book is available in a video released by Silverstream Priory:
The biography of a young Polish nun of the last century, it is a fascinating snapshot of the fruits of the 1950s Liturgical Movement at its finest. “There is a question of equilibrium, of balance, in the supernatural order, as in the physical universe,” writes Abbot Philip Anderson about this book. “It was the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who re-established this balance on the highest level, after sin had unleashed ruin upon mankind. But some souls are called to fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in their flesh for His Body, as Saint Paul tells us. How can this be? Let the story of Sister Maria Bernadette, who was surely one of those souls, lift a corner of the veil and draw you into the mystery. Maybe you too have a part to play.”
Known in the world as Róża Wolska, she was born in 1927. Reminiscent of Pier Giorgio Frassati in many ways, Róża was an avid athlete. In the early ’40s she was introduced to the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec. At that time Tyniec was in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement, in its healthy phase; under the monks’ guidance, Róża’s spiritual life flourished, as friendship, lectio divina, and the sacred liturgy revealed the beauty of God to her.
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| A prayer card by Sr. Bernadette: "I to my beloved, and my beloved to me, [who feedeth among the lilies]" (Song 6:2) |
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| Page from a Gospel book illuminated and calligraphed by Sr. Bernadette |
For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is a new translation and revised edition of a Polish biography of Sister Bernadette. It contains numerous photographs and reproductions of her artwork, and extensive passages from her charming, humorous, and spiritually uplifting letters. “As we go through the pages,” Sally Read continues, “[Sister’s] very soul seems to be honed and polished before our eyes; she is both reduced and glorified by her pains. Her story is an illustration of what it means to suffer in Christ, and for the sins of others, and is given great immediacy and vitality by the examples of her beautiful art. Her words are meat for those who wonder about the role of suffering in life.” An epilogue in the book ponders the lessons of victim souls and how we are to make sense of this “scandal” in a world that has so much lost the understanding of the value of reparation and the practice of abandonment to the Father’s Providence.
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| A humorous drawing showing Sister's response to the psalm verse "And he took me up from the deep waters" |
For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is available for purchase on Arouca Press’s website, on Silverstream Priory’s shop, as well as Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and other retailers. I hope that many will “take a chance” on this little-known story and find a special blessing in it.
A brief preview of the photos and artwork found in the book is available in a video released by Silverstream Priory:
Saturday, October 16, 2021
A 17th Century Vesperal from the Abbey of St Gall
Today is the feast of St Gall, a disciple of the great monastic founder of the later 6th and early 7th century, St Columban. He was born in Ireland, educated under Columban at the abbey of Bangor, and accompanied his teacher to the continent, where he assisted him in the founding of the important abbeys at Annegray and Luxeuil. From there, they made their way to the area around the Swiss lakes of Zurich and Constance; when Columban went to Italy, Gall remained behind, and having preached and gathered a group of disciples who lived under Columban’s rule, died sometime around 645 AD. The great Swiss abbey of San Gallen is named after him, since it was built over the site traditionally said to be that of his hermitage, about 70 years after his death. (Further details of this are given below in connection with the founder St Othmar.)
This abbey is the home of one of the most important libraries in the world; among other things, it houses several of the oldest manuscripts of Gregorian chant. Much of the collection is now free to consult via the website https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en, which also includes links to the digital collections of numerous other Swiss libraries. Here is a book from San Gallen which I recently discovered while perusing the site, a magnificently illustrated Vesperal made for the Prince Abbot of San Gallen at the end of the 17th century. This book contains only the intonations of the antiphons and hymns, which were made by the celebrant and dignitaries of the choir, such as the prior and subprior etc. The celebrant’s other parts (the chapter and orations) would be sung out of a different book called a capitularium.
Here are all of the decorated pages of the book; I have cropped those on which the decorations are confined to the margins. (Cod. Sang. 1452B; all images CC BY-NC 4.0) The complete book can be seen by following the links at the following url: https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/1452B
The First Sunday of Advent. The book is not very large, about 14½ by 11 inches; for the intonation of the second antiphon, a server would carry it to the next dignitary of the choir, then to the third, and so on.
The O antiphons. The style of note is known in German as “Hufnagelnotation – hoof-nail notation”, from the resemblance of the notes to a common kind of nail for horse-shoes.
Christmas. At top, the Holy Family turned away from the inn; at the upper right margin, the appearance of the angel to the shepherds.
In the margin of the next page, the angelic choirs sing over the stable at Bethlehem.
Decoration from the following page, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and angels adoring the Christ Child as He sleeps in the manger, which is shaped like the Cross. Below, Ss Stephen and John.
Monday, March 22, 2021
The Feast of St Benedict 2021
In places where St Benedict is kept as a patron, including all Benedictine houses of whatever order, his feast is transferred to today, since yesterday was Passion Sunday, which can never be impeded.
Listen carefully, my child, to the master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart; willingly receive and effectively fulfill the admonition of your loving father, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you, therefore, my discourse is now addressed, whoever you may be that renounce your own will to do serve under the Lord, Christ the true King, and take up the most mighty bright weapons of obedience. And first of all, as you begin to do any good work, beg of Him with most earnest prayer that it may be perfected, so that He who has now deigned to count us among His children may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds. For we must always so serve Him with the good things He has given us, that He will never as an angry Father disinherit His children, nor ever as a dread Lord, provoked by our evil actions, deliver us to everlasting punishment as wicked servants who would not follow Him to glory. (The Prologue of the Rule of St Benedict.)
The second half of the Hour of Prime is sometimes called the Chapter Office, from the Benedictine custom of reading a part of the Rule of St Benedict at the end of it every day. The text of the Rule was divided into roughly 120 sections, and read in order over the course of four months, making for three full readings a year. At Citeaux, however, this reading began not on January 1st, as in most other houses, but on March 21st, which is both the feast day of St Benedict, and the day the abbey was founded in 1098. Beginning the reading of the Rule on this day became an annual reminder not only of the Order’s founding, but more specifically of the Cistercians’ role as the “strict constructionalists” of Benedictine monasticism, almost as if to say that the observance of the Rule itself began again with the coming of the new Order.
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Saints Benedict and Bernard, by Diogo de Contreiras, 1542; painted for the Cistercian convent of Santa Maria de Almoster in Portugal. (Public domain image from Wikimedia.)
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| The first two pages of the Rule of St Benedict, with the Prologue to be read on March 21st, from a Cistercian Martyrology printed at Paris in 1689. |
Friday, December 04, 2020
Benedictine Martyrology Back in Print after a Century
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| La Gloria di S.Benedetto by Pietro Annigoni (1979), showing the Patriarch surrounded by his multitudinous offspring. |
I am excited to share with readers the latest reprint offered by my modest publishing enterprise Os Justi Press. (It has been awhile since we’ve added titles, as I’ve been busy with other projects, but don’t forget to have a look at the online catalogue—including the anthology John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence, and Ritual, Parsch’s The Breviary Explained, Guardini’s Sacred Signs, Fr. Willie Doyle’s incomparable pamphlet Vocations, the illustrated Missal for Young Catholics, the best editions of Robert Hugh Benson’s The King’s Achivement and By What Authority?, the pocket edition Roman Martyrology, and many others!)
Speaking of martyrologies, many NLM readers will know that the great religious orders preserve records not only of all their members who have gone over to the eternal country, but also and in a more particular way of those who have died in the odor of sanctity and are venerated either universally or locally as models and intercessors.
For obvious reasons—it has been around for much longer, and its contemplative and liturgical way of life is entirely structured for prioritizing the pursuit of sanctity—the Benedictine Order numbers more saints, blesseds, venerables, and reputed holy men and women than any other in the Church, especially if we include the many later branches and reform movements that, called by various names, take Benedict’s Holy Rule as their own.
This is why it gives me extraordinary joy to announce the republication, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, of A Benedictine Martyrology. Published in 1922 and basically impossible to find on the used book market, this book is Alexius Hoffman’s English translation and adaptation of the Rev. Peter Lechner’s Ausführliches Martyrologium des Benedictiner-Ordens und Seiner Verzweigungen [Detailed Martyrology of the Benedictine Order and its Branches], published in Munich in 1855. The original was published in cloth; this reprint is paperback, but with a simple and formal cover design:
Speaking of martyrologies, many NLM readers will know that the great religious orders preserve records not only of all their members who have gone over to the eternal country, but also and in a more particular way of those who have died in the odor of sanctity and are venerated either universally or locally as models and intercessors.
For obvious reasons—it has been around for much longer, and its contemplative and liturgical way of life is entirely structured for prioritizing the pursuit of sanctity—the Benedictine Order numbers more saints, blesseds, venerables, and reputed holy men and women than any other in the Church, especially if we include the many later branches and reform movements that, called by various names, take Benedict’s Holy Rule as their own.
This is why it gives me extraordinary joy to announce the republication, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, of A Benedictine Martyrology. Published in 1922 and basically impossible to find on the used book market, this book is Alexius Hoffman’s English translation and adaptation of the Rev. Peter Lechner’s Ausführliches Martyrologium des Benedictiner-Ordens und Seiner Verzweigungen [Detailed Martyrology of the Benedictine Order and its Branches], published in Munich in 1855. The original was published in cloth; this reprint is paperback, but with a simple and formal cover design:
The volume is catholic in its criteria, containing not only the “classic” black monks but members of reforms and branches such as the Order of Citeaux, of Camaldoli, of Vallombrosa, of Monte Oliveto, of Monte Vergine, of Fiore, of Pulsano, and of La Trappe, the Celestines, the Humiliati, and the Congregations of Cava and Cluny, as well as military Orders and eminent benefactors. Weighing in at a substantial 350 pages, with over 1,500 entries, it is a worthy supplement to the Roman Martyrology, a moving testament to the greatness of the spiritual family inaugurated by the holy twins Benedict and Scholastica.
The book gathers succinct biographies of men and women who lived according to or in the ambit of the Rule of St. Benedict and who died with a reputation for heroic virtue and sanctity, including both those officially beatified or canonized and those who received local veneration. Note that, unlike the Roman Martyrology, which is little more than a list of names, places, and a salient fact or two, the Benedictine Martyrology devotes anywhere from one paragraph to a whole page to the life of each man or woman recorded. In that sense, it is a sort of “mean” between the Roman Martyrology’s pithiness and the multi-page treatments in The Golden Legend or Butler’s Lives. Each day has usually four or five entries, covering three quarters of a page to a little over a page. In this way, it would serve admirably for daily reading after the Office of Prime or at some other convenient moment.
The Benedictine Martyrology is available from Amazon.com (link) and its affiliates.
Here are the first three pages from the month of December:
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Investitures, First Professions, and Solemn Professions of the Benedictines of Mary
The flourishing traditional Benedictines of Mary at the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus in Gower, Missouri, are no strangers to NLM readers; we have featured them before.
This past Saturday, August 22nd, I had the inestimable blessing of attending the solemn profession of two sisters at the abbey, one of whom is the daughter of close friends. The only word I can use to describe it: sublime. The largely medieval rite of profession was, like so much else, utterly cast aside after Vatican II as the Benedictines scrambled to dilute their identity into a neutral gray wash, but in usus antiquior communities, this profession rite has returned in its full splendor. To experience a traditional solemn profession — as with a traditional priestly ordination — is to experience the full glory of Catholicism, to experience bitterly what we have squandered like the prodigal son, and to feel a fire burning in one’s heart to repent and return to the house of the Father.
The day before, August 21st, six postulants were received as novices and clothed in the holy habit. Two other nuns made their simple profession.
I will share a few photos of these two days, courtesy of the sisters and the family of one of the professurae. With each photo, I’ve added a brief description of what’s happening at that moment, sometimes with an excerpt from the liturgical rite. Sadly, I don’t have photos for all the moments of the rite.
I. Before the Ceremonies and Processing In
The ladies to be clothed are dressed in bridal apparel, while the novices are identifed by the white veils of the novitiate.
II. First Profession of Vows
After the sermon, the bishop calls the professurae forward by intoning the verse, “Venite, filiae, audite me: Timorem Domini docebo vos. – Come, my daughters, listen to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” (Psalm 33) They enter the sanctuary and kneel; there is an exchange by which their intention is declared, followed by the chanting of the Veni, Creator Spiritus and an admonition from the bishop. Then the professurae recite, one at a time, their “charts of profession,” which they write out by hand and sign upon the altar (we will see more photos of this part of the ceremony below with the solemn professions).
The high point of the ceremony is the chanting of the “Suscipe,” a verse from Psalm 118. The sisters bow low and sing, “Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam.” Then, rising up and raising their hands aloft to heaven, “et non confudas me ab expectatione mea.” (Receive me, O Lord, according to Thy word, and I shall live: and let me not be confounded in my hope.) Then the entire community of nuns repeats the chant. (In the Benedictine Office, this verse is sung at Terce of Monday; in the Breviary, it is traditionally printed in small capitals, as a weekly reminder of the rite of profession.)
This happens two more times, each on a higher note than before (like the Easter vigil Alleluia).
Following this, the bishop presents the veil to the professurae, concluding with the prayer, “O God, who bade the most blessed Benedict, Thy chosen servant, to serve Thee alone, detached from the turmoil of the world: grant, we pray, to these, Thy handmaids, rushing to Thy service under his direction, constancy in perseverance and perfect victory unto the end. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.” The professed present their candles to the bishop and Mass resumes with the Offertory.
This past Saturday, August 22nd, I had the inestimable blessing of attending the solemn profession of two sisters at the abbey, one of whom is the daughter of close friends. The only word I can use to describe it: sublime. The largely medieval rite of profession was, like so much else, utterly cast aside after Vatican II as the Benedictines scrambled to dilute their identity into a neutral gray wash, but in usus antiquior communities, this profession rite has returned in its full splendor. To experience a traditional solemn profession — as with a traditional priestly ordination — is to experience the full glory of Catholicism, to experience bitterly what we have squandered like the prodigal son, and to feel a fire burning in one’s heart to repent and return to the house of the Father.
The day before, August 21st, six postulants were received as novices and clothed in the holy habit. Two other nuns made their simple profession.
I will share a few photos of these two days, courtesy of the sisters and the family of one of the professurae. With each photo, I’ve added a brief description of what’s happening at that moment, sometimes with an excerpt from the liturgical rite. Sadly, I don’t have photos for all the moments of the rite.
I. Before the Ceremonies and Processing In
The ladies to be clothed are dressed in bridal apparel, while the novices are identifed by the white veils of the novitiate.
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| Right before the ceremony begins |
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| Processing in with lit candles |
After the sermon, the bishop calls the professurae forward by intoning the verse, “Venite, filiae, audite me: Timorem Domini docebo vos. – Come, my daughters, listen to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” (Psalm 33) They enter the sanctuary and kneel; there is an exchange by which their intention is declared, followed by the chanting of the Veni, Creator Spiritus and an admonition from the bishop. Then the professurae recite, one at a time, their “charts of profession,” which they write out by hand and sign upon the altar (we will see more photos of this part of the ceremony below with the solemn professions).
The high point of the ceremony is the chanting of the “Suscipe,” a verse from Psalm 118. The sisters bow low and sing, “Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam.” Then, rising up and raising their hands aloft to heaven, “et non confudas me ab expectatione mea.” (Receive me, O Lord, according to Thy word, and I shall live: and let me not be confounded in my hope.) Then the entire community of nuns repeats the chant. (In the Benedictine Office, this verse is sung at Terce of Monday; in the Breviary, it is traditionally printed in small capitals, as a weekly reminder of the rite of profession.)
This happens two more times, each on a higher note than before (like the Easter vigil Alleluia).
Following this, the bishop presents the veil to the professurae, concluding with the prayer, “O God, who bade the most blessed Benedict, Thy chosen servant, to serve Thee alone, detached from the turmoil of the world: grant, we pray, to these, Thy handmaids, rushing to Thy service under his direction, constancy in perseverance and perfect victory unto the end. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.” The professed present their candles to the bishop and Mass resumes with the Offertory.
Monday, March 30, 2020
The Central Point in the History of Mankind
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| Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov, Crucifixion (1908) |
THE DEATH OF A GOD, dying for the salvation of men, is the central point in the history of mankind. All ages bear witness to and converge towards it: the preceding centuries point to its coming, the others are destined to harvest its fruits.
The death of Christ is the centre of history, and also the centre of the life of each man in particular. In the eyes of God every man will be great in proportion as he takes part in that deed; for the only true and eternal dignity is that belonging to the divine Priest. The degree of each one’s holiness will be in exact proportion as he participates in that bloody immolation. For the Lamb of God alone is holy.
But although Jesus Christ the divine High Priest appeared only once on earth, to offer up His great sacrifice on Calvary; yet, every day He appears in the person of each one of His ministers, to renew His sacrifice on the altar. In every altar, then, Calvary is seen: every altar becomes an august place, the Holy of holies, the source of all holiness. Thither all must go to seek Life, and thither all must continually return, as to the source of God’s mercies.
Those who are the Master’s privileged ones, never leave this holy place, but there they “find a dwelling,” near to the altar, so that they never need go far from it; such are monks, whose first care it is to raise temples worthy to contain altars. Making their home by the Sanctuary, they consecrate their life to the divine worship, and every day sees them grouped around the altar for the holy sacrifice. This is the event of the day, the centre to which the Hours, like the centuries, all converge: some as Hours of preparation and awaiting in the recollection of the divine praise — these begin with Lauds and Prime continued by Terce, the third Hour of the day; the others, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, flow on in the joys of thanksgiving until sunset when the monks chant the closing in of night.
Thus the days of life pass, at the foot of the altar; thus the life of man finds its greatness and its holiness in flowing out, so to say, upon the altar, there to mingle with that Precious Blood which is daily shed in that hallowed place: for, if the life of man is as a valueless drop of water, when lost in the Blood of Christ it acquires an infinite value and can merit the divine mercy for us.
He who knows what the altar is, from it learns to live; to live by the altar is to be holy, pleasing to God, — and to go up to the altar to perform the sacred Mysteries is to be clothed upon with the most sublime of all dignities after that of the Son of God and His holy Mother.
Meditation by Dom Pius de Hemptinne (1879–1907), a discipline of Dom Columba Marmion.
The death of Christ is the centre of history, and also the centre of the life of each man in particular. In the eyes of God every man will be great in proportion as he takes part in that deed; for the only true and eternal dignity is that belonging to the divine Priest. The degree of each one’s holiness will be in exact proportion as he participates in that bloody immolation. For the Lamb of God alone is holy.
But although Jesus Christ the divine High Priest appeared only once on earth, to offer up His great sacrifice on Calvary; yet, every day He appears in the person of each one of His ministers, to renew His sacrifice on the altar. In every altar, then, Calvary is seen: every altar becomes an august place, the Holy of holies, the source of all holiness. Thither all must go to seek Life, and thither all must continually return, as to the source of God’s mercies.
Those who are the Master’s privileged ones, never leave this holy place, but there they “find a dwelling,” near to the altar, so that they never need go far from it; such are monks, whose first care it is to raise temples worthy to contain altars. Making their home by the Sanctuary, they consecrate their life to the divine worship, and every day sees them grouped around the altar for the holy sacrifice. This is the event of the day, the centre to which the Hours, like the centuries, all converge: some as Hours of preparation and awaiting in the recollection of the divine praise — these begin with Lauds and Prime continued by Terce, the third Hour of the day; the others, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, flow on in the joys of thanksgiving until sunset when the monks chant the closing in of night.
Thus the days of life pass, at the foot of the altar; thus the life of man finds its greatness and its holiness in flowing out, so to say, upon the altar, there to mingle with that Precious Blood which is daily shed in that hallowed place: for, if the life of man is as a valueless drop of water, when lost in the Blood of Christ it acquires an infinite value and can merit the divine mercy for us.
He who knows what the altar is, from it learns to live; to live by the altar is to be holy, pleasing to God, — and to go up to the altar to perform the sacred Mysteries is to be clothed upon with the most sublime of all dignities after that of the Son of God and His holy Mother.
Meditation by Dom Pius de Hemptinne (1879–1907), a discipline of Dom Columba Marmion.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Benedictine Monks on Incense: Sourcing It and Making It
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| Boswellia sacra, the source of frankincense |
I recently visited a Benedictine monastery known for its excellent liturgical life. At Mass on Epiphany, the celebrant said the following in the course of his homily:
So I decided to ask the sacristan monk about the incense they were using, and he gave me quite a bit of interesting information!
Given the love of NLM readers for all things beautiful and liturgically proper, I thought I should share what he wrote to me, in case it might be of interest or aid to anyone. Then, at the end of the article, I attach a page from the most recent newsletter of the Monks of Norcia, telling of how Br. Anthony has learned the art of making the monastery’s incense. The article begins with edifying reflections on why we use incense to begin with.
That said, pure frankincense is suitable for the Roman Rite at all times. Of late, I have been experimenting with varieties from Ethiopia and Somalia; at present, we’re using this variety for tempore per annum and for Exposition and Benediction [pictured below]. It has a warm, slightly tangerine scent. It came in a 1 kg package: we began using it every Sunday beginning on Pentecost and ending on the first Sunday of Advent, and still we have some left over. Note that the website has various search filters that make it easy to find what one is looking for. Any incenses on this page would seem safe to consider as well.
For Epiphany, I take up the mortar and pestle and simply grind up pure myrrh and add it to pure frankincense and it is wonderful.
I’m no physician, but the problem with many Roman-style incenses is, I suspect, the various additives. Incense makers begin with a base of frankincense, but then add various perfumes, sometimes fragments of scented woods, &c. N. Abbey incense [name withheld] is a fine example. They seem to be the classic choice in the traditional anglophone world. I think the quality is good, but they still add various essential oils, &c. Even if all the ingredients are of high quality, when you burn them there is still the resulting chemical reaction to account for. By using pure frankincense, one eliminates all the additives, and possibly thereby the allergic reactions people may be having.
The cheaper brands are probably little more than wood and paper soaked in essential oils.
As for Byzantine-style incenses, we use them for Mass and Vespers of festivals; however, I’m less certain about their composition. They are, more often than not, perfumed. That said, none of the brothers have ever found them a difficulty, and we’ve used many varieties. The rose-scented kind I’ve been using during the Christmas octave did not come from the above website, but it would be typical of what you’d find here. I intend to try a few of the offerings from the Bethlehem Monks. The only drawback is that, in my experience, many priests are unaccustomed to using the Byzantine style, where the grains are larger and it takes slightly longer for them to catch and begin to burn.
Frankincense represents the costly spiritual sacrifice that is adoration; frankincense is the vital essence of the tree that produces it; it is, if you will, the lifeblood of the tree. The tree is slashed, and the precious essence bleeds out of it. One who would adore in spirit must be ready to be stripped and slashed, like the frankincense tree, so as to give the blood of one’s very essence in sacrifice. A sacrifice that is measured, and calculated, and weighed, is no sacrifice at all. It cannot be a spiritual sacrifice, that is one worthy of God who created us in His image and likeness to participate in the royal priesthood and in the victimhood of His Son.Given the symbolism not only of incense but even of how incense is produced, harvested, and purchased at a price, it seemed altogether fitting that the same chapel in which these words were spoken should be filled with the smoke of an incense that, to my nose, smelled better than others I had experienced — less smoky and resiny, more of a pure fragrance, almost like a spirit without a body. No matter how much was burned, the chapel still seemed full of breathable air. This contrasted with experiences I’ve had where the incense starts to make my throat tighten up or my eyes water a bit, and where one can start to wish for fresh air.
So I decided to ask the sacristan monk about the incense they were using, and he gave me quite a bit of interesting information!
Given the love of NLM readers for all things beautiful and liturgically proper, I thought I should share what he wrote to me, in case it might be of interest or aid to anyone. Then, at the end of the article, I attach a page from the most recent newsletter of the Monks of Norcia, telling of how Br. Anthony has learned the art of making the monastery’s incense. The article begins with edifying reflections on why we use incense to begin with.
* * *
We purchase most of our incense (and altar wine) through Holy Art. There are Italian, French, German, British, Polish, American, &c., versions of this site, and the prices do differ slightly. It seems we use the Italian version most often.That said, pure frankincense is suitable for the Roman Rite at all times. Of late, I have been experimenting with varieties from Ethiopia and Somalia; at present, we’re using this variety for tempore per annum and for Exposition and Benediction [pictured below]. It has a warm, slightly tangerine scent. It came in a 1 kg package: we began using it every Sunday beginning on Pentecost and ending on the first Sunday of Advent, and still we have some left over. Note that the website has various search filters that make it easy to find what one is looking for. Any incenses on this page would seem safe to consider as well.
I’m no physician, but the problem with many Roman-style incenses is, I suspect, the various additives. Incense makers begin with a base of frankincense, but then add various perfumes, sometimes fragments of scented woods, &c. N. Abbey incense [name withheld] is a fine example. They seem to be the classic choice in the traditional anglophone world. I think the quality is good, but they still add various essential oils, &c. Even if all the ingredients are of high quality, when you burn them there is still the resulting chemical reaction to account for. By using pure frankincense, one eliminates all the additives, and possibly thereby the allergic reactions people may be having.
The cheaper brands are probably little more than wood and paper soaked in essential oils.
As for Byzantine-style incenses, we use them for Mass and Vespers of festivals; however, I’m less certain about their composition. They are, more often than not, perfumed. That said, none of the brothers have ever found them a difficulty, and we’ve used many varieties. The rose-scented kind I’ve been using during the Christmas octave did not come from the above website, but it would be typical of what you’d find here. I intend to try a few of the offerings from the Bethlehem Monks. The only drawback is that, in my experience, many priests are unaccustomed to using the Byzantine style, where the grains are larger and it takes slightly longer for them to catch and begin to burn.
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