And in the evening of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher, alleluia. (The Magnificat antiphon of Vespers at the end of the Easter vigil, also sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline, as it is in this recording.)
Aña Véspere autem sábbati * quae lucescit in prima sábbati, venit María Magdaléne, et áltera María, vidére sepulcrum, allelúja.
A truly splendid polyphonic setting by the Slovene composer Jacob Handl (1550-91), also known as Jacobus Gallus.
This post is the very last of this year’s Holy Week and Easter photopost series, and in terms of the beauty of the pictures, we certainly end on a high note! As always, we thank all the contributors, past and present. Our next series will be for Pentecost, and include the Ascension and Rogation days, so have your cameras ready - Veni, Sancte Spiritus!
Oratory of Ss Gregory and Augustine – St Louis, Missouri
Finally we come to the last part of this year’s Holy Week and Easter photopost series! Once again, we are very grateful to all the contributors, and wish it were possible to include all of the beautiful photos that were sent in. There will be a second part, before we move on to Pentecost, so have your cameras ready - Veni, Sancte Spiritus!
Nuestra Señora del Pilar – Guadalajara, Mexico (FSSP)
The incense grains encased in wax which are inserted in the Paschal candle.
Robert W. Keim is a secular brother of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri, a linguist, and a literary scholar specializing in the poetic and dramatic literature of the English Renaissance. A longtime student of the arts and spirituality of sacred liturgy, he teaches university courses in rhetoric and is pursuing research into the devotional, scriptural, and liturgical culture of medieval England. We are grateful to him for sharing this article with us.
Roman rite Catholics recently had their once-per-year opportunity to savor the praeconium paschale, an ancient liturgical hymn known in English as the Easter Proclamation and commonly referred to by its supremely fitting first word: exsultet, [1] “let (the angelic host of the heavens) rejoice.” Chanted by the deacon during the liturgy of Holy Saturday, the Exsultet is a poetic masterpiece that fills the opening moments of the Easter vigil with mystical pathos and brings key paschal motifs—luminosity, deliverance, communal joy—into glorious relief.
A chant setting of the Exsultet from a late-fourteenth-century book of epistle and Gospel readings (Epistolarium et Evangeliarium, Lübeck Municipal Library, MS theol. lat. 2° 5, folio 91 recto ).
O Necessarium Peccatum...
Originally one among various prayers with which western European rites celebrated the lighting of the paschal candle, the Exsultet dates to the fourth or fifth century and came to Rome with the Gelasian sacramentaries. It appears to have been influenced by the thought of St. Ambrose, and it may have been composed by him. As we see in other early Christian writings (and in Holy Scripture), the Exsultet draws much poetic and spiritual energy from the eloquent pairing of opposites that rhetoricians call antithesis. The antithesis of light and darkness is especially prominent and informs the entire hymn; the following examples are from the opening and concluding sections of the text:
Let the earth also rejoice, illumined by such brightness: and, enlightened with the splendor of the eternal King, may it know that the darkness of all the world has been dispersed.
We pray Thee, therefore, O Lord: that this candle, consecrated unto the honor of Thy Name, to destroy the darkness of this night, may unfailingly endure.
The Easter Proclamation treats of another antithetical relation—namely, the mysterious kinship of Adam’s ruin and Christ’s Redemption—that culminates in our most well-known formulation of a famous theological paradox: O felix culpa..., “O happy fault, that deserved to have such and so great a Redeemer!” Holy Church is bold indeed to speak thus of Original Sin, which the Exsultet describes also as the “truly necessary sin of Adam.” [2] But lovers tend to be bold in their use of language, and so do poets, and since the Church is both a lover and a poet, we should not be too surprised. Theologians, however, must be more circumspect, and indeed, the metaphysical implications of a “happy,” “fortunate,” or “fruitful” sin—all of these meanings are possible with Latin felix—have long been controversial:
Augustine was ambivalent about the idea, while other church fathers opposed it or maintained a discreet silence. In fact, the felix culpa verse was contested and at times even stricken from the liturgy. It does not appear in the influential Romano-German Pontifical (tenth century), and Abbot Hugh of Cluny (d. 1109) purged the offending sentences from the Cluniac Easter rite. [3]
Thankfully, the felix culpa survived and is still with us, returning every Easter to supply the overly analytical modern mind with some much-needed paradoxicality. And though it is sufficiently sublime to regard a disastrous transgression as “necessary” because it occasioned the Incarnation and salvific death of our dear Lord, the piety of the Middle Ages saw fit to exalt also Our Lady as the cherished fruit of Adam’s fateful yet fertile sin.
Folio 93 verso in the manuscript mentioned above, which proceeds directly from ut servum redimeres, filium tradidisti to O (vere) beata nox, quae sola meruit scire tempus et horam. In other words, the references to Adam’s “necessary sin” and “happy fault” were omitted.
Adam, the Apple, and “Heuene Qwen”
The early-fifteenth-century Middle English poem “Adam lay ibowndyn” is found, along with verse of a much less edifying nature, in an artifact known as Sloane Manuscript 2593.
The poem “Adam lay ibowndyn” begins on folio 11 recto, under the first horizontal line, in MS Sloan 2593. Image courtesy of the British Library.
Dr. Kathleen Palti transcribed the text as follows:
Adam lay ibowndyn bowndyn in a bond fowr’ þowsand wynter þowt he not to long And al was for an appil An appil þat he tok as clerkis fyndyn wretyn in her’ book Ne hadde þe appil take ben þe appil taken ben ne hadde neuer our lady a ben heuene qwen Blyssid be þe tyme þat appil take was þerfor’ we mown syngyn deo gracia
Below is a rendering in quasi-modern English.
Adam lay bound, bound in a bond, four thousand winters thought he not too long; and all was for an apple, an apple that he took, as clerics find written in their book. Had not the apple taken been, the apple taken been, nor had never our lady been the queen of heaven. Blessed be the time that apple taken was, therefore we can sing, “Deo gratias.”
When I first came across this otherwise unremarkable specimen of late medieval religious poetry, I had never seen a literary or liturgical text that explicitly connects the celestial reign of the holy Virgin to the felix culpa. It turns out that this theme is not unique to “Adam lay ibowndyn,” but it is perhaps uniquely memorable and touching when encountered in such a homely and heartfelt expression of western European folk piety. And though the text is clearly the work of an unpretentious poet, the rhetorical craftsmanship may be more refined than it initially appears: the author specifically celebrates the coronation of Mary; this event carried a sense of finality and completion because in the mystical chronology of Catholic devotional practice, it was subsequent to the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Ghost. [4] The queenship of Our Lady thus functions as a synecdoche for all the glorious moments that followed the seminal triumph of Good Friday, and perhaps even for the glorious totality of salvation history.
A fifteenth-century illumination depicting the coronation of Mary. Ink, tempera, and gold on vellum; image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The folk theology of “Adam lay ibowndyn” is a lovely complement to the profound liturgical theology of the Church’s praeconium paschale. The readings and ceremonies of the Easter vigil, which are utterly preoccupied with Christ’s momentous and long-awaited victory over sin and death, do not lead us directly into reflections on Our Lady’s role in the paschal mysteries. Thus, I am grateful for the work of an anonymous English poet who reminds me that Adam’s necessarium peccatum brought Mary of Nazareth into my life—O happy fault, that gave us so great a Queen and Mother!
The Marian inflection of the felix culpa also reminds us to honor Our Lady’s subtle presence in the Exsultet. The hymn’s affection for bees [5] is somewhat curious until we recognize that these favored creatures, whose virginal labors produced the paschal candle, beautifully symbolize the virgin Mother of Him who, as a pillar of fire, led the Hebrews out of bondage: “And now we know the praises of this pillar, which the glowing fire enkindles unto the glory of God.... It is nourished by the melting wax, which the mother bee brought forth for the substance of this precious lamp.”
The Modern Life of a Medieval Poem
Certain works of art have a mysterious ability to survive the ravages of time. The author of “Adam lay ibowndyn” could never have dreamed that this short, simple, vernacular poem would—some five hundred years in the future—inspire several choral compositions and even reach the status of a paraliturgical text. But this is precisely what has occurred, and I myself heard the poem sung by a professional choir as part of a solemn musical oratory of Advent. It was a delightful experience, and I would be even more delighted to hear a fine polyphonic setting of “Adam lay ibowndyn” during this sacred and joyous tide of Easter.
NOTES:
[1] As with other Latin words in which an initial S is preceded by the prefix ex- (e.g., exspiro, exstasis, exsurgo), exsultet can also be spelled exultet (expiro, extasis, exurgo). The available evidence suggests that the exs- spelling was preferred in the classical period.
[2] The complete locution is “O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est! - O surely necessary sin of Adam, which has been blotted out by the death of Christ!” The notion of a necessary sin is, from a strict theological perspective, highly problematic. Some scholars have argued that, despite the apparent similarity, “necessary” may not be the intended meaning of necessarium. The only proposed alternative that I find plausible is “unavoidable.”
[3] Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 14.
[4] In the York cycle of mystery plays, for example, the coronation of Mary was dramatized in the second-to-last play; the last was “The Judgment Day.”
[5] This affection is more conspicuous and emphatic in pre-sixteenth-century texts of the Exsultet, which included an additional section that praised bees as “truly blessed and wonderful” and explicitly mentioned their symbolic connection to the Virgin Mary.
The very first Scriptural reading of Holy Week, Exodus 15, 27 – 16, 7, the epistle which forms part of the blessing of the palms, lays out the program for the week to come, and unites all of the main ceremonies of the Triduum with Palm Sunday.
“In those days, the children of Israel came into Elim, where there were twelve fountains of water, and seventy palm trees: and they encamped by the waters. cap. 16 And they set forward from Elim, and all the multitude of the children of Israel came into the desert … after they came out of the land of Egypt, and … murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, (saying) ‘… Why have you brought us into this desert, that you might destroy all the multitude with famine?’ And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold I will rain bread from heaven for you; let the people go forth, and gather what is sufficient for every day, … But the sixth day let them prepare to bring in, and let it be double that which they were wont to gather every day.’ And Moses and Aaron said to the children of Israel, ‘In the evening you shall know that the Lord hath brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord.’ ” (Vespere scietis quod Dominus eduxerit vos de terra Aegypti, et mane videbitis gloriam Domini.)
The Gathering of the Manna, from a Flemish book of Hours, end of the 15th century. (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CLM 28345; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
The reading begins with a mention of palms, in reference to the rite of Palm Sunday. The fickleness of the Israelites, who have just crossed the Red Sea in the previous chapter, and now murmur against God’s prophet and priest, the very ones who led them out of Egypt, represents the fickleness of those who were in Jerusalem at the time of the Lord’s triumphal entry, crying out “Hosanna,” and five days later, gathered before Pilate and cried out, “Crucify him!” The gathering of twice as much manna on the day before the Sabbath refers to the consecration of two Hosts on Maundy Thursday, one of the Mass, and one which is reserved for the Mass of the Presanctified on the following day. [1]
The words of Moses and Aaron towards the end of the reading, “Vespere scietis – In the evening you shall know”, refer to the Gospel of the Easter vigil, Matthew 28, 1-7, which begins with the words “Vespere autem Sabbati – on the eve of the Sabbath.” The words “et mane videbitis gloriam Domini – and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord” look forward to the second verse of the Gospel of Easter morning, Mark 16, 1-7, “Et valde mane una sabbatorum – And very early in the morning, the first day of the week.”
A stained-glass window of the Prophet Hosea with three other prophets, holding banderoles with two verses from his book: “On the third day he will raise us” (6, 3), and “O death, where is thy sting?”, St Paul’s citation in 1 Corinthians 15, 55 of the Septuagint translation. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by GO69, CC BY-SA 4.0)
This theme, of the evening and the morning, also appears at two other crucial moments in the readings of Holy Week, both also the first Scriptural readings within their respective ceremonies. The first prophecy of the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, Hosea 6, 1-6, also refers to the Resurrection of Christ in the morning: “In their tribulation, in the morning they shall rise to me… He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. We shall know, and we shall follow, that we may know the Lord, as the daybreak is his going forth prepared.” Likewise, the first prophecy of the Easter vigil, Genesis 1, 1 – 2, 2, contains six repetitions of the formula, “and there was evening, and there was morning.” It is also reflected in the Passion narratives, all four of which are divided into an evening and a morning. [2]
The vigil Mass of Holy Saturday is not a first Mass of Easter, an anticipation of the Resurrection, and was never celebrated as such in the Roman Rite. It is rather a vigil in the true sense of the word, “a keeping watch.” At that point in the celebration of the liturgy, we know, as Hosea says we shall, that Christ has risen, but we do not yet see Him in His glory. This is symbolized by the incomplete character of the Mass, which has no introit, Creed, offertory, or Agnus Dei, while the communio is not a Mass antiphon in the proper sense, but a very short form of Vespers.
The Magnificat antiphon of Vespers at the end of the Easter vigil, also sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline, as it is here: Aña Véspere autem sábbati * quae lucescit in prima sábbati, venit María Magdaléne, et áltera María, vidére sepulcrum, allelúja. (And in the evening of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen and the other Mary came to see the sepulcher, alleluia.)
In the Gospels of both Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, the Risen Lord is mentioned, but does not appear in person. However, with the restoration of the Introit after two days on which it was not sung, on the third day, He speaks directly and in person: “I have risen, and am still with thee.” It is at this Mass, on the morning of Easter, that the fullness of solemnity is restored to the liturgy, and the glory of the Lord is indeed seen. As the prophecy of Hosea continues, “And we will follow, that we may know the Lord: like the daybreak is his going forth”, that is, His going forth from the tomb.
Liturgical scholars have long been wont to describe the unique character of the Easter vigil Mass in reference to something called Baumstarck’s Law, named for the scholar who identified it, the German Anton Baumstarck (1872-1948). This supposed law can be summed up very simply by saying, “The more solemn days change last”, meaning that when a new feature of the liturgy is instituted, people don’t add it to the more important days, or hesitate to do so, because they remember that “we’ve always done it THIS way”, and don’t want to change it. Therefore, the absence of the features named above from the Mass of the Easter vigil is effectively dismissed as a mere archaism, undoubtedly ancient, but per se meaningless. (This is also often applied to the Tenebrae offices, in reference to the absence of the invitatory, hymns, doxology etc.)
It is revealing, and typical of both Germans and the era in which Baumstarck lived, that the phenomenon which he identified is called a “law,” a term which places it in the category of forces like those described by the “laws” of physics: implacable, unavoidable, and above all, impersonal. But changes to the liturgy result from decisions, not forces, and decisions are made by people, not by forces. And this in turn is why Baumstarck’s Law (which has plenty of perfectly legitimate applications) would better be called Baumstarck’s Principle – an explanation of some aspects of liturgical change, but decidedly not of all.
Thus we find the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster, e.g., writing as follows of the Easter vigil Mass in The Sacramentary (vol. 2, p. 308): “Holy Saturday still preserves, almost unaltered, the primitive type of the morning Mass which, during the first three centuries, closed the vigil of preparation for the Sunday.” Likewise Josef Jungmann in Missarum Solemnia (p. 394): “The absence of the
Communion song on Holy Saturday recalls the time before the introduction of the chant.” [3]
But to treat this (and many analogous customs) as nothing more than an archaism is fundamentally absurd. Even granting for the sake of argument that the introit, offertory and communio were added later to the Mass, as we know the Creed and Agnus Dei were, nonetheless, someone made a deliberate and conscious decision to NOT add them to two specific days of the year: Good Friday and Holy Saturday. [4] As the prophet says, “He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up.” [5]
[1] For the Church Fathers, the manna was understood as a clear prefiguration of the Eucharist. St Cyprian, Epistle to Magnus (PL 3, 1150A): “We see the mystery of this equality (among all believers) celebrated in Exodus, when the manna flowed down from heaven, and as a prefiguration of the things to come, showed the nourishment of the bread of heaven and the food of Christ when He would come.”
– St Ambrose, De Sacramentis (PL 16, 444B), immediately after explaining the words of Consecration: “It was indeed a great and venerable thing, that the manna rained down upon the Jews from heaven: but understand this. What is greater, the manna from heaven, or the body of Christ? The body of Christ, to be sure, who is the maker of heaven. And then, he that ate the manna, died: who shall eat this Body, it shall be unto him the forgiveness of sins, and he shall not die forever.”
– Ambrosiaster, Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul (PL XVII, 234A-B): “ ‘And they all did eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.’ (1 Cor. 10, 3-4) He calls the manna and water (Exod. 16, 15; 17, 6) ‘spiritual’... having in themselves a figure of the future mystery, which we now receive in commemoration of Christ the Lord.”
[2] Many liturgical traditions follow this division by reading the Passion narratives partly on Holy Thursday and partly on Good Friday, beginning the Gospels of the latter at the point where the Evangelist mentions the morning: Matthew 27, 1; Mark 15, 1; Luke 22, 66, and John 18, 28.
[3] With all due respect, especially to the memory of the Bl. Schuster, the liturgical scholars of their era failed to see that their reasoning on this and so many other points was purely circular. “The Easter vigil preserves an archaic form of the Mass… and how do we know that this is an archaic form of the Mass? Because it is preserved at the Easter vigil...”
[4] Not at all surprisingly, analogous customs are also found in other rites. The Ambrosian Easter vigil Mass has no antiphons at all, apart from a brief psalmellus (the equivalent of the gradual) between the first reading and the epistle, and the Alleluia between the epistle and gospel. The Creed and Gloria are both omitted, and the Ambrosian Mass has neither the Kyrie nor the Agnus Dei, so the only part of the Ordinary which is said is the Sanctus. In the Byzantine Rite, the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Saturday is also not treated as a first liturgy of Easter; the Gospel is the whole of Matthew 28, which does include the visible appearance of the Risen Christ to the woman at the tomb, and to the disciples on the mountain of Galilee, but the tropar which characterizes the liturgy of Easter and the whole Paschal season is not yet sung. “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and to those in the tombs giving life.”
[5] As I mentioned earlier this week, the Roman Mass of Holy Thursday also did not originally have an Introit, but this was in function of the total absence of a foremass, and hence, of a lack of anywhere to put it.
In the previous articles in this series, I described the lectionary system of the Jewish liturgy by which readings from the Law of Moses (“Torah” in Hebrew) are paired with readings from the Prophets called “haftaroth”, which are chosen to match them thematically. I also described how this very ancient system influenced some very ancient features of the Roman lectionary, especially the readings of the Ember days, while noting various ways in which the Church of Rome altered the Jewish practice. For the purposes of this final article (in two parts, of which this is the second), we must note one of these changes in particular.
In the Jewish lectionary, the haftaroth always come immediately after the portions of the Torah to which they correspond. On the Ember Saturday of Lent and September, however, the readings begin with two lessons from the books of Moses; the third reading then serves as the haftarah of the first, and the fourth of the second. This same arrangement is also used for the first eight of the Old Testament prophecies at the Easter vigil: first four readings from the Torah, then their four corresponding haftaroth. The last four, however, are paired as in the Jewish tradition.
Torah
Haftarah
1. Genesis 1, 1 – 2, 2
5. Isaiah 54, 17 – 55, 11
2. Genesis 5, 31 – 8, 21 (17 verses are omitted from this passage)
Following the lead of St Paul (1 Cor. 10, 1-2), the Church Fathers took the crossing of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus as a symbol of baptism. This is why the story is read at the Easter vigil, the baptismal ceremony par excellence, in nearly all ancient rites (Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic, Byzantine etc.), while the prayer which accompanies it at the Roman vigil of Pentecost explicitly says that “the Red Sea is the form of the sacred font.”
On the other hand, the reading from Isaiah 4 which provides its haftarah (with the tract that follows it from chapter 5) is uniquely Roman. The connection of this passage with the sacrament of baptism is attested in St Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel (lib. iv), as he explains chapter 16, 9, in which the Lord says to Israel, “I washed thee with water, and cleansed away thy blood from thee… ”
“ ‘I washed thee’, he says, with the water of saving baptism. For ‘unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’ (John 3, 5). And elsewhere we read, ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’ (Mark 1, 8). And Isaiah also (4, 4) speaks of this baptism, saying, ‘The Lord will wash the uncleanness of the sons and daughters of Sion, and cleanse the blood from their midst, with a spirit of judgment, and a spirit of burning.’ ” (Jerome quotes this from one of the Old Latin translations of the Septuagint, rather than his own.)
There is a further parallel between these passages. Exodus says that “the Lord looking upon the Egyptian army through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, slew their host” (14, 24), while Isaiah says (4, 5) that “the Lord will create upon every place of Mount Sion, and where He is called upon, a cloud by day, … and the brightness of a flaming fire in the night: for over all the glory shall be a protection.”
In Exodus 14, 20, the fire and cloud are the means by which God protects the one people, standing between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. In Isaiah, on the other hand, the Lord will create the cloud and fire “where He is called upon”, which is to say, by all the nations that are made His disciples in baptism. And thus, the glory of the Lord, which the children of Israel proclaim as they pass the Red Sea (“this is my God, I will glorify Him”, verse 3 of the canticle), becomes a protection over all the world. This is beautifully expressed by the oration said after the tract from Exodus.
“O God, Whose ancient miracles we see shining forth also in our days, as by the water of regeneration Thou workest unto the salvation of the gentiles, that which by the power of Thy right hand Thou didst confer upon one people, … grant that the fullness of the whole world may pass into (becoming) the children of Abraham, and into the dignity of Israel. (in Abrahæ filios et in Israëlíticam dignitátem … tránseat…”)
This word “transeat – pass” refers to the verse 16 of the canticle, “until thy people, O Lord, pass by (pertranseat): until this thy people, which thou hast possessed, pass by,” for it is in their passing through the waters of baptism that the Lord takes possession of the fullness of the whole world.
The tract which follows the reading from Isaiah irenically omits the verses of chapter 5 spoken in criticism of Israel, which I have here italicized. (The text of this canticle is also in an Old Latin translation.)
“The beloved one had a vineyard on a horn (i.e. hill), in a fruitful place. And he fenced it in, and dug the stones out of it, and planted it with the choicest vines, and built a tower in the midst thereof, and dug a winepress therein. And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. … I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted: I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will make it desolate: … For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.”
Here again, the prayer that follows speaks of the conversion of the nations: “O God, who … hast made manifest among all the children of Thy Church, that in every place of Thy dominion, Thou art the sower of good seeds, and the cultivator of chosen branches: grant to Thy peoples who are reckoned by the name of the vines and harvests, that they … may become rich in worthy fruit.”
The Latin verb “censentur”, translated here as “reckoned”, is related to the word “census”, and distantly reminds us that Christ was born for our salvation when the Roman Empire was holding a census of the whole world. It can also mean “honored”, which is to say, that the nations are now honored in receiving the dignity which once belonged to Israel alone, that of being the Lord’s people.
– For the final four prophecies, each reading of the Torah is followed immediately by its haftarah.
Fifth pair: Exodus 12, 1-11, and Jonah 3, 1-10
Both of these readings are used elsewhere, the first at the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, and the second on Passion Tuesday. It may seem counterintuitive to repeat a lesson from the previous day, but the reason for doing so is explained by its haftarah; the theme that unites them is feasting and fasting.
The lesson from Exodus describes the preparation rite of the Paschal lamb for the great feast of Passover, the rite which was taking place even as the Lord was undergoing His Passion. The lamb, of course, is prepared so that it might be consumed, as also is the One whom John the Baptist was first to call “the Lamb of God.” The Easter vigil is the first occasion on which the newly baptized, for whom these readings are especially (though not exclusively) chosen, receive the Lamb of God in Holy Communion. And perhaps it was also for this reason that the Agnus Dei was never added to the Communion rite of the Easter vigil, the only Mass at which it is not said, since this reading effectively held its place.
The Byzantine Rite, following the ancient rite of Jerusalem, reads the whole book of Jonah at the Easter vigil, while the Ambrosians have it at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. This is done, of course, because Christ Himself calls His Resurrection “the sign of Jonah”, and many ancient depictions of the prophet show him coming out of the whale as a symbol of the Resurrection.
A third-century sarcophagus from the Pio-Christian collection of the Vatican Museums. This is one of the best preserved and most elaborate representations of the Jonah story, and is therefore known as “the Jonah Sarcophagus,” although there are many other ancient sculptures and paintings of the story. Note that Noah is seen standing in a square ark above the sea-monster on the right, a clever use of the extra space to add another important Biblical episode.
The Roman Rite, on the other hand, choses just the third chapter, in which God’s wrath against the Ninevites is appeased by their fasting. This teaches the catechumens, and reminds the baptized, that worthy participation in the Holy Eucharist must be accompanied by sincere repentance for our sins, and that the Church routinely prepares itself for the celebration of the Mass, and for the service of God more generally, by fasting. The story is also a reminder that in Christ and in the Church, the fullness of the whole world passes into becoming the children of Abraham, since the Ninevites are a pagan nation.
Sixth pair: Deuteronomy 31, 22-30 (with tract, 32, 1-4) and Daniel 3, 1-24
The theme of this last pair of readings is the worship of the one true God, and the rejection of idolatry.
In the lesson from Deuteronomy, as the Torah nears its conclusion, and Moses is soon to die, he foretells the repeated lapses into idolatry which will characterize so much of Israel’s future. “You will do wickedly, and will quickly turn aside from the way that I have commanded you: and evils shall come upon you in the latter times, when you shall do evil in the sight of the Lord.” The prayer that follows the tract, therefore, asks for the transformation of idolatrous peoples, in language that reminds us of the Crossing of the Red Sea: “may that which was declared unto vengeance pass (transeat) unto salvation (in salutem)”, where the canticle of Exodus 15 reads, “factus est mihi in salutem – He hath become my salvation.”
In the book of Daniel, on the other hand, we have an example of Israel rejecting idolatry, and of willingness to accept martyrdom in order to remain faithful to God, as the three children say to the king of Babylon, “It is not even allowed that we answer thee concerning this matter. For behold our God, whom we worship, is able to save us … and to deliver us out of thy hands, o king. But if He will not … we will not worship thy gods…”
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. On the far left, the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar points to a bust of himself set on a column, the gesture by which he commands the three children to worship it. Even though the Biblical text states quite unmistakably that the emperor made an enormous “statue”, in early Christian art, it is usually represented as a bust on a column, since that it what the Romans used. (On the right side are represented the Miracle at Cana and one of the three Magi. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Davide Mauro; CC BY-SA 4.0)
Babylon was taken by the Persians in 539 BC, as noted later on in Daniel (5, 31), and then reduced to insignificance by the conquests of Alexander the Great; although it remained inhabited, and even had a Christian bishopric, it was very small and unimportant. When the Apostles Peter (1 Pet. 5, 13) and John (Apoc. passim) speak of it, they are actually talking about the Roman Empire, which in the early centuries, persecuted the Christians principally because of their refusal to worship the emperor’s image. This last lesson, therefore, is a reminder to the catechumens, just before they depart for the baptistery and the beginning of their new life in Christ, that as Christians, they are called and required to imitate the people of Israel at their greatest, and worship none other than the one true God.
In the previous articles in this series, I described the lectionary system of the Jewish liturgy by which readings from the Law of Moses (“Torah” in Hebrew) are paired with readings from the Prophets called “haftaroth”, which are chosen to match them thematically. I also described how this very ancient system influenced some very ancient features of the Roman lectionary, especially the readings of the Ember days, while noting various ways in which the Church of Rome altered the Jewish practice. For the purposes of this final article (in two parts), we must note one of these changes in particular.
In the Jewish lectionary, the haftaroth always come immediately after the portions of the Torah to which they correspond. On the Ember Saturday of Lent and September, however, the readings begin with two lessons from the books of Moses; the third reading then serves as the haftarah of the first, and the fourth of the second. This same arrangement is also used for the first eight of the Old Testament prophecies at the Easter vigil: first four readings from the Torah, then their four corresponding haftaroth. The last four, however, are paired as in the Jewish tradition.
Torah
Haftarah
1. Genesis 1, 1 – 2, 2
5. Isaiah 54, 17 – 55, 11
2. Genesis 5, 31 – 8, 21 (17 verses are omitted from this passage)
10. Jonah 3, 1-10 (repeated from the Mass of Passion Tuesday)
11. Deuteronomy 31, 22-30, and Tract (32, 1-4)
12. Daniel 3, 1-24
First pair: Genesis 1, 1 – 2, 2 and Isaiah 54, 17 – 55, 11
The first reading from the book of Genesis describes the six days of Creation, and God’s rest on the seventh, which is of course part of the reason why the Jewish people rest on the Sabbath and keep it as their holy day. The seven repetitions of “God saw that it was good” were often adduced by the Church Fathers against the heresy known as Gnosticism, which claimed that the material creation was made by an evil (or at least strictly just, but not merciful) god of the Old Testament, and that Christ came to reveal another god, good and merciful, but who has nothing to do with the material creation.
The corresponding haftarah reading begins with the words “This is the inheritance of the servants of the Lord, and their justice with me, saith the Lord”, perhaps a reference to the Israelites as the heirs of the Lord’s promises. The second verse, “All you that thirst, come to the waters” is of course intended as an invitation to Baptism. But the passage ends with verse 11, “So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it.” In a Christian context, this means the Word, the Son of God the Father, and His agent in making the material creation (“through whom all things were made”), the creation that He saw was good.
Second pair: Genesis 5, 31 – 8, 21 and Baruch 3, 9-38
The second reading is the story of Noah’s ark, which St Peter himself (1 Pet. 3, 20-21) explains as a symbol of the Church, just as the waters of the flood are a symbol of Baptism. “(the Fathers in limbo) waited for the patience of God in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built, wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. Whereunto baptism, being of the like form, now saveth you also.” This is also stated in the blessing of the baptismal font: “(God), who through the waters didst wash away the crimes of a guilty world, and in the very outpouring of the flood, didst signify regeneration, so that in the mystery of one and the same element, there might be the end of the vices and the origin of the virtues...”
Part of a Christian sarcophagus of the 4th century, decorated with images from two of the prophecies of the Easter vigil, Noah and the Ark and the Three Children in the Furnace. In Hebrew (mostly unknown to the Christians in antiquity, even Jewish ones), Greek and Latin, the word for “ark” in Genesis 6, 14 etc. can also mean a box, chest or coffer. Noah’s ark is there often depicted as such for economy of space. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, released to the public domain by the photographer.)
The haftarah is taken from the prophet Baruch, a deuterocanonical book which is not accepted as Scriptural by the Jewish people. It addresses Israel directly four times, beginning with “Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life: give ear, that thou mayst learn wisdom”, and later, in verse 24, “O Israel, how great is the house of God, and how vast is the place of his possession!” This may be read as an invitation to Israel to recognize that the house of God, i.e. the Church, symbolized by the ark, is in fact greater than just one nation, since the eight persons on board it are the ancestors of all the nations of the world, now called by Christ to the knowledge of the true God.
Verse 10 reads, “How happeneth it, o Israel, that thou art in thy enemies’ land?” In the context of the lectionary created by the Church of Rome, this refers to the condition of the Jewish diaspora after the Romans had ended their political independence, destroying first their temple and then their capital city. The words of verse 12, “Thou hast forsaken the fountain of wisdom” would refer to the Jews’ failure to accept Christ, “the power (virtus) of God, and the wisdom of God”, and institutor of the sacrament of Baptism. Verse 14, “Learn where is wisdom, where is strength (virtus)” would then be another invitation to them from the Church to accept Him.
Verse 26, “There were the giants, those renowned men that were from the beginning, of great stature, expert in war,” refers to a verse from the reading from Genesis (6,4), “Now giants were upon the earth in those days.” The prophecy ends with the words, “This is our God, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him. He found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.” The last verse was of course understood by the Church Fathers as a prophecy of the Incarnation; in this context, it is also an appeal to God’s beloved people to embrace the Incarnate one as the true Messiah.
The Prophets Jeremiah and Baruch, date uncertain (after 1600), by the Sienese painter Rutilio di Lorenzo Manetti (1571-1639); public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.
Third pair: Genesis 22, 1-19 and Ezekiel 37, 1-14
The third pair of readings unite a prophecy of Christ’s Passion with one of His Resurrection. (Благодарю тѧ, Отче Стефане!)
The third Torah reading, Genesis 22, 1-18, is 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 haftarah, 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. … 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. … ’ ”
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.
In the Byzantine Rite, Orthros of Holy Saturday, one of the most beautiful services of the year (commonly called Jerusalem Matins), 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, the setting of the guards at the Lord’s tomb. In the Slavic tradition, the reading from Ezekiel may be sung according to a special tone, as heard in this recording made at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, seven years ago.
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.
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.
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 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!
Here are some images for these three days for your mediation. First, Good Friday: The crucifixion of Christ, an illumination by the Master of St. Veronica (German, active about 1395 - 1415).
I chose this for the beautiful flow in the lines of drapery around the forlorn figure of Our Lady. The artist has eliminated any sense of depth, as a more conventional iconographer would, by putting the blue and gold patterned background around the figures. The flatness is deliberate, the lack of three dimensionality in the image evokes heaven which is outside time and space.
Next, we have what in the Byzantine Rite Churches is called the Resurrection Icon, and in the Roman Church might also be referred to as the Harrowing of Hell. This image speaks of Christ’s descent in Hades and so is appropriate for Holy Saturday.
A Western rendering of the same, by the 15th century Italian artist Fra Angelico.
There is a fascinating account of the development of this image in Aidan Hart’s excellent book Festal Icons, which I recommend everyone to read if they can. He describes how the prototype for the iconographic image actually appeared first in Rome in the 8th century (perhaps with great influence from Byzantine Christians who were present there at the time). He suggests that one reason that the prototype of the Resurrection in this form was so late in emerging was that it was developed to reinforce the assertion, against the heresies of monothelitism and monoenergism, which were prevalent at the time, that Christ descended into hell as the single person, in two natures, divine and human. The image shows the Resurrected Christ bodily descending into Hell to draw out those who might be themselves bodily resurrected. It is therefore as much an icon of the resurrection of mankind as it is of Christ. Adam and Eve are present, and typically Christ, the new Adam, reaches down to draw up the old Adam. He has trampled down the doors of Hades and discarded the instruments of his death, such as the nails. In the iconographic version, there might also be present Kings David and Solomon, St John the Baptist, Abel the Just shown as a young man with a shepherd’s crook, Isaiah, and other patriarchs and prophets.
I like the connection between the good shepherd, Abel from the book of Genesis, and Christ, the Good Shepherd, and the shepherds who observe the Nativity as a thread that runs through these Biblical events.
The Fra Angelico version has the devil skulking away stage left!
This image makes the transition into Easter itself. In the words of the Exultet, the hymn sung in the Easter Vigil:
This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.
Illustrated scrolls of the Exultet, such as the Barberini Exultet Roll created in Italy in the 11th century have the Harrowing of Hell to illustrate these lines.
Finally we have a Resurrection image, which developed in the Roman Church from about the 12th century onwards. Here is an English relief carving in alabaster from the 14th century.
Christ emerges from the tomb, trampling on the guards as he does so, again by Fra Angelico.
Those who have assisted at the traditional Roman liturgy for some time can usually name many things about it that they noticed over the years — things that impressed, provoked, consoled, puzzled, that made them wake up, question more, dig deeper. There is a moment of transition, I find, from being one who appreciates the old liturgy, perhaps now and again, or as a field trip, or as a pastoral duty, to being one who has fallen in love with it, who makes it his spiritual home, and who, accordingly, may justly be called a traditionalist. (As much as some people protest against the use of that word, it remains immensely handy for naming a phenomenon, which is what language is supposed to do.)
My books mention many such experiences, but here are two that are especially appropriate to share in Easter week.
The first was the contrast I noticed, several years in a row, between the modern (Paul VI) Easter Vigil and the Easter Sunday Missa Cantata of the Roman Rite. The reason for comparing these two is that I was involved at the time in providing music for both — the “Ordinary Form” on Saturday night and the “Extraordinary Form” (how quaint are those terms now!) on Sunday morning.
The Paul VI vigil had no “spaces,” no obvious opening to mystery through which one could enter. It was a flood of didactic text, spoken aloud, with musical interludes. Modern people are already awash in words. Do we really need more? In the N.O. Easter Vigil, one felt that one had been thoroughly drenched in the Bible readings conducted in Nabbish, a lengthy homily, the unsatisfying glamor of receiving some people into the church in a ritual that culminated in applause, and a celebration of the Eucharist wholly lacking in supernatural resonance or fearful majesty. It made an impression for sheer length, number of lilies, and candles, but otherwise it was like cookie dough — the same consistency throughout.
The Easter Missa cantata, on the other hand, was full of the sound of Alleluias sung in Gregorian chant — sixteen of them (not counting the repetitions of the Communion antiphon). The chants for Easter are strong, sometimes strange, always unearthly, already half-dwelling in the realm of eternity. The church, ablaze with white and gold… the ritual nailed to the altar, from which salvation pours out like blood and water… the clouds of incense billowing… all point to the mysterious reality of the Crucified and Risen One — and this is something that can be perceived by anyone seeking God or even seeking some meaning in life. Marshall McLuhan said, decades ago, that modern culture is obsessed with images and that the Church must therefore provide images of great power: visual and audible images that are startlingly different from what secular culture offers. At the Easter morning sung Mass, I had an almost unnerving sense of stepping back through time across all the centuries that separated me from the resurrection of Christ and coming once again into His powerful presence. This was a ritual that somehow poured from His glorified wounds to bathe me in their light. There was a holy awe about the place, a restrained joy coiled like a spring ready to leap to heaven, a hushed adoration like that of Mary Magdalene when she discovered Christ in the garden and He would not let her touch Him.
Let me not be misunderstood: I am not calling into question the good will of anyone who contributed to the Easter Vigil. On the contrary, there was abundant good will, which I remember fondly. The problem is deeper than the individuals: it is in the rites they are using and the customs that have grown up around them to the point of having nearly the force of law. The face liturgy presents to us depends much more on the rites and customs than it does on the personnel who happen to be using them; the former determine and delimit the possible range of influence for the latter.
The second experience was singing, and then reflecting on, Lesson III of Holy Saturday’s Tenebrae: “Incipit Oratio Jeremiae Prophetae.”
Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned unto aliens: our houses to strangers. We are become orphans without a father, our mothers are as widows. Our water we have drunk for money: we have bought our wood for a price. We were dragged by our necks, we were weary and rest was not given unto us. Unto Egypt, and unto the Assyrians have we given our hand, that we might be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, and are no more: and we have borne their iniquities. Servants have ruled over us: there was none to redeem us out of their hand. Our bread we fetched at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the desert. Our skin was burnt as an oven, by reason of the violence of the famine. They have oppressed the women in Sion, and the virgins in the cities of Juda. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, be converted unto the Lord thy God.
Pondering these prophetic words led me to see their application to our current liturgical situation, and the parallels have only grown clearer with time. We are alienated from our inheritance; our houses of worship are sold off to Masonic lodges or Hindu ashrams; we are become like orphans without a father in Rome or, in some cases, a father in our diocese; we bought our reforms for a steep price, and were dragged along without our consent; we grew weary of hyperactive participation and longed for a contemplative rest that was denied us; we exchanged our birthright for a seat at the United Nations and the European Union; those who fomented our disasters are mostly long-gone and we suffer from their sins; slaves of fashion rule over the sons of God; we fetched our traditional bread wherever we could find it, afraid of the sword of church authority in the desert of the post-Council; the spiritual famine has been violent, and it has extended even to threatening the religious life of consecrated virgins. Jerusalem, O Church on earth: be converted unto the Lord thy God!
Someone once said of the liturgical reformers: “They took the faith out of our hands and knees.” The reform stripped away, or allowed to be stripped away, bodily spiritual formation. Catholics can get a visceral sense of the contrast when they attend their first Tridentine Mass and find that there’s a lot more kneeling than they are accustomed to (even at High Mass) and more demands placed on their attention in general. It is a liturgy that pre-dates the invention of television, so it expects a long attention span, and the ability to be quiet and sit still. The faith has to penetrate into our bones and muscles or it remains cerebral and ineffectual.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the contrasting practices of Holy Communion. In too many churches, the faithful walk up in multiple lines and receive the Body of Christ in their hands, like people queueing for bus tickets, after which they take a cup to wash it down, like teammates sharing Gatorade. In traditional communities, the faithful kneel along the communion rail and wait until the priest comes to them to bless them with the Host — “Corpus Domini nostri + Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam, Amen” — and places it gently on their tongues. These two contrasting scenes are, in reality, expressive of two different ideas of religion, if we take religion in the sense of the virtue by which we offer God our worship through concrete words and actions.
This is why I am not surprised that the former Benedictine monk Gabriel Bunge, a world expert on the Trinity icon of Rublev, left the Catholic Church to become Eastern Orthodox. No one ever introduced him to the real Western tradition that corresponded to what he was studying from the East. He came to the conclusion that the only authentic tradition left was the East. His conclusion should rather have been that the modern West had abandoned its own authentic tradition, and that we have an urgent calling to recover it.
After experiences like the two I recounted, one’s soul is seared with the truth, at once liberating and daunting: I cannot go back to the 60s and 70s, to those pathetic works of human hands. Let the dead bury the dead. It is the perennially youthful Roman Rite that gives joy to me, that shines forth light and truth.
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