The Kyrie Eleison

Lost in Translation #93

In the 1997 crime drama Donnie Brasco, an FBI technician (Paul Giamatti) asks an undercover agent (Johnny Depp) about the meaning of “fuhgettaboutit” in the Italian-American community. The agent’s explication is memorable. “Fuhgettaboutit,” says he, can mean: agreement, disagreement, wonder and praise, or anger and insult—all depending on a kaleidoscope of intonation and circumstance. “And sometimes,” the agent concludes, as if surprised by his own insight, “it just means, ‘Forget about it.’”

Mi scusi, but I wonder if the Kyrie eleison is the “fuhgettaboutit” of sacred liturgy. In the Byzantine Rite, it is used an astonishing forty times and in strikingly different settings, appearing, among other places, in both the plaintive Great Litany at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy and in the jubilant Litany after the consecration. In the traditional Roman Rite, the Kyrie has one function in litanies and processions, and another in the Mass. And as we will see, within that one function lies a range of emotions and intentions.

Language and Biblical Origins

The prayer, which means “Lord, have mercy” and “Christ, have mercy,” is in Greek rather than Latin. The use of Greek in the traditional Roman Rite is significant for three reasons.

First, along with Latin and Hebrew, Greek is one of the three languages on the placard above the head of our crucified Lord that proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth to be the king of the Jews. Appropriately, all three of these languages are used during the traditional Latin Mass (the Mass includes Hebrew words such as amen, alleluia, and sabaoth).

Second, Greek is a reminder that the Mass in Rome was celebrated in that language for the first three hundred years or so--even though, as we will discuss later, the Kyrie is not a vestige of the Greek liturgy in Rome but something that was introduced to the Roman Rite only after the latter was translated into Latin sometime in the fifth century.

Third, like Latin, Greek is a lingua franca; it has an echo of universality that mirrors the universality of the Catholic Church, and it is even part of the Romanitas of the Church, insofar as Greek was the language of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. Fittingly, the Kyrie enjoys a near universal presence in the apostolic liturgies. Besides the Roman Rite and Greek-speaking Byzantines, the Coptic, Ethiopian, and West Syrian Rites use it in its untranslated form. Other Byzantine-Rite churches (such as the Ukrainian) as well as the Armenian and East Syrian Rites use the Kyrie but in their own languages.

The expression itself first appears in the Old Testament [1]. In the Gospels, Jesus Christ is often petitioned with the plea, “Lord, have mercy,” or a similar formula like “Jesus, son of David, have mercy.” [2]

These linguistic and biblical considerations lead Fr. Michael Fiedrowicz to conclude:

The Kyrie impressively places before our eyes the universality of the Church, in that it brings Eastern and Western Christianity together on a synchronous level, allows the prayers of the Old and New Covenant to flow into the liturgical prayer on a diachronic level, leads the ancient desire for a Savior to fulfillment, and finally allows the earthly liturgy to sound together with that of Heaven. [3]

Liturgical Use

The Kyrie was first used liturgically in the city of Rome during processions from one church (the collecta or place of the assembly) to another (the statio, where Mass would be celebrated). As the procession began, the deacon would chant a series of invocations and the people would respond with Kyrie eleison; the procession would then culminate with praying the Collect. When the processions were discontinued, the invocations were dropped and the Kyrie became a formal part of the Mass. An association with invocations lingered, however, in the form of tropes, lines added to the Kyrie (which now consisted of three Kyries, three Christes, and three Kyries) to suit the occasion. Tropes were a common feature of medieval Western liturgy, especially in the Sarum Rite.

Outside the Mass, the Kyrie eleison continues to be used verbatim in Catholic litanies as well as in Latin translation.

The liturgical and devotional conventions that have emerged in the West over the centuries also reveal a curious rule. In our daily, profane lives, we can say “have mercy” to a human being. When Portia asks Shylock to have mercy on Antonio in the Merchant of Venice, she is not being impious or committing a sin. And there is nothing wrong with the age-old custom in central Colombia of addressing someone with sumercé or "your mercy."

But in Christian prayer, you can only ask for mercy from God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Trinity. For everyone else, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, you can only ask for prayers. In the litanies, invocations to God are followed by “Miserere nobis – Have mercy on us”, but invocations to the Mother of God and the Saints are met with “Ora pro nobis – Pray for us”. It is an interesting way of underlining the difference between latria (true worship, which can only be given to God) and dulia, which is the veneration of God’s friends.

The Kyrie in the Traditional Latin Mass

After the priest recites the Introit, he and the server/congregation pray:

P. Kýrie, eléison.

℟. Kýrie, eléison.

P. K ýrie, eléison.

℟. Christe, eléison.

P. Christe, eléison.

℟. Christe, eléison

P. Kýrie, eléison.

℟. Kýrie, eléison.

P. Kýrie, eléison.

In the traditional Roman Rite, the Kyrie is plaintive but not part of the plaintive Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and thus not part of the penitential/absolution rite. The distinction is emphasized through action. After the priest finishes the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, he ascends the altar while praying, kisses it, goes to the Epistle corner, makes the sign of the cross, reads the Introit, and then recites the Kyrie. That sign of the cross and the recitation of the Introit mark the more ancient beginning of the Mass: they are the front door, whereas the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar are the front porch built at a later date. While the Confiteor, etc. take place on the front porch, the Kyrie takes place in the living room.

Nor is reciting the Kyrie after the Confiteor redundant. In his commentary on the Mass, Fr. Pius Parsch identifies four aspects of prayer: contrition, desire, praise, and petition. These four aspects, he contends, are present in the initial prayers of the Mass and in the same order: The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar express contrition, the Kyrie desire, the Gloria praise, and the Collect petition. [4] To say “Lord, have mercy” can be a way of asking for forgiveness of one’s sins, as does the publican in the parable when he is standing in the back of the Temple with downcast eyes. (see Luke 18, 9-14)

But in the Gospels, all other uses of the phrase Kyrie eleison or similar formulae are for other miserable conditions such as blindness, demonic possession, and leprosy, with blindness being the most common. Indeed, one can seek divine mercy as a protection from any present or future danger or malady. St. Thomas Aquinas sees the Kyrie as a reference to our present “misery” on earth as we groan in exile on an uncertain pilgrimage that afflicts us all, saint and sinner alike. [5] To put it somewhat glibly, if the Blessed Virgin Mary were to attend a Tridentine Mass during her lifetime, she would not need to recite the Confiteor, but she would still want to say the Kyrie, as I am sure she did in her own way during the flight to Egypt, while her Son was lost in the Temple, or as He hung on the Cross.

Who Is Invoked?

As far as we can tell, all nine invocations of the Kyrie litany were originally addressed to Jesus Christ. The Apostles and others addressed Jesus as Lord, and the early Church did as well, even though the Romans saw the title as politically subversive. One of the earliest hymns proclaims that Jesus Christ “is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2, 11)

The use of three threes and the placement of Christe, eleison in the middle, however, created an almost irresistible temptation to interpret the litany in light of the Holy Trinity, where the first three Kyries are to God the Father, the three Christes are to God the Son, and the last three Kyries are to God the Holy Spirit. Hence, in the days when tropes were still used, the Father and the Holy Spirit were invoked as well as the Son. Seen through this lens, the Kyrie can be read as a Trinitaria crie de coeur while the Gloria, which is structured sequentially according to the Three Divine Persons and in general immediately follows the Kyrie, can be read as a Trinitarian hymn of praise.

According to one liturgical perspective, any move away from the Christocentric origin of the litany is not an organic development but a mistake that should not be repeated. The sample tropes in the new Missal, for example, are all addressed to the Son of God. Noting this usage, Fr. Dennis Smolarski advises celebrants of the Novus Ordo that “when using the third form of the act of penitence, do not speak to the Father, the Spirit, or anyone other than Christ.” [6]

But purely within the lexical context of the Mass, either interpretation is valid. The Christological reading obviously works. Jesus Christ is indeed the Lord, and in the Gloria we go so far as to say that He is the only Lord (tu solus Dominus). On the other hand, the Trinitarian reading works as well: the same Gloria that proclaims Christ alone to be Lord refers earlier to His Father as “Lord God, Heavenly King, God the Father Almighty” (we will explain this oddity in a later essay). And the Holy Spirit is also Lord: in the Credo, we praise Him as the life-giving Lord (Dominus vivificans). Finally, the triple-three sequence acts an invitation for us to ponder the great mystery of circumincession or perichoresis, the mutual immanence or interplay of the three distinct persons of the Holy Trinity whereby the Father is entirely in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, the Son is entirely in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is entirely in the Father and the Son.

Perhaps, then, instead of drawing a line in the sand in the name of historical purism and insisting on only one option, we can allow for a broader interpretation. Abbot Claude Barthe, for example, makes it clear in his commentary on the Mass that the petitions “are addressed principally to Christ the Lord, in all the majesty of His victory over death,” yet in the same breath he admits that “the three invocations certainly make us think of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” [7] He also notes that the reduction of the invocation to three threes first occurred in the Frankish kingdom, “where all possible implications of the Trinitarian dogma had always been defended with particular force.” [8]

Liturgical Occasion

I have suggested that like the Italian-American “fuhgetaboutit,” the Kyrie takes on different meanings depending on context and tone--though not to the extent of contradiction. The general intention, of course, is to petition God to alleviate our miserable condition, which is the result of our own sinfulness or of the postlapsarian world in which we live. There is a way in which the Kyrie betokens our pilgrimage status on earth.

But pilgrimages can vary in their degree of woe from ones that are perilous and painful to others that are rather scenic and pleasant. Similarly, the liturgical occasion on which the Kyrie is used can affect the amount of angst or urgency involved. During a Requiem Mass or a Votive Mass in Times of Plague (or War or Persecution), the faithful may be experiencing this valley of tears more acutely than during the Easter Sunday or Pentecost Mass, and thus their cries of “Lord have mercy” may have different connotations.

Musical Settings

Another factor besides context is tone, or in this case, musical setting. The Kyrie is the first part of the Ordinary that is always sung during a High Mass; thus, despite the concessions made for the celebration of a Low Mass, musicality is a part of its liturgical essence. But the musicality varies significantly according to the repertoire of both Gregorian chant and later musical traditions such as polyphonic and orchestral.

Gregorian chant has eight modes, each with its own emotional register. One author characterizes them in the following manner:

1. gravis (serious)
2. tristis (sad, mournful)
3. mysticus (mystical)
4. harmonicus (harmonic or harmonious)
5. laetus (happy, joyful)
6. devotus (devotional or devout)
7. angelicus (angelic)
8. perfectus (perfect)[9]

There are settings for the Kyrie in all eight modes, though interestingly, the rarest is the sad mode (number two), which is used only in the ad libitum chant Rector cosmi pie and not in the Requiem Mass for the dead, which uses the devout mode (number six). The mode probably heard the most often is the serious mode (number one) since it is the mode for Feasts of the Blessed Virgin, the Sundays during the Time after Epiphany and the Time after Pentecost, and the Sundays of Advent and Lent. And there is even a Kyrie in the happy mode (number five), the popular Missa de angelis.

As for other forms of sacred music, one hardly knows where to begin except to state the obvious, namely, that the impression that the Kyrie in Palestrina's Missa brevis leaves on the soul is different from that of the Kyrie in Mozart's Requiem.

The Kyrie in the New Mass

With respect to the Kyrie, the 1970 Roman Missal adds ambivalence to polyvalence, for the litany can be used either as a part of the penitential rite or not. The rubrics allow the celebrant or liturgical planning committee to substitute the Kyrie for the Confiteor and to combine it with tropes such as “You were sent to heal the contrite: Lord, have mercy.” When it is used in this manner, the absolution “May almighty God have mercy on us” follows it. But when the Kyrie is not used in the penitential rite, it is said or sung after the absolution in alternative parts by the celebrant, cantor, people, or choir. The latter arrangement retains what became the Roman Rite's traditional architecture as well as Parsch's distinction between contrition and desire; the former, on the other hand, conflates the distinction and moves furniture from the parlor onto the front porch.

Conclusion

Like “fuhgettaboutit,” the old-fashioned Southern exclamation “Lord a'mercy!” communicates any number of emotional reactions including approval, disapproval, pleasant surprise, and exasperation. How fitting, then, that the liturgical use of this petition should share a similar polyvalence. And yet despite its semantic diversity, the Kyrie brings us back to one central truth: that God's chief attribute is His mercy.

Notes

[1] See Ps. 40, 11; Ps. 122, 3; Tob. 8, 10.

[2] See Matt. 15, 22; Mt. 17, 14; Mt. 20, 30-31; Mk. 10, 47-48; Luke 17, 12-13.

[3] Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass: History, Form, & Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, trans. Rose Pfeifer (Angelico Press, 2020), 85

[4] Pius Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass, trans. Frederic C. Eckhoff (Herder, 1940), 43.

[5] Summa Theologiae III.83.4.

[6] Dennis Smolarski, SJ, How Not to Say Mass: A Guidebook on Liturgical Principles and the Roman Missal, Revised Edition (Paulist Press, 2003), 53.

[7] Abbot Claude Barthe, Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2023), 48.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Charles Weaver, “Some Thoughts on Gregorian Modal Ethos,” Corpus Christi Watershed, June 29, 2023.

A Litany Based on the Writings of St Thomas

Yesterday, we posted pictures of the Mass and procession held in honor of St Thomas Aquinas at the former Dominican convent of Toulouse, France, where his relics are kept. During the procession, a special litany is chanted, calling upon God with various attributes and titles taken from the writings of St Thomas; the full text is given in the jpg, which you can click to enlarge. At least part of this overlaps with a troped Kyrie Rex immense, Pater pie, of which I give a recording below; I don’t know if the Kyrie comes from words of the Saint, or vice versa, and I wasn’t able to find any further information. If anyone knows anything more about it, please share your information in the combox.

The Ninefold Kyrie: An Example of “Useless Repetition”?

Like the Byzantine liturgy, the traditional Roman liturgy is characterized by many examples of what we might call “purposeful repetition.”

The Asperges antiphon and the Introit antiphon are repeated after their verses and doxologies. The doxology is said many times throughout Mass. Psalm 42 as laid out at the start features a number of repeated phrases. The Kyrie, of course, has nine petitions in three sections (3 x 3), of which the outer members are verbally identical. The Confiteor is said by the priest, then repeated by the servers with small differences, and then said again later in the Mass, right before the communion of the faithful. The Domine, non sum dignus is said three times by the priest, and then three times by the servers (either alone or together with the faithful). If we look beyond the Mass to the Divine Office, we see many more examples.

Most of these repetitions were discarded or brutally reduced in the liturgical reform, purportedly in pursuance of Sacrosanctum Concilium 34, which called for the reduction of “useless repetitions” (repetitiones inutiles, or ineptas as the original draft read).

St. Gertrude the Great was privileged with some of the most wondrous and detailed visions that any saint has ever received. In her Revelations, we read about a mystical Mass celebrated by Our Lord, in which Gertrude saw the Eternal High Priest Jesus Christ offering the High Mass in the convent. Here is the part that pertains to the Kyrie:

At the first Kyrie eleison, He granted her the remission of all the sins which she had contracted through human frailty; after which, the angels raised her up on her knees. At the second, He pardoned her sins of ignorance; and she was raised up by these princes, so that she stood before God. Then [at the third] two angels of the choir of Cherubim led her to the Son of God, who received her with great tenderness.
        At the first Christe eleison, the Saint offered our Lord all the sweetness of human affection, returning it to Him as to its Source; and thus there was a wonderful influx of God into her soul, and of her soul into God, so that by the descending notes the ineffable delights of the Divine Heart flowed into her, and by the ascending notes the joy of her soul flowed back to God. At the second Christe eleison, she experienced the most ineffable delights, which she offered to our Lord. At the third Christe eleison, the Son of God extended His Hands, and bestowed on her all the fruit of His most holy life and conversation.
        Two angels of the choir of Seraphim then presented her to the Holy Spirit, who penetrated the three powers of her soul. At the first Kyrie eleison, He illuminated her reason with the glorious light of Divine knowledge, that she might always know His will perfectly. At the second Kyrie eleison, He strengthened the irascible part of her soul to resist all the machinations of her enemies, and to conquer every evil. At the last Kyrie eleison, He inflamed her love, that she might love God with her whole heart, with her  whole soul, and with her whole strength. It was for this reason that the choir of Seraphim, which is the  highest order in the heavenly hosts, presented her to the Holy Ghost, who is the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and that the Thrones presented her to God the Father, manifesting that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are One God, equal in glory, co-eternal in majesty, living and reigning perfect Trinity through endless ages.[1]

On another occasion, we read of how “the saint receives a triple absolution and benediction from the  Blessed Trinity, through the merits of Jesus Christ.” Once again this threefold mystical grace was granted precisely during the Kyrie of the Mass:

As the saint heard Mass one day with the greatest fervour, it appeared to her that her guardian angel took her in his arms as if she were a little child, at the Kyrie Eleison, and presented her to God the Father, to receive His benediction, saying: “Eternal Father, bless Thy little child.” And because for a time He replied not, as if He would testify by His silence that so miserable a creature was unworthy of this favour, she began to enter into herself, and to consider her unworthiness and nothingness with extreme confusion. Then the Son of God arose, and gave her the merits of His most holy life to supply her defects, so that she appeared as if clothed with a rich and shining robe, and as if she had attained to the full age and strength of Jesus Christ.
        Then the Eternal Father inclined lovingly towards her, and gave her His absolution thrice, as a sign of the triple remission of all the sins which she had committed against His omnipotence in thought, word, or deed. The Saint offered in thanksgiving the adorable life of His only Son; and at the same time the precious stones with which her garments were adorned emitted a harmonious concert to the eternal glory of God, which testified how agreeable it is to Him to offer Him the all-perfect and holy life of His Son.
        The same angel then [at the Christe] presented her to God the Son, saying: “Bless Thy sister, King of Heaven”; and having received from Him a triple benediction, to efface all the sins she had committed against the Divine Wisdom, he then presented her to the Holy Spirit, with these words: “O Lover of men, bless Thy spouse”; and she received from Him also a triple benediction, in remission of all the sins which she had committed against the Divine Goodness.
        Let those who read this reflect on these three benedictions at the Kyrie Eleison.[2] 

By the time St. Gertrude was beholding these visions (she lived from 1256 to ca. 1302), most of the great Kyrie chants of the Gregorian repertoire had already been composed. These chants artistically exploit the musical balance and contrast made possible by a 3+3+3 structure. Perhaps the most stunning example is the Kyrie of Mass IX, the Missa cum jubilo:

The very fact that an age-old structure, numerologically luminous, on which mystical visions and musical masterpieces had been built up, was put aside by a committee of self-styled “experts,” shows the extent to which the reform proceeded from crass contempt for liturgical tradition and sacred music, in spite of what Sacrosanctum Concilium had said elsewhere. How many examples of this sort of thing, examples sadly available ad nauseam, would it take to convince the fence-sitters that the reform deserves nothing better than the rubbish bin?

The ninefold Kyrie of the Mass is obviously directed to the Holy Trinity, as its oddness of number blocks any impression of “call and response.” It is not a dialogue between “presider and assembly” but a cry of the faithful to the Most Holy Trinity. The sixfold Kyrie, on the other hand, is a textual expression of the anthropocentric “closed circle” of which Ratzinger wrote: the priest or cantor calls out “Lord, have mercy” to the people, and they respond to the priest or cantor. The object of the prayer (the Holy Trinity) is in tension with the structure of it (a binary this-that, back-and-forth) — since one set of Kyrie eleison/Christe eleison/Kyrie eleison, as in the monastic Office, would have sufficed, if God were the one being addressed.

Let me try to express this point again: the ancient ninefold Kyrie was replaced with a sixfold Kyrie in order to facilitate an “active participation” construed verbally and extrinsically, for there is no other textual, ritual, or musical justification for it.[3] We see here how utilitarian considerations outweighed continuity with tradition, aesthetics, and theological coherence. The lumbering sixfold Kyrie is symptomatic of the entire mentality behind the Novus Ordo, a point Henry Sire captures well in his book Phoenix from the Ashes:

The achievement of the liturgical purists, as they condemned the incoherences of the old rite, has thus been to introduce far more incoherences in the rite they have invented. The reason for this is the lack of integrity in their intentions, but it also stems from the method used when the Consilium set about recasting the liturgy. The Mass was divided into sections and each one given to a separate committee to revise. The result was that each part of the Mass had to be slightly tampered with; otherwise the committee concerned would not have justified its existence. The changes made follow no liturgical logic. In the Kyrie eleison, the old threefold repetition, going back to the earliest days of the Church, has been replaced by a twofold one. This was in pursuance of the Modernists’ principle of abolishing ritual repetitions. Yet, if that were logically followed, there is no reason why the prayer should not be reduced to Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, or indeed to Kyrie Christe eleison. Thus both logic and tradition go overboard so that a committee should do its petty meddling. At the same time, while one committee pruned repetitions here, another was introducing them in another part of the Mass, those of the responsorial psalm and the bidding prayers, which show repetitions of a kind from which the old rite was free. In their poverty of conception, the innovators’ rule was that repetition was wrong unless they could think of nothing better themselves.[4]

Sire has put his finger on an irony that few have dared to speak about, namely, that the Novus Ordo exhibits more and worse defects in some of the very areas against which the cancer-phase Liturgical Movement directed its blazing arrows. Thus, we find far more useless repetition in the Novus Ordo than in the traditional Mass. Think about the Prayer of the Faithful: how many millions of times have we wearily said “Lord, hear our prayer” to the laundry-list of ill-formulated, poorly-read petitions at the podium? Or how many times have we repeated the response to the responsorial psalm, while visions of Hallmark cards danced in our heads, or we wondered if we or the rest of the people would remember the response, or whether all this has any point to it except to give the unemployed some work to do? Those who rejected the repetitions of tradition were punished for their pride with the lackluster redundancies of concocted rites.[5]

Time for everyone's favorite liturgical gesture! 

In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Lord, have mercy is sung over 40 times by the people. The cascading petitions create an aura very like that which silence creates in the Roman Rite. An Eastern Orthodox Christian online wrote the following, to someone’s objection about the number of Kyrie’s in the liturgy:

I have found that the more I say it, the more genuine I get. It’s like the first 10 times I’m slowly getting rid of all distracting thoughts. The next 10 times, I’m starting to get my myself in the right frame of mind for prayer. The next 10 I’m starting to think about the meaning behind each word. Then during the final 10 I can actually pray it from my heart.[6]

The fact that lip service is paid to the “ancient and glorious East” by the very liturgists who savagely denuded the Roman Rite (or the Ambrosian or Mozarabic, etc.) or who today defend its naked state shows up the intellectual dishonesty of the reforms and their pursuit of agendas at all costs, even at the price of consistency of principle. The Eastern liturgical tradition contains countless examples of textual and ritual repetition on a scale far more extravagant than anything the Latin tradition ever boasted. Take the liturgy of baptism, with its many threefold statements; or the multitude of prostrations in penitential seasons.

At the end of the day, the problem boils down to this: is usefulness, “cash value” so to speak, the best or ultimate criterion of whether something belongs in the liturgy or not? Let us ask this question: Is it useful to contemplate God? Do we justify our contemplation by saying that research shows that it strengthens the brain, promotes good sleep and low blood pressure, and leads to statistical improvements in cheerfulness? Or is it something worth doing for its own sake, or rather, for God’s sake — and therefore, not surprisingly, something beneficial to us? Similarly, repetition, which is always meaningful and profitable when done in faith, hope, and charity, is a discipline primarily aimed at offering God praise, adoration, and glorification, an earthly likeness of the song of angels crying out “Holy, holy, holy…” in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity.

It is therefore strange, passing strange, that the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy should tell us that repetition must be “useful.” It is useful, but not in a utilitarian way, as David Clayton has recently explained — and yet, it is hard to see how the Council meant anything other than a surrender to modern American pragmatism: let’s get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Boyz, we got things to do!

The solution, as it always has been and always will be, is to treat with the utmost respect all that proceeds from the mouth of God in His liturgical Providence. The ninefold Kyrie of the Mass was just such a thing, coming to us from ancient times, stretching unbroken through the dark centuries of Roman decline, the bright centuries of the Middle Ages, the tempestuous centuries of Reformation and Revolution. No one would have thought of changing it — no one, that is, until the cretins who believed that their lego-brick liturgies, assembled in study weeks, were superior to the vintages of Christendom matured over long ages. In verses that apply equally well here: “When they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Rom 1:21–22). And: “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain” (1 Cor 3:20). Or perhaps most aptly of all: “Omnes declinaverunt, simul inutiles facti sunt” (Ps 13:3). Kyrie, eleison.

NOTE

[1] Source: The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude (London: Burns & Oates/New York: Benziger, 1870), of which a typo-ridden version is available here.

[2] Ibid.

[3] I am aware that when litanies are recited, there is a doubling of the Kyrie rather than a tripling. But this is the authentic structure of the litanies, even as the ninefold structure was the authentic structure in the Mass. It flies in the face of all respect for inherited rites to do violence to an ancient (6th-century) structure in order to bring it into conformity with a modern predilection for call-and-response mechanisms.

[4] H. J. A. Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015), 261.

[5] And please do not tell me that the responsorial psalm was something ancient that, having been forgotten, was rightly revived. In the form in which it was re-launched in 1969, and above all in the manner in which it is done, it has nothing to do with ancient practice.

[6] This comment is from a thread in which various Orthodox laymen are discussing the benefits of repetition in liturgical prayer. It interests me especially because there is no indication that anyone in the discussion is a theologian or a liturgist; they are just ordinary folks trying to live their tradition, as we should do.