The Asperges Ritual and the Mystery of Dwelling

Lost in Translation #88

So far, the purpose of the “Lost in Translation” series has been to examine the Propers of the Roman liturgy, especially the Orations, with the goal of unearthing shades of meaning that are usually not, and sometimes cannot be, translated into English. The Orations are particularly good candidates for such an examination, as they are veritable Roman haikus, a unique species of rhetoric that ingeniously combines tight structure, poetic rhythm, literary order, succinct imagery, and a panoply of human experience. The fruit of our inquiry can be found on this website and in my book on the subject.

We may still may return to the Roman Propers now and then, but with today’s installment we turn our attention to a consideration of the Latin used in the Ordinary of the Mass. While the Latin of the Orations is arguably more homogeneous (rules regarding structure and meter tend to be followed regardless of the century in which they were written), the Latin of the Ordo of the Mass is more diverse, betraying the influence of different centuries, different styles, and even different cultures. Our intention is not to offer an exhaustive line-by-line analysis of the Latin from the Ordo but to highlight some of its more interesting aspects.

We begin our examination with the Asperges ritual, which should take before the principal Sunday Mass in all cathedrals and collegiate churches; prior to Vatican II, the English bishops ordered all parish churches to do the same, even if the principal Mass was a Low Mass. [1] The ceremony reconnects us to our baptismal vows, but it also has the quality of an exorcism, driving out the unclean in order to prepare the way for the Holy Sacrifice. And it is further tied to the Sacrifice by metaphor: hyssop, which is mentioned in the antiphon, was the plant used to sprinkle the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts and lintel of the house. (Exodus 12, 22)

The Asperges’ relation to baptism explains why it is only allowed on a Sunday. The “Eighth Day” (Sunday, the day of the Resurrection) is tied to the sacrament of baptism mystically (hence the popularity of octagonal baptismal fonts), and the first sacramental baptisms explicitly mentioned in Scripture are of Saint Peter baptizing 3,000 souls on the first Pentecost Sunday. (see Acts 2, 41)

The Asperges’ relation to exorcism, on the other hand, may explain why it is allowed only once on a Sunday, since once the place (specifically, the altar) has been exorcized it need not be again--at least not until the following Sunday.

And the Asperges’ relation to sacrifice may explain why the priest who performs the Asperges ritual must be the celebrant of the Mass that follows it. Even though the Asperges is not part of the Mass proper (which is why the priest wears a cope and not a chasuble, which is worn only for the Eucharistic sacrifice), it is nevertheless ties to the Mass, and the priest who is in persona Christi during the Mass also represents Christ in distributing the graces of His Precious Blood.

Outside the liturgy, the Asperges is traditionally used every time a priest brings Holy Communion to a sick person or when administering Extreme Unction.

This beautiful sprinkling rite ends with the following oration:

Exaudi nos, Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, æterne Deus, et míttere dignéris sanctum Angelum tuum de caelis, qui custodiat, fóveat, prótegat, vísitet, atque defendat omnes habitantes in hoc habitáculo. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.

Which I translate as:

Hear us, O Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God: and vouchsafe to send Thy holy Angel from Heaven to guard, cherish, protect, visit, and defend all who are dwelling in this dwelling. Through Christ our Lord.

The prayer, to my mind, has two puzzles.

First, who is God’s holy Angel? Some, such as Abbé Claude Barthe in his recent book A Forest of Symbols, claim that it is “Christ Himself, who is asked to come down to this place.” [2] His hypothesis aligns with the speculation that the Angel who is asked to carry the consecrated offerings up to God’s heavenly altar is also the Son of God, and not a celestial spirit (see the Supplices te rogamus in the Canon). This interpretation draws from the fact that “Angel” (angelos) means “messenger” in Greek, and Jesus Christ is certainly the Messenger of God (angelos Theou), as St. Paul calls Him in Galatians 4, 14. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with wanting an Angel to come down and do some purifying in preparation for the sacramental arrival of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, just as there is nothing wrong in believing that an Angel carries our sacrifice to God during the Canon, as some artists have imagined.

The second puzzle arises from the line omnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo, and it is twofold. Most translations use “house” for habitaculum, and that is indeed a valid way to translate the word. I offer the clumsier translation “all who are dwelling in this dwelling” to draw attention to the redundant use of habito in the words habitantes and habitaculum. The twofold puzzle is this: why does the Church refer to this place of worship as a “dwelling-place” rather than use a more religious term such as “church” (ecclesia), “temple” (templum, aedes), or even “tabernacle” (tabernaculum), as she does elsewhere in her liturgical prayers? For that matter, if the Oration is alluding to the church as the House of God (Ps. 26, 4) or a House of Prayer, (Matt. 21, 13) then why does it not use the Latin word domus, as does the Vulgate in both these cases?

Second, why does the prayer ask for a blessing on those who dwell therein, which presumably means us? For although we may long to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our life (see Ps. 26, 4), and although monks and nuns spends several hours a day in church, the fact remains that believers typically visit church rather than dwell in them.

The partial answer to these questions is to remember that this Oration figures prominently in the Rituale Romanum, where it is used in the blessing of homes both in Paschaltide and outside it, in the blessing of a new seminary, and in the more solemn blessing of a school. And, of course, it is used in the two sick calls mentioned above. Presumably, then, the prayer was not written with a consecrated church in mind.

But this answer is not fully satisfying, for it suggests that those who placed the Asperges ritual before the celebration of Sunday Mass were simply too lazy to come up with a more appropriate prayer.

I therefore suggest meditating further on the word habitaculum, dwelling-place. A habitaculum can be any structure or even no even structure, for you can truly dwell in a land without so much as a thin layer of tent or tepee separating you from the wide and starry sky. Moreover, the first dwelling-place of Jesus Christ was the womb of His Mother. The Collect for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary declares that God the Father made Mary’s womb a “worthy dwelling-place” (dignum habitaculum) for His Son. But if the Virgin’s womb is Her Son's habitaculum, it is also the habitaculum of those who are members of His mystical Body.

With these considerations in mind, a generic prayer that can be used for blessing all kinds of buildings becomes a prayer that asks God to bless us who are members of Him who dwelt in His mother’s womb and who are currently dwelling in--or at least near--the womb of the church, that is, the sanctuary, where, like the Virgin’s womb, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. As such, the Oration nods to an imminent Incarnation, the fructification of the elements of bread and wine through the inbreathing of the priest's words of consecration through the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit. And this link between altar/womb, Jesus Christ, and His members is underscored by the sprinkling rite, which blesses only three things: the altar, the clergy, and the people.

The Oration in this prologue to the Mass is also a suitable counterpart to the epilogue of the Mass. The Last Gospel in itself is a meditation on dwelling or the lack thereof: the verse “He came into His own and own received Him not” recalls another: “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His head.” (Matt. 8, 20)  And yet despite the world’s rejection of Him, the Last Gospel proclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”--or to translate the Greek in a slavishly literal fashion, He “pitched His tent among us.” And when we hear the news of this dwelling announced, we imitate the motion of the Supernal Son descending to kiss the earth with His Incarnate presence by touching our knees to the ground.

In Holy Communion, we make within the marrow of our being a dwelling for Our Lord who on earth found nowhere to lay His head. In the Asperges ritual, after we are sprinkled with the sacramental reminder of our baptism, we pray to be made worthy dwelling-places of the God-Man in imitation of she who bore Him first.

Notes

[1] Rev. Adrian Fortescue, Ceremonies of the Roman Rite (Newman Press, 1962), 98.

[2] Abbé Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2023), 36.

The Gospels of the Epiphany (Part 1)

The feast of the Epiphany is one of the richest of the Church’s liturgical year, commemorating several different events in the life of Our Lord. The Roman and other western rites have traditionally laid the strongest emphasis on the visit of the three Magi to the infant Jesus, which is recounted in the Gospel of the feast; the paintings and sarcophagi from the catacombs of Rome attest to the great antiquity of this tradition. In the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, the visit to the Magi is read on Christmas Day, and the Epiphany is principally focused on the Baptism of the Lord, as may be seen in the icon of the feast. The Roman Rite traditionally assigns the celebration of this latter event to the octave day of the Epiphany, which was officially renamed “the Baptism of the Lord” in the 1961 rubrical reform; this change was carried over into the post-Conciliar liturgy. The Epiphany is also traditionally the day on which the date of Easter is announced to the faithful, and the feast and its vigil are the occasion of several blessings in the Rituale.

The Adoration of the Magi, depicted on a Christian sarcophagus of the 4th century, now in the Pio-Christian collection of the Vatican Museums.

At the first Mass of Christmas, the Church reads the revelation of the Incarnation to the people of the ancient covenant, represented by the shepherds; at the dawn Mass, these men of humble estate come to Bethlehem, and behold the Creator of the Universe as an infant sleeping in a manger. This private manifestation of God to the people of Israel on Christmas is complimented by a similarly private manifestation on Epiphany to the nations of the world, in the persons of the Magi. As St Fulgentius says in a sermon read during the octave of the Epiphany, “The shepherds were the first-fruits of the Jews; the Magi have become the first-fruits of the gentiles.” St Matthew does not say that the Wise Men found the Holy Family still at the stable in Bethlehem, where they had been found earlier by the shepherds, but the Church’s artistic tradition has depicted it thus, precisely to emphasize the connection between these two “epiphanies”.

The last antiphon of Christmas Matins is “God hath made known, alleluja, his salvation, alleluja,” words which are repeated at both Lauds and Vespers; the psalm from which they are taken, Psalm 97, has been associated with the Nativity of the Lord from very ancient times. A subsequent verse of the same psalm is sung as the communion antiphon of the third and most solemn of the three Christmas Masses, and is repeated several times during the octave: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” These words are fulfilled in the Epiphany, when the representatives of the ends of the earth, the Magi, come to worship the Christ Child, God Incarnate for our salvation. Therefore, although the Gospel does not say how many they were, Christian art from the earliest times (and especially in Rome) has usually shown them as three, representing the three parts of the world known to ancient peoples, Asia, Africa and Europe, descendents of the three sons of Noah.

The Adoration of the Magi, by Flemish painter Gerard David, ca. 1490.

From the earliest times, the Roman Gospel of the third Mass of Christmas has been the Prologue of St John (1, 1-14); this is attested already in the middle of the seventh century in the very oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Comes Romanus of Wurzburg. In the high Middle Ages, the custom emerged of reading this same text at the end of the Mass, as part of the celebrant’s thanksgiving. At the third Mass of Christmas, therefore, the Gospel of the Epiphany was read in its place, uniting the revelation of the Incarnate Word to Israel with His revelation to the nations. It is worth noting that the Gospels of both Christmas and Epiphany end with a genuflection, by which we imitate the Magi in kneeling before the Divine Infant, just as we honor the Incarnation every Sunday by genuflecting during the Creed at the words “Et incarnatus est.” (The 1961 rubrical reform of Pope St John XXIII prescribes that there be no last Gospel at this Mass.)

In the Middle Ages, another pair of Gospels was added to the liturgy to associate the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. At Matins of Christmas, the Genealogy of Christ according to St Matthew (1, 1-16) was sung before the Te Deum and the Midnight Mass, at Epiphany Matins, the Genealogy according to St Luke (3, 21 – 4, 1). Both of these were normally sung with the same ceremonies that accompany the singing of the Gospel at Solemn Mass. Since these texts are fairly repetitive, musicians composed special and elaborate music for them; they were often set for two deacons or groups of deacons, who would alternate the verses.

St Matthew’ genealogy was clearly chosen for Christmas because it ends with St Joseph, “the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, that is called Christ.” In German-speaking lands, it was usually follow by the antiphon “O mundi Domina”, a final O antiphon on the cusp between Advent and Christmas. That of St Luke was then assigned to Epiphany because it is preceded by an account of the Baptism of Christ (vs. 21-23), one of the principal events commemorated by the feast. This Gospel ends with Christ departing into the desert “lead by the Spirit”, a distant prelude to the coming Lenten fast. Commenting on the reason why these two Gospels are read on their respective feasts, Sicard of Cremona writes in about 1200, “Matthew reckons (the genealogy) by descending (from Abraham to Joseph), because he is describing the humanity of Christ, by which He descends to us. Luke recounts (the genealogy) ascending, since from the baptized One he ascends to God, showing the effects of baptism; because the baptized become sons of God.” (Mitrale, V, 6)

Folio 19r of the Schuttern Gospels, an early 9th century illuminated manuscript produced at the Abbey of Schuttern in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

These texts occur in virtually every use of the Roman Rite except that of the Roman Curia itself, the ancestor of the Breviary of St. Pius V; they were retained after the Tridentine reform in the proper breviaries of certain religious orders, including the Premonstratensians, Dominicans, and Carmelites of the Ancient Observance.

Here is a marvelous recording of the Genealogy of Christ according to St Luke from Epiphany Matins.

An equally nice version of the Genealogy according to St Matthew from Christmas Matins, sung by the Schola Hungarica; brevitatis causa, the names between “the wife of Uriah” and Jacob, the father of St Joseph, are omitted in this recording. (There is small mistake at the very beginning; the word “autem” is incorrectly added after the name of Abraham.)

Also from the Schola Hungarica, the antiphon “O mundi Domina”; the music is very similar to that of the standard seven O antiphons of Advent.

Aña O mundi Domina, regio ex semine orta, ex tuo jam processit Christus alvo, tamquam sponsus de thalamao; hic jacet in praesepio, qui et sidera regit. ~ O Lady of the world, born of royal descent, Christ hath now come forth from Thy womb, as a bridegroom from his chamber; he lieth in a manger, that also ruleth the stars.

The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel: A Case-Study in Pius V’s Conservatism

I remember hearing years ago a double claim: first, that Psalm 42 was recited en route from the sacristy to the altar as a private act of preparation and that the Last Gospel was recited on the way back to the sacristy as a private act of thanksgiving; and second, that it was Pope Pius V who first put them into the Roman missal in the place they now occupy. I dutifully repeated this opinion in the Q&A after a lecture in St. Louis. A religious brother who happened to be there wrote to me afterwards with a polite correction, and I thought it would be beneficial to share with readers what he shared with me—especially in these days, when people who should know better often attribute fantastical acts of originality to Pius V.

*          *          *

You said that the Last Gospel and Prayers at the Foot were devotional prior to Pius V’s reform, and that they were recited while walking to and from the sacristy. I thought you might be interested to see some images from pre-Trent Roman Missals that in fact prescribe the current practice in their rubrics.

1474 is thought to be the year of the first printed edition of the Missale Romanum. The Henry Bradshaw Society published in 1899 a critical edition of a 1474 Missale Romanum from Milan. While the Last Gospel is not mentioned in the Ordinary, here are the prayers at the foot of the altar:

Missale Romanum 1474 (1899 critical edition)

A Missale Romanum printed in Venice in 1501, three years before Pius V was born, contains two rubrical sections: an introduction at the front and an Ordinarium Misse in the middle of the tome. This Missal includes both the Prayers at the Foot of the altar and the Last Gospel described in precisely the format we are accustomed to for those ceremonies in the TLM today. Since it doesn’t have internal page numbers, I have included text searches that will lead to the right pages online (the scan may also be downloaded for free). There are:

- Front section includes Prayers at the Foot: “stans ante infimum gradum altaris” (search: letificat iyuentutem)
- Ordinarium includes Prayers at the Foot “cum intrat ad altare” (search: facerdos cũ itrat)
- Front section describes Last Gospel “ad cornu evangelii” (search: Initium fancti euangely)
- Ordinarium does not mention a Last Gospel after the Placeat (search: tibi laf qua fancta)

1501 Missale Romanum (Venice)

One can find many Missals from this time period that omit the Last Gospel. I have not found any yet that omit the Prayers at the Foot, which are very consistent across the board, at least for the Roman rite. I also haven’t found any that direct that either of those be said while in transit. So, in the Roman usage, by the printed age, if ever that was the practice, walking and talking was no longer a thing.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Gospels of the Epiphany (Part 1)

The feast of the Epiphany is one of the richest of the Church’s liturgical year, commemorating several different events in the life of Our Lord. The Roman and other Western Rites have traditionally laid the strongest emphasis on the visit of the three Magi to the infant Jesus, which is recounted in the Gospel of the feast; the paintings and sarcophagi from the catacombs of Rome attest to the great antiquity of this tradition. In the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, the visit to the Magi is read on Christmas Day, and the Epiphany is principally focused on the Baptism of the Lord, as may be seen in the icon of the feast. The historical Roman Rite assigns the celebration of this latter event to the octave day of the Epiphany, which was officially renamed “the Baptism of the Lord” in the 1961 rubrical reform; this change was carried over into the post-Conciliar liturgy. The Epiphany is also traditionally the day on which the date of Easter is announced to the faithful, and the feast and its vigil are the occasion of several blessings in the Rituale.

The Adoration of the Magi, depicted on a Christian sarcophagus of the 4th century, now in the Pio-Christian collection of the Vatican Museums.

At the first Mass of Christmas, the Church reads the revelation of the Incarnation to the people of the ancient covenant, represented by the shepherds; at the dawn Mass, these men of humble estate come to Bethlehem, and behold the Creator of the Universe as an infant sleeping in a manger. This private manifestation of God to the people of Israel on Christmas is complimented by a similarly private manifestation on Epiphany to the nations of the world, in the persons of the Magi. As St Fulgentius says in a sermon read during the octave of the Epiphany, “The shepherds were the first-fruits of the Jews; the Magi have become the first-fruits of the gentiles.” St Matthew does not say that the Wise Men found the Holy Family still at the stable in Bethlehem, where they had been found earlier by the shepherds, but the Church’s artistic tradition has depicted it thus, precisely to emphasize the connection between these two “epiphanies”.

The last antiphon of Christmas Matins is “God hath made known, alleluja, his salvation, alleluja,” words which are repeated at both Lauds and Vespers; the psalm from which they are taken, Psalm 97, has been associated with the Nativity of the Lord from very ancient times. A subsequent verse of the same psalm is sung as the communion antiphon of the third and most solemn of the three Christmas Masses, and is repeated several times during the octave: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” These words are fulfilled in the Epiphany, when the representatives of the ends of the earth, the Magi, come to worship the Christ Child, God Incarnate for our salvation. Therefore, although the Gospel does not say how many they were, Christian art from the earliest times (and especially in Rome) has usually shown them as three, representing the three parts of the world known to ancient peoples, Asia, Africa and Europe, descendents of the three sons of Noah.

The Adoration of the Magi, by Flemish painter Gerard David, ca. 1490.

From the earliest times, the Roman Gospel of the third Mass of Christmas has been the Prologue of St John (1, 1-14); this is attested already in the middle of the seventh century in the very oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Comes Romanus of Wurzburg. In the high Middle Ages, the custom emerged of reading this same text at the end of the Mass, as part of the celebrant’s thanksgiving. At the third Mass of Christmas, therefore, the Gospel of the Epiphany was read in its place, uniting the revelation of the Incarnate Word to Israel with His revelation to the nations. It is worth noting that the Gospels of both Christmas and Epiphany end with a genuflection, by which we imitate the Magi in kneeling before the Divine Infant, just as we honor the Incarnation every Sunday by genuflecting during the Creed at the words “Et incarnatus est.” (The 1961 rubrical reform of Pope John XXIII prescribes that there be no last Gospel at this Mass.)

In the Middle Ages, another pair of Gospels was added to the liturgy to associate the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. At Matins of Christmas, the Genealogy of Christ according to St Matthew (1, 1-16) was sung before the Te Deum and the Midnight Mass, at Epiphany Matins, the Genealogy according to St Luke (3, 21 – 4, 1). Both of these were normally sung with the same ceremonies that accompany the singing of the Gospel at Solemn Mass. Since these texts are fairly repetitive, musicians composed special and elaborate music for them; they were often set for two deacons or groups of deacons, who would alternate the verses.

St Matthew’s genealogy was clearly chosen for Christmas because it ends with St Joseph, “the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, that is called Christ.” In German-speaking lands, it was usually follow by the antiphon “O mundi Domina”, a final O antiphon on the cusp between Advent and Christmas. That of St Luke was then assigned to Epiphany because it is preceded by an account of the Baptism of Christ (vs. 21-23), one of the principal events commemorated by the feast. This Gospel ends with Christ departing into the desert “lead by the Spirit”, a distant prelude to the coming Lenten fast. Commenting on the reason why these two Gospels are read on their respective feasts, Sicard of Cremona writes in about 1200, “Matthew reckons (the genealogy) by descending (from Abraham to Joseph), because he is describing the humanity of Christ, by which He descends to us. Luke recounts (the genealogy) ascending, since from the baptized One he ascends to God, showing the effects of baptism; because the baptized become sons of God.” (Mitrale, V, 6)

Folio 19r of the Schuttern Gospels, an early 9th century illuminated manuscript produced at the Abbey of Schuttern in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

These texts occur in virtually every use of the Roman Rite except that of the Roman Curia itself, the ancestor of the Breviary of St. Pius V; they were retained after the Tridentine reform in the proper breviaries of certain religious orders, including the Premonstratensians, Dominicans, and Carmelites of the Ancient Observance.

Here is a marvelous recording of the Genealogy  of Christ according to St Luke from Epiphany Matins by the ensemble Stirps Jesse.

An equally nice version of the Genealogy according to St Matthew from Christmas Matins, sung by the Schola Hungarica; brevitatis causa, the names between “the wife of Uriah” and Jacob, the father of St Joseph, are omitted in this recording. (There is small mistake at the very beginning; the word “autem” is incorrectly added after the name of Abraham.)

Also from the Schola Hungarica, the antiphon “O mundi Domina”; the music is very similar to that of the standard seven O antiphons of Advent.

Aña O mundi Domina, regio ex semine orta, ex tuo jam processit Christus alvo, tamquam sponsus de thalamao; hic jacet in praesepio, qui et sidera regit. ~ O Lady of the world, born of royal descent, Christ hath now come forth from Thy womb, as a bridegroom from his chamber; he lieth in a manger, that also ruleth the stars.

Time for the Soul to Absorb the Mysteries — Part 4: The Ablutions to the Last Gospel

Last week I considered how the Communion rite in the traditional Mass afford a spacious home for corporate and personal prayer, so that the virtue of actual devotion, which is required for fruitful communication, may thrive in clergy and in laity alike. One may say, in fact, that the traditional Mass continually supports and strongly encourages the positing of all the acts of the virtue of religion discussed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, such as devotion, prayer, adoration, sacrifice, and praise.[1] In this way, the Mass is not only an “oasis” of peace in which prayer may be kindled and fed, but also a training or proving ground for the heavenly Jerusalem, whose citizens heroically exercise just these virtues. (Links to Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.)

Today I shall continue my exploration with the rites that take place once the priest and the faithful have received the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord.

The Ablutions

After communion, there is a long pause for the people while the priest cleanses his fingers and the sacred vessels, and the other ministers puts things aside or back to their places for the end of Mass. Here again we see the genius of the Roman Rite as it developed organically: there is no unseemly haste in this matter of ablutions, and, as a providential side effect, there need be no haste in the people’s time of thanksgiving. How welcome, how utterly necessary is this time of grace, when the Lord is most intimately present to and within us! Many great saints have spoken about the privileged prayer that is possible only at this time, in the minutes following sacramental communion with the Word made flesh. What a shame if the very form of the liturgy — or, it must be added, the particular customs of a given community, even in the sphere of the usus antiquior — should thwart this communion of minds and hearts!

The Placeat Tibi

Instead of racing to the finish line as the Novus Ordo does, in its eagerness to “send us out on mission,” et cetera ad nauseam, the old Mass takes a moment to beseech the Lord in a prayer of burning intensity, said by the priest bowing before the altar, in between the Ite missa est and the final blessing:

May the performance of my homage be pleasing to Thee, O holy Trinity, and grant that the Sacrifice which I, though unworthy, have offered up in the sight of Thy Majesty, be acceptable to Thee, and through Thy mercy, be a propitiation for me and for all those for whom I have offered it.

A magnificent summary of the very essence of the Mass, and a summons to embrace its ascetical-mystical reality! The usus antiquior never forgets and never allows us to forget God’s majesty and our unworthiness, God’s mercy and our dire need of it. Centered from start to finish on the primal mystery of the Holy Trinity, serious about the Father’s business, the Mass is here simply styled “the Sacrifice.” That is what it is — and that is how it should look, sound, feel, and exist for us.

The Last Gospel

Over the years, one of the things about the Novus Ordo that has grated on me the most is the rapid-fire conclusion. The celebrant may well take his time with the homily (sometimes it seems as if this is viewed as the most important point of the entire Mass), but when it comes to everything afterwards, it’s “life in the fast lane” — particularly when communion is done. The vessels are hastily put away and “Let us pray” booms out like an ultimatum over the heads of people who could not have had the slightest chance to pray. Within seconds, the floodgates are opened and the crowds, impatient to get home to leisure pursuits that are vastly more significant than anything that happened on Calvary, pour into the parking lot to simulate bumper cars. It is thoroughly disedifying for the few devout Catholics who, due to some unanticipated freethinking, wish to stay in the pews to make their thanksgiving after Mass.

At a traditional Mass, this travesty is unheard of.[2] The liturgy itself builds in time for thanksgiving from the ablutions through the Placeat tibi and, finally, the sweet balm of the Last Gospel, which, no matter how slowly or quickly it is read, whether aloud or sotto voce, always seems like a well-placed comma or ellipsis in the grammar of worship. The end is rejoined with the beginning, like the circulation of divine lifeblood: In the beginning was the Word… the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory… Deo gratias.

It is well to recall the beauty of the Last Gospel, the Prologue of the loftiest of biblical books, on this feast of its author, St. John the Evangelist. For it is he who teaches us, perhaps better than anyone else, the very virtue of restfulness in God that I have been arguing is one of the chief characteristics of the ancient Roman rite. The Beloved Disciple took his time at the Last Supper when leaning on the breast of Jesus; he did not think that there were more urgent things to do, be it selling ointments to get money for the poor, strategizing against the enemies of his Lord, or even preaching the good news that he was later inspired to write down. No, at the solemn moment when the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was instituted, John knew where he had to be and what he had to be doing: at the side of his Master, in the adoring silence of a friendship so intimate that it would later spill out in the most sublime revelations vouchsafed to man. John heard his Gospel beating in the heart of Jesus, High Priest and Victim; there he learned the meaning of adoration, reparation, supplication, and thanksgiving — Eucharistia. St. John is therefore the patron not only of theologians but of all who “worship God in spirit and in truth.” He leads us back, again and again, to the authentic liturgies of the Catholic Church, whose seeds the Lord sowed into the soil of His apostles’ souls in the Upper Room.

NOTES

[1] See Summa theologiae, II-II, qq. 81 to 91.

[2] Cf. my article "Priestly Preparation Before Mass and Thanksgiving After Mass."

Photos courtesy of and (c) Corpus Christi Watershed and Fr. Lawrence Lew.

The Last Gospel in the Dominican Rite

It is not generally well know that the Dominican Rite did not adopt the use of the "Last Gospel" (John 1: 1-14) as a priestly thanksgiving at the altar after Mass until the 1600s, well after its adoption in the Roman liturgy. In fact, we made this addition under pressure to conform to the Roman practice, because in most places the laity had come to expect the priest to recite John's Prologue at the end of the liturgy. The Dominicans had continued the medieval practice of having the priest recite the canticle Benedicite Omnia Opera (Dan. 3: 58-88--still found in Sunday Lauds) while returning from the altar to the sacristy as his thanksgiving. The Roman liturgy of the post-Tridentine period did include that canticle, but as part of the priest's prayers of thanksgiving after Mass. Dominican practice also adopted, as I suppose the Roman also did, the practice of replacing John's Prologue with the proper Gospel of the Sunday or of the ferial in Lent, when this was overridden by that of a saint's day or other solemnity. Sadly, that practice was dropped by our Rite in 1961, when all other "Last Gospels" were suppressed except for that of the Day Mass of Christmas, when the Gospel of the day is John's Prologue. The Last Gospel for that day is that of Epiphany, the visit of the Magi in Matthew.

 There seems to have been considerable resistance among the Dominicans to this novel practice. For example, at Low Mass, Dominican rubrics, as in the 1933 Dominican Missal, specified that the server was to extinguish the candles immediately after the blessing, that is, during the reading of the Last Gospel. This silent protest caused enough comment that, in certain places such as the Eastern Dominican Province in the United States, manuals for altar boys, like that of William Bonniwell in the 1940s, told the servers to wait until the Last Gospel was over before snuffing the candles. In my own Western Province, however, older priests tell me that the practice of snuffing during the Last Gospel continued until its suppression in 1963. I might also add that at least at all the sung Masses in the Dominican Rite that I have attended, the choir and congregation began the (admittedly non-liturgical) recessional hymn immediately after the blessing, as the priest went to begin the Last Gospel.

There was another way in which the Dominican Rite registered a quiet protest against the introduction of this Roman practice. Our text of the Last Gospel was different, although only in its punctuation, not in its words. In the Roman version, the Latin reads: Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est; in ipso vita erat. Which is "Everything was made through him, and without him was made nothing that was made; in him was life." The Dominican reads: Omnia per ipsum facta sunt: et sine ipso factum est nihil: Quod factum est in ipso vita erat. (Note the capital Q.) That is, "Everything was made through him and without him was made nothing. What was made in him was life." I distinctly remember the different position of the "full stop" pause when I first heard Dominicans like Fr. Joseph Fulton, O.P., of saintly memory in my province, saying the old Mass when I was novice. I always do it that way myself. I had immediately noted that the pause was not where I heard it as an altar boy in my secular parish back in New York.

This variant was not an accident. The Dominican punctuation and phrasing reflects the thirteenth-century break in the text as seen, for example, in the exegesis found in Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on the Gospel of John (chapter 1). Even if we had to adopt a Roman liturgical practice in the seventeenth century, we did so using the thirteenth-century version of the Gospel text! It gives me a certain pleasure to note that modern biblical critics, as shown in the critical edition of the Greek (viewable here) place the "full stop" period after "nothing," as the Dominican version does

The Dominicans dropped the Roman practice of reading the Last Gospel during the liturgical reforms of 1963. So the "Last Gospel" is absent from the 1965 Dominican Missal. But, sadly, this edition also displaced the Benedicite Omnia and gave celebrants the option of reciting In Principio as a thanksgiving on the way back to the sacristy, or even of omitting it entirely.

The image included in this post is the Prologue of John from a fifteenth-century French non-Dominican manuscript: where it is included as a devotional prayer after the calendar, not as a "Last Gospel," but readers should notice that it has the Dominican variant on "Quod factum est in ipso vita erat."