That a richer table of the word of God may be provided for the faithful, let the treasures of the Bible be opened up more plentifully. - Sacrosanctum Concilium 51 (my own, corrected translation)
The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth; wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water. I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on. A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus: Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Parath (the name of a river); there hide it in a cleft of the rock. Obedient to the LORD’s command, I went to the Parath and buried the loincloth. After a long interval, the LORD said to me: Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth which I told you to hide there. Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth from the place where I had hid it. But it was rotted, good for nothing!
courtesy of a friend of a friend
Then the message came to me from the LORD: Thus says the LORD: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing. For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen. (Jeremiah 13, 1-11, in the colorless, odorless, gaseous paraphrase known as the New American Bible, the reading for today, Monday of week 17 of Ordinary Time in the post-Conciliar Rite.)
My heartfelt thanks to Mr Gerhard Eger of Canticum Salomonis for his help in researching this article.
The Saturday before Palm Sunday was originally one of the so-called aliturgical days of the Roman Lent, on which no Mass was celebrated, the others being the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, and the six Thursdays between Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. When this custom was changed for the Thursdays by Pope St Gregory II (715-31), the respect for the musical tradition codified by his sainted predecessor and namesake was such that it was deemed better not to add new pieces to the established repertoire. This is why the Masses of these days have no proper chant parts, borrowing their introits, graduals, offertories and communions from other masses. (There is one exception, on the Thursday of Passion week.)
However, the two formerly aliturgical Saturdays already have Masses in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, the oldest of its kind for the Roman Rite, the contents of which predate Gregory II. Evidently this change was made before his time, but we do not know by whom. This is also why the missing chant parts for these Masses were supplied in a different fashion, by simply repeating those of the previous day.
The Communio of both Passion Friday and Saturday (Ps. 26, 12): “Ne tradíderis me, Dómine, in ánimas persequentium me, quoniam insurrexérunt in me testes iníqui, et mentíta est iníquitas sibi. (Give me not up, o Lord, to the souls of them that persecute me, for unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity hath lied for itself.)”
A number of lectionaries of the mid-8th century, and the earliest versions of the Gregorian Sacramentary about 30 years later, mark this day with the rubric “elemosina datur – alms are given.” Within the first half of the 9th century, the liturgical writer Amalarius of Metz reports (De eccl. offic. I, 9) that in both the sacramentary and antiphonary, (his term for the book we now call the gradual), the rubric reads “Dominus papa elemosinam dat. – The lord pope gives alms.”
Later medieval commentators on the liturgy took it for granted that this meant that the pope personally distributed alms to the poor, and in this they are followed by modern writers such as Dom Guéranger and the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster. The former writes in The Liturgical Year that “(t)he Pope presided at this distribution, which was no doubt made ample enough to last the whole of the coming week, when, on account of the long ceremonies, it would scarcely be possible to attend to individual cases of poverty. The liturgists of the Middle Ages allude to the beautiful appropriateness of the Roman Pontiff’s distributing alms with his own hand to the poor, on this day, the same on which Mary Magdalene embalmed with her perfumes the feet of Jesus.” Schuster, on the other hand, says that it was done “in imitation of the Saviour who, on the occasion of the Pasch, was wont to entrust Judas with the duty of giving alms to the poor.” (The Sacramentary, vol. 2, p. 168, citing John 13, 29)
The Mass of Passion Saturday, with the rubric “Sabbato ad Sanctum Petrum, quando elemosina datur – Saturday at St Peter’s, when the alms are given”; in the Echternach Sacramentary, ca. 895 A.D.
However, none of the ancient Ordines Romani, the documents which explain how the liturgy was celebrated in Rome, give any details about how this was done, or why, or at what scale. (A fortiori, we cannot say what connection, if any, the custom may have had to the formerly aliturgical quality of the day.) I make bold, therefore, to offer an alternative explanation.
The oldest text of the Gregorian Sacramentary notes the station for this day “at St Peter’s, when alms are given,” but there is another tradition, attested in various lectionaries, which marks the day as follows: “Sabbato datur fermentum in consistorio Lateranensi – On Saturday, the fermentum is given in the hall (lit. ‘place of assembly’) at the Lateran.” (As noted by Theodor Klauser (1894-1984) Das römische Capitulare evangeliorum, p. 69; 1935) This refers to the custom by which hosts (or pieces of them) consecrated by the pope were sent to the main churches in Rome, and used when the priest performed the fraction rite at Mass, as a symbol of communion between the bishop and his clergy. There do not, however, appear to be any liturgical sources that note both the distribution of the fermentum to the clergy, and of alms to the poor, even though they took place on the same day.
A reconstruction of the Lateran complex as it stood in the Middle Ages; the hall where five of the ecumenical councils were held is in the structure in the middle with five small apses sticking out the side. The complex was rebuilt many times over the centuries, and it is difficult to say where exactly the “consistorium” mentioned above was. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)
Guéranger and Schuster simply take it for granted that the popes did both, but offer no explanation as to how they fit them both into the day, even as Schuster explicitly says that it was supposed to be a day of rest before the lengthy ceremonies of Holy Week. Much less do they explain how the pope and his court fit in the trip from the Lateran to St Peter’s on the opposite side of Rome, and back again. Well before them, the scholars of the Congregation of St Maur, in their commentary on the first Ordo Romanus, admit their perplexity over this discrepancy (PL 78, 887A), while perhaps offering the clue that explains it.
As they note, the famous collection of papal biographies known as the Liber Pontificalis says that Pope Zachary (741-52) “established that on many days, expenses for food, which even now are called ‘elymosina’, be brought from the venerable residence of the patriarch (‘de … patriarchio’, i.e. the Lateran) by the (papal) cellarers to the poor and pilgrims who stayed at St Peter’s, and given out to them, and further established that the same distribution of ‘elymosina’ of food be made to all the needy and infirm throughout all the regions of the city of Rome.” (The author makes a particular note of the word “elymosina”, which has many variant spellings, because it comes from Greek; it is the origin of the English word “alms” and its derivatives.)
While this passage says that the pope distributed alms to all the poor, it singles out St Peter’s basilica as a particularly important center of this work. And indeed, there were several pilgrim hospices in the neighborhood of the Vatican. Many such institutions, not just those in Rome, also took care of the needy in their cities, especially in the winter, when fewer pilgrims traveled, leaving more space within the buildings, and the poor were liable to suffer more. (This is why the Latin word “hospitium – a place to welcome guests” evolved into the English word “hospital.”)
The church of the Holy Spirit “in Sassia”, in the Borgo region near St Peter’s basilica. The nickname “in Sassia” derives from a hospice for Saxon pilgrims established here by the English king Ine of Wessex in 727, one of many such institutions in the area. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by gaspa, CC BY 2.0; incorrectly labeled as a photo of the nearby church of Santa Maria in Traspontina.)
More importantly, it says that the pope frequently sent alms from the Lateran to St Peter’s, not that he personally brought them there or distributed them. So perhaps we should understand that the special Paschal distribution of alms on the Saturday before Palm Sunday was likewise made “by the pope” in the moral sense, but not in the sense that he personally handed them out.
This would explain several things. The distribution would have been made at St Peter’s because it was already an important center of the Roman Church’s charitable activities. This would also be a sign that the alms came from the pope acting as the vicar of the Apostle, much as we still refer to the charitable collection taken each year around the feast of Ss Peter and Paul as “Peter’s pence”, not “Leo’s pence” or “Benedict’s pence.” And perhaps the later form of the rubric, which uses the term “dominus papa – the lord pope”, refers to the pope’s position as the civil ruler of Rome, first de facto, later de jure, a position which was consolidated precisely in the era when the rubric appears, in the days of Pope St Adrian and Charlemagne.
More importantly, if the pope did not personally distribute alms to the poor, but only did so in a figurative sense, it would explain how he could personally distribute the fermentum to the clergy, a much less taxing activity on a day that was supposed to be an opportunity for rest. And it would also perhaps explain why the aliturgical quality of the day was abolished so soon, if it was felt to be more convenient (and safer) to have a Mass at the Lateran, rather than to consecrate hosts for the fermentum at the station Mass of Passion Friday, and then carry them back to the Lateran.
As texts were supplied for the Masses of the formerly aliturgical days, there are inevitably found some variants from one place to another. The most common epistle for the new Mass of Passion Saturday is the one found in the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval predecessors, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, the appropriateness of which is obvious. This is already attested in the lectionary of Murbach ca. 750 A.D.
“Come, and let us invent devices against the just man, … let us strike him with the tongue, and let us give no heed to all his words. Give heed to me, o Lord, and hear the voice of my adversaries. … Remember that I have stood in thy sight, to speak good for them, and to turn away thy indignation from them. … thou, O Lord, knowest all their counsel against me unto death.”
Christ the Man of Sorrows between the prophets David and Jeremiah, ca. 1495-1500, by the Spanish painter Diego de la Cruz.
By the 9th century, the so-called lectionary of Alcuin gives the passage from the prophet Zachariah (9, 9-16) which St Matthew cites (21, 5) in the Gospel which is read at the blessing of the palms. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout for joy, o daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy King will come to thee, the just and savior: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” This carries on through the Middle Ages in a small number of places, sometimes cut down to just the first three or four verses, but in some places, it was read at the blessing of the Palms instead of the more common reading from Exodus.
The Gospel of Holy Monday was originally John 12, 1-36. In Rome, this reading was later divided into two, with the first ending at verse 9. The second part, verses 10-36, was then used to supply the Gospel reading for Passion Saturday, which includes the plotting of the priests to kill Lazarus (10-11), the events of Palm Sunday (12-19), and Philip and Andrew bringing some gentiles to Christ (20-23). It therefore sets the tone of the day as a kind of vigil of Palm Sunday, while the Apostles’ introduction of the gentiles to Christ is read one week before the baptismal ceremonies of Holy Saturday, at which the successors of the Apostles fulfill the great Commission, to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28, 19)
This was, however, very much a minority tradition in the Middle Ages; the Usuarium catalog of medieval liturgical books shows it in only 5% of documented Uses. The most common reading, attested in just under 55% of cases, is John 6, 54-72 (alias 53-71).
“Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” This first verse and those that come immediately after it, from the passage known as the Eucharistic Discourse, would perhaps have been chosen to encourage acceptance of the once-novel practice of celebrating Mass on this formally aliturgical day. Then, when many of the disciples abandon the Lord, “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Will you also go away?’ And Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.’ … Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve; and one of you is a devil?’ Now he meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon: for this same was about to betray him…” This of course foreshadows Christ’s betrayal by Judas, and abandonment by the disciples, which are read at the Mass of Palm Sunday in the Passion of St Matthew.
The readings of Passion Saturday, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, and John 6, 54-72, in a Sarum Missal printed ca, 1500.
There is yet another Gospel for this day, which was read in about one-third of the medieval Uses of the Roman Rite, the whole of John chapter 17. This is the last part of Our Lord’s discourse at the Last Supper, the prayer which He makes to the Father before undergoing His Passion; in the liturgy, it serves as a prelude to the first reading of the Passion the next day.
This passage supplies the antiphons for the Benedictus (verse 5) and Magnificat (verse 25) for this day in the Divine Office, even though the Roman Missal does not read this Gospel. However it came about, this custom is very ancient, and indeed, these antiphons are consistently found also in Uses that read the Gospel from John 6 at Mass.
On the Tuesday of Passion week, the Epistle of the Mass is the episode of the book of Daniel known as “Bel and the Dragon”, the fourteenth and final chapter in the Vulgate. This is one of the deuterocanonical parts of the book, along with the story of Susanna (chapter 13), which is read earlier in Lent, and the long section of chapter 3 known as “the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Children.” Of the latter two, a portion of the Prayer is read as the Epistle on Thursday of this week; the Song is one of the most commonly used canticles in all historical Christian liturgies, known from its opening word in Latin as the Benedicite.
This episode is the second time Daniel is thrown into a den of lions, the first being in the protocanonical sixth chapter. In the Patrologia Latina, more citations of chapter 6 are listed than of chapter 14, but in point of fact, the two stories are very similar, and many of the citations are vague enough that they could really refer to either one. The first verses in the Missal paraphrase the Biblical text, and summarize that the Babylonians rose up against Daniel because he destroyed two of their idols: a statue called Bel, which he unmasked as a fraud that didn’t really eat the food laid out for it every night, and a “dragon” (or “serpent”) which he killed by stuffing a lump of pitch, fat and hair down its throat. (“Bel” derives from the name “Baal”, a very nasty character who is often mentioned in the books of Kings) They therefore force King Cyrus to throw Daniel to the lions, which (as in the earlier episode) have been deliberately starved, but nevertheless do not touch the prophet; after a week he is discovered safe and sound, and his persecutors are themselves then thrown into the pit and devoured. I suspect that the version from chapter 14 was the one chosen for liturgical use because of the picturesque episode of the angel (verses 32-38), who carries the prophet Habakkuk by his hair over 500 miles from Judaea to Babylon, in order to bring food to Daniel.
In ancient Christian frescoes and sarcophagi, Daniel is often shown in the lions’ den nude. His emergence from the den or “pit” represents the Resurrection of Christ, which is the general theme behind so many early Christian artworks; his nudity therefore demonstrates the reality of the human nature and human body in which Christ rose, against the many early heretics who denied them. (The prophet Jonah, who represents Christ’s body in his own, according to the Lord’s own explanation, is also frequently shown nude for the same reason.) However, this theme does not appear in early Christian writings.
Daniel in the Lions’ Den; fresco of the 3rd century in the Catacomb of Ss Peter and Marcellinus
As is so often the case, the Church Fathers’ interpretation of the episode indicates why it was chosen to be read in Lent. Already in the third century, St Cyprian of Carthage explains that “Daniel, when he was compelled to adore the idol Bel that the people and king then worshipped, to assert the honor of his God with full faith and liberty, cried out, saying, ‘I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who made heaven and earth.’ ” (Epistle 61, known as “The Exhortation to Martyrdom”, PL IV 354A) These words, so similar to the opening of the baptismal Creed, reminded the ancient catechumens not only of the Faith which they wished to profess, but also that they might very well have been called to bear witness to it as martyrs, as indeed Cyprian himself did. In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (the first such commentary among the works of the Fathers), the story is read as an exhortation to trust in God. “To those who seek the kingdom and the justice of God, He promises that all things will be added; for, since all things belong to God, nothing can be lacking to him that has God, if he himself is not lacking to God. Thus a meal was arranged divinely for Daniel, when he was closed in the lions’ den by the king’s order; and among the hungry beasts, who did yet spare him, the man of God was fed.” (PL 4, 534A)
Once the era of persecution had passed, Daniel was frequently represented by the Fathers as a moral model. For St Zeno of Verona, a contemporary of St Ambrose, Daniel shows us the power of fasting as a spiritual discipline, an important theme for Lent. “Daniel, unarmed, killed a dragon that was terrible to the peoples, and being thrown to the lions, ate in the middle of his danger, he who was wont to fast (Dan. 9, 3) when he was out of danger. (Tractatus 2.8.3 de Timore, PL XI 324A) For Ambrose himself, this also makes him a model of the virtue of courage. “Daniel … was so wise that, in the midst of lions irritated by hunger, he was not weakened (or ‘disheartened’) by any dread of the beasts’ savagery; so courageous, that he could eat without fear of provoking them by his example to eat him.” (De Officiis, 2.4.11, PL XVI 106C)
In his treatise “On God’s Promises and Predictions” St Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage in the mid-5th century, sums up these various traditions. Daniel by his actions “teaches and shows that only the one true God is to be worshipped, abandoning vain superstitions, by which the prophet saw that not only the Babylonians, but indeed the whole world was held captive under the power of demons. (God) also showed to his herald that in the future it would be freed from their dominion by the grace of Christ the Lord. But because, as someone once said ‘Truth begets hatred’ (the Roman playwright Terence, in Andria, 1.1.68) … the Babylonians put him into the lions’ den to be devoured. … Therefore, when Daniel was brought out … his enemies were given to the lions as food, that they might perish. These things were done as a symbol of Daniel’s Lord, who prayed for His own, saying ‘Hand not over to the beasts the soul that confesseth Thee (Psalm 73, 19).’ For that roaring lion, the devil, who wandereth about seeking whom he may devour, (1 Peter 5, 8), consumes the enemies of our prophet, Christ the Lord, when he finds them, having received power over them.”
Daniel in the Lion’s Den; sculpted capital in the Abbey of Sant’Antimo in Montalcino, Italy, by the anonymous Romanesque sculptor known as the Master of Cabestany, active in the second half of the 12th century. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko.) Daniel in the center, surrounded by lions, raises his hands in a gesture very similar to that of the priest at Mass during the Our Father; the angel, immediately to the right, is the deacon, and Habakkuk holds his basket of food under a veil, as the subdeacon holds the paten. – The Master of Cabestany is named for a small town near Perpignan, France, where he did a particularly beautiful sculpted tympanum over the door of one of the churches. Well over 100 pieces have been attributed to him and his workshop, in a wide range of places throughout southern France and northern Spain. The presence of three of his pieces in Tuscany suggests that he may have traveled as a pilgrim to Rome, and financed the trip by doing sculptures at various stops along the way. In his time, Sant’Antimo was a very rich and important territorial abbey which governed a large tract of Tuscany, fully able to pay him a good price for his work, as well as a popular stop for pilgrims on the via Francigena.
Yesterday, the Roman Rite began the season of Passiontide, in which the focus of the liturgy shifts from penance, fasting, and the preparation of the catechumens for baptism to meditation on the Lord’s impending suffering and death, before His glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Mass chants of the season are mostly taken from Psalms which are evidently about the Passion, and were understood as such by the Fathers, as for example today’s introit, the beginning of Psalm 55: “Miserére mihi, Dómine, quoniam conculcávit me homo: tota die bellans tribulávit me. – Have mercy on me, o Lord, for a man hath trodden me down; all the day he hath made war and troubled me.” A treatise known as the Breviarium in Psalmos, traditionally but incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, which seems to have been read very closely by the unknown composers of many Gregorian chants, explains this verse as follows: “In the one who is a man and makes war, the Psalm shows the attack of the devil and of the other wicked spirits, at whose inspiration the Lord suffered.”
The Man of Sorrows, ca. 1434, by the German painter and Dominican friar Master Francke (ca. 1380- ca. 1440)
The epistle, however, is the third chapter of the book of Jonah, in which the prophet enters the city of Nineveh and preaches to the inhabitants the fast commanded by God as an act of repentance. Placed on this first feria of Passiontide, it serves as an important reminder that although the tenor of the liturgy has shifted, Passiontide is still very much a part of Lent, and Lent is kept by fasting.
The Gospel, John 7, 32-39, then explains in a very beautiful and subtle way what exactly the liturgy is now looking forward to, and not just in Passiontide, but in what comes from it, and extends beyond it through the Easter season. “The rulers and Pharisees sent ministers to apprehend him”: this foretells our Lord’s arrest in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of Holy Thursday. Jesus’ words to those sent to arrest Him, “Yet a little while I am with you, and then I go to him that sent me,” remind us that we are now very close to the day on which He will die, but also to the time of His Ascension, in which He will bring our human nature, glorified in the Passion and Resurrection, before the throne of God. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me, and where I am, thither you cannot come,” refers to the absence of the Lord’s body from the tomb. The response of the Jews to this, as they say, “Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will He go unto the dispersed among the gentiles, and teach (them)?”, is a prophecy of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, through which the Lord will indeed, in the person of His Apostles, go among the gentiles and teach them.
The conclusion of the Gospel therefore speaks of the baptism of the catechumens both at the Easter vigil, and, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, at the vigil of Pentecost as well. On the latter, the Communio of the Mass is taken from this passage. “And on the last and great day of the festivity (here, symbolically, on the last day of Lent, i.e. Holy Saturday), Jesus stood and cried, saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him: for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Communio, Jo. 7 Ultimo festivitátis die dicébat Jesus, ‘Qui in me credit, flúmina de ventre ejus fluent aquae vivae’; hoc autem dixit de Spíritu, quem acceptúri erant credentes in eum, allelúja, allelúja. (On the last day of the feast, Jesus said, ‘He who believes in Me, from within him there shall flow rivers of living water.’ He said this, however, of the Spirit, Whom they who believed in Him were to receive, alleluia, alleluia.
The final verse reminds us, as we walk with the Lord in His sufferings, that He is indeed glorified at the end of them, not only in the Resurrection, but in the establishment of His Church, and the fulfillment of the mission which He gave to it to go forth and baptize all nations.
From the Friday of the third week of Lent to the last day of Passion week, most of the Roman Rite’s Gospel readings are taken from St John. They are, however, not arranged in the order of the Gospel itself.
Saturday, John 12, 10-36 (the triumphal entry into Jerusalem)
In the lectionary of the post-Conciliar Rite, not one of these remains in its traditional place. The Gospels of the Samaritan woman, the blind man and the raising of Lazarus have all been moved to Sundays in year A, on the basis of a completely erroneous belief, one that rests on no evidence of any kind, that their analogous position in the Ambrosian Rite attests their supposed original order in the Roman Rite. (Someone managed to realize that within the three-year lectionary system, that this means that these crucial passages are omitted from Lent altogether in two years out of three. A provision is therefore made that they can be resumed on any of the following ferias of the same week in such years, but this is not mandatory.) The rest have been rearranged as part of a semi-continuous series of readings from John which follows the order of the Gospel, but the selection of passages is very different, and no part of today’s reading remains in Lent on either a Sunday or a feria. The official description of the new lectionary claims that this new selection of readings “corresponds more fully to the characteristics of Lent.”
I imagine that many of our readers have read the proposal made by Geoffroy Kemlin, abbot of Solesmes, and sent to the Holy Father, recently published in an English translation on Rorate Caeli, that the Ordo missae of St Pius V be incorporated into the post-Conciliar missal, so that those who celebrate the traditional Roman Rite can benefit from all the worst features of the post-Conciliar Rite: the prefaces, eucharistic prayers and lectionary. In an interview that follows, Abbot Kemlin states that “the current lectionary called for by Vatican II is far richer than the old one.”
I pass over the fact that Vatican II most certainly did not call for the historical lectionary of the Roman Rite to be thrown in the trash and replaced with a new one of the Consilium ad exsequendam’s devising, although the good abbot of all people should know this. But to refer to the new lectionary as “richer” is an embarrassingly shallow assessment. Yes, it does have more readings. But as has been pointed out over and over again for nearly sixty years now, there is hardly a page of it that does not cheapen or substantially mispresent the meaning of the Word of God by censoring it of so-called difficult passages, or shortening it for the sake of mere convenience. (The Gospel of Lazarus, e.g., which was read this past Sunday, can optionally be cut down by omitting 18½ of its 45 verses, more than 40% of it. Next Sunday, the Passion of St Matthew can be optionally cut down to a pitiable 44 verses out of the traditional 141, a bit more than 30%.)
An unimportant part of the Lord’s Passion, depicted by the Italian painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), ca. 1730.
But there is the graver issue that the men who created the Roman Mass, including its lectionary, were poets and scholars of the very highest and finest literary sensibility, as evidenced, for example, by the careful selection of the Gospel reading for today, and the subtle way it lays out a program for the rest of Passiontide, and connects it to the Easter season. The notion that their work so desperately needed improving upon that almost no part of it should be left undisturbed would, in a happier age, rightly have been censured as scandalous and offensive to pious ears. The notion that the men who sat on the Consilium ad exsequendam were the ones to improve it is laughable. To paraphrase one of Evelyn Waugh’s best sayings, “To see this committee fumbling with our rich and delicate lectionary is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sèvres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.”
I therefore offer as a counter-proposal that the lectionary of the post-Conciliar Rite be further enriched by the optional use of the Roman lectionary, so that the whole Church may benefit from the marvelous work of these ancient poets and scholars, our forefathers in the Faith, as Vatican II actually wanted.
In the Roman Rite, the Gospel of the woman caught in adultery, John 8, 1-11, is joined at today’s Mass with the story of Susanna, who is rescued from an accusation of adultery by the prophet Daniel. Whether by coincidence or design, these two stories are united not just by a textual theme, but also by a text-critical one; both stories were known in antiquity to be later additions to their respective books, but nevertheless accepted as authentic and canonical by the Church.
Christ and the Adulteress, 1620s, by the French painter Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), an unabashed plagiarist of Caravaggio. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
Susanna is one of two Greek additions to the book of the prophet Daniel, the other being the episode known as Bel and the Dragon. In the Septuagint, it is placed at the beginning of the book, since it describes Daniel as a youth, and Bel and the Dragon at the end. St Jerome placed them both at the end of his Latin translation of Daniel, and they therefore appear in the Vulgate as chapters 13 and 14 respectively. Since the time of the Protestant reformation, they have been included in many non-Catholic English Bibles with the group of books improperly known as the Apocrypha.
But as with the other so-called Apocrypha, the early Church had no serious doubts about the canonicity of either episode. The earliest Patristic commentary on Daniel, written by Hippolytus of Rome in the first half of the 3rd century, accepts Susanna as a part of the book without distinction, and the hugely influential Biblical scholar Origen, his contemporary, explicitly defended its canonicity. It was frequently depicted in art in the Roman catacombs, and both episodes form part of the Roman Mass lectionary.
Susanna as a lamb between two wolves, from the Arcosolium of Celerina in the Catacomb of Praetextatus, mid-4th century.
The pericope of the adulteress, on the other hand, was a bit slower to find acceptance. It is missing completely from a considerable number of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including several of the earliest and most important ones, such as the Codexes Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus. Other early manuscripts have it marked in such a way that indicates doubt as to its authenticity, and a few place it at the end of Luke 21, which is why it is sometimes known as “the wandering pericope.” It is not mentioned in some important early commentaries on the Gospel of John, such as those by Ss John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria. To this day, the Byzantine Rite’s Gospel for the Divine Liturgy of Pentecost goes from the last verse of John 7 directly to verse 8, 12, and the passage is not included in the semi-continuous reading of St John that runs from Easter to Pentecost. (It is included in the lectionary for the feasts of female penitents.)
In the West, the question of its authority was settled by its acceptance on the part of three of the first four Doctors of the Church. St Jerome included it in the correction of the Latin text of the Gospels which he made at the behest of Pope St Damasus I. St Ambrose refers to it as part of the liturgy in his Second Apology for David, and it is still used to this day in the Ambrosian Rite in the same place in which he attests it. St Augustine includes it in his commentary on the Gospel of John, which is by far the most important and widely read such commentary in the West. In his book “On Adulterous Marriages”, he also gives the following explanation of the passage’s absence from some manuscripts, words which have become, alas, all too relevant to our own age.
“But now, after Christ said to the adulteress, ‘Neither shall I condemn thee; go, sin no more henceforth,’ who could not understand that the husband must forgive since he sees that the Lord of them both has forgiven (her)? Nor should she any longer call herself an adulteress, whose crime was wiped away by God’s mercy when she repented.
But clearly the sense of the faithless abhors this, such that some of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, I believe, fearing that free license to sin was being given to their wives, took out of their copies (of the Gospel) that which the Lord did regarding the forgiveness of the adulteress, as if He granted permission to sin when He said, ‘Now sin no longer …’ (De conjugiis adulterinis II, 7.)
The Four Doctors of the Church, by Pier Francesco Sacchi, ca. 1516.
For Hippolytus, Susanna is a figure of the Church beset by her persecutors, but vindicated and saved by the just judgment of God in the person of the prophet Daniel, whose name means “God is my judge.” For St Ambrose, the adulteress is also a figure of the Church, in the broader sense of God’s people, in both the Old and New Testaments, that seeks the Word of God in many places until she finds it in Christ, and is absolved and purified by Him. “And therefore she was waiting about, and everywhere sought the Word of God, because she was wounded, because she was naked, because she was an adulteress in all things, although without blemish in Christ, as she sought a redeemer in her wretched body. Christ joined her to Himself, in order to make her immaculate; He united Himself to her, in order to take away her adultery.” Where Susanna is the symbol of the Church in her fidelity to Christ, and the adulteress is the Church redeemed by Christ when she has been unfaithful to him.
Roughly nine centuries later, William Durandus neatly sums up this union of the two readings as follows: “On Saturday (of the third week of Lent) it is shown that the Lord saves by justice and mercy, whence the Epistle speaks of Susanna, who was saved by justice. The Gospel is that of the woman caught in adultery, whom the Lord delivered through mercy. Therefore, because (she) is saved through mercy, the Church, seeing the weakness of her children, asks to be delivered through mercy in the Introit, saying, ‘Give ear, O Lord, to my words, understand my cry. Hearken to the voice of my prayer, (my king and my God.)’ ” (Rat. Div. Off. 7, 52, 1)
Three further things we may note about this Introit. Psalm 5, from which it is taken, is titled in Greek and Latin “for her that obtaineth the inheritance”, which the Church Fathers naturally took as a reference to the Church. A 4th-century commentary on the Psalms called “Breviarium in Psalmos”, which was long mistakenly attributed to St Jerome, says, “This Psalm is written about the Church, which at the end of the world will obtain the inheritance in all the nations that believe in Christ.” (PL XXVI, 828D-829A)
Secondly, the same commentary explains the words “my king and my God” as follows. “He truly dared to say ‘my king and my God’, even he over whom sin does not reign in his mortal body. ‘My king and my God’, because Thou reignest in me, and sin reigneth not, wherefore Thou art my God. Thou art my God, because my belly is not my God (Phil. 3, 19), because money is not my God, because lust is not my God.” This represents the condition of the Church as symbolized by the adulteress, whose adultery is taken away, and thus lust is no longer her god.
Third, the verse of the Introit continues in the fourth verse of the Psalm, “For to thee will I pray, o Lord; in the morning thou shalt hear my voice.” The story of the adulteress begins when “early in the morning (Jesus) came again into the temple.” This is also a symbol of the adulteress’ conversion, as the Breviarium says: “As long as I am in the darkness of error, He does not hear me, but when the sun of justice (i.e. Christ) shall come into my heart, then He heareth me.”
The Gradual of this Mass is taken from Psalm 22: “If I shall walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils; since Thou art with me, o Lord.” This refers to the fact that both Susanna and the adulteress faced the possibility of being killed, but were saved by the Lord. In many medieval Uses of the Roman Rite, this same gradual was used at the Requiem Mass.
The Offertory is from Psalm 118, verse 133: “Direct my steps according to thy word, that no injustice may have dominion over me, o Lord.” Of this, the Breviarium says simply “and not according to bodily desires, because I am given over to Thy service.” St Hilary of Poitiers comments in a similar vein, “…not according to the ways of the world, not according to the glory of men, not according to the pleasures of the body.” (Tractatus super Psalmos; PL IX, 617D-618A) Thus the Church, freed from the dominion of sin like the adulteress, is able to proceed to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. And since this Psalm was sung daily for centuries at the hours from Prime to None, those who heard and sang this Offertory would certainly have thought of the first part of the following verse, “Redeem me from the calumnies of men” as a reference to the calumnies made against Susanna, and the second part, “that I may keep thy commandments,” as a reference to the Lord’s command to the adulteress, “Go and sin no more.”
On the ferias of Lent, the Communion antiphons are taken each one from a different Psalm in sequential order, starting on Ash Wednesday with Psalm 1. The days which were formerly aliturgical do not form part of this series, namely, the six Thursdays, and also the first and last Saturday; the ferias of Holy Week are also not included. (See the table below; click for larger view.)
The series is also interrupted on six days when particularly important passages of the Gospels are read, and the Communion is taken from them instead. Here is a magnificent polyphonic setting of the one for today, by the Portuguese composer Frei Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650), a Carmelite friar who worked principally at his order’s house in Lisbon.
In the lectionaries of the various Latin rites, one of the most prominent Gospels of the Lenten season is that of the Samaritan woman who spoke to Christ at the well of Jacob (St John 4, 5-42). Although the Roman, Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites each read this Gospel on a different day, it appears in all three as a lesson of particular importance for the preparation of those who will be baptized at Easter or Pentecost.
In the Roman Rite, it is read on the Friday of the third week, joined with one of the most important epistles of Lent, Numbers 20, 1-13, in which Moses makes water run from the rock in the desert. This story was understood by the early Christians as a prefiguration of the sacrament of baptism, starting with St Paul himself, who tells us that “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea: and did all 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, 1-4) Moses striking the rock to make the water run from it is one of the most frequently depicted Biblical scenes in early Christian art; just in the paintings of the Roman catacombs, it appears over 70 times, along with numerous other representations on ancient sarcophagi.
Moses making the water run from the rock in a fourth-century fresco in the Catacomb of St Callixtus.
On the previous Sunday, the Lenten station is kept at the church of St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls, where anciently the catechumens underwent a formal examination of their Christian faith, the ritual known as the scrutiny. The Gelasian Sacramentary contains a beautiful prayer for them to be said on that day, “that they may worthily and wisely come to the confession of Thy praise; so that through Thy glory they may be reformed to the former dignity which they had lost in the original transgression.” At the same Mass, the Memento of the living has an interpolation to pray for their future godparents, and during the Hanc igitur, the names of the catechumens were read out loud. On the following Friday, the station is kept at another church of Rome’s most venerated martyr, St Lawrence ‘in Lucina’, nicknamed, like so many sacred places in the city, for the woman upon whose property it was originally built. Here, they would hear Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman of the “living water … springing up unto life everlasting”, and understand His words as a clear reference to baptism.
A piece of the gridiron of St Lawrence’s martyrdom, preserved in a reliquary in a side-altar of San Lorenzo in Lucina. Photo courtesy of Orbis Catholicus.
In his treatise on the Gospel of St John (Tract 15, 10), St Augustine explains the woman as a type of the Church, “not yet justified, but waiting to be justified”, like the catechumens themselves. He also reminds us that the Samaritans were not part of the Jewish people; indeed, the Bible itself says that they were a mixed nation of Jews and pagans, observing the customs of both. (4 Kings 17, 24-41) So too, the early Church was a mixture of Jews and pagans, now united in Christ in whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3, 28) Augustine continues by saying, “Therefore, in her, let us hear ourselves (spoken of), and in her, let us recognize ourselves, and in her, let us give thanks to God for ourselves.” (i.e. for what He has done for us.)
The dedicatory inscription on the counter-façade of Santa Sabina in Rome, the only part of the church’s original mosaic decoration which survives, ca. 425 A.D. The two figures on the sides are “the church from the circumcision” on the left, and “the church from the gentiles” on the right. Photo courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.
In the Ambrosian Rite, the first Sunday of Lent is called “in capite jejunii – at the beginning of the fast”, a title also used for Ash Wednesday in medieval liturgical books of the Roman Rite. The remaining Sundays are named for their Gospels, all taken from St John, the second Sunday being that of the Samaritan woman, the third ‘of Abraham’ (chap. 8, 31-59), the fourth ‘of the man born blind,’ (9, 1-38), the fifth of Lazarus (11, 1-45) and the sixth ‘of the Palms’ (11, 55 – 12, 11). On the second Sunday, the following antiphon is sung after the Gospel, while the deacon spreads the corporal on the altar in preparation for the Offertory. (As in the Roman Rite, most of the Mass propers use the Old Latin version of the Scriptures.)
For I will take you from among the gentiles, and I will pour upon you clean water; you shall be cleansed from all your iniquities. I will give you a new heart, and renew a righteous spirit within you. (Ezechiel 36, 24, 25 and 26.)
In the Roman Rite, the same prophecy of Ezechiel (though not exactly the same words) provides both the introit and the first epistle of the Mass of the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent, on which day the catechumens were exorcized and blessed at the tomb of St Paul, the great Apostle of the gentiles.
The Ambrosian Missal contains proper prefaces for nearly every Mass of the temporal cycle, generally rather longer than those of the Roman Rite. The Lenten prefaces of the Sundays are each based on the Gospel of the day, and that of the Samaritan woman reads as follows:
Truly it is worthy and just…through Christ our Lord. Who, to instill (in us) the mystery of His humility, being tired, sat at the well, and * asked of the Samaritan woman that a drink of water be given Him, even He that had created the gift of faith in her; and so He deigned to thirst for her faith, so that, as He asked water of her, He might enkindle in her the fire of divine love. * We therefore beseech Thy boundless compassion, that defying the dark depths of vice, and leaving behind the vessel of harmful desires, we may ever thirst for Thee, that art the fountain of life, and source of all goodness, and may please Thee by the observance of our fast. Through the same etc.
The words here noted between the stars form the basis of a Preface used in the post-Conciliar Rite in the first year of the three-year lectionary cycle, when the story of the Samaritan woman is read on the third Sunday of Lent. Since this crucial passage is not included among the readings of the second and third years, a rubric provides that it may be read on Sunday in place of the Gospels assigned to those years, or it may displace one of the ferial Gospels; a similar provision is made for the blind man and Lazarus.
The Orthodox church of Jacob’s Well, also known as St Photini’s, in the city of Nablus on the West Bank. The current church is the fifth structure to stand over the site, which has been venerated by Christians as the Well of Jacob since the fourth century.
In the Byzantine tradition, the story of the Samaritan woman is read in Eastertide rather than Lent, as is that of the man born blind; however, the association of it with the sacrament of baptism is just as clear as in the Latin rites. On the fifth Sunday of Easter, the following three exapostilaria are sung at the end of Matins; the first is that of the Easter season, the second relates to the Gospel of the day’s Divine Liturgy, and the third to the feast of Mid-Pentecost.
Exapostilarion of Easter Having fallen asleep in the flesh as a mortal, O King and Lord, You rose again on the third day, raising up Adam from corruption, and abolishing death. O Pascha of incorruption, O salvation of the world! of the Samaritan Woman You reached Samaria, and talking with a woman, sought water to drink, my all-powerful Savior, who poured out water for the Hebrews from a sharp rock, and led her to belief in you: and now she enjoys life eternally in heaven. of Mid-Pentecost At the mid-point of the feast, Lover of mankind, you came to the temple and said: You who are full of thirst, come to me and draw living water welling up, through which you will all revel in delight and grace and immortal life.
Note how the exapostilarion of the Samaritan woman makes the same association between the Lord’s revelations to her and the episode of the water running from the rock that is made in the Roman Rite by the readings of the Mass. This reference to the waters of baptism continues in the third text, which quotes Christ’s second reference to the “living waters” in the Gospel of John, when He speaks in the temple during the feast of Tabernacles. (chapter 7, 37-39.)
The text of this second Gospel of the “living waters” is deferred by the Byzantine Rite to Pentecost itself, a custom which it shares with the Ambrosian and Roman Rites in different ways. The church of Milan preserves to this very day an ancient custom of celebrating two Masses on both Easter and Pentecost, the traditional days for the administration of baptism; one is the Mass “of the solemnity” itself, and another “for the (newly) baptized.” On Easter Sunday, the Gospel at the Mass for the baptized is John 7, 37-39, with the second part of the last verse omitted.
On great day of the festivity, the Lord Jesus stood and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him.
At the Mass for the baptized on Pentecost, this Gospel is repeated, adding the final words of verse 39 which are not said on Easter, “for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” In the Roman Rite, the same text provides the Communion antiphon for the Mass of the vigil of Pentecost, although the Gospel itself is read on the Monday of Passion Week.
The Byzantine Rite has traditionally honored the Samaritan woman as a Saint, and she was often called both an Apostle and Evangelist. Her legend states that she, her five sisters and two sons were among those baptized by St Peter and the other Apostles on the first Pentecost, and afterwards traveled to preach in many places; after evangelizing Carthage, they came to Rome, where they were martyred under Nero. Her given name is Photeine (or “Photini” in the modern pronunciation), the Greek word for “bright”; the cognate “photistes – illuminator” is used in the Byzantine tradition as a title for the saint who first evangelizes a people, the best-known example of this being perhaps St Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia. With the latinized form of her name, Photina, she was added to the Tridentine edition of the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Baronius, along with her family members, on March 20th, the day of her feast in the Byzantine Rite. Her troparion makes the same association between the waters of baptism and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost indicated by the placement of her Gospel on the Sunday after Mid-Pentecost.
Wholly illuminated by the divine Spirit, and sated of your thirst by the springs, you drank deeply of the water of salvation from Christ the Savior, all praiseworthy one, and shared it abundantly with them that thirst; o Great Martyr and Equal to the Apostles, Photini, entreat Christ our God to save our souls.
Several years ago, I read a very interesting book called Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia, by Thomas Connolly. (Yale Univ. Press, 1995). The principal subject is Raphael’s painting The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, but it also contains a great deal of information about devotion to the Saint, at whose basilica the Lenten station is held today. I am here paraphrasing what Connolly writes about this station, and its connection to Cecilia; the credit for putting this information together is entirely his.
The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, by Raphael, 1515-17, now in the National Gallery of Bologna. To the left of St Cecilia we see Ss Paul and John the Evangelist, to the right, Ss Augustine and Mary Magdalene. The broken instruments at her feet symbolize that she has rejected the things of this world in order to “sing only to God in her heart”, as is stated in her Office.
In 1744, three inscriptions were found very close to the Basilica of St Cecilia in the Trastevere area of Rome, referring to a small shrine of the “Bona Dea”, as she was called, “the good goddess.” Although she was quite popular in ancient Rome, we know very little about this goddess, since men were excluded from participation in her cult, and it was forbidden to write down what took place at her two annual festivals. One of these was held at a temple dedicated to her on the Aventine hill, the other in the house of the senior magistrate of the Republic, presided over by his wife. During the rites, all men and male animals were excluded from the house; in fact, “Good Goddess” is a euphemistic name, since men were not allowed to speak or even know her true name. One of the most famous episodes in the history of the late Roman Republic, involving all of the leading political figures of the day, including Cicero, Pompey and Julius Caesar, took place when these rites were held in the latter’s house in 62 BC. A man named Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman in an attempt to sneak into the rites and seduce Caesar’s wife, creating an enormous and long-lasting scandal.
The Bona Dea was a goddess very much associated with female chastity, and therefore, anything to do with the goddess of sexual desire, Venus, was also removed from the house where the rites of the Bona Dea were held. This would include any statues and images of Venus, and most particularly the plant myrtle, which was woven into crowns and worn on the head by her worshippers at her principal festivals.
When the Lenten Station is held at the Basilica of St Cecilia on the Wednesday of the Second Week, next door to a shrine of the Bona Dea, the traditional Epistle is taken from the Deuterocanonical additions to the book of Esther, the only reading from that book in the Missal. (This reading was later borrowed from this day for the votive Mass “against the pagans.” It has been suppressed in the post-Conciliar rite.) In chapter 13, Mardochai is praying for the delivery of the Jewish people from their enemy Haman, who has arranged for the Persian Emperor to order the massacre of all the Jews in his dominions.
“In those days, Mardochai prayed to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in thy power, and there is none that can resist thy will, if thou determine to save Israel. Thou hast made heaven and earth, and all things that are under the cope of heaven. Thou art Lord of all, and there is none that can resist thy majesty. And now, O Lord, O king, O God of Abraham, have mercy on thy people, because our enemies resolve to destroy us, and extinguish thy inheritance. Despise not thy portion, which thou hast redeemed for thyself out of Egypt. Hear my supplication, and be merciful to thy lot and inheritance, and turn our mourning into joy, that we may live and praise thy name, O Lord, and shut not the mouths of them that sing to thee, O Lord, our God.’ ” (vss. 9-11 and 15-17)
This is the reading as it appears in the Missal of St Pius V, but before the Tridentine reform, it began as follows: “In those days, Esther prayed to the Lord, saying…” And this, despite the fact that it is Mardochai who offers this prayer in the Bible.
A leaf of a Roman Missal printed at Lyon in 1497. The Mass for today’s station begins in the middle of the right column.
It might seem that by taking the words of a man and putting them in the mouth of a woman, the Church has somehow adopted or absorbed an aspect of the Bona Dea cult when reading these words right next door to her shrine at the Basilica of St Cecilia. This is not the case, however. In chapter 2, 7, it is stated that Esther, (who becomes the Queen of Persia, and saves the Jews from Haman) was called “Hadassah,” (הֲדַסָּה) which is the Hebrew word for “myrtle”, the plant of Venus that was excluded from the rites of the Bona Dea. This would therefore be a deliberate critique of the Bona Dea, and a statement of rejection of the many pagan cults that excluded one class of persons or another.
As noted last month, the first part of the Nicodemus Gospel, John 3, 1-15 or 16, was said at two other Masses before it was assigned to the Finding of the Cross. On the other hand, the second part, verses 16-21, is found in the very oldest Roman lectionaries on Pentecost Monday, and remains there to this day. This may seem an odd choice, given that it speaks entirely about the mission of the Son, without reference to the Holy Spirit. It is assigned to this day as a compliment to the Epistle of the Mass, which is determined by its Roman Station church.
On Easter Monday, the Station is at St Peter’s Basilica, and the Epistle, Acts 10, 37-43, is part of Peter’s discourse in the house of the centurion Cornelius.
You know the word which hath been published through all Judea: for it began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached, Jesus of Nazareth: how God anointed him with the Holy Ghost, and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things that he did in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed, hanging him upon a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses preordained by God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he arose again from the dead; And he * commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is he who was appointed by God, to be judge of the living and of the dead. To him all the prophets give testimony, that by his name all receive remission of sins, who believe in him.
On Pentecost Monday, the station is at the basilica of St-Peter-in-Chains; the Epistle repeats the last two verses of the Epistle of Easter Monday, (beginning at the star noted above,) and continues to verse 48.
While Peter was yet speaking these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word. And the faithful of the circumcision, who came with Peter, were astonished, for that the grace of the Holy Ghost was poured out upon the gentiles also. For they heard them speaking with tongues, and magnifying God. Then Peter answered: Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Ghost, as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Baptism of Cornelius, represented on the bronze baptismal font of the church of St Bartholomew in Liège, by Reiner de Huy, completed by 1118. Image from wikipedia by Jean-Pol Grandmont.
The second part of the Nicodemus Gospel, therefore, clarifies Peter’s statement that Christ is “judge of the living and of the dead.”
For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting. For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. But he that doth truth, cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God.
In the post-Conciliar lectionary, with the abolition of the Octave of Pentecost, this passage has been moved to the Wednesday after Low Sunday, as part of the lectio continua of the Gospel of John in Eastertide, broadly imitating the custom of the Byzantine Rite. A longer version, John 3, 14-21, is read on the 4th Sunday of Lent in the second year of the three-year cycle, and a shorter version, only verses 16-18, is read on Trinity Sunday in year A. Part of the Gospel is also assigned to the Exaltation of the Cross, verses 13-17. The first sentence is frequently used as an Alleluia verse in the new lectionary, although it is not part of the historical chant repertoire.
In the Byzantine Rite, this verse has a particularly prominent place, since it is cited at the celebration of every Divine Liturgy when the Anaphora of St John Chrysostom is used. During the Sanctus, the priest reads as follows.
We also with these blessed powers, o Lord and lover of mankind, cry out and say, ‘Holy art Thou, and all-holy, and Thy only-begotten Son, and Thy Holy Spirit. Holy art Thou and all-holy, and magnificent is Thy glory. Who did so love the world, that Thou gavest Thy only-begotten Son, that everyone that believeth in Him may not perish, but have eternal life.
This anaphora was created as a substitute for the much lengthier Anaphora of St Basil the Great, in which, by the word-count in Greek, the parallel prayer is almost exactly five times as long. Where St Basil recounts the whole history of our salvation, from the creation and fall of man to the Resurrection, Ascension and Second Coming of Christ, with many citations of the Sacred Scriptures, St John Chrysostom sums up the whole economy of salvation with a single verse: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.”
IN those days: The hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones. And he led me about through them on every side; now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, dost thou think these bones shall live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” And he said to me, “Prophesy concerning these bones, and say to them, ‘Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ ” And I prophesied as he had commanded me, and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I saw, and behold the sinews, and the flesh came up upon them: and the skin was stretched out over them, but there was no spirit in them.
And he said to me, “Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, O son of man, and say to the spirit, ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Come, spirit, from the four winds, and blow upon these slain, and let them live again.’ ” And I prophesied as he had commanded me, and the spirit came into them, and they lived, and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. And he said to me, “Son of man, all these bones are the house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people, and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, o my people, and shall have put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land: saith the Lord God.’ ” (Ezechiel 37, 1-14, the sixth prophecy of the Vigil of Pentecost, and seventh of the Easter vigil.)
This passage 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. In the later second century, St Irenaeus of Lyon writes:
“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. … ’ ”
It 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.
A Christian sarcophagus of the first quarter of the 4th century, with a representation of Ezekiel’s vision of the bones on the left, and the Adoration of the Magi on the right. The figures on the far left are cleverly shown in various stages of resurrection; the standing figure next to them is Christ, who is holding a thaumaturgical wand to indicate that He is performing a miracle, as Ezekiel looks on from behind.
In the Byzantine Rite, this lesson 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 this long and complicated ceremony 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. Among the Slavs, it is sometimes sung in a special setting; this recording was made at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, nine 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.
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