The Dedication of the Holy Sepulchre

In the Byzantine Rite, there are three observances on the calendar today. The first is a very ancient feast adopted from the liturgical tradition of the city of Jerusalem, the annual commemoration of the dedication of the basilica of the Anastasis, which is now generally called in English “the church of the Holy Sepulchre.” This dedication was performed in the year 335 by the bishop of Jerusalem, St Macarius, in the presence of the Emperor Constantine, who had financed the building project. This church was completely destroyed in 1009 at the orders of the Muslim caliph; the building which stands on the site today is a replacement first completed about 40 years later, and has, of course, subsequently undergone innumerable modifications and renovations. (Photos of the Holy Sepulcher from a distance, on the left in the 1st photo, and of the Edicule and Rotunda, both by Fr Lawrence Lew, from this post of 2019: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/05/photos-of-holy-land-from-fr-lew.html).

In the Byzantine liturgical ranking of feasts, Easter stands in a class by itself, followed by Twelve Great Feasts, eight of Our Lord and four of Our Lady. Most of these are preceded by a day of preparation called a Fore-feast, the equivalent of the vigils of the Roman Rite, and followed by an After-feast, the equivalent of a Roman octave, although they vary in length. Today is therefore also the Forefeast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

Many major feasts in the Byzantine Rite are followed immediately by a “synaxis” (“σύναξις” in Greek, “собóръ” in Church Slavonic), a commemoration of a sacred person who figures prominently in the feast, but who is, as it were, overshadowed by its principal subject. (Scholars of the Eastern rites also call them “concomitant feasts.”) This past Tuesday, for example, was the Synaxis of Ss Joachim and Anne, which is kept the day after the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Another is kept in honor of the Virgin Herself on the day after Christmas, another of St Gabriel on the day after the Annunciation, etc.

The Dedication of the Anastasis was one of the most important feasts in Jerusalem itself, and according to the oldest sources of the city’s native liturgical rite, was kept with an octave. (This rite is also known as the “Hagiopolite Rite”, from the Greek “Hagia polis – the Holy City.”) The Exaltation of the Cross began as a kind of synaxis or concomitant feast for this dedication, since the complex of the Anastasis also contained the site where the True Cross was found, and the Cross itself was long kept within it. In Byzantium, however, the Exaltation supplanted the dedication in importance, since the latter celebration was closely tied to the Holy City, but obviously less important outside it.

The chapel of the Finding of the Cross within the Holy Sepulcher, served by the Armenian Apostolic Church; from this post of photos by Nicola dei Grandi, also from 2019:
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/04/a-visit-to-church-of-holy-sepulchre.html

The third feast of today is that of the centurion Cornelius who receives the Apostle Peter in his house in Acts 10. This makes for a very subtle and cleverly thought-out connection with the other two feasts. The liturgical texts of the dedication and the fore-feast refer several times to the conversion of the nations, as for example in the very first hymn of Vespers. (The text is taken from a sermon of St Gregory of Nazianzus, 44 “On the new Sunday”; P.G. XXXVI, col. 608.) 

“It was the old law that dedications be honored, and rightly so; all the more should the new things be honored through dedications, for ‘the islands are made new unto God’, as Isaiah saith, by which we should understand the churches now established from among the nations, which receive a firm foundation from God; wherefore, let us spiritually celebrate this present dedication.” (From 0:27 to 2:21 in this video: Ἐγκαίνια τιμᾶσθαι, παλαιὸς νόμος, καὶ καλῶς ἔχων· μᾶλλον δὲ τὰ νέα τιμᾶσθαι δι᾿ Ἐγκαινίων· ἐγκαινίζονται γὰρ νῆσοι πρὸς Θεόν, ὥς φησιν Ἡσαΐας· ἅς τινας ὑποληπτέον τὰς ἐξ ἐθνῶν Ἐκκλησίας, ἄρτι καθισταμένας, καὶ πῆξιν λαμβανούσας βάσιμον τῷ Θεῷ· διὸ καὶ ἡμεῖς τὰ παρόντα Ἐγκαίνια πνευματικῶς πανηγυρίσωμεν.)

Cornelius, an official representative of the Roman Empire, sends his men to fetch the Apostle Peter, the future bishop of Rome, and they find him praying in the house of Simon the Tanner at Joppe. There Peter receives the vision of the winding sheet, and learns from God Himself that the gentile nations are not required to keep the dietary restriction of the old law. The episode concludes with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the members of the house, 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.” The conjunction of Cornelius’ feast with the other two therefore represents the Cross of Christ as the source of grace from which the nations are converted, the Church as the place of that conversion, and the church building as the visible sign of God’s enduring presence among them.

There is another important historical detail that ties into this theme. September 13th was the date on which the ancient Romans commemorated the dedication of one of their city’s most important temples, that of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, where he was called “Jupiter Capitolinus.” This massive edifice and the complex that surrounded it were clearly visible from the heart of Rome’s public life, the Forum, but also from the foreigners’ quarter on the other side of the Tiber, where the Jews resided, and many of the earliest Christians among them. The historian Tacitus describes it by saying that “the enormous wealth of the Roman people acquired thereafter adorned rather than increased its splendor.” (Histories 3, 72)

The Roman Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, more or less as it would have been seen from an elevated point on the opposite side of the Tiber, with various other buildings. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In 70 A.D., the Romans put down a great rebellion of the Jews that had broken out in Judaea four years earlier, and destroyed a considerable part of Jerusalem, including, most importantly, the temple. Sixty years later, the Emperor Hadrian decided to found a Roman colony on the site, which he called “Aelia Capitolina”, from his family name “Aelius”, and from a large temple to Jupiter Capitolinus which he built on or very near the site of the former Jewish temple. This may have been what provoked another rebellion in 132, which the Romans also put down with great violence, and after which, Jews were forbidden from entering the city except on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, to mourn the destruction of the temple on its anniversary. The memory of “Jerusalem” as such was erased so completely that the Romans themselves even forgot the name. In 310, Firmilian, the governor of the Roman province of Palestine, arrested a large number of Christians, and when they were asked what city they were from, they replied “Jerusalem”, meaning the heavenly Jerusalem, which they said was “in the East” and belonged to Christians only. Firmilian, having never heard of this place before, took this to mean that the Christians had founded a new city, which enraged him to persecute them all the more fiercely. (Eusebius of Caesarea, The Martyrs of Palestine, 11, 8 sqq.)

Jerusalem in a mosaic map in the floor of the church of St George in Madaba, Jordan, ca. 570 A.D., discovered in 1884. The main street of the Roman city of Aelia is clearly visible running through the middle of it. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

With the coming of Constantine, however, and the liberation of the Church, there also began first era of major church constructions. After building six great basilicas in Rome, Constantine moved East to Byzantium, and built several more major churches on important Christian sites, including the Anastasis. This project would have entailed destroying Hadrian’s temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

It seems very likely, therefore, that September 13th, the date of the dedication of the original Roman temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, was deliberately chosen for the dedication of the Anastasis, as a sign that Jerusalem was now definitively cleansed of the profanation inflicted on it by the Romans, and beginning a new life as a Christian city. This is also strongly suggested by the Greek word for dedication, “enkainia”, which derives from “kainos – new.” In John 10, 22, this word refers to a festival that commemorated the “renewal” of the temple under Judas Maccabee after it was profaned by the Greeks. In the same way, the “enkainia” of the Holy Sepulcher refers to the renewal of the specific site of the Anastasis, and by extension, of the entire Holy City, after its profanation by the Romans.

The Vigil of St Lawrence

In the Roman Rite, the term “vigilia – vigil” traditionally means a penitential day of preparation for a major feast. The Mass of a Saint’s vigil is celebrated after None, as are the Masses of the ferias of Lent or the Ember Days, and in violet vestments; however, the deacon and subdeacon do not wear folded chasubles, as they do in Lent, but the dalmatic and tunicle. The Mass has neither the Gloria nor the Creed, the Alleluja is simply omitted before the Gospel, not replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said at the end in place of Ite, missa est.

Folio 100r of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the mixed Gelasian type written in 780-800 AD. The Mass of the vigil of St Lawrence begins with the large A in the middle of the page; the preface cited below begins with the decorated VD second from the bottom. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

Before the Tridentine reform, the vigil of a Saint consisted solely of the Mass, and had no presence in either the Roman version of the Divine Office, or in that of most other Uses. A minority custom, which seems to have been predominantly German, gave an Office to the vigils of Saints, which consisted of a homily at Matins, and the use of the collect of the vigil as the principal collect of the day; the rest of the Office was that of the feria. The Breviary of St Pius V adopted this latter custom for the vigils of Saints, a rare example of change in an otherwise extremely conservative reform; but even for the Roman Rite, this was not an absolute novelty. Historically, the vigils of the major feasts of the Lord (Christmas, Epiphany etc.) did include the Office, and the change in 1568 simply extended the scope of a well-established custom.

Writing at the end of the 13th century, the liturgical commentator William Durandus notes as one of the special privileges of St Lawrence that he is the only martyr whose feast has a vigil, a custom which he shares with the Virgin Mary and the Apostles. More anciently this was not the case; the Gelasian Sacramentary also included vigils of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius on June 17th, and of Ss John and Paul on June 25th. However, these had already disappeared from the Gregorian Sacramentary by the mid-9th century, and the fact that St Lawrence’s vigil was retained certainly indicates the universality and importance of devotion to him. The same ancient sacramentaries have vigils for the Assumption, the birth of St John the Baptist, Ss Peter and Paul, and St Andrew; they were later given to the other Apostles whose feasts occur outside Eastertide, and to the feast of All Saints.

St Lawrence Distributing Alms to the Poor; fresco by the Blessed Angelico from the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, 1447-49, now in the Vatican Museums.

The story is well known that during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian in the mid-3rd century, St Lawrence was the deacon in Rome in charge of the Church’s charities. When he was arrested and told to hand the riches of the Church over to the Romans, he distributed all the money to the poor, whom he then brought to the residence of the prefect of Rome, and showing them to him, said, “These are the riches of the Church.” The liturgy refers to this by using Psalm 111, 9, “He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor: his justice remaineth for ever and ever” as both the Introit and Gradual of the vigil of St Lawrence; the same text is cited by St Paul in the Epistle of the feast day, 2 Corinthians 9, 6-10. St Maximus of Turin also cites this verse in a sermon on St Lawrence: “How profound and how heavenly was the counsel of this man of the spirit, that he should take care of the needy; and since the crowd was using up what he had given them, nothing could be found for the persecutor to take; for indeed he followed the saying ‘He hath distributed etc.’ ” (Homilia 74 in natali S. Laurentii; PL LVII 401A)

The Epistle of the vigil, Sirach 51, 1-8 and 12, appears in the Wurzburg lectionary, the very oldest of the Roman Rite, around 650 AD; it was clearly chosen for the reference to St Lawrence’s martyrdom by being roasted alive on a grill. “Thou hast delivered me, according to the multitude of the mercy of thy name, from them that did roar, prepared to devour. Out of the hands of them that sought my life, and from the gates of afflictions, which compassed me about. From the oppression of the flame which surrounded me, and in the midst of the fire I was not burnt. From the depth of the belly of hell, and from an unclean tongue, and from lying words, from an unjust king, and from a slanderous tongue.” The “unjust king” is, of course, the Emperor Valerian, in contrast to whom St Lawrence’s “justice remaineth for ever and ever.”

The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, by Titian, 1567, from the Spanish Royal Monastery of the Escorial.

The Gospel, Matthew 16, 24-27, appears in the same lectionary only on the vigil of St Lawrence, but was later extended to the Common of a Single Martyr. (Commons of the Saints had not yet been created as a feature of Roman liturgical books when the Wurzburg lectionary was written.) The first line, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”, may have been chosen in reference to the story of St Lawrence’s martyrdom, as told by St Ambrose.

When Lawrence saw Pope St Sixtus II being led to martyrdom, he addressed him thus: “Whither goest thou without thy son, father? Whither, holy priest, dost thou hasten without thy deacon? Never wast thou want to offer sacrifice without thy minister. What then hath displeased thee in me, father? Hast thou found me ignoble? Make proof surely whether thou didst choose a worthy minister. Dost thou deny a share in thy blood to one to whom thou didst entrust the consecration of the Lord’s blood, and a share in the celebration of the sacraments?... Abraham offered his son, Peter sent Stephen before him…” To this Sixtus replied, “I do not leave or abandon thee, son, but greater contests await thee. We, as elder men, receive the way of an easier combat; a more glorious triumph against the tyrant awaiteth thee as a younger man. Soon shalt thou come after, cease weeping; after three days shalt thou follow me, as levite followeth priest.” (These words from the 39th chapter of St. Ambrose’s De Officiis form the basis of several antiphons and responsories in the office of St Lawrence.)

Ss Benedict, Sixtus II, and the Martyr Proculus by Simone di FIlippo, ca. 1380. (Image from Wikipedia by SilviaZamb, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Offertory is beautifully selected from the book of Job, who, like Lawrence, is honored by the Church as one who showed great patience in suffering. “My prayer is pure, and therefore I ask that a place be given in heaven to my voice; for there is my judge, and He that knoweth me is on high; let my plea arise to the Lord.” (from the end of Job 16) The text is loosely cited from the Old Latin version, not the Vulgate of St Jerome, which indicates that it is a piece of great antiquity. One of Durandus’ predecessors in the field of liturgical commentary, the Benedictine abbot Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075-1130), wrote a book about the terrible fire which destroyed the town of Deutz, in which he refers frequently to both Job and St Lawrence, and cites this offertory. “Thou, o blessed Martyr, … were the Job of thy times, and now, and until the end of the world, Christ and His Church hear thy cry, the great cry of thy passion, … She (the Church) first heard thy cry, and first joined thee in it, and taught us to cry out with Her in these words, which first were the words of Job… but nevertheless are the words of the Holy Church in her afflictions, and are mostly perfectly suitable to Thee, ‘My prayer is pure etc.’ ” (De incendio oppidi Tuitii sua aetate viso liber aureus, cap. 21; P.L. 170 354B)

The Gelasian Sacramentary also contained a Preface for both the vigil and feast of St Lawrence, of which the former reads as follows, a lovely exposition of the reason for celebrating the feasts of the Saints every year.

Truly it is worth and just, meet and profitable to salvation, that we should give Thee thanks always and everywhere, o Lord, holy Father, almighty and everlasting God, by anticipating the blessed struggles of the glorious martyr Lawrence, whose honorable solemnity in its annual recurrence is everlasting and ever new; for precious death of Thy just ones remaineth in the sight of Thy majesty, and the increase of joy is renewed, when we recall the beginning of their eternal happiness. And therefore with the Angels…

Part of the mosaic in the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome. St Lawrence, in the middle; on the left, Pope Innocent II (1130-43), who built the church, presents to Christ; on the right, Pope St Callixtus I (ca. 218-22), who was martyred in the neighborhood of this church, and whose relics are kept in it.

The 1960 reform of the Breviary added to the vigil of St Lawrence a completely anomalous feature, something which had never existed before, and does not exist anywhere else; it is the only vigil that has Vespers. [1] A vigil is a separate liturgical observance from its feast, and traditionally, all feasts began with First Vespers, and so a vigil by definition ended once None and the Mass were celebrated. In 1960, however, all the feasts of St Lawrence’s rank lost their first Vespers. [2] His vigil somehow managed to survive the massacres of 1955 and 1960, but as the only vigil attached to a feast with no First Vespers. In order to cover the gap between the vigil and the feast, which now begins with Matins, the vigil was extended to include Vespers; these consist of the regular Office of the feria, but with the Collect of the vigil. For no discernible reason, the series of versicles known as the ferial preces, which are characteristic of penitential days, are omitted from all the vigils in 1960.

[1] The vigil of the Epiphany, which as part of the Christmas season is not a penitential day, is celebrated in a different manner from the vigils of the Saints. It traditionally had First Vespers, on the evening of January 4th, but ended like the other vigils after None. Many medieval Uses extended this custom to the vigil of Christmas as well, but this was not done in the Roman Use.

[2] By 1981, when the Ambrosian Liturgy of the Hours was promulgated, this change was recognized to be a mistake; the modern Ambrosian Office has First Vespers for all feasts, and celebrates Solemnities with Second Vespers.

The Vigil of Ss Peter and Paul

In the Roman Rite, the term “vigilia – vigil” traditionally means a penitential day of preparation for a major feast. The Mass of a Saint’s vigil is celebrated after None, as are the Masses of the ferias of Lent or the Ember Days, and in violet vestments; however, the deacon and subdeacon do not wear folded chasubles, as they do in Lent, but the dalmatic and tunicle. The Mass has neither the Gloria nor the Creed, the Alleluja is simply omitted before the Gospel, not replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said at the end in place of Ite, missa est.

The Mass of the Vigil of Ss Peter and Paul in the Echternach Sacarmentary, (895 A.D.; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9433) Note that it is preceded by the Mass of Pope St Leo II, as will be explained below; the preface of the Apostles is said, instead of the common preface prescribed by the Missal of St Pius V.

The vigil of Ss Peter and Paul is one of the oldest observances of the Roman Rite, attested in all pertinent liturgical books as far back as we have them. The Mass chants (except for the Communio) and the two Scriptural readings are the same in the most ancient sources as those in the Missal of St Pius V; the three prayers are the same in the earliest versions of the Gregorian Sacramentary, from the end of the 8th century.

It is one of the Church’s oldest and most universal customs to celebrate Ss Peter and Paul in a joint feast on June 29. However, the Roman liturgy naturally tends to lay greater emphasis on Peter as the one who was a close friend of the Lord in His earthly life, and in whom the primacy was conferred upon the church of Rome. Therefore, just as Peter figures more prominently than Paul in the main feast, so also in the vigil; the Introit, Epistle, and Gospel are all about him, as is the modern Communio taken from the Gospel. This is balanced by the fact that Paul has a special feast of his own on June 30th, while at the vigil, the prayers all refer to “apostles” generically, without naming either one.

Collecta Præsta, quáesumus, omnípotens Deus: ut nullis nos permittas perturbatiónibus cóncuti; quos in apostólicae confessiónis petra solidasti. - Grant, we ask, almighty God, that Thou may not permit us to be shaken by any disturbances, whom Thou hast strengthened on the rock of the apostolic confession. (Here, of course, the “rock” also refers more to Peter.)

Secreta Munus pópuli tui, quáesumus, Dómine, apostólica intercessióne sanctífica: nosque a peccatórum nostrórum máculis emunda. – Sanctify the service of Thy people, we ask, O Lord, by the intercession of the Apostles, and cleanse us from the stains of our sins.

Postcommunio Quos caelesti, Dómine, alimento satiasti: apostólicis intercessiónibus ab omni adversitáte custódi. – O Lord, by the intercession of Thy Apostles, defend from all adversity those whom Thou hast satisfied with heavenly food.

The Introit is taken from the Gospel, as it is some of the other very ancient Roman vigils, such as those of St John the Baptist and the Apostle St Andrew.

Introitus Dicit Dóminus Petro: Cum esses junior, cingébas te et ambulábas ubi volébas: cum autem senúeris, extendes manus tuas, et alius te cinget et ducet, quo tu non vis: hoc autem dixit, signíficans, qua morte clarificatúrus esset Deum. Ps 18 Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei: et ópera mánuum ejus annuntiat firmamentum. Gloria Patri. Dicit Dóminus Petro.

Introit The Lord said to Peter, ‘When thou wert young, thou didst gird thyself and walk where thou would, but when thou shalt be old, thou wilt stretch forth thy hands, and another will gird thee, and lead thee where thou wouldst not. Now this He said to signify by what manner of death he should glorify God. Ps 18 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of His hands. Glory be. The Lord said to Peter.

The Epistle, Acts 3, 1-10, is chosen in part because it is the first miracle which Peter performs after Pentecost, the healing of the paralytic at the Beautiful Gate. This signifies his role as the head of the Church in the long period from the descent of the Holy Ghost (which is recounted in the previous chapter) to the end of the world, a period symbolized by the season between Pentecost and Advent. This miracle happened when Peter and John had gone up to the temple to pray “at the ninth hour”, which refers to the hour of the vigil’s celebration after None.

The psalm verse with which the Introit is sung is repeated in the Gradual, and was associated with the Apostles from very ancient times. For example, a commentary on the Psalms written in the 4th century, and formerly attributed to a correspondent (and later disputant) of St Jerome, Rufinus of Aquileia, says “the Apostles and Evangelists … are rightly called ‘heavens’, because of the loftiness of their life, and the ‘firmament’ because of the solidity of their faith and charity; they declare the glory of (Christ’s) divinity, and proclaim to the works of (His) humanity.” (PL 21, 712B in fine) The first part of the Gradual, “Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world,” likewise refers to the Apostolic preaching of the Gospel to the whole world. (The exact same verses are also sung in the Byzantine Rite as the Prokimen, the chant before the Epistle, at the Divine Liturgy on June 29.)

Since the Gospel of the feast is Matthew 16, 13-19, the conferral of the primacy of the Church upon Peter, that of the vigil is the prophecy of his death which Christ makes to him at the end of the Gospel of St John.

“Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. Amen, amen I say to thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not. And this he said, signifying by what death he should glorify God.”

In the brief reading in the breviary in which St Augustine comments on this passage, he explains that Peter here makes a three-fold confession in place of his three-fold denial of Christ during the Passion.

The Crucifixion of St Peter, depicted in the Papal Chapel known as the Sancta Sanctorum at the Lateran Basilica in Rome, ca. 1280.

Since at least the later part of the 8th century, June 28 was also kept as the feast of Pope St Leo II, who died on this day in 683, after a reign of less than 11 months. The Liber Pontificalis records that on the previous day he celebrated the ordination of nine priests, three deacons, and twenty-three bishops; it is not said that it was the ordination ceremony that killed him, but the heat of Rome in June and the inevitable length of such a ceremony make this seem likely more than coincidence. The principal achievement of his pontificate was the confirmation of the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the third of Constantinople, which condemned the Monothelite heresy; being fluent in Greek as well as Latin, he personally made the official Latin translation of the council’s acts. It is one of the oddities of hagiography that his predecessor St Agatho, in whose reign the council was held, and whose intervention (through his legates) in its deliberations was acclaimed with the words “Peter has spoken through Agatho!”, has never been honored with a general feast day in the West, but is kept on the Byzantine Calendar. Leo, on the other, was a Sicilian, and therefore born as a subject of the Byzantine Empire, but is not liturgically honored in the East. (Back when there were plenty of canonical and monastic churches, such foundations would have celebrated two Masses in choir, that of St Leo after Terce, and that of the vigil after None, just as was done with the feasts of Saints which occur in Lent.)

In this altar in St Peter’s Basilica are kept the relics of three Sainted Popes named Leo, the Second (682-3), the Third (795-816) and the Fourth (847-55). The altar of Pope St Leo I (440-61) is right next to it, and Pope Leo XII (1823-29) is buried in the floor between them.

In 1921, Pope Benedict XV extended the feast of St Irenaeus of Lyon to the general Calendar on his traditional Lyonese date, June 28, moving Leo II to July 3rd, the next free day on the calendar, and the day of his burial according to the Liber Pontificalis. In the reform of 1960, St Irenaeus was moved to July 3rd, and Leo II suppressed, in order to free June 28th up entirely for the Mass and Office of the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul. This was fundamentally a rather odd thing to do, since so many of the vigils then on the general Calendar (including all those of the other Apostles, and, inexcusably, those of the Epiphany and All Saints), were abolished by the same reform.

Less than a decade later, however, with the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, vigils in the classic Roman sense, penitential days of preparation for the major feasts, were simply abolished altogether, “freeing” June 28th from the one observance which had hitherto been absolutely universal on that date, the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul. Irenaeus was therefore returned to that date.

Ss John and Paul in the Ancient Liturgy of Rome

Today is the feast of the Martyrs Ss John and Paul, two Roman brothers killed for their Christian faith by the Emperor Julian the Apostate, who reigned from 361-63. According to the traditional account of their lives, they had been military officers under Constantine, and later served in the household of his daughter, Constantia, who at her death left them her large fortune to take care of the poor. When Julian, the son of Constantine’s half-brother, came to the throne, they refused to attend him at the court because of his apostasy from the Faith. The emperor would have used this as a pretext to seize the money left by Constantia, but granted them ten days to reconsider; the two Saints therefore gave all the money away for its intended purpose. Terentian, the captain of Julian’s bodyguard, then came to their house, bearing a statue of Jove and the Emperor’s promise that they would be greatly honored if they would worship it; otherwise, they would be immediately killed. The words of their response are sung as the second antiphon of Lauds on their feast day: “Paul and John said to Terentian, ‘If Julian is thy lord, have thou peace with him; we have no other than the Lord Jesus Christ.’ ” They were beheaded at once, and buried within their own house on the Caelian hill, directly across from the imperial residence on the Palatine.

This plaque in the floor of the basilica of Ss John and Paul marks the “place of (their) martydom ... within their own house”. This photo was taken on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, when the Lenten Station is held there, by Mr Jacob Stein, author of the blog Passio Xpi, and reproduced with his kind permission.

Not long after, Julian was slain during a military campaign against Rome’s ancient enemy, Persia, a campaign which he had instigated and in which he apparently believed the pagan gods would grant him victory as a vindication of his “revival” of their worship. A later apocryphal tradition says that he was killed by a Christian soldier in his army named Mercurius, who is honored in the East as a Saint; his death happened on the feast day of Ss John and Paul, which is probably not coincidental. Julian’s successor Jovian converted the Saints’ house into a church, and many possessed persons were healed there, including the son of Terentian; the latter became a Christian, and wrote the passion of the Martyrs.

Scholars of hagiography do not regard the details of this traditional account as historically reliable, but there can be no reasonable doubt that devotion to Ss John and Paul is extremely ancient. One of the most interesting suggestions of this is found in the manuscript improperly known as the Leonine Sacramentary, now kept in the library of the cathedral chapter of Verona. This is actually not a sacramentary, the ancient predecessor of the Missal, which contains only the priest’s parts of the Mass, namely, the prayers, prefaces and Canon. It is rather a privately made collection of the texts of a large number of “libelli missarum”, small booklets which contained the prayers and prefaces of Masses for specific occasions. These elements often varied from church to church even within the same city; the Leonine Sacramentary is a wildly irregular gathering of them, and has twenty-eight different Mass formulae for Ss Peter and Paul, fourteen for St Lawrence, and eight for Ss John and Paul. The collection was certainly made in Rome itself, since it contains numerous specific references to the city; it is generally dated to the mid-6th century.

In the fifth Mass of Ss John and Paul, the preface reads as follows.

VD. Quamvis enim tuorum merita pretiosa justorum, quocumque fideliter invocentur, in tua sint virtute praesentia, potenter tamen nobis clementi providentia contulisti, ut non solum passionibus Martyrum gloriosis urbis istius ambitum coronares, sed etiam in ipsis visceribus civitatis Sancti Johannis et Pauli victricia membra reconderes, ut interius exteriusque cernentibus et exemplum piae confessionis occurreret et magnificae benedictionis non deesset auxilium. Per.

Truly it is worthy… For although the precious merits of Thy just ones are present in Thy might wheresoever they be faithfully invoked, Thou didst nonetheless in Thy merciful providence mightily deign not only to crown the bounds of this city with the glorious passions of the martyrs, but also to place the victorious bodies of Saints John and Paul in its very heart, so that those who behold it from within and without may be met with the example of the holy confession (of the Faith), and not lack the help of Thy magnificent blessing. Through (Christ our Lord.)

In ancient times, there was a boundary within Rome called the pomerium, and for a variety of legal and religious purposes, only what was inside this boundary was counted as part of the city. Traditionally, when an Emperor had expanded the territory held by Rome, the pomerium was also expanded, until the reign of the Emperor Aurelian (270-75), who made it coterminous with the city walls. It was illegal to bury the dead inside the pomerium, and this is part of the reason why the Christian catacombs, and hence the tombs of the Martyrs buried within them, are all found outside the city. The words of the preface given above about “crown(ing) the bounds of the city with the passions of the Martyrs” refer to the placement of the Martyrs’ graves encircling the city.

An inscription from the reign of the Emperor Claudius, which notes that “having expanded the territories of the Roman people (by the conquest of the island of Britain in 43AD), he expanded and set the bounds of the pomerium.” The photographer has highlighted in red an upside-down F in the last line of the inscription; this device was invented by Claudius personally as a way of writing the consonantal sound W, to distinguish it from the vowel U, both of which were written with the letter V. The new letter never caught on, and was abandoned after Claudius’ death in 54AD. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Pierre Tribhou; CC BY-SA 4.0)

It is not known why the Roman law about the pomerium was not heeded in regard to the burial of Ss John and Paul, but the author of the preface was clearly aware that this was very unusual, and saw in it a special act of God’s providence in the Christianization of Rome. In order for this to be noteworthy, the ancient Roman laws and taboos about the burial of bodies within the pomerium would need to be not necessarily in force, but at least remembered. This suggests that the text of the preface may be rather older than the manuscript, going back to a time when such laws and taboos were in fact known and obeyed, or had been so in living memory, and Christianity was still ascendant, but not yet wholly triumphant, in the Eternal City.

The Gospel of Nicodemus in the Liturgy of Eastertide

By “the Gospel of Nicodemus”, I mean not the apocryphal gospel of that title, but the passage of St John’s Gospel in which Christ speaks to Nicodemus, chapter 3, verses 1-21. This passage has an interesting and complex history among the readings of the Easter season. For liturgical use, the Roman Rite divides it into two parts, the second of which begins at one of the most famous verses in all the Gospels, John 3, 16, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son …”; the first part anciently included verse 16, but was later cut back to end at 15.

Christ and Nicodemus, by Fritz van Uhde, ca. 1886

The oldest surviving Roman lectionary, the “Comes Romanus” of Wurzburg, was written around 700 A.D, and represents the liturgy of approximately 50-100 years earlier, the period just after St Gregory the Great; in it, John 3, 1-16 is assigned to be read twice in Eastertide. The first occasion is on the Pascha annotinum, the anniversary of the previous year’s Easter and baptism of the catechumens. The second is the Octave Day of Pentecost, the observance of which is, of course, much older than the feast of the Holy Trinity which we now keep on that Sunday.

In his Treatises on the Gospel of St John (11.3), St Augustine say that “this Nicodemus was from among those who had believed in (Christ’s) name, seeing the signs and wonders which He did” at the end of the previous chapter. (2, 23) “Now in this Nicodemus, let us consider why Jesus did not yet entrust Himself to them. ‘Jesus answered, and said to him: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ (John 3, 3) Therefore, Jesus entrusts Himself to those who have been born again. … Such are all the catechumens: they already believe in the name of Christ, but Jesus does not entrust himself to them. If we shall say to the catechumen, ‘Do you believe in Christ?’ he answers, ‘I believe’, and signs himself; he already bears the Cross of Christ on his forehead.”

These words refer to the very ancient custom, still a part of the rites of Baptism to this very day, by which the catechumens were signed on their foreheads with the Cross. Augustine here follows his teacher St Ambrose, who says in his book On the mysteries, “The catechumen also believes in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, by which he is also signed: but unless he shall be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he cannot receive forgiveness of sins, nor take in the gift of spiritual grace.” (chapter 4)

Augustine then says (11.4), “Let us ask (the catechumen), ‘Do you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink (His) blood?’ He does not know what we are saying, because Jesus has not entrusted Himself to him.” The fact that Nicodemus first came to Christ at night (John 3, 2) also refers to his status as a catechumen. “Those who are born from water and the Spirit (John 3, 5), what do they hear from the Apostle? ‘For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light.’ (Eph. 5, 8) and again, ‘Let us who are of the day be sober.’ (1 Thess. 5, 8) Those then who have been reborn, were of the night, and are of the day; they were darkness, and are light. Jesus already entrusts Himself to them, and they do not come to Jesus at night as Nicodemus did…”.

Following this interpretation, the Gospel is perfectly suited for the celebration of the Pascha annotinum, in which the catechumens commemorated the day when Christ first entrusted Himself to them in both Baptism and the Eucharist.

Two leaves of a 1491 Missal according to the Use of Passau (Germany). The Mass for the Octave Day of Pentecost begins towards the bottom of the first column on the left, with the rubric “everything as on the feast, except the Epistle and Gospel.”

On the Octave Day of Pentecost, this Gospel is repeated, although the Wurzburg manuscript here attests to a custom of the Roman Rite observed in northern Europe, but not in Rome itself. Already in very ancient times, baptisms were done on Pentecost as on Easter; this is attested in a letter of Pope St Siricius (384-399) to Himerius, bishop of Tarragon in Spain (cap. 2), and one of Pope St Leo the Great (440-461), in which he exhorts the bishops of Sicily to follow the Church’s custom and the example of the Apostle Peter, who baptized three thousand persons on Pentecost day. (Epist. 16) The Gospel of the vigil of Pentecost, John 14, 15-21, is continued on the feast itself with verses 23-31, both passages referring to the sending of the Holy Spirit. Since Baptism was traditionally administered on Pentecost, the reading of the Nicodemus Gospel on the Octave, a foundational text for the Church’s understanding of that Sacrament, expresses what an important aspect of the feast this really was.

This point is made even more clearly by the Ambrosian rite. The Church of Milan assigns two Masses to the Easter vigil and each day of Easter week, one “of the solemnity”, and a second “for the (newly) baptized”; the latter form a final set of lessons for the catechumens who have just been received into the Church. At the Easter vigil Mass “for the baptized”, the Nicodemus Gospel is read, ending at verse 13. The first prayer of this Mass begins with a citation of it: “O God, who lay open the entrance of the heavenly kingdom to those reborn from water and the Holy Spirit, increase upon Thy servants the grace which Thou hast given; so that those who have been cleaned from all sins, may not be deprived of the promises.” The Epistle, Acts 2, 29-38, is taken from St Peter’s speech on the first Pentecost, ending with the words, “and you will receive the Holy Spirit.”

On Easter itself, the Gospel of the Mass “for the baptized” is John 7, 37-39.

On the great day of the festivity, the Lord Jesus stood and cried out, 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.]

However, the words noted here in brackets are omitted at this Mass. Pentecost also has two Masses, and at its Mass “for the baptized”, this Gospel is repeated, but including the final words, further emphasizing the connection between the two great baptismal feasts.

The remains of the Baptistery of Saint John at the Fonts (San Giovanni alle Fonti), the paleo-Christian baptistery of Milan, discovered under the modern Duomo in 1889.

In the second-oldest Roman lectionary, the Comes of Murbach, roughly a century later than the Wurzburg manuscript, the Nicodemus Gospel was added to a third Mass, that of the Finding of the Cross on May 3rd. The origin and gradual diffusion of this feast are not the subject of this article; suffice it to note two points here. The Wurzburg lectionary has neither the Finding of the Cross nor the Exaltation, but both are in Murbach, and are well-established by the end of the Carolingian period. The latest possible date for Easter, (occurring only once per century since the Gregorian Calendar was promulgated in 1582), is April 25, making May 2nd the latest date for Low Sunday. It is probably not a coincidence that the Finding of the Cross was fixed to May 3rd, the first date at which it must occur in Eastertide, but cannot fall within the Easter Octave itself.

The choice of Gospel was certainly determined by the final words, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him, may not perish; but may have life everlasting.” St Augustine explains, “As those who looked upon the serpent did not perish from the bites of the serpents; so those who with faith look upon the death of Christ are healed from the bites of sins. But they were healed from death to temporal life: here, however, He says “that they may have eternal life.” (Tract. in Joannem, 12, 11)

The Deposition of Christ, by Michelangelo, 1547-53, also known as the “Nicodemus Pietà” from the generally accepted tradition that the hooded figure at the top of the group is Nicodemus, and a self-portrait of the artist. From the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo di Firenze.

It may also have been motivated by the fact that the Pascha annotinum was by this time falling into disuse; Bl. Ildephonse Schuster notes in The Sacramentary (vol. 2, p. 260) that it is only rarely mentioned in Rome after the 8th century. (The Murbach lectionary omits its Epistle.) This is probably due both to the disappearance of the adult catechumenate, and to the fact that it was supposed to be celebrated with the same rites as Easter itself, but will often occur in Lent; it would then have to be transferred, rather obviating the point of it. Assigning John 3, 1-16 to May 3rd may therefore have been intended to maintain its importance by finding it a more prominent position in the liturgy. And indeed, it is as the Gospel of the Finding of the Cross that it will serve as part of the liturgy of Eastertide past the Middle Ages and through the Tridentine period.

Although the Octave of Pentecost is very ancient, Rome and the Papal court never kept the first Sunday after Pentecost as part of it. (This forms another parallel with Easter, since the liturgy of Low Sunday differs in many respects from that of Easter itself.) In northern Europe, as noted above, the Octave Day was a proper octave, repeating the Mass of the feast, but with different readings: Apocalypse 4, 1-10 as the Epistle, and John 3, 1-16 as the Gospel. Both of these traditions were slowly but steadily displaced by the feast of the Trinity, first kept at Liège in the early 10th century; but there was a divergence of customs here as well. When Pope John XXII (1316-34) ordered that Holy Trinity be celebrated throughout the Western Church, he placed it on the Sunday after Pentecost, a custom which became universal after Trent. But even as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Low Countries and several major dioceses in Germany still kept the older Octave Day of Pentecost, and put the feast of the Trinity on the Monday after.

Others compromised between the older custom and the new by keeping the readings from the Octave of Pentecost, but inserting them into the Mass of the Trinity; this was observed at Sarum, and by the medieval Dominicans and Premonstratensians. After the Tridentine reform, however, as part of the general tendency to Romanize liturgical books, this compromise was retained only by the Old Observance Carmelites, leaving the first part of the Nicodemus Gospel only on the Finding of the Cross for all the rest of the Roman Rite.

In 1960, the feast was suppressed from the general Calendar, and relegated to the Missal’s appendix “for some places”, causing the effective disappearance of the crucial Gospel passage from the liturgy of Eastertide. This defect been partially remedied in the Novus Ordo; the reading is broken into two pieces, assigned to the Monday and Tuesday after Low Sunday, but not to any major feast of the season.

A second (and shorter) part of this article will consider the second part of the Gospel of Nicodemus, John 3, 16-21, on Pentecost Monday, June 9th.

The Chrism Mass: Tradition, Reform and Change (Part 2) - Guest Article by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

This is the second part of an article by Fr Jean-Pierre Herman on the blessing of oils, which is traditionally celebrated at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and the recent reforms thereof; the first part was published on Tuesday. The French original was published on Sunday on the website of the Schola Sainte-Cécile as a single article. Fr Herman is professor of liturgy at the Good Shepherd Institute’s Séminaire Saint-Vincent de Paul in Courtalain, France, and we repeat our gratitude to him for sharing this English translation with NLM. The images are reproduced with the kind permission of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.

A ritual overload foreign to tradition

Over and above these strictly liturgical changes, the Chrism Mass has become a condensed version of conciliar ecclesiology: a celebration of the People of God, an expression of communion between the bishop and his priests, a renewal of ministries and, in some dioceses, even a renewal of diaconal promises.

Mons. Leon Gromier

Among the most enlightened critics of this change is Mgr Léon Gromier. A pontifical ceremonial officer and great connoisseur of the Roman rites, Mgr Gromier firmly denounced the reform of Holy Week in 1955, which he described as a “subversion of Roman tradition under the pretext of restoration.”

With regard to the Chrism Mass, he pointed out a double contradiction: on the one hand, the dislocation of the link between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the consecration of the oils, and on the other, the introduction of new structures with no traditional foundation. In particular, he criticised the idea of a separate Mass for the blessing of the oils, stating that “never in the Roman tradition has chrismation been separated from the very heart of the Sacrifice of the Mass” . For him, any attempt to make this Mass an autonomous ecclesial event risked transforming an act of sacramental sanctification into an institutional event, thereby losing the profound meaning of the rite.

Annibale Bugnini justifies this transformation:

The idea of making the Chrism Mass a ‘priestly feast’ was an intuition of the Pope... A new and attractive element was added in 1965: the concelebration of the Eucharist...

With this in mind, the Chrism Mass was rethought as a collective celebration of the ordained ministry. According to Bugnini, the liturgy had to become the living image of the mystery of the Church and make visible the communion of the presbyterate around the bishop. Thus, the strictly sacramental elements were gradually surrounded by new symbols, mainly aimed at highlighting ecclesial unity and the identity of the diocesan clergy.

Annibale Bugnini, architect of the post-Conciliar reform.

This change was accompanied by a ritual and symbolic overload. The blessings of the oils are inserted into a complex liturgical development, which now includes: the renewal of priestly promises, any commitments of deacons, processions with the oils, acclamations sung by the congregation, narrative presentations of the ministries in the diocese, and gestures of collective homage to the bishop. Far from constituting a homogeneous enrichment, this accumulation of signs creates symbolic competition, in which the sacramental mystery is often overshadowed by the celebration of conciliar ecclesiology.

Bugnini himself describes its contrasting reception:

The most severe liturgists were reluctant to accept the fact. They resigned themselves reluctantly to saying goodbye to the centuries-old liturgy that wove the Missa chrismatis around the consecration of the oils.

The introduction of the renewal of priestly promises, a rite that was completely new to the Roman tradition, reinforced this communal and affective orientation. Bugnini states:

The renewal of priestly vows on this special day is a strong, long-awaited, almost necessary gesture to publicly reaffirm the bond between the priest and his bishop, and their fidelity to their mission.

In several dioceses, this practice has been extended to deacons, who also renew their liturgical commitments. This development, not foreseen by the rubrics, blurs the hierarchy of orders and tends to transform a priestly rite into a simple celebration of the local Christian community. The sacramental meaning is thus buried under an avalanche of pastoral gestures and speeches.

Added to this is the content of episcopal homilies, which are often far removed from any doctrinal explanation of the sacraments and their efficacy. Many bishops choose to focus their preaching on pastoral assessments, calls for diocesan unity or community exhortations, thereby relegating the sacramental dimension to the background. The Chrism Mass then becomes an exercise in ecclesial communication, sometimes political, to the detriment of mystagogy and liturgical catechesis.

This overload seriously undermines the sacramental clarity of the rite. What was intended by Pius XII to be a sacramental catechesis becomes a celebration of institutional identity. Instead of demonstrating the sacraments’ dependence on Christ’s sacrifice, the rite tends to express, above all, the self-celebration of the local Church and its ministers. The liturgical word is fragmented into multiple discourses, often anecdotal or circumstantial, losing sight of the profound unity of the sacred action centred on Christ and his Cross.

Bugnini himself insists on this turning point:

It was worth sacrificing a traditional preference [...] in order to highlight the visible communion of the presbyterate around its bishop, in a liturgy fully adapted to the new times.

This statement sums up the logic of the reform: to abandon the sacramental symbolism inherited from centuries of tradition to make way for a new liturgical rhetoric, based no longer on mystery but on ecclesial visibility. of the rite: instead of a pedagogy of grace, there is an emphasis on affective communion, sometimes to the detriment of doctrine. The liturgical word is fragmented into multiple discourses, often anecdotal or circumstantial, losing sight of the profound unity of the sacred action centred on Christ and his Cross.

The urgent need to find the source

Pope St Alexander I consecrating the holy oils, in an image from a manuscript dated 1300-10. According to a medieval tradition, it was Alexander, the 5th successor of St Peter (reigned ca. 105-15) who instituted the rite of consecrating the oils on Holy Thursday.  

The shift of the Chrism Mass from a sacramental epiphany centered on Christ’s sacrifice to a community celebration with an identity function reflects a profound evolution in contemporary liturgical theology. This shift is not purely formal, but goes to the very heart of the liturgy: its purpose, its language and its theological structure.

While Pius XII, with a clear desire for pedagogical reform, wanted to offer the faithful a liturgy that was profoundly Eucharistic and catechetical, the post-conciliar reforms gradually replaced this logic with a horizontal conception of the liturgy. The liturgy is now presented as a manifestation of ecclesial communion, centred on the bishop and his presbyterate, to the detriment of the catechesis of the sacraments. Josef Ratzinger - the future Benedict XVI - rightly noted:

What was once turned towards God has gradually turned in on the community. Community self-celebration has replaced the act of worship.

This withdrawal is particularly evident in the modern Chrism Mass, where the episcopal preaching no longer focuses on the nature and power of the sacraments, but on pastoral concerns, diocesan assessments or calls for synodality. The bishop becomes less the sacramental minister of Christ than the visible animator of a community on the move.

The liturgist Mgr Klaus Gamber, in his prophetic writings, was already denouncing this development:

Instead of looking at the organic development of the liturgy, new office-born rites have been introduced, cut off from any living tradition and oriented more towards ideology than faith.

Thus, what Pius XII had conceived as a catechetical liturgy, centred on the sacramental grace deriving from the one sacrifice of Christ, was gradually transformed into a symbolic manifestation of an ecclesial communion conceived above all as visible, participative and ministerial. The gradual erasure of the link between the Eucharist and the sacraments, the dilution of theological language in orations, and the inflation of symbolic gestures based on a horizontal ecclesiology have emptied the rite of its mystagogical density.

The time has come to restore the original significance of the Chrism Mass as a sacramental act within the sacrifice of Christ, the source of all anointing and sanctification. The traditional rite offers a sober, majestic expression of this, doctrinally rigorous and spiritually fruitful. Restoring it does not mean going backwards: it means re-establishing a vital link between the sacraments and their Eucharistic source, between liturgical action and the redemption of the world.

To serve liturgical truth is to honour the Paschal Mystery of Christ, celebrated in his Church with fidelity, sobriety and faith.

Bibliography

1. Liturgical and historical sources

G DURAND, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. A. Davril & T. Thibodeau, Turnhout, Brepols, 1995.

Pontificale Romanum (ed. 1595-1596), republished by Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Gelasian Sacramentary, ed. H. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, Oxford, 1894.

Gregorian Sacramentary, ed. Dag Norberg, Paris, CNRS, 1985.

Ordo Romanus I, ed. M. Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut Moyen Âge, vol. III, Louvain, 1951.

2. Historical and critical studies

H. SCHMIDT, Die Formularien der Chrisammesse in den alten römischen Sacramentarien , Ephemerides Liturgicae, vol. 71, 1957, pp. 733-736.

L. GROMIER, Commentaires sur la réforme de la Semaine Sainte, in: Ephemerides Liturgicae (various articles, years 1951-1962).Ephemerides Liturgicae (various articles, years 1951-1962).

A. BUGNINI, La réforme de la liturgie 1948-1975, trans. fr. P.-M. Gy, Cerf, 1998.

K. GAMBER, La Réforme liturgique en question, DMM, 1992.

J.-F. Thomas, La liturgie: art sacré, théologie et vie mystique, Via Romana, 2017.

3. Liturgical theology and mystagogy

J. LECLERCQ, La Semaine Sainte dans la liturgie romaine, Solesmes, 1951.

L. BOUYER, Le Mystère pascal, Cerf, 1945.

P. GUÉRANGER, L’Année liturgique. Le Temps de la Passion et la Semaine Sainte, Solesmes.

J. RATZINGER (Benedict XVI), The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ad Solem, 2001.

J. HANI, Le symbolisme du culte chrétien, L’Âge d’Homme, 1995.

The Chrism Mass: Tradition, Reform and Change (Part 1) - Guest Article by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

We are very grateful to Fr Jean-Pierre Herman for sharing with us this important article about the Chrism Mass and its recent reforms. The French original was published two days ago on the website of the Schola Sainte-Cécile as a single article; it will be published here in two parts. Fr Herman is professor of liturgy at the Good Shepherd Institute’s Séminaire Saint-Vincent de Paul in Courtalain, France. The images from liturgical books are reproduced with the kind permission of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.

The Chrism Mass, from sacramental catechesis to ecclesiological celebration:

tradition, reform and change.

by Abbé Jean-Pierre Herman

Among the major liturgical rituals of the year, the Chrism Mass today occupies a major place in the liturgical life of dioceses. It is presented as one of the most significant manifestations of the fullness of the bishop's priesthood and the intimate bond that unites him to his priests. [1] It is the moment when the Church sanctifies the oils intended for the sacraments and, in its post-conciliar version, when the link between the ministerial priesthood, the people of God and the Paschal Mystery is publicly manifested. Priests solemnly renew their ordination promises, and the bishop visibly embodies the unity of the presbyterate.

However, it should be remembered that the term “Chrism Mass” did not appear until the reform of 1955. Until then, the Roman liturgy included only one celebration on Holy Thursday: the Mass in Coena Domini, during which the bishop proceeded to bless the oils. Ancient sources, such as the Gelasian Sacramentary, present several liturgical formularies linked to this day, but, as Hermann Schmidt has shown [2], these were not separate Masses, but a single ritual whole. The Gregorian Sacramentary, a century later, proposes only one form for the blessing of the oils. The Ordo Romanus I confirms this tradition of a single rite, [3] which was maintained with notable symbolic enrichments, admirably described by William Durandes, bishop of Mende, in his Rationale (or Manual of the Divine Offices), and taken up again in the Roman Pontifical of 1595, until the reform of the twentieth century.

Frontispiece of a 1511 edition of the Pontificale Romanum.

Pius XII’s intention in the 1955 reform (Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria) was to make this Mass a sacramental catechesis. By isolating the blessing of the oils from the evening Mass, the Pope wanted to emphasize that all sacramental grace flows from the Sacrifice of Christ. However, this reform, while respectful of the traditional canonical structure, paved the way for more radical developments. With the post-conciliar reform, the Chrism Mass became an ecclesiological celebration, centered no longer on sacramental grace, but on communion between the bishop, his priests and the people.

The traditional rite: a strong Eucharistic structure.

In the traditional rite, as codified in the Pontifical Romanum of 1595, the blessing of the Holy Oils is not an independent celebration, but is solemnly inscribed at the heart of the Mass in Coena Domini. Far from being a marginal addition, it is deeply integrated into the Eucharistic offering. This insertion manifests a fundamental liturgical and theological truth: all sanctification in the Church, including that of the sacramental instruments, flows directly from the sacrifice of Christ made present at the altar.

The three blessings - of the oil for catechumens, the oil for the infirm and the holy chrism - are structured around the Roman Canon. This structuring is not arbitrary: it expresses the fact that the mystery of the Cross and the Eucharist is the unique source of all grace. By blessing the oils as part of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Church confesses that Christ, priest and victim, communicates his divine life through the sacraments that these oils are used to confer.

The beginning of the consecratory preface of the Holy Oils in an edition of the Roman Pontifical printed in 1497.

The rite itself is remarkably rich in symbolism. It includes:

• the minister's breath on the oils, evoking the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit in creation and resurrection;
• the anointing in the chrism vessel, marking the intimate link between the oil and the sanctifying grace; 
• the incensing of the sacred vessels, which signifies the ascension of prayer and the consecration of what is destined for God;
• the solemn chant of O Redemptor, a theological and contemplative hymn that magnifies the redemptive work of Christ in the sacraments;
• and the triple acclamation Fiat, taken up by the clergy, a liturgical sign of community assent to the invocation of the Paraclete.

The epiclesis that precedes the consecration of the chrism - Emitte, quaesumus, Domine, Spiritum Sanctum Paraclitum - establishes an explicit link with Pentecost: the chrismal oil is sanctified by the Spirit, just as the Apostles were in the Upper Room. This link shows that the sacramental ministry of the Church continues the work of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Eucharistic sacrifice. The ancient liturgy thus retains a profound mystagogical coherence, rooted in the theology of the Paschal Mystery.

The 1955 reform: a catechetical turning point

The liturgical reform promulgated by Pius XII in 1955 introduced a significant change in tradition: it detached the blessing of the oils from the Mass in Coena Domini and instituted a separate Mass, known as the Chrism Mass, celebrated on the morning of Holy Thursday. This innovation broke with the ancient Roman custom, in which the unity of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the consecration of the oils bore symbolic witness to the fact that the sacraments derive their efficacy from the mystery of the Cross.

However, despite this new autonomy for the Chrism Mass, the internal structure of the celebration remains close to the Tridentine model: the blessings of the oils continue to be inserted at the end of the Roman Canon and after communion. This partial maintenance of the structure aims to preserve the sacramental significance of the gestures, while making them more intelligible to the assembly of the faithful, who are now more involved in the liturgical life.

The aim of this reform is no longer primarily to demonstrate the dependence of the sacraments on the Eucharist, but to highlight the diversity and beauty of the sacramental life of the Church, with a view that is more pedagogical than mystagogical. From a pastoral point of view, the link between the oils and the various sacraments they are used to confer should be made clear: baptism, confirmation, ordination and the anointing of the sick.

The beginning of the blessing of the Holy Oils in an edition of the Pontificale printed in Paris in 1683.

Nevertheless, this reform has led to a significant simplification of the rites:

rich and symbolic gestures are largely reduced or modified;

Traditional orations, long, typically theological and often dense, are giving way to briefer texts, with a more accessible vocabulary, but sometimes less evocative;

The liturgy as a whole gains in clarity, but loses the mystical density that characterised the Tridentine Pontifical.

Post-conciliar reform: an ecclesiological celebration refocused on ministry

The liturgical reform promulgated in 1969, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, brought about a profound transformation of the Chrism Mass, both in its structure and in its theology. The underlying pastoral intention was clear: to make this celebration a visible manifestation of the unity of the presbyterate around the bishop, with greater emphasis on the communitarian and ministerial dimension of the priesthood. But this refocusing entails a significant theological shift: the Chrism Mass ceases to be a Eucharistic theophany of sacramental grace, becoming above all an ecclesiological presentation of the ministry.

The Chrism Mass was henceforth conceived as an autonomous celebration, which could be brought forward to another day in Holy Week, thus breaking with the ancient liturgical integration of Holy Thursday, the day of the priestly mystery par excellence. Most of the time, the blessings of the oils are no longer inserted into the Canon of the Mass, nor are they placed after communion, a possibility still offered by the rubrics, but moved to a separate moment, after the homily, in the form of a "rite of the oils" detached from the Eucharistic prayer. This change is not merely functional; it runs the risk of dissociating the sacraments from the altar, which is their ontological source.

A major innovation was added to this restructuring: the solemn renewal of the priestly promises by the priests. This element, totally absent from the previous liturgical tradition, constitutes a radical innovation introduced without historical precedent or ritual roots. Its inclusion in the liturgy is in keeping with a post-conciliar perspective of valuing the presbyteral ministry as a collegial participation in the mission of the bishop. Although this gesture is not at the heart of the celebration, it has become a high point, often highlighted in contemporary pastoral practice. It marks a turning point: the liturgy no longer celebrates only the action of Christ in his sacraments, but also the subjective commitment of the ministers themselves.

This refocusing has visible consequences in the way the rite is conducted. The Liturgy of the Word is enriched with texts of a catechetical nature, emphasising the prophetic, priestly and royal mission of the People of God, while the blessings of the oils, while retaining their ancient structures, are simplified in their implementation. The breathing, the anointing in the vessels, the acclamations such as the Fiat, the singing of O Redemptor: all these gestures are either abbreviated, made optional, or simply omitted. The symbolic and theological density of the rite is impoverished.

In short, the post-conciliar reform shifts the centre of gravity of the Chrism Mass from the sacramental union of the oils with the Eucharistic sacrifice to a celebration of the ministerial Church and of presbyteral communion. The focus is no longer primarily on the origin of the sacrament - Christ the priest offering his sacrifice - but on the human structure of the Church and the pastoral life of its ministers. The Chrism Mass thus becomes the mirror of a Church that contemplates itself, rather than a Church that receives everything from its Lord at the altar.

NOTES:

[1] Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, quoted by G. TORNAMBE, «Évolution des rites de la Missa chrismatis», Revue des sciences religieuses, 90/1 (2016), pp. 81-103.

[2] H. Sschmidt, «Formularia liturgica Feria V in Cena Domini: Considerationes criticae», Ephemerides Liturgicae, 71 (1957), pp. 733-736.

[3] M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du Moyen-Age, I-V, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 23, 24, 28, 29 ), Louvain, 1931-1961.