The Divine Office as a Mirror of the Mass

Here is a very cleverly drawn up graphic which Peter found, that uses the Hours of the Divine Office as a frame for explaining the parts of the Mass. Detailed explanations are given in the smalled type at the bottom; right click to open in a separate window or tab, so it will be legible.

A couple of things to note. For a very long time, it was the standard custom to say Mass in choir after either Terce, Sext or None, depending on the quality of the liturgical day: after Terce on Sundays and greater feast days, after Sext on ferias and minor feasts, and after None on fast days. As a general rule, the next Hour was said after the Mass in part as an act thanksgiving. Here the center of the Mass is placed between Terce and Sext.

The first part of the Mass up to the Collect is associated with Matins and Lauds, since the latter Hours ends with the Collect that will later be said in the Mass. This also reflects the traditional discipline that before a priest said his “private” Mass (so-called), he was supposed to have said at least Matins and Lauds.

The Hour of Prime is associated with the readings, sermon and Creed, just as the creeds known as those of the Apostles and St Athanasius are said at that Hour; the hymn of Prime begins with the words “Now that star of light is risen”, which is associated with the lights carried at the Gospel procession. In the Middle Ages, there also existed the custom of reading either a passage from the Gospels or the Rule followed by the community at the end of Prime; perhaps the creator of the graphic was also inspired by that.

The hour of Terce, at which the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles at Pentecost, is associated with the Offertory prayers, which include the prayer “Veni Sanctificator.” The Communion rites are associated with Sext, and the conclusion of the Mass with None, and the rest of the day’s activities with Vespers and Compline.

Priestly Preparation Before Mass and Thanksgiving After Mass

By the grace of God I’ve been a Catholic all my life, and during these decades, I’ve known and observed many priests going about their duties. One of the most fascinating differences among them is how they bear themselves before and after Mass. It took me a long time to realize how great an impact for good or for ill this can have.

Let us take as our point of departure a marvelous line in the Code of Canon Law. Canon 909 reads: “A priest is not to omit dutifully to prepare himself by prayer before the celebration of the Eucharist, nor afterwards to omit to make thanksgiving to God.”

As if commenting on this canon, Bishop Marc Aillet writes:

Tearing us away from the secular world and thus from the temptation of immanentism, [the liturgical rites] have the power to immerse us suddenly in the Mystery and open us to the Transcendent. In this sense, one can never stress enough the importance of the silence preceding the liturgical celebration, an inner narthex, where we are freed of the concerns, even if legitimate, of the secular world, in order to enter the sacred space and time where God will reveal his Mystery; one can never stress enough the importance of silence in the liturgy to open oneself more readily to the action of God; and one can never stress enough the appropriateness of a period of thanksgiving, whether integrated into the celebration or not, to apprehend the inner extent of the mission that awaits us once we are back in the world.

The Time Before Mass

Consider first the time before Mass. Shawn Tribe wrote an article here a number of years ago that deeply affected me—an article urging the recovery of a spirit of reverence, respect, and quietude in the sacristy before the celebration of Mass. He noted that many sacristies have a sign reading SILENTIUM, and recalled the very old custom of the priest reciting hallowed prayers as he dons each separate garment in preparation for offering the Holy Sacrifice. Before a High Mass, a Solemn Mass, or some other major liturgy the platoon of servers will be very busy, but there is no reason why they can be quietly busy, learning to move in an atmosphere of prayerful preparation and anticipation, keeping their voices down and their conversations useful to the matters at hand.

The holiest priests I’ve known (although there are exceptions to any rule) have tended to arrive in the sacristy early so that they could prepare in an unrushed spirit. I have noticed that they would carefully say the vesting prayers and be ready, waiting, often looking at a wall-mounted crucifix, before the servers had finishing pulling themselves together. When the bell rings or the clock strikes, such a priest is ready to process in, with a “Procedamus in pace” on his lips. What a profound “ripple effect” his earnest, calm, and focused mind can have on the entire sacristy atmosphere, and on all who are working in it!

Contrast this with the priest who rushes in at the last minute, in a whirl and a tizzy. He’s looking here and there, maybe stealing a quick glance at the Ordo, racing against the clock. He throws open the closet and grabs the alb and the chasuble, scarcely taking time to straighten them before walking out into the church. Where is the “dutiful preparation” of Canon 909? Do the servers imbibe a true spirit of reverence towards this most awesome of all human actions—indeed, do they see that the priest is embarking on a divine action of which he is, and they are, totally unworthy, and before which we stand in fear and trembling? Or take the other contrast, Father Foghorn, whose arrival everyone knows because you can hear him yacking away in the sacristy before Mass, about the weather, or football, or something in the news, or someone’s sick aunt, or whatever the topic du jour may be. Indeed, he might even be giving out commands about liturgical preparations, but the generalissimo manner is enough to debar anyone from prayer.

The truth is simple: Father Foghorn and Reverend Roadrunner are not edifying. We need clergy who, before Mass, conscientiously pursue the spirit of recollection, prayerfulness, humility, and peace. At the end of the day, this is not merely for the benefit of a bunch of rag-tag servers or half-asleep pewsitters; it is for the benefit of the clergy themselves, who stand to win or lose their vocations based on how they approach the very work for which they have been set apart. The devil, shall we say, never omits to prepare for whatever dark business he has in hand, and it seems he targets those who have forgotten their dignity. We must not omit to prepare ourselves for ascending the mountain of the Lord in the company of the angels.

The Time After Mass

Let us turn to the time after Mass. Although I don’t remember ever seeing this custom while growing up in a mainstream American parish in the 1970s and 1980s, I began to notice in college and afterwards that more conservative or traditional priests, having returned to the sacristy, would say “Prosit” and then give a blessing to the kneeling altar servers. This is a laudable custom that surely deserves to be retained wherever it exists or revived wherever it has fallen into desuetude.

But what should happen next? The best way I can answer that question is to describe a particular priest friend of mine, whose example in this regard was as luminous as can be. After blessing the servers, he would quietly divest (no indulging in sacristy banter and very little of the “post-game debrief”), and then immediately step out to the sanctuary, kneel on the side, and pray for several minutes. He sometimes used the traditional prayers of thanksgiving from the Missale Romanum, other times not. It was clear that he was not doing this to be seen by men, yet everyone saw him nonetheless—and this is as it should be. The priest who offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most sublime act of worship on the face of the earth, the ecstasy of angels and the terror of demons—how can he possibly return immediately to secularity, light chit-chat, text messages, voicemails, or emails, or rush away to do something else (unless it is a genuine emergency)?

The holy priest just described is the polar opposite of the priest who seems unable to get away fast enough when Mass is over. He zips out of the sanctuary or nave (depending on the planned or available route of escape), whips off the garments, and is out the door quicker than you can say: “Father, do you have a minute to hear a confession?” To a layman, this is a dismaying experience. I was taught in grammar school to stay a bit after Mass and make thanksgiving. Why isn’t our priest, our leader, doing the same? We always say that example speaks louder than words.

Then there is the priest who obviously thinks that the time after Mass is created for socializing, often at great length, in the atrium or right outside the main doors of the church. I’m not saying that greeting people, shaking hands, and asking “How’s your mother doing?” or questions of that sort is a bad idea; in fact, on Sundays it seems to be an especially good opportunity for making the sort of “horizontal” connections that ought to be avoided during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass itself. Nevertheless, when the post-liturgical bonhomie is conducted with such vim and vigor that the faithful who are trying to pray in the church can hear the guffawing and backslapping pouring through the entrance, or when the extent of the socializing crowds out any real prayer of thanksgiving on the priest’s part, we are dealing with a mixed-up sense of priorities.

When we have received our Lord in Holy Communion, He is, for some precious minutes, really, truly, substantially present within us. If we are in a state of grace (and we’d have no business receiving communion otherwise), He is always with us spiritually; but He is not always with us in the miraculous mode of His physical Eucharistic presence. This is a special time, a time of unique intimacy and love, when our praises to God and His favors to us are poured out more abundantly, when we are most of all abiding in Him and He in us. Let us not squander this gift from the Lord—and let the clergy lead the way in setting a strong and sincere example of how to rejoice and give thanks. I am reminded of a saying attributed to St. Pius X: “If the priest is an angel, the people will be saints; if the priest is a saint, the people will be good; if the priest is good, the people will be mediocre; and if the priest is mediocre, the people will be beasts.”

The Advantage of the Usus Antiquior

As a parting thought, the impression has grown on me more and more over the years that one of the strongest merits of the usus antiquior is that it has preparation and thanksgiving already “built in.” Yes, there is still a brief period for each in the Novus Ordo, but nothing comparable to Psalm 42 and its accompanying versicles and prayers, or to the Placeat and the Last Gospel. One feels that one has decisively begun and decisively ended. There is a suitable psychological and spiritual transition from the secular world to the sacred, and again from the sacred to the secular. And yet, paradoxically, it is among usus antiquior-celebrating priests that I have tended to find the greatest recollection and prayerfulness before and after Mass, too. What this suggests to me is that the very reduction of the rituals of preparation and thanksgiving within the Ordinary Form has had a bleed-over effect on the time before and after the liturgy itself.

This is why we should adamantly oppose any “reform” of the 1962 Missale Romanum that involves the abolition of the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last Gospel. Those who speak of the value of the 1965 Missal—the supposed implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium—as if it’s the fulfillment of legitimate liturgical reform are not thinking carefully enough about why these introductory and conclusory parts became popular in the first place and why, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they were eventually integrated into the liturgy.

Two Books for Children — One New and One Classic Reprint

M. Cristina Borges. Of Bells and Cells. Illustrated by Michaela Harrison. N.p.: St. Bonosa Books, 2014. 44 pp., paper. List: $13.50. Purchase at Amazon.com.

Maria Montessori. The Mass Explained to Children. [Unaltered reprint of the original publication from Sheed & Ward, 1933.] Foreword by Rev. Matthew A. Delaney. Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015. i + 88 pp., paper. $9.95. Purchase at Amazon.com.

As parents know, the work of educating children in the Faith starts at the very beginning and never really ends. It might end formally when they leave for college or move out of the home, but that's still a good 17 to 20 years' worth of education. Those crucial years should be marked by exposure to good (as in: beautiful and reverent) liturgy, an introduction to orthodox theology, and an initiation into traditional spirituality. What I've seen in homeschooling families is that formation in the faith is happening more or less all the time, and this is a large part of the reason why the boys and girls know their faith, love it, practice it, and run circles around their peers. You simply can't put students with an otherwise secular mentality in a religion class for an hour a week and expect them to get anything out of it.

But parents, like all educators, need good resources to lean on. We can't be making everything up as we go along. After decades of relative drought, it is heartening to be witnessing a downpour of solid, traditionally Catholic books being published for children. Some of these have already been reviewed here at NLM (see here, here, and here). Recently I received two more that I can highly recommend to our readers.

The first is M. Cristina Borges' Of Bells and Cells. This book endeavors to present vocational discernment, religious life, and priesthood to small children in a way that they will understand, but without cutting corners, dumbing down the truth, or lessening the radical nature of the calling. Indeed, her strategy seems to be very much that of Pope Benedict XVI, namely, to present the reality in all its demanding grandeur precisely because this is when we can see most clearly how wonderful a gift it is, how worthy of Our Lord, and how appropriate to His holy Church. I do not know exactly which sources Borges is drawing upon, but her theology of vocation is both traditional and profound, yet clearly and simply expressed. She emphasizes the universal call to holiness while underlining the unique conformity to Christ present in religious vows and the priestly character.

Borges devotes several fine pages to the three evangelical counsels, which she explains with admirable simplicity but without the slightest hint of that wishy-washy embarrassment so typical of modern discussions of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In this book, the vows are presented as the ways in which men and women make a total gift of themselves to the Lord, rely completely on Him, surrender all to Him, and emulate, as perfectly as they can, His life and virtues. (Indeed, I cannot help thinking that this children's book would make a better introduction to the subject than many highschool and college texts out there.) I also appreciated her entering into how religious life is structured, its daily round, the steps of entering and making vows, the taking of a new name, the rationale behind wearing the habit (some of the best pages of the book!), the differences between religious orders, and the active and contemplative lives.

The portion of the book dedicated to the priesthood is equally luminous and inspiring. Once again, the fact that the author is willing to explain things like the difference between a secular/diocesan priest and a religious priest, why the clergy wear black (and, in particular, the cassock), how the priest is made "another Christ" through ordination such that he can then offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and forgive sins, sets this book in a class by itself.

An appendix contains brief accounts of the Benedictines, Carmelites, Carthusians, Conceptionists, Dominicans, Franciscans, Poor Clares, Missionaries of Charity, Redemptorists, Little Sisters of the Poor, and Jesuits, to give children some basic information about their founders, most famous saints, and characteristics. This is an especially nice touch, because it helps children to start thinking about how God has provided many different "realizations" of the Gospel and raised up many different kinds of saints who are all living out the baptismal vocation of holiness.

Turning to the reprint of a 1933 classic, The Mass Explained to Children, I doubt that Maria Montessori needs an introduction to readers here. This book saw many printings in the days before the auto-demolition of the Church, and we owe Angelico Press a debt of gratitude for reprinting it as a handsome and affordable paperback, now that so many in the Church are worshiping once again in the classical Roman Rite, for which Montessori obviously wrote this and all her other books on the liturgy. In its pages we find Montessori's remarkable gift for explaining objects, movements, texts, and other signs to children in a way they can relate to, bolstered by her conviction that children have a capacity for wonder, symbolism, and sacred action that most adult educators leave entirely untapped.

Montessori explains in her Preface that this book is not meant to be used at Mass, but before Mass, to help prepare children to understand what they will be seeing and hearing and doing. It serves that catechetical purpose admirably. It strikes me as an ideal religion text for somewhere in the grammar school years, depending on the aptitude of a given child. Again, I have placed a few photos below to give a better sense of it.

(Attention Montessori teachers and admirers: I've been wondering for a long time if anyone has developed a "Catechesis of the Good Shepherd" approach that fully comports with the traditional Latin Mass for which Maria Montessori originally designed her catechetical materials and approaches. If anyone has any information on this matter, I'd be grateful if you would write it into the comments below, or send me an email.)

Pages from Cristina Borges, Of Bells and Cells

Pages from Maria Montessori, The Mass Explained to Children

Look at the text: it's amazing how far we have fallen away from the sense of reverence!

Written in 1933, this deep reverence for the priesthood became almost unknown after the Council.

Note how Montessori lovingly explains the details rather than demanding their simplification.

The holding together of the fingers is connected with the awesome mystery on the altar.

Book Notice: The Definitive Study of Concelebration

Joseph de Sainte-Marie, OCD. The Holy Eucharist—The World’s Salvation. Studies on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, its Celebration, and its Concelebration. With a Foreword by Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB. Leominster: Gracewing, 2015. xxxix + 557 pp. Available from Amazon (USA $40, UK £25, Germany €38) or the publisher.

Let me begin with the bottom line. This is the most important book ever to appear in English on the subject of concelebration. It ought to be read by every bishop, priest, religious, teacher of liturgy, and seminary formator, and absolutely anyone with a desire to learn about this complex and sometimes contentious issue.

Fr. Joseph de Sainte-Marie (1931–1985), a professor and specialist in Carmelite spirituality at the Pontifical Theological Faculty ‘Teresianum’ in Rome, published this substantial collection of his writings in 1982, only a few years before his death. One may regret that it has taken over 30 years for an English translation to appear — or better, one may rejoice that it has finally come out for the benefit of those who do not read French. Lest a nearly 600-page tome prompt any dismay, I hasten to repeat that this is a gathering together of a dozen finely-chiseled essays on the Mass and the Holy Eucharist, with special attention to concelebration. Most of the essays could be read in one sitting; the lovely style of writing and the vigorous argumentation make the book hard to put down once begun!

While this book contains eloquent essays on the Mass as a true and proper sacrifice, the sacramental system, and the relationship of sacrifice and banquet, far the greater part of its bulk is given over to a careful, systematic, and exhaustive study of concelebration under every aspect — historical, liturgical, theological, pastoral, magisterial. For example, Fr. Joseph de Sainte-Marie provides a detailed synopsis of the elements of the question as they make their appearance in the ancient and medieval periods down through the twentieth century Liturgical Movement and into the Second Vatican Council; he sifts all the pertinent texts of and interventions at the Council to establish just what was being proposed, debated, changed, agreed to, and subsequently applied or misapplied; he compares and contrasts Eastern and Western practices; he patiently gathers evidence to show the ways in which agenda-driven reasoning and sleight-of-hand were employed to put across a novel reinterpretation of concelebration and to ensure its enforcement.

The author reaches many important conclusions in this work of highly readable scholarship. Among the more immediately practical conclusions are: (1) although concelebration is licit and occasionally opportune, particularly when the presbyterate is led in worship by the bishop, it was never historically, and should not now be, the normal or default mode of offering the Mass; (2) much of our contemporary theory and praxis are based on a fundamentally flawed concept of what concelebration historically was—a flaw that found its way into the Council debates and subsequent implementation; (3) in either sacramental or ceremonial concelebration, no differently than in a ‘private’ Mass, one sole Mass is offered to God; (4) because “each Mass pours the redemptive Blood of Christ upon the Church and the whole world,” the Church and the world benefit from a multiplication of Masses and suffer loss from their reduction; (5) it can be demonstrated from documents of Tradition and of the Magisterium that the Church herself greatly desires that Masses be thus multiplied; (6) habitual reliance on or presumed choice of concelebration constitutes a genuine liturgical abuse. These statements are, of course, conclusions, and therefore they must emerge from valid argumentation based on thoroughly evaluated evidence. Fr. Joseph de Sainte-Marie takes nothing for granted and establishes each of these conclusions with rigorous research and argumentation that goes far beyond anything I have seen when reading on this question.[1]

It is an exhilarating, sometimes distressing, and always enlightening work, one that is written by a priest who is deeply in love with our Lord Jesus Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Indeed, he makes it clear that his motivation for the painstaking work that went into his studies is a desire to give glory to God and sanctify souls through the sacrifice of the Mass, coupled with an anxiety (quite legitimate, as anyone who takes up the book will discover) that leaders in the Church had been both deceiving and deceived as they walked down a path of innovation, inversion, and incoherence.

Let me sum up my enthusiasm for The Holy Eucharist—The World’s Salvation: if you have any interest at all in the question of concelebration or in the manner of its current practice in the Latin Rite, you would do yourself an immense favor to get this book and read, for starters, the Foreword by Dom Alcuin Reid (pp. xvii–xxxix) and chapter 1 by the author (pp. 3–27). As you find yourself brought to a greater depth of awareness of the issues, an appropriate subtlety of discernment, and a new strength of practical judgment, you will wonder how we managed to get anywhere before this book was in our hands.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (xi)
Foreword (xvii)

Part I: A Disputed Question
1. Reflections and Questions on the Subject of Concelebration (3)
2. A Critical Note on a ‘Theology of Concelebration’ (29)
3. Concelebration: Sensus Fidei and Theology (81)

Part II: The Historical Inquiry
4. Concelebration: The History of a History (123)
5. Concelebration: An Historical Summary (179)
6. Eucharistic Concelebration in the Magisterium of the Second Vatican Council (203)
7. ‘Useless and Superfluous Masses’ (273)
8. The Church Asks for the Multiplication of Masses (297)

Part III: Theological Reflection
9. ‘Sacrificium Missae’ (323)
10. The Liturgy: Mystery, Symbol, and Sacrament (355)
11. The Mass: Meal, ‘Blessing’, Congregation, or Sacrifice? (425)
12. The Celebration and Multiplication of the Sacrifice (483)

Conclusion (539)

The back cover

Sample pages

NOTE

[1] Having given much thought to this matter (see "The Loss of Graces: Private Masses and Concelebration" in Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis, and the NLM article "Celebration versus Concelebration: Theological Considerations"), I was overjoyed to find in Fr. Joseph de Sainte-Marie an author who pursues the inquiry with an unprecedented breadth and depth.