The Prayer for Peace and the Peace

Lost in Translation #168

After the commingling and the Agnus Dei the priest silently prays the following:

Domine Jesu Christe, qui dixisti Apostolis tuis: Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis: ne respicias peccata mea, sed fidem Ecclesiæ tuæ; eamque secundum voluntatem tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris: Qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Which I translate:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who said to Thine Apostles, ‘Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you’, look not on my sins but on the faith of Thy Church; and, in accordance with Thy will, deign to pacify her and to collect her into one, Who livest and reignest, God, forever and ever. Amen.

My translation is not as eloquent as that of the 2011 ICEL:

Lord Jesus Christ,

who said to your Apostles:

Peace I leave you, my peace I give you,

look not on our sins,

but on the faith of your Church,

and graciously grant her peace and unity

in accordance with your will (no. 126).

“Grant her peace and unity” is better on the ears than “pacify her and collect her into one.” The imperative “pacify her” makes the Church sound like a dyspeptic baby in need of her binky. But by using the verb pacificare, the prayer does not simply ask that the Church be given a gift called peace that she can use or not use to various degrees, but that she be transformed by peace, that she herself be made peaceful.

Coadunare, which I have translated as “collect into one,” is also an apt verb for uniting. Aduno already means to “make one,” that is, to move the many to (ad) the one (uno). Co-ad-uno makes the action both more corporate and more intense. To my mind the verb calls to mind the meaning of the word “Church” – in both the Greek Ekklēsia and the Latin Ecclesia, it means the assembly. The prayer essentially asks that Christ may really and truly make the Church what she is, that He may make her an assembly collected from everywhere and now united in His peace.

My translation renders digneris as “deign to.” ICEL changes this verb in the subjunctive mood to the adverb “graciously,” while some preconciliar hand Missals use “vouchsafe.” The latter is a lovely if obsolete word: to vouch or warrant something safely is to be generous, trustworthy, and gracious in bestowing. But in English, “deign” still maintains a tenuous connection to “dignify,” a connection that is stronger in the Latin and, I contend, significant. The inclusion of digneris adds a layer of hierarchic formality (which it is good to do in sacred liturgy), but more than that, it has the Domine Jesu Christe ask that God dignify His Church or increase her dignity by granting her certain properties. And human dignity is one of the surprising themes of the Latin Mass. The Offertory Rite marvels at the dignity that man has been given through His creation and redemption, and the priest and faithful in a moment will be reciting the Domine, non sum dignus, still trembling at the thought of their own unworthiness or lack of dignity in receiving so august a Sacrament.

The prayer reminds Jesus Christ of what He said during the Last Supper: “Peace I leave, My peace I give.” The full quote is:

But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. (John 14, 26-27)

The hint of a relationship between the Holy Spirit and Christ’s peace is confirmed later in John’s Gospel, when our Risen Lord appears to the Apostles and says:

‘Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.’ When He had said this, He breathed on them; and He said to them: ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.’ (John 20, 21-23)

The Church Fathers interpreted Christ’s insufflation here as a kiss. Hence, His breathing of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles after bidding them peace is a Kiss of Peace. Indeed, as I argue elsewhere, Eastern liturgies place their Kiss of Peace before their Offertory/Anaphora because they are following Matthew 5:23-24:

If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath any thing against thee; Leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother: and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift.

The Roman Rite, on the other hand, follows John 20 and hence has not a [primarily] conciliatory Kiss but a Paschal Kiss, a Kiss that communicates the peace of the Risen Christ. The Paschal character of this kiss is reinforced by its placement after the commingling, which represents the Resurrection. In the words of Honorius Augustodunensis (1080-1140): “By sharing the pax, [the priest] denotes the peace given after Christ’s resurrection and our participation in its joy.” [1]

The Church takes seriously the words of the Domine Jesu Christe and of these Johannine passages. Christ has bequeathed to the Church a unique peace that is real and palpable and not vague or metaphorical. As David Yeago notes, Christ describes the peace “with utter substantial realism,” as “a concrete reality” which “confers the gift of which it speaks” and has the power to return to the giver if the recipient is unworthy. [2] As James Perella notes in his magisterial study The Kiss Sacred and Profane, for Church Fathers such as Sts. Cyril of Jerusalem and John Chrysostom, “the kiss exchanged by the brethren is more than just a symbol”: it is the actual mixing of souls, [3] the movement of souls towards “a mutual intercourse.” [4]

In the traditional Mass this respect for the Peace’s substantial realism may be seen in two areas: its ceremonies and its language.

In the traditional Mass, the priest kisses the altar near where the Sacred Host lies (earlier rubrics have him kissing the Host itself or the lip of the Chalice) and then “kisses” the deacon who in turn “kisses” the subdeacon and so on. To administer the Kiss (which is no longer labial), the giver of the peace places his hands on the other’s shoulders. He leans forward towards the recipient’s left cheek and says, Pax tecum, to which the recipient replies, Et cum spiritu tuo. I call this form of the Kiss of Peace the Roman accolade, for “accolade” comes from or “to the neck,” and the act of “falling on” someone’s neck betokens a kiss, as we see with the father of the prodigal son who ran out of his house and “fell upon his [son’s] neck and kissed him” (Luke 15, 20).

No one can give the peace who has not received it from someone else, including the priest, who receives it from Christ Himself on the altar. The symbolism is both beautiful and clear. All true peace comes from Christ through the ministration of His Church. Grace cascades from the Eucharistic sacrifice through Christ’s ministers to His people, forming what several Western rites aptly called a “chain of peace and charity” that both binds together and elevates. [5] In the words of Fr. Pius Parsch, the kiss:

is especially a glorious symbol of the union of Christians among themselves and of their union with Christ ; for the kiss comes from the altar, which is the symbol of Christ. Therefore it is Christ who kisses those who are participating in the holy sacrifice. The kiss goes from one to another, thus uniting all the faithful most intimately among themselves and with Christ. That mystical union of the faithful in Christ, which the holy sacrifice and Communion are to accomplish, is beautifully represented in the kiss of peace. [6]

The power of the Peace is reinforced in the etiquette governing the ritual. While it is common in the Tridentine rite to bow to one’s ecclesiastical superior at incensations and the like, one does not acknowledge the rank of the giver of the peace before it is administered, for, as the Caeremoniale Episcoporum puts it, “there is consideration not for the minister bringing it but for the Peace [itself], which is conveyed to him from the Sacrifice of the altar.” [7] The giver of the peace, in other words, represents not himself but Christ, for the peace that he gives is Christ (cf. Eph. 2, 19).

The second way in which the traditional Roman Rite acknowledges the substantial realism of the Peace is the manner in which it speaks about it. The 1570/1962 Missal simply states:

Si danda est pax, osculatur altare et, dans pacem, dicit: Pax tecum. ℟. Et cum spiritu tuo.

In Missis defunctorum non datur pax, neque dicitur praecedens oratio.

Which I translate as:

If the Peace is to be given, [the priest] kisses the altar and, when giving the Peace, says, Peace be with thee. ℟. And with thy spirit.

In Masses for the dead the Peace is not given, nor is the previous prayer said.

Unlike today, there is no talk of a “sign of peace” being exchanged. In the classical Roman liturgy, the Peace itself is given and received. And that Peace is a real spiritual blessing which even has the power to forgive venial sins, for it is (at least according to Parsch) a sacramental. [8] And insofar as the Peace bestows forgiveness and peace, it may be considered a fulfillment or instantiation of Psalm 84[3],11: justítia, et pax osculátæ sunt—“justice and peace have kissed.”

The 1970 Missal

The Novus Ordo changed the Kiss of Peace in four ways. The rubrics of the 2002 Missale Romanum state:

Deinde, pro opportunitate, diaconus, vel sacerdos, subiungit:

Offerte vobis pacem.

Et omnes, iuxta locorum consuetudines, pacem, communionem et caritatem sibi invicem significant; sacerdos pacem dat diacono vel ministro.

The 1985 ICEL translation for which is:

Then, if appropriate, the deacon or priest adds:

Let us offer each other the sign of peace.

All make an appropriate sign of peace, according to local custom.

The priest gives the sign of peace to the deacon or minister.

And the 2011 ICEL translation for which is:

Then, if appropriate, the Deacon, or the Priest, adds:

Let us offer each other the sign of peace.

And all offer one another a sign, in keeping with local customs, that expresses peace, communion, and charity.

The Priest gives the sign of peace to a Deacon or minister.

The rubric now appears after the fraction rite and before the commingling, the first change to the Kiss and one that undermines the Paschal meaning of the Kiss as coming from the Risen Lord, since the mystical symbol of the Resurrection, the commingling, has yet to occur. According to the testimony of Annibale Bugnini, on the basis of the principle that the Consilium was authorized to simplify but not alter the structure of the Roman Rite, Pope Paul VI “asked for the elimination of no. 13 of the draft [of the Novus Ordo], which placed the rite of the fraction after the greeting of peace and during the singing of the Agnus Dei.” [9] His request, however, was denied!. And thus today, while the faithful smile, shake hands, and offer each other the hippie peace sign, Our crucified Lord mystically lies lifeless on the altar.

Second, the new rubrics simply state Offerte vobis pacem or “Let us offer each other the sign of peace.” Gone is the chain of love: The vertical mediation of Christ’s peace from Host to priest to ministers and so on has been replaced by a horizontal immediacy, with peace springing up spontaneously from among the people. The metaphysics of pseudo-Dionysius (who coined the word “hierarchy”) has been replaced by that of Hegel (who coined the word Zeitgeist).

Third, the peace is to be administered according to local custom. Instead of a kiss or a kiss-adjacent gesture like that of the Roman accolade, any “appropriate sign” is valid, thereby efectively ending the kiss of peace as a kiss—a tradition, incidentally, that goes back to the “holy kiss” in the New Testament. [10]

In the United States, the most common replacement of the kiss or accolade (at least before the COVID pandemic) has been the handshake. In many respects, this is not an unreasonable choice. As an indication that one is unarmed, the handshake is certainly a recognizable sign of peace. Unfortunately, though, it is a better sign of the peace that comes from the city of man rather than from the city of God. Handshaking signifies a truce, a deal, the kind of agreement one makes in the world of politics and business. It is not first and foremost a sign of love or intimacy, let alone the charity that the Holy Spirit alone pours forth into our hearts. Indeed, unlike the kiss and virtually every other sacred gesture in the liturgy, it has undergone no transformation or modification that would mark it as distinctive from the “profane” handshakes outside the temple and thus it more or less retains its worldly resonance.

Msgr. Peter Elliott has an interesting interpretation, or rather suggestion, regarding these rubrics. While acknowledging that the “sign of peace” is to take place according to local custom, he recommends that within the sanctuary, the traditional Roman accolade be given. One wonders how often his advice has been heeded. [11]

Fourth, while the Latin of the 1970/2000 Missale Romanum preserves a belief in the substantial realism of the Peace by simply calling it the Pax, some approved translations undermine this realism. We have already seen above how ICEL calls the Pax the “sign of peace.” As for other languages, the Italian is just as weak, the French is the strongest of the translations that I consulted, and the Mexican Missal is somewhere in between.

The third edition of the Italian Missal has:

Scambiatevi il dono della pace.

Oppure:

Come figli del Dio della pace, scambiatevi un gesto di comunione fraterna.

Oppure:

In Cristo, che ci ha resi tutti fratelli con la sua croce, scambiatevi il dono della pace.

Oppure:

Nello Spirito del Cristo risorto, scambiatevi il dono della pace. [12]

Which I translate as:

Exchange the gift of peace.

Or:

As children of the God of peace, exchange a gesture of fraternal communion.

Or:

In Christ, who made us all brothers and sisters by his cross, exchange the gift of peace.

Or:

In the Spirit of the risen Christ, exchange the gift of peace.

The French has:

Dans la charité du Christ, donnez-vous la paix.

Et tous se manifestent la paix et la charité mutuelles selon les coutumes locales.

Le prêtre donne la paix au diacre ou au ministre. [13]

Which I translate as:

In the charity of Christ, give one another the peace.

Mutual peace and charity are manifested according to local customs.

The priest gives the peace to the deacon or the minister.

Because of its numerous options, the Mexican Misal Romano is all over the map:

Luego, si se juzga oportuno, el diácono, o el sacerdote, añade:

Dense fraternalmente la paz.

O bien:

Como hijos de Dios, intercambien ahora un signo de comunión fraterna.

O bien:

En Cristo, que nos ha hecho hermanos con su cruz, dense la paz como signo de reconciliación.

O bien:

En el Espíritu de Cristo resucitado, dense fraternalmente la paz.

Y todos, según la costumbre del lugar, se dan la paz.

El sacerdote da la paz al diácono o ministro. [14]

Which I translate as:

Then, if deemed appropriate, the deacon or priest adds:

Fraternally give the peace.

Or:

As children of God, exchange now a sign of fraternal communion.

Or:

In Christ, who has made us brothers and sisters through his cross, give the peace as a sign of reconciliation.

Or:

In the Spirit of the risen Christ, fraternally give the peace.

And all, according to local custom, exchange a sign of peace.

The priest gives the peace to the deacon or minister.

Note that while some options refer to the Peace, others refer to a sign or gesture. And while one option rightly characterizes the Peace as Paschal (Johannine) in character, another wrongly characterizes it as conciliatory (Matthean) in character.

Notes

[1] Gemma Animae I (Migne, PL 172.570), ch. 83.

[2] Yeago, “Unfashionable Thoughts on Sharing the Peace,” Dialog 23 (August 1984), 292.

[3] Perella, The Kiss Sacred and Profane: An Interpretive History of Kiss Symbolism and Related Religio-Erotic Themes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 24. Perella cites Cyril, Catechesis Mystagogice XXIII.3 (PG 33:1112).

[4] John Chrysostom, Homily 30 (PG 61:606); cf. In epistulam II ad Corinthios 30:2 (PG 61:607). And if the kiss produces united souls, it also produces one body, thereby fulfilling the petition of the Domine Jesu Christe (cf. John Chrysostom, In epistulam I ad Corinthios 44.4 (PG 61:376).

[5] Along with the “Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum,” several medieval Missals include the blessing: Habete vinculum pacis et caritatis, ut apti sitis sacrosanctis mysteriis (cf. Jungmann, 332, n. 61).

[6] Liturgy of the Mass, 298.

[7] Quia ante non habetur consideratio ipsius ministri deferentis, sed Pacis, quae a Sacrificio altaris ad illum defertur (I.xxix.8).

[8] See Liturgy of the Mass, 298.

[9] The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (Liturgical Press, 1990), 837, n. 19.

[10] Rom. 16,16; 1 Cor. 16,20; 2 Cor. 13,12; 1 Thess. 5,26; 1 Pet. 5,14.

[11] Peter J. Elliott, Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite, 2nd ed. (Ignatius Press, 2005), no. 323.

[12] P. 447.

[13] Missel Romain, 3rd ed., no. 128.

[14] No. 128.

The Agnus Dei

Lost in Translation #167

To resume “Our Lost in Translation” series on the Ordinary of the Mass, we turn to the Agnus Dei. After the Commingling, the priest recites (while the choir chants) the following:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.

Which is typically translated:

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

The title for Christ and the clause about Him are taken from St. John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who taketh away the sin of the world” (Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi. ~ John 1, 29). Mystically speaking, since the Fraction and Commingling represent the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, respectively, then the Agnus Dei can be seen as the voice of John the Baptist shouting from Limbo that the Messiah has risen from the dead. Even on the other side of the grave, John remains the Precursor of the Lord.

John the Baptist, to the left of Jesus Christ, proclaiming Him in Limbo

Addressing Christ as the Lamb of God is also appropriate at this point of the Mass, since the Lamb has just been sacramentally immolated on the altar, and since the congregation is about to receive this Paschal Lamb in Holy Communion.

The Agnus Dei twice petitions the Lamb for mercy and once for peace. Pleading for mercy from Jesus is common in both the New Testament and in the Mass; what makes this plea distinctive is that it moves on to a plea for peace. Peace is a salient them of this part of the Mass, beginning with the priest adapting the words of the Risen Christ, “Peace be with you,” and continuing in a moment with the Kiss of Peace.

The priest accents the petitions of the Agnus Dei by striking his breast at each petition, a ritual acknowledgement that his need for mercy and his lack of peace are tied to his sinfulness.

In Requiem Masses, the Agnus Dei is changed to the following:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem sempiternam.

Which is typically translated:

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant unto them rest.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant unto them rest.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant unto them everlasting rest.

The petition has shifted from us the living to all the souls in Purgatory, even if it is a Requiem Mass for a single deceased person. That is why the priest does not strike his breast when reciting this version of the prayer, for it is no longer about him and the rest of the Church Militant.

The request for rest (requies) rather than peace (pax) is inspired by 4 Esdras 2, 34-35, the same apocryphal text that inspired the standard Catholic prayer for the dead: “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord…”:

Wait for your shepherd; he will give you everlasting rest, because he who will come at the end of the age is close at hand. Be ready for the rewards of the kingdom, because perpetual light will shine on you forevermore.

But peace is still in the background. The final petition, which adds sempiternam to requiem, may be inspired by the Vulgate translation of 2 Thessalonians 3, 16:

Ipse autem Dominus pacis det vobis pacem sempiternam in omni loco.

Which the Douay Rheims translates as :

Now the Lord of peace himself give you everlasting peace in every place.

The Vulgate, incidentally, is rather loose with its choice of sempiternam, which is meant to translate the Greek dia pantos, or “through all.” The Greek text thus reads: “May the Lord of peace give you peace through all in every way.”

Praying for rest and praying for peace are ultimately praying for the same thing (beatific happiness), but the connotations are different. The Church Militant seeks peace in the midst of spiritual strife and war; the Church Suffering seeks rest after a lifetime of laboring in the Lord’s vineyard. For the souls in Purgatory, the war is over, the battle done, the victory won; all that remains is paying the debt owed God through pain. And since that pain is intense, the Church Militant prays and offers sacrifice that it be over soon.

The Numinous in the Roman Rite, Part II

In our last post, we described the importance of the numinous for Catholic worship. Here, we describe how that principle is instantiated in the traditional Roman Rite.

The Numinous in the 1962 Missal

To repurpose Yeats’ verse about the 1916 Easter Rebellion, at every Mass a terrible beauty is born; at every Mass a portal to the mysterium tremendens et fascinans is opened. The ceremonies of a Eucharistic liturgy and the comportment of its ministers should therefore reflect this basic fact. Different Apostolic Liturgies communicate the numinous in different ways. In the 1570/1962 Roman Missal does so, one can list the silent canon, the use of a sacred language, and the etiquette of the priest: his frequent kisses of the altar and genuflections, his not separating his canonical digits after touching the Host, etc. But in this post, we will focus on three other examples: the performance of or response to kairos, the liturgical stammer, and allusions to the Holy of Holies.

I. A Quiet but Tremendous Beginning

The traditional Latin Mass begins not with a greeting of the people but with a shudder before God. This shudder does not occur simply because the priest has physically entered the sanctuary or is about to approach the altar: it happens because Mass is beginning. Outside of Mass, lay men and women can enter into the sanctuary to act as sacristans, arranging flowers and linens and vessels. And when a Low Mass begins, the priest walks into the sanctuary, arranges the chalice, corporal, and burse on the altar, and returns to the foot of the altar.

But upon his return and after he makes the sign of the cross to begin the Mass, his attitude changes significantly. The same altar that he was touching almost nonchalantly a few moments ago he now quivers before as he repeatedly asks God for forgiveness. The difference is that he is aware that he has moved into a sacred time, kairos. In the New Testament, a distinction is made between chronos, which is ordinary, chronological time, and kairos, which means “the time when God acts.” The Byzantine Rite makes this distinction explicit, when its Divine Liturgy begins with Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio: “It is time kairos for the Lord to act.”

St. Therese of Lisieux as a sacristan arranging the sacred vessels without gloves outside of kairos

The laconic Roman Rite, on the other hand, follows the adage: facta non verba, “deeds not words,” acting out rather than articulating an awareness of kairos (also, there is no Latin equivalent for this Greek word). After making the sign of the cross, the priest recites Psalm 42 (41), a cri de coeur that moves from despair to hope in the presence of Divine Majesty. He then recites the Confiteor, asking for a forgiveness of his sins, knowing that no one should approach the sacred unclean. And even after he asks for forgiveness, he continues to move with fear and trembling as he ascends the altar and recites the prayers the Aufer a nobis and Oramus te (more on the former later). And when the priest approaches the altar this time, he kisses it reverently, which he did not do before when he was setting up the chalice.

All of which is to say that this humbling, trepidatious attitude of the priest and his ministers betokens a special time and a special act. Sacred liturgy is more than an act of worship or the fulfilment of an obligation or a way of giving thanks or a memorial or even a sacrifice; it is a portal through which we enter into the “wholly other” dimension of the numinous.

II. The Liturgical Stammer

In the prayers at the foot of the altar, the priest confers absolution on the ministers and the congregation that have recited the Confiteor and then asks the same for himself. Next, after a short series of versicles, the priest prays two prayers (one when is he is approaching the altar and one when he arrives), both of which ask for a forgiveness of sins: the Aufer a nobis and the Oramus te, respectively. The worry among some is that because these prayers are said so soon after the absolution, they bespeak a despair that the absolution was not efficacious, that the priest thinks that he still has sins on his soul even after God has forgiven him. This repeated plea for forgiveness, so the charge goes, may indicate a despairing spirit of Jansenist scrupulosity.

But there is another interpretation for why the priest and his ministers hem and haw. Catherine Pickstock speaks of a “stammer” in traditional liturgies that instantiates “the ‘slow tongue’ of Moses, the ‘unclean lips’ of Isaiah, the demur of Jeremiah, and the mutism of Ezekiel.” [1] Rather than moving in a Cartesian, linear fashion from A to B to C (as the Novus Ordo does, or so Pickstock argues), the traditional Rome Rite often takes two steps forward, one step back. This stammer or dance reflects the proper attitude that one should have in the face of the numinous, namely, a mixture of hope, fear, awe, personal unworthiness, gratitude, hesitancy, and perseverance.

Seen in this light, the repeated requests for purification during and after the Prayers of the Foot of the Altar do not bespeak a lack of confidence in God’s power to forgive but the proper response to the prospect of participating in so great a numinous mystery. They are a perfect enactment of Psalm 5, 8 – “I will come into (introibo) Thy house, I will worship towards Thy holy temple in Thy fear” – where “God’s fear” can be taken to mean the correct reaction to being in the presence of the numinous.

III. The Holy of Holies

Another strange deficiency in Otto’s Idea of the Holy is that when covering the Old Testament, Otto focuses only on feelings of the numinous without also including places. [2]  But surely, the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple is the greatest physical nucleus of the numinous in the Hebrew Bible, surpassing even Mount Sinai.

For in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, an object that brought death to anyone who touched it without divine authorization (as in the case of poor Uzzah: see 2 Samuel 6, 1-7 and 1 Chronicles 13, 9-12). In the Ark were some of the most sacred objects imaginable: the stone tablets of the Decalogue that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, manna from the time that the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and the staff of the first High Priest, Aaron. And above the Ark hovered the cloudlike Shekhinah, a mysterious manifestation of God’s presence.

The Ark and the Holy of Holies were separated from the rest of the Temple by a curtain that was sixty feet high, thirty feet wide, and four inches thick. Only the High Priest passed through that curtain, and only once a year, on the Feast of Atonement (Yom Kippur), when he sprinkled the blood of sacrificed animals on the Ark for the remission of the sins of the people. So great was the numinosity of the place that the Levites feared the High Priest would die of fright; and since they could not retrieve the body without entering the Holy of Holies and risk being struck down by God, they tied a rope around his waist so they could drag out his corpse if necessary.

As it turns out, the awesome and terrifying structure that was Solomon’s Temple was a mere symbol for the body of Jesus Christ (see John 2, 21). It is therefore appropriate to invoke this symbol when engaged in an activity that makes present the Body (not to mention Blood, Soul, and Divinity) of Jesus Christ.

The traditional Latin Mass does so once. When the priest ascends the altar as he prays the Aufer a nobis:

Take away from us our iniquities, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that we may be worthy to enter into the Holy of Holies with pure minds. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here, the priest imagines the sanctuary as the Holy Place and the area immediately around the altar, which is traditionally separated from the rest of the sanctuary by one or more steps, as the Holy of Holies. And since the altar is a symbol of Jesus Christ, whose body the Temple foreshadows and who dwells in the heavenly Holy of Holies with His Father (see Heb. 9, 11-13), the priest is ritually approaching Jesus Christ and with the proper attitude.

But the greatest numinous moment is yet to come. Before the term “Canon” came to designate the prayer by which the priest confects the Eucharist, it was known by other names. Two in particular are relevant to our inquiry: the “dangerous Lord’s Prayer” (orationem dominicam quae dicitur periculosa) and “the Action” (actio). The former certainly attests to the numinosity of the Consecration, but so too does the latter, for it is a reminder that the Mass is an action, and that action puts us in formidable proximity to the numinous. As a character in John Henry Newman’s novel Loss and Gain eloquently puts it, the Mass

is not a mere form of words—it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is, not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope, and is the interpretation, of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne of grace, they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. [3]

The use of Actio to describe the Canon occurs once in the Mass, in the rubric Infra Actionem or “within the Action.” The instruction occurs immediately before the Communicantes, which has different versions depending on the occasion. Infra Actionem warns the priest of this variable; it essentially means, “Within this Action/Canon be prepared to make this or that insertion.”

Interestingly, Infra Actionem is in both forms of the Roman Rite (it is in Eucharistic Prayer I of the 1970 Missal). But there is another rubric that appears in neither yet is worthy of our consideration. In the liturgical books of the Carolingian era for a Pontifical High Mass, one reads: surgit solus pontifex et tacite intrat in canonem—“The pontiff rises alone and enters silently into the Canon.” [4]

The rubric draws from a medieval tradition that the Canon is a Holy of Holies into which only the celebrant can enter. As Fr. Josef Jungmann summarizes (disapprovingly): “The priest alone is to enter this inmost sanctum, while the people stand praying without, as once they did when Zachary burned incense in the Temple sanctuary.” [5] Fr. Daniel Cardo concurs but sees this imagery in a positive light:

It might be possible to recognize in the expression intrat in canonem a symbolic meaning indicating that the priest is, at that point, crossing the threshold of the holy of holies, where the veil of the true temple of Christ’s body was torn (cf. Matt. 27, 51): his side opened on the Cross, from where the Church receives the gift of the sacraments. [6]

Moreover, there is a fascinating metaphysics underlying this abandoned rubric. The Mass began with the priest declaring that he will enter into the altar of God (Introibo ad altare Dei) before he ascends the steps to the altar and prays the Aufer a nobis about entering the Holy of Holies. At this point of the Mass, the Holy of Holies is conceived of spatially, as one would expect of a temple; to enter into one part, one must physically move into it. But with this medieval rubric, the Holy of Holies is not conceived of spatially: the priest has already been standing at the altar for some time. Here, to enter into the Holy of Holies, he does not relocate from A to B but transitions from potency to act. The Holy of Holies is no longer the greatest place on earth but the greatest action that can be on earth.

Conclusion

Rudolf Otto’s ideas, we repeat, are not perfect, but they are useful, for they remind us of the important role that the numinous plays in our lives as believers. Moreover, they provide a reliable measuring stick for evaluating the vitality of sacred liturgy, which fails as liturgy to the degree to which it neglects the numinous. Those who reduce liturgy to a meal or a community gathering will never hear the words, “There is a mighty spirit in the room.”

This review appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:2 (Summer 2026), pp. 56-57. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Blackwell, 1998), 215.

[2] See Otto’s chapter “The Numinous in the Old Testament,” 74-84.

[3] John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert (Burns & Oates, 1962), 185.

[4] Ordo Romanus II.10.

[5] Josef Jungmann, S.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 1 (Benzinger Brothers, 1951), 82-83.

[6] Daniel Cardó, The Cross and the Eucharist in Early Christianity: A Theological and Liturgical Investigation (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 110-11.

The Numinous and the Roman Rite, Part I

The concept of the numinous was first articulated by the German Lutheran Rudolf Otto in his seminal work The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Since its publication in 1917, the monograph has influenced an impressive array of thinkers with vastly different points of view: Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner, Leo Strauss, and C.S. Lewis, to name a few. Otto’s thought is not perfect (it has been rightly criticized for working within a post-Kantian framework), but it is sufficient for our purposes, namely, as a means of exploring something in worship that cannot be explained away by rationalist reduction. In fact, I would go so far as to count among the most reliable ways to measure the health of a liturgy its ability to generate a sense of the numinous.

And so, to substantiate my claim, I will in this post summarize Otto’s concept and argue that every Eucharistic liturgy is and should be an encounter with the numinous. Then, next week I will describe three ways in which the 1962 Roman Missal successfully encourages a sense of the numinous.

Rudolf Otto

I. Otto and the Numinous

Otto’s idea of the holy is predicated on the observation that the holy and the just are not synonymous. While every holy person is just, not every just person is holy. You might, for example, call Socrates just, and you might even call him pious, but would you ever call him holy? For Otto, the difference is that the holy person has an encounter with the “numinous,” a word he coins from a Latin word for divinity in general and divine will or sway in particular (numen). And the numinous object, Otto writes, is the “wholly other” that is experienced as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a formidable and fascinating mystery. [1]

Regarding the “formidable,” Otto has in mind the full range of meanings for tremendus, which, like its cognate tremor, means both fear and trembling (literally).

First, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of awefulness, a shuddering before God that is, paradoxically, a gift from God, for “the natural man is quite unable to shudder or feel horror in the real sense of the word.” [2]

Second, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of overpowering, or what the Romans called majestas. It is in the face of this Majesty that one feels a sense of one’s own miniscule creatureliness and utter dependence like never before.

Third, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of energy, which Otto compares to a sense of urgency and of divine wrath. In and of Himself, God is beyond emotion, but as we experience Him, the living God is a jealous God, filled with passion and power. Otto quotes with approval a line from an unnamed mystic: “Love is nothing else than quenched Wrath.” [3]

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

This tremendous mystery is also fascinans—in fact, it is “uniquely attractive and fascinating.” [4] This aspect of the mystery explains the “moment of rapture that breathes in our tenderest and most heart-felt hymns of salvation,” such as the poetic compositions of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. “Mere love” and “mere trust,” Otto contends, do not account for the ecstasies that a Saint experiences in his intimate encounters with the numinous. [5]

And the numinous can generate a variety of feelings:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its “profane,” non-religious mood of everyday experience. [...] It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. [6]

Perhaps the clearest commentator on Otto’s work is C.S. Lewis, who builds up to a sense of the numinous with the help of a mental exercise. Lewis asks us to imagine someone coming in and saying that there is a tiger in the next room. Aware of the danger, we would probably experience fear. Now imagine someone saying that there is a ghost in the next room and that we believe it. Lewis conjectures that we would experience a special kind of fear called Dread, which puts us at the “fringes of the Numinous.” Finally, imagine someone saying, “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and that we believe it. Lewis opines:

Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words “Under it my genius is rebuked.” This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous. [7]

II. The Numinous in Eucharistic Liturgy

Otto’s Idea of the Holy contains an appendix entitled “The Numinous in Poetry, Hymn, and Liturgy,” but it is a treacly collection of passages from the Bhagavad-Gita and Protestant hymnists. Still, we can at least credit him for thinking about liturgy when thinking about the numinous; for a truly sacred liturgy facilitates the greatest of encounters with the numinous, as is witnessed by the Saints who experienced ecstasies while celebrating or assisting at Mass.

Our own argument is simple:

The Mass, as consistently affirmed by the Magisterium from time immemorial to the present day, is the unbloody re-presencing of the death of the Son of God on the cross as well as His Resurrection and Ascension. [8]

This Paschal mystery that is being represenced is truly a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. For how can the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ be deemed otherwise?

Therefore, the Mass should do everything it can to foster an encounter with the numinous through its rites. Certainly, the Mass was experienced as numinous from an early age. Consider the following passages from the Patristic era:

In a sermon, St. Augustine admonishes:

Approach the partaking of this altar with fear and trembling (see Phil. 2, 12-13). Recognize in the bread that which hung on the cross, in the chalice that which flowed from his side. [9]

In his poem On Faith, Isaac of Antioch (ca. 450) writes:

I saw the mixed vessel of faith, which was filled with blood instead of wine; and instead of bread the slain body was placed upon the table. I saw the blood and shuddered; the sacrificed body and terror seized me. [10]

St. Cyril of Jerusalem calls the Mass “a holy and tremendous Sacrifice” and “a holy mystery”; similarly, he calls the time of Sacrifice “a sublimely dread hour.” [11]

Finally, the Liturgy of St. James includes the admonition:

Let all mortal flesh be silent, standing there in fear and trembling, let all things of earth vanish from our thoughts; for the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Christ our God, is about to be sacrificed and to be given as food to the faithful. Before Him choirs of angels go, clothed with power and dominion, with faces veiled, chanting the hymn, Alleluia. [12]

Such is the numinous in the Eucharistic liturgy, according to the Fathers. Next week, we shall how this principle is instantiated in the classical Roman Rite.

This essay appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:2 (Summer 2026), pp. 34-38. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] The Idea of the Holy (Martino Fine Books, 2010), 25-30.

[2] Otto, 15.

[3] Otto, 24.

[4] Otto, 31.

[5] Otto, 34.

[6] Otto, 12-13.

[7] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Zondervan, 2001), 5-6.

[8] See Catechism of the Catholic Church 1354.

[9] Sermon Denis 3.

[10] Cited in Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained (Herder, 1902), 104.

[11] Cited in Gihr, 105.

[12] Cited in Gihr, 111.

The 1570 Missale Romanum and the Devotion to the Dormition in Jerusalem

In a previous post, we described the 1951 changes to the Propers for the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Here, we return to the 1570 Roman Missal and its implicit endorsement of the Eastern tradition that Our Lady “fell asleep in the Lord” before being assumed body and soul into Heaven. We also coordinate this belief with the devotions to Our Lady in the city of Jerusalem.

The 1570 Secret, variations of which can be traced back to the fifteenth and possibly twelfth century, states:

Subveniat, Dómine, plebi tuae Dei Genitrícis oratio: quam etsi pro conditióne carnis migrasse cognóscimus, in caelésti gloria apud te pro nobis intercédere sentiámus. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

May the prayer of the Mother of God assist Thy people, O Lord: although we know that she passed according to the condition of the flesh, may we nevertheless feel her interceding for us in heavenly glory. Through Our Lord.

And for those who think that “passing according to the condition of the flesh” is not explicit enough, we turn to another ancient prayer that appears in the late eighth-century Gregorian Sacramentary, and is still used as the Collect for the feast in the Dominican Rite:

Veneranda nobis, Dómine, hujus diei festívitas opem cónferat salutárem; in qua sancta Dei Génitrix mortem subiit temporálem, nec tamen mortis néxibus deprími pótuit, quae Filium tuum Dóminum nostrum de se genuit incarnátum. Qui tecum vivit et regnat.

Which I translate as:

May the venerable feast on this day, on which the holy Mother of God underwent temporal death (although she, who brought forth Thy incarnate Son Our Lord, could not be shackled by death’s bonds), bring us salvific assistance. Who liveth and reigneth with Thee.

In Jerusalem, Dormition Abbey marks the spot where our Lady fell asleep in the Lord. The abbey is located on Mount Zion, where according to tradition Our Lady and St. John took up lodgings after the first Pentecost. It was built in the early twentieth century and is now staffed by German Benedictines.

The crypt of the Abbey, where Our Lady fell asleep in the Lord

In Jerusalem, it was not permissible for the remains of a deceased person to remain in the city over night, and so it is believed that Our Lady’s body was transferred outside the city to a cemetery near the Mount of Olives, on the other side of town. The church built over her grave, called the Tomb of the Virgin or Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary, is one of the nine churches in the Holy City that is part of the Status Quo, a 250-year-old understanding between religious communities brokered by Ottoman sultan Osman III in 1757. Although the Catholic Church is part of that agreement, the church is unmistakably Greek Orthodox in design and decoration. The church is inconspicuous from the outside and involves a series of descents, both exteriorly and interiorly. It is the only church I have been in that goes down rather than up.

To access Our Lady’s final – or almost final  – resting place, one must bow down low through the entrance to the right of the altar. There one will find a rough stone less than six feet long.

Both East and West have versions of a story in which all of the Apostles except Saint Thomas were miraculously transported from all over the world to be present at Mary’s death, and that they remained at her tomb for three days. On the third day, Saint Thomas arrived and asked “to worship the Tabernacle of God,” that is, the body of the Blessed Virgin. When they opened the coffin, they were greeted by only her burial wrappings and an incredible fragrance (some versions of the story describe lilies in the tomb). The Byzantine icon of the Dormition (see the first image of this post) captures most of these details, including a beautiful image of Christ holding in His arms the soul of His mother prior to the reunion of her body and soul and heavenly assumption, the way that she held Him when He was a baby.

Review of Cosima Clara Gillhammer’s Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy

In his book The Restoration of Christian Culture, John Senior writes:

Whatever we do in the political and social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloody manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary. What is Christian Culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone’s opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of two thousand years of history. Christendom, what secularists call Western Civilization, is the Mass and paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it.

Senior goes on to describe the Mass as emanating outwards to all aspects of life. What is done on a stone altar inspires the construction of a beautiful church. The church inspires a garden and clerics to tend the church and the people who flock to it. Next to the church and the garden a cemetery is made for those who died as faithful servants of what is done on that altar; and around the church-grounds people build their houses and sow their fields, until a community is formed. That community needs laws, and the laws cannot help but be influenced by the sense of justice that radiates from the center of its citizens’ lives. And before you know it, you have a Christian world built around the Mass.

The most recent attempt to uncover that world is Cosima Clara Gillhammer’s Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy. Gillhammer contends that the liturgy of the medieval Christian West exerted a greater impact on art and culture than is generally appreciated. “The liturgy forms the fabric of Western creative imagination,” she writes. “It provides the very images, words and concepts with which we think and tell stories” (253). To substantiate her claims, the author organizes her chapters based on different themes: Petition (the Psalms), Love (the Song of Solomon and the Blessed Virgin Mary), Hope (Advent), Suffering (Holy Week), Grief (the Stabat Mater), Joy (the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday), Death (the Dies Irae), Revelation (the Apocalypse), Time (liturgical seasons), and Space (Holy Week).

Light on Darkness does not presuppose any knowledge of the Catholic Faith: on the contrary, it sometimes reads like a Dummies’ Guide to Christianity. One chapter, for example, walks the reader through the Creed before proceeding further. Clearly, the intended audience is not limited to Catholics but seeks to persuade a broader demographic of the liturgy’s impact on Western culture.

Not all of Gillhammer’s genealogies are equally persuasive or relevant. It is true that (the Protestant) George Herbert’s poems communicate a “union with God in terms of a banquet,” but there is no evidence that he developed this idea thanks to Catholic liturgy rather than a direct reading of the Sacred Scriptures. And although I loved Gillhammer’s explanation of liturgical time as an example of Kairos (the time when God acts) rather than Chronos (mere sequential time), she does not explain in what ways the Kairos of the Roman rite changed the West or its culture.

The book also contains a few errors. A sentence on page 39 gives the impression that Psalm 51(50) was recited every day of the year during Lauds, but it was not said on feast days, which were many. The suppression of the Alleluia does not occur at the beginning of Lent (in the traditional calendar) but at the beginning of pre-Lent or Septuagesimatide. And in her discussion of liturgical time, Gillhammer conflates the idea that time is relative with the idea that time is subjective. What Einstein meant by his general and specific theories of relativity is not the same as my experiencing a one-hour department meeting as lasting an eternity.

Nevertheless, Light on Darkness abounds in fascinating facts. Did you know that:

The haunting sequence Dies Irae in the Requiem Mass is the “most frequently cited musical motif” in the history of Western music (187). In film alone, it has appeared in The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), Mad Max (1979), The Shining (1980), The Lion King (1994), Mulan (1998), X2 (2003), The Return of the King from The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2005), and Watchmen (2009).

The liturgical application of (seemingly racy) passages from the Song of Songs to the Blessed Virgin Mary created a new way of thinking about love. “What engagement with the Song of Songs achieves is not so much an avoidance of erotic language and sexual subject matter,” Gillhammer writes, “as a deliberate and creative use of such language in engaging with religious matters” (53). The author goes on to describe the impact of this new approach from the secular poetry of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the poems of Walt Whitman.

The Impropreria or Reproaches in the Good Friday service generated a new genre of English literature in which the fallen nature of man dialogues with the goodness of God.

The concept of felix culpa (O happy fault) in the Easter Vigil proclamation the Exsultet has found its way into artistic expression, from Middle English to James Joyce.

The beautiful sequence Stabat Mater for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows went on to inspire artists to think of new ways of envisioning compassion, from Michelangelo’s Pieta to the Pieta of Kathe Kollwitz (d. 1945).

The celebration of the Resurrection in the liturgy led to the resurrection of the theatre in the Christian West, from biblical dramas on Easter (and Passion Plays on Good Friday) to Corpus Christi plays to “mystery plays” to the works of William Shakespeare. Hamlet is much more liturgical than you think.

Despite a few hiccups, Light on Darkness is an engaging and worthwhile read. Among its many virtues is its refutation of the myth that Catholic Christians were disconnected from the liturgical life of the Church because they were denied so-called “active participation.” The book convincingly demonstrates that liturgy was in the very air that our medieval and Renaissance forebears breathed and that the results of this insufflation are beautiful. John Senior would be pleased, I think, with Gilhammer’s explication of the central fact of two thousand years of history.

This review appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:2 (Summer 2026), pp. 56-57. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Note

[1] The Restoration of Christian Culture (Ignatius Press, 1983; reprinted, Roman Catholic Books), 16-17.

A Double Scandal of Particularity

Readers of NLM will be familiar with the concept of the scandal of particularity and how it may be applied to liturgical considerations, namely:

1. The Incarnation is scandalously particular. The universal Logos takes flesh from a particular maiden at a particular time in a particular place to become the person Jesus of Nazareth. 
2. God is also scandalously particular in His love for us, not only in the way that He loves us in our individuality but in the way He reaches out to us—the parents who made sure you were baptized, the friend who gave you a book that changed your life, the time you randomly landed on a Catholic radio station that led to your conversion (all true stories). As Joseph Ratzinger puts it, “God wants to come to men only through other men.”
3. In a healthy liturgy, the scandal of particularity abounds. It is evident not only in its generous use of concrete symbols but in its embrace of its own tradition, that democracy of the dead linking us to the “other men” from the past who handed to us the Faith. Ratzinger noticed, for example, that the traditional Roman Rite is a “mysterious fabric of texts and actions [that] had grown from the faith of the Church over the centuries. It bore the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more than the product of human history.”

In my Lost in Translation series, I often dwell on the scandal of particularity with respect to the Roman Rite’s Romanitas, its conspicuous affirmation and development of its Christian Roman heritage which, rather than creating a myopic insularity, opens up the believer to the universal Gospel. Examples include the use of Rome’s stational churches to shape the liturgical year; frequent petitions within the liturgy to the twin founders of Christian Rome, Peter and Paul; and, of course, the language of the Romans, now conquered, pruned, and repurposed to serve the truth, humbly laboring under the unglamorous sobriquet, “ecclesiastical Latin.”

I have recently learned of another aspect of the Roman Rite’s scandal of particularity: its capacity to work well with other particulars, at least holy ones. Last week I had the privilege of attending a Latin Mass in the Austrian Hospice in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, the only TLM currently in the city. As I assisted, the prayers I have been saying or reading for twenty-five years took on a new meaning. A few examples:

“I confess to… blessed Mary ever Virgin,” who was born less than a few blocks east of here, who fell asleep in the Lord at what is now Dormition Abbey three quarters of a mile south, and who was assumed into Heaven at the Tomb of the Virgin a quarter of a mile east of St. Anne’s.

The birthplace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, exterior

The birthplace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, interior

The crypt of Dormition Abbey

Tomb of the Virgin Church, exterior

“I confess to… blessed John the Baptist,” who was martyred at Herod’s desert fortress in Machaerus (east of the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan), and was born five miles west of here, at what is now St. John the Baptist Church.

The birthplace of John the Baptist

“I confess to…Saint Peter,” who learned the Our Father from Jesus Christ in what is now Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives (one mile east--see below), who participated in the Last Supper in the Upper Room (one mile south), who slept in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives while Our Lord underwent His agony (about half a mile east), and who denied Our Lord at Caiaphas’ residence, which is now St. Peter in Gallicantu, St. Peter at the Cock’s Crow (over a mile south).

Upper Room/Room of the Last Supper, rebuilt by the Crusaders

St. Peter in Gallicantu

“I confess to… Saint Paul,” who bolted out of the Damascus Gate (about a quarter of a mile north) with a warrant to kill Christians, and came back through the same gate a contrite Christian - the gate that I used to get to this Mass.

“Take away from us our iniquities, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that we may be worthy to go in unto the Holy of Holies with pure minds,” the physical symbol of which once stood on the Temple Mount, less than half a mile southeast of here.

“Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy,” a cry that is conspicuous in Jerusalem for its absence. The Canaanite woman uttered this plea along the coasts of Tyre and Sidon (Matt. 15, 22) and the blind man did the same in Jericho (Mark 10, 47; Luke 18, 38), but there is no biblical record of anyone asking the Son of God for mercy in the Holy City.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will,” the song of the Angels who appeared to shepherds on a hill roughly seven miles south of where I was kneeling (and which I had visited the day before).

“Cleanse my heart and my lips, O almighty God, Who didst cleanse the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a burning coal.” Isaiah was no stranger to Jerusalem. Its fiercest critic, he also rejoiced knowing that the Assyrian assault on the city would be in vain. To Sennacherib their king he relayed the following:

This is the word which the Lord hath spoken of him: ‘The virgin the daughter of Sion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn: the daughter of Jerusalem hath wagged the head after thee…. When thou wast mad against me, thy pride came up to my ears: therefore I will put a ring in thy nose, and a bit between thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.’ (Isa. 37, 22 and 29)

“He suffered under Pontius Pilate,” a suffering that began when Christ was condemned by Pilate a couple of blocks up the Via Dolorosa from our location and scourged.

“He was crucified for us” on Golgotha, now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, over a quarter of a mile southwest.

“He was buried. And on the third day He rose again,” also at what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Tomb of Jesus, inside the church

“He ascended into Heaven” from the Mount of Olives at what is now the Chapel of the Ascension, which reputedly contains the footprints of Our Lord miraculously preserved in limestone and covered with a mysterious oil, about a mile east of here.

“Communicating with and honoring…the memory of Thy blessed Apostle and Martyr James [the Less],” the first bishop of Jerusalem and the second martyr (after Stephen) who was thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple, stoned by an angry mob, and bludgeoned to death with clubs at the base of the Temple Mount.

The Martyrdom of St James, by the Master of the Oberaltaich Mans of Sorrows, early 16th century. Image from Wikimedia Commons, © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

“For this is the Chalice of My Blood of the new and everlasting testament, the mystery of Faith; which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.” These words were first said in the Upper Room south of here. And while He carried the Cross, Jesus Christ dripped blood onto the street that is now called the Via Dolorosa, upon which I walked in order to get to Mass.

“Upon these deign to look with a favorable and serene countenance and to accept them, as Thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of Thy just servant Abel and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham.” Abraham’s virtual sacrifice of Isaac took place on Mount Moriah, which later became the Temple Mount.

“To us sinners also, Thy servants confiding in the multitude of Thy mercies, deign to grant some part and fellowship with Thy holy Apostle and Martyr Stephen,” who was stoned to death north of the Damascus Gate, at the current site of Saint-Etienne Basilica, less than half a mile north.[1]

“Our Father, who art in Heaven.” Our Lord taught this prayer to His Apostles on the Mount of Olives, allegedly in a cave now venerated as a shrine.

Pater Noster Church

One of many translations of the Lord’s Prayer at the church. This one is in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The Latin version, you will be happy to know, is inscribed on the altar.

“The cave in which the Lord taught His Apostles on the Mount of Olives”

Ecce Deus Sunday

Providence blessed me further when it arranged that I attend Mass on a rare occasion where Roman Catholic and modern Jewish memories intersect. The Church calendar contains several “baptized” Jewish holidays—Good Friday and Easter (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavuot), but all of them were celebrated by Jesus Himself. As far as I can tell, there is only one Jewish “feast day” that the Church commemorates that was instituted decades after Our Lord ascended into Heaven: Tisha B’Av.

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, usually falls sometime in late July or early August. It is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, for it commemorates the destruction of the second Holy Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 69 as well as the Babylonians’ destruction of the First Temple in 523 B.C. For twenty-five hours, observant Jews do not eat or drink, wear leather footwear, bathe, apply ointments or creams, engage in marital relations or any form of intimacy, sit on a chair of normal height, or greet one another. The sorrow of Jews on this day is reminiscent of that of their ancestors during the Babylonian Exile: “If ever I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten.” (Ps. 136, 5)

The priest reading the Sunday Gospel at the Austrian Hospice on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The traditional Roman Rite’s Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, which is also celebrated sometime between late July and August, hearkens to Tisha B’av. In the Gospel reading, Our Lord has just made the arduous climb up to the Mount of Olives, which has a breathtaking view of Jerusalem. Before him lies the Holy City and its crown jewel, the Second Temple. But all Our Lord sees is the future, when the Romans legions will starve the city into submission (and cannibalism) and raise the Temple to the ground [2]:

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, seeing the city, He wept over it saying: “If thou also hadst known, and that in this day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side; and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.” (Luke 19, 41-47)

The Gospel reading on the wall of Dominus Flevit Church

One is reminded of another lamentation of Our Lord’s:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not. Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate. (Mt. 23, 37-38)

On the wall of the Salon of the Austrian Hospice

Mosaic on the altar of Dominus Flevit Church

This year, Tisha B’av was on July 22-23. I arrived in Jerusalem just as the Jewish fast was ending. Three days later, on July 26, I attended a Low Mass for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. As I heard the words of the Gospel, I thought of the Temple Mount within eyesight of the Hospice. The Mount, of course, is not only bereft of its Temple but topped with the Dome of the Rock mosque. As if to echo the eeriness of Jerusalem’s history, during the Offertory and Canon, the silence was broken by the muffled sound of a muezzin’s megaphone praying to Allah from a minaret outside. [3]

The Dome of the Rock from the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice

Moreover, during the Mass I thought of the Dominus Flevit church, the site on the Mount of Olives where Our Lord wept over Jerusalem. I had visited the church the day before, and now I was hearing the Church solemnly proclaim the sacred words that gave rise to it.

Dominus Flevit Church

View of the Temple Mount that the priest has when celebrating ad orientem from the altar of Dominus Flevit Church

Notes

[1] A Greek Orthodox tradition dating from the twelfth century, on the other hand, holds that the Proto-martyr was stoned at the Lion’s Gate near the Mount of Olives, over a quarter of a mile east of the Hospice.

[2] You can read Josephus’ account in The Jewish War or Gueranger’s summary in The Liturgical Year, vol. 11, 215-223.

[3] I confirmed this with one of the congregants after Mass, an Arab Catholic born and raised in Jerusalem. When I mentioned that this was the first time I had heard a muezzin in real life, his face grew solemn and he said: “I have heard one every day of my life.”

N.B. Regarding my choice of words regarding this gentleman, I have been told that while some native Christians are fine with the label “Palestinian,” others are not because, it is claimed, 1) the nationality “Palestinian” is a construct invented by Yassar Arafat, and 2) the construct applies mostly if not exclusively to Muslims. As with everything in the Middle East, opinion on the matter is divided.