Implementing the Traditional (Pre-55) Roman Holy Week, Part 2 — Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday

(Continuing from Part 1.)

Holy Thursday

You probably have most of the materials needed for Thursday even if you have never done the 1955 Holy Week, only that of Paul VI; if you do not have an ombrellino, silk can be placed over a more ordinary umbrella… the veil for the second chalice really ought to be plain white, and you need wide ribbon, but a white chalice veil turned inside-out does in a pinch. Practice tying a bow beforehand, and make sure that the ribbon is suitably wide, lest your two left thumbs get in the way.

The Pange lingua gloriosi ought to be sung in alternation (cantors-all or men-women); this becomes particularly acute when the people are used to intoning themselves only part of it and not really knowing the melody as well as they think, having learned it orally. But hopefully no one insists on going on to Tantum ergo when either one must wait briefly or return to the second verse… Some instruction may be needed; otherwise, more musically advanced parishes may choose a polyphonic setting of the text to conclude the hymn.

Remember that it is not especially Roman for the thurifers to ever walk backwards. It is also easier to walk the normal way. When arranging the altar of repose, think of your future selves; flowers do not belong right in front of the altar. While the ideal altar of repose is temporary, as splendid as it ought to be, and does not use a tabernacle, but rather a sort of urn, it must lock, and the altar of repose needs to be reasonably out of the way. A side altar must do for many of us, and it can be quite splendid as shown in another example from the Institute of Christ the King. 

If the Mandatum is sung, I personally do not feel scrupulous about singing any particular antiphons and especially all of them. The music is meant to cover the time of the washing, nothing more or less, but Holy Thursday presents a special case. Choral enthusiasts have heard or even performed the Maurice Duruflé harmonization outside of the liturgy. The chant (harmonized or otherwise) is popular, well-known, beloved. It is fairly easy for experienced congregations to join at least the response portion, with the schola taking the verses. This makes it hard to insist on singing another antiphon first; one certainly will not have time after.

But should the Mandatum be done at all? It depends. Some pastors in the West (Europe and North America) are sensitive to not only not having ecclesiastical subordinates as does a bishop or religious superior, or at least the dean of a cathedral chapter, but that the otherwise natural replacement are children, not the men of the parish, and so they do not wish to touch the feet of the altar servers, at least the minors. Since most servers are boys, or at least will be some part of the contingent necessary for the Mandatum rite, then it is easy to justify omitting the rite. It is also optional. Now, most of this is optional as it is, but if one had to cut one thing from this week, it would be the Mandatum, if it meant preserving everything else including Vespers of Thursday and Friday.

Moving on to the stripping of the altars: my reading is that ps. 21 and its antiphon are sung recto tono, not with the chant from Good Friday’s Matins. The psalm need not be repeated, nor the repetition of antiphon delayed, if the carpet, some of the candlesticks, etc. are not removed promptly, so long as the ministers have finished removing the altar cloths and the major part of the work is completed.

More considerations on the Divine Office will follow, but I would strongly encourage you to sing, even recto tono, Vespers after the main liturgy on Thursday and Friday; on all three days of the Triduum, one could celebrate None beforehand, although this is not strictly required.

Good Friday

One does not need black falls for the legilia or covers for the missal. Everything is “naked” on this day. But what applies to purple folded chasubles applies to the black worn on this sacred day. The Good Friday celebrant’s chasuble should be even more splendid than usual if possible.

If you have adoration lasting into the night of Thursday, ending at midnight per the rubrics common to all variations of the Roman rite, then you will likely wish to change the candles and followers at the altar of repose before beginning the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.

The choirmaster must work with the celebrant to give the right pitches for the unveiling of the cross. Try to roll with what he sings, not what you planned to sing.

Just as on Sunday and on Thursday, the music for the adoration covers the adoration itself. It need not extend beyond this, and should not, only to the extent that a chant should finish logically and polyphony should finish in its entirety, omitting subsequent chants or polyphonic settings. For example, one may end the Reproaches with one final “Popule meus,” one should repeat the antiphon Crucem tuam, and one should sing the (entire) Crux fidelis, but one need not sing all of the chants just to sing them, if adoration has concluded.

The books are clear: the people adore by genuflecting on both knees three times as they approach the single large crucifix placed on a cushion. Permission was given, admittedly, to pass down the communion rail a crucifix which essentially eliminates this creeping to the cross. But it happens once a year. It replaces communion on this day. This rite was broken in bits first in 1955, and in 1970, doing what Thomas Cranmer and his ilk wished to do but as it turns out from the inside. Unless there is an unusually large congregation (not realistic in most churches attached to the traditional rite and to the traditional Holy Week ceremonies), I would not recommend skipping the creeping of the cross in favor of the permission to move down the altar rail with a crucifix to be kissed by the faithful, but this requires coordination with ushers.

Should the people remove their shoes? I am in favor of this, and it may happen anyway, as they copy the clergy.

The rest of the rite is quite straightforward, so long as the Vexilla Regis begins only when the procession departs to return to the main altar. I hardly wish to touch the prayer for the Jews, but most clerics will probably use the 2007 prayer preceded by the genuflection as with the other prayers (keep in mind that this is the original pre-Carolingian practice).

Make sure you know that the tool used to light and extinguish candles is brought to the altar of repose for the actual Mass of the Presanctified when candles are lit at the same time that the cross is adored and, importantly, that it is returned to the sacristy before Tenebrae.

Holy Saturday

The triple candle is not easy to make. I do not make it myself. Various ways of heating the wax to twist three candles together including a sous-vide machine and using a weight system may work. I find that it is most in the spirit of things to have three candles in one, as opposed to three candles in a candelabra attached to a pole.

If possible, I encourage using a different dalmatic than the one for the Mass as seen here in photos from Saint Mary’s Oratory in Wausau, Wisconsin. A nice lampas could work too. The priest’s chasuble for the vigil itself is also especially striking.

Prepare the list of readers in advance. Some readings can be done by a chanter from the schola, but others are followed by tracts or are preceded by one. I do not think that forcing at most a handful of clerics to sing twelve readings is an ideal to which we should aspire. Laymen who can sing should be pressed into service.

For the procession and the blessing of the font, it may be necessary to begin the tract as the celebrant prepares and the candle is removed. Otherwise, the tract will be so long with the ministers left waiting at the font. If the Palestrina setting is sung, there is a second part in polyphony, or one may sing the chant.

The Litany is tricky. First, it seems that it may be started as the celebrant begins to process from the baptistry; he need not be prostrating at this point, if he blessed the font. Otherwise, it makes sense to wait, when the font is not blessed.

All of the invocations are doubled, that is, from “Pater de caelis…miserere nobis” to “Santa Maria, ora pro nobis” all the way to the end of the Litany, with the invocations “Ut…te rogamus audi nos” (possibly — probably — excluding the Agnus Dei; see below). This is entirely foreign to anyone used to the 1960 or 1970 rubrics. I find it best for cantors to sing and to reply to themselves, that is, they sing all of the first “Santa Maria, ora pro nobis” by themselves, and so on and so forth. Then the people only reply to the second invocation. Why? In part, to not mess up and to stay together. The chant books have breath marks omitted from missals in the last set, and then the people clearly hear the plural invocations of the saints (some pairs of saints invoked together, the “All ye…” concluding each section…).

Further, the cantors alone should restart at “Agnus Dei…” and in my ideal world, they sing until “Parce nobis, Domine” etc. The last invocation is not sung with the same melody as in Mass XVIII, so it needs to be taught to the congregation ahead of Holy Week. (One can send links via email newsletters and the various apps for parish communications; it might be helpful to do a series with recordings. A handful of parishioners in the pews who are prepared can make a difference.)  I cannot tell from the rubrics or from the ceremonials if the Agnus Dei strophes or the “Christe, audi nos”/“Christe, exaudi nos” are also doubled. To me, I think that they logically are not, but everything else is, so it feels inconsistent. In any case, some instruction on the chant of the Litany is needed.

The pitch will almost inevitably drop when doubling. I recommend starting on B flat or at least A and to correct the falling pitch at each new set (certainly by “Peccatores”…).

For the solemn Alleluia, the choirmaster must work with the celebrant to give the right pitches. Try to roll with what he sings, not what you planned to sing. In this case, feel free to intone for the repetition if the celebrant takes you too high such that the next two, or even the current one, are out of range. With this in mind, ideally, the bulk of tracts are sung in one key, but the verse and final tract follow the last pitch of the final Alleluia, and so they may be in a different key if you choose a more comfortable key for the others.

I personally prefer to omit the Marian antiphon, even if on Saturday there is not much congregational singing to do. In a way, Christ is not yet risen! Also, recessing to organ music is much easier after singing for three to four hours, and besides, the antiphon comes back after Compline, not Vespers, and we should respect this even outside of obligatory prayer of the office in choir.

We will conclude the series with Tenebrae and the Divine Office.

Implementing the Traditional (Pre-55) Roman Holy Week, Part 1 — Introduction and Palm Sunday

This essay (which will be divided into three posts) is by the same anonymous author who contributed the series on the implementation of the pre-1939 (mostly the same as pre-1955) liturgy on every single day of the liturgical year. In that series, Holy Week is mentioned in broad strokes: which days to do first, and why.

Now let us consider the details of that rite. We shall not examine the “what to do” in detail, except where there is possible confusion, but rather the little things that have come up over years of celebrating the ancient Holy Week. This series transmits the lessons learned and what would have been nice to know years and years ago when first approaching the introduction of the classical Holy Week in a parochial setting. Some of what follows is in the realm of opinion, well-informed by books and by practice as it may be; but the goal is to give clergy, sacristans, MCs, and directors of sacred music food for thought.

In the end, I want to be clear: you can, and you should, celebrate the traditional Holy Week in parish churches even on a skeleton crew. 2020 and 2021 proved that this was possible. Plenty of evidence can be found on YouTube and on social-media platforms. But one cannot do this on a whim. It requires some planning, and that is the ultimate point of this series.

Why the traditional Holy Week of the Roman rite?

Why, indeed? A priest whom this author knows well puts it: the faithful like the Triduum, in the Novus Ordo that is, because it is the most Catholic part of the entire Novus Ordo, though they will not say this in so many words, without yet considering the degree to which it is more Catholic than the reformed rite of Pius XII and to which it has more in common with the classical Holy Week, or conversely the degree to which it retains elements of the Pian reform, and this even excluding the degree to which it declines towards or away from the ideal.

The Catholic nature is obvious, yet is somewhat obscured all the same when looking back to the 1955 rite, for one sees the catholicity even with no knowledge of the rites celebrated immediately “anterior” to the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council and is troubled in the same thought by the changes, even when one does not know explicitly that they are changes or that we should be bothered at all. For example, without getting too far ahead or off-track, one can immediately sense that the Litany of the Saints ought to be sung during the paschal vigil as one unified chant, not divided in two in order to do something else in between the two sections.

One is likely to be deeply moved by the character of the 1955 rites displaying in its way a deeper catholicity from even the best of the Novus Ordo, to say nothing of the typical celebration.  I recall my first brush with the Pius XII rites in my adolescence. The rite was celebrated in the afternoon of Good Friday. The black recalled a funeral, even though I had not yet been to a traditional Requiem Mass on any occasion (I had only read about it online), and the sober community mingling after the liturgy also called to mind the funeral customs of our own times.

Later, in my adolescence and into adulthood, when experiencing even the best of the Novus Ordo (ad orientem, Gregorian chant and especially sacred polyphony, three deacons reading the Passion without congregational participation, a second priest assisting in choir dress instead of Mass vestments, etc.), the wider flexibility in times permitted (a later hour may be chosen, per the rubrics, for “a pastoral reason”), actually worked against us: to celebrate the modern form of the presanctified liturgy of Good Friday in the evening (let us say at or after the customary dinner hour in most Western nations except for Spain), after a day jam packed with devotions, including the Stations of the Cross and confessions at noon celebrated for hundreds of people, instead of structuring those around the major liturgical office celebrated at a more dignified hour, meant that the liturgy became an afterthought, the loss of the funerary character even more apparent, already so from the get-go with the use of red instead of black vestments. Gregory DiPippo has expressed why this is so important and how it is indeed diminished in the changes made to the liturgy in 1970.

All of this is resolved when one finally attends the unreformed Holy Week. It is unambiguously Catholic. It is all tied to the Mass, the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary united to the offering of the Last Supper, in the expectation of the Resurrection and Ascension to come, all undergone by Christ that we too may share in new heavenly life. The rites are ordered and well-constructed even to the least knowledgeable observer. I would not say that I am jealous of those whose first and only experience of this sacred week is in the classical rite (some converts or children for example know only this rite, as unbelievable as that sounds), but there is something remarkable about this: they get to see possibly the most obviously Catholic rite that there is, in its depth, in its intensity. They have, up to this point, received nothing but the best, handed down as it ought to be.

Ceremonials and Other Books

The Brignoles community produces a handy volume taken from the 1951 edition of Fortescue (O’Connell), The Ceremonies of the Roman Rites Described, apparently, per the monks, with emendations conforming to the 2017 indult from the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei pertaining to the use of the ancient ceremonies.

Otherwise, the full Fortescue is available on the Internet Archive.

Francophones or those willing to grit their teeth should remember that Stercky’s Manuel de liturgie, volume 2, is the place to find the ceremonies of the various seasons and important occasions.

There are of course other volumes; Lawrence O’Connell’s The Book of Ceremonies is available from Corpus Christi Watershed; while relatively little in this volume pertains to Holy Week, as one must imagine that it was hardly celebrated solemnly with deacon and subdeacon even in American seminaries, the portion on the Forty Hours’ Devotion will clarify how to celebrate Mass on Holy Thursday after the consecration.

Other books are out there to complement these. Finally, one ought to follow Holy Week as provided for in the Memoriale Rituum designed for smaller churches with fewer resources and especially without the choral obligation of the Divine Office and conventual Mass, but the collective wisdom nowadays is to follow the ceremonies as prescribed for larger churches, cathedrals and those with a chapter of canons, making amendments as necessary to the shape of the building and to the personnel available, not omitting the rite or doing it radically differently as the preconciliar legislation envisions, wherein the Memoriale Rituum is obligatory in smaller churches. However, I believe that it is better to follow the full rite and to adapt a sung or solemn Mass to the circumstances of the available, qualified people and to the church building itself.

The Requisite Personnel

You might ask what I consider a skeleton crew: you need the priest. In the best of circumstances, you can find a priest or deacon and even a second minister to serve as subdeacon. He need not be in holy orders, although having two deacons or at least a second priest and a deacon lessens the burden on the principal priest.  (I am not going to address here whether laymen not in seminary or in holy orders can or should serve as subdeacon; that’s up to the priest in charge in the end). In any case, you obviously need at least one priest.

As to the servers:  you need four for the main functions of master of ceremonies, thurifer; and acolyte; a crucifer for Thursday, and  if one does not have a subdeacon, also for Sunday and Friday — this server can and will need to have other roles during the week — and then one or two capable of fetching and taking away things when they are needed or no longer needed. This could be the crucifer when he is not occupied, and one of these servers needs to carry the paschal candle during Saturday’s vigil.

Ideally, you have a second thurifer for Thursday, someone to carry the ombrellino, and torchbearers at the solemn Masses, at least two, up to eight. For Tenebrae, you need the minimum number of people who can sing the office competently including the readings; the same applies to the twelve prophecies of Holy Saturday, insofar as you will have not just a large number of readings but some which are quite long, and making just one person, or a few men plus the subdeacon if one is lucky to have one, sing everything tends to not work out very well in my experience. At least four men excluding the subdeacon is my preference, but you need to work with what you have and work up to what you prefer (all according to providence…)

Palm Sunday

First, the vestments. You need, in addition to the usual celebrant’s violet cope and chasuble, etc., two additional chasubles, then the ordinary deacon’s stole, plus two maniples.

If you are so lucky, you need three more deacons’ stoles and maniples for the Passion.

As to the shape and ornamentation of the chasubles, they can be whatever you prefer, all things being equal. However, the Roman or French forms cut short are the easiest to manage in my opinion, even though they are not truly folded. In these cases, you must have fabric for the broad stole worn by the deacon for the palm Gospel and then from the Gospel until the end of communion.

There are also fuller medieval or at least neo-Gothic forms, such as the forms preferred by English Benedictines and by the Solesmes congregation, of which I have given an example for another liturgical season; now, these are more elaborate, and the low Mass chasubles are not so elaborate, allowing for the possibility of rolling up a chasuble for the portions of the Mass where the deacon does so. Indeed, the truly folded chasuble is described in an earlier NLM article. This means that the separate piece of fabric is not necessary, although it may remain more convenient. 

The Saint Philip Neri and Spanish cuts are the least well-adapted to this context since the joints of the shoulders are blocked in the same way that a French chasuble pinned up, and not made short in the first place, gets in the way. Having worn a folded chasuble in the French style pinned up  as a straw subdeacon, it would be very difficult to wear such a vestment (that is, any form where the “folded” element is stiff and in the way of the shoulder joint) in my opinion. One needs to keep the arms pinned to the body when the hands are kept folded, but such a design impedes this; the arms are kept out at ninety degrees, closer to a yoga pose than to Christian worship. I hesitate to show an example of a Neri chasuble intended for contemporary liturgical celebrations of the ancient Roman liturgy, since the one which I have seen  is a commissioned piece from a relatively new studio (in other words, in both cases, I have a practical opinion to give, but also it is a matter of taste: de gustibus etc., and I do not wish to seem like I’m picking on someone).

Pins attached temporarily or snaps sewn onto the chasuble would be convenient if one chooses instead the Borromean form, which is softer like the Gothic chasuble; the soft fabric would not get in the way of the ministers’ arms. The vestment could be made with some skillful tailoring such that one can roll the deacon’s chasuble instead of purchasing a separate piece of material to serve as the broad stole.

The Ceremonies

For the first antiphon Hosanna Filio David and then for the distribution of palms, I strongly advocate making sure that the people have at least the antiphons as they do in the Ordinary Form. Giving the people the music, not just the text and translations, keeps them centered on the rite, even if they don’t sing, as this ceremony alone can last upwards of twenty minutes. It is easy to make the scores via some form of Gregorio (via an online editor or by using LaTeX in full, which is what I recommend) and to distribute them printed on copy paper; the chants are quite easy for the people to sing with the numerous repetitions.

Using the psalms given in the 1955 reform can work very well; you are still repeating the antiphons several times allowing for the popular participation described above. To me, there is a gap: should there be a doxology in these psalms? The office retains it, the Mass does not, and the 1955 reform treats it like the office. I leave it to each one’s judgement. You can use psalms, or you can make a repetition polyphonic. Between Palestrina, Victoria, and others, there are several approachable settings of one or both antiphons beginning “Pueri hebraeorum.” The important part is that Catholics in the choir (hopefully most members…) are able to receive palms without having to start the music only after the clergy, servers, and musicians do so; this depends on the size of the choir, its musical capabilities, and the arrangement of your church building.

I would also include the ferial tone of the dialogue of the palm-blessing preface in the material given to the congregation, as people tend to sing the usual solemn tone.

The choir should be in place to follow the clergy as they exit; there is time for this at the end of the prayers if the choir is singing in a gallery instead of from the chancel (sanctuary). For the procession, I personally do not feel scrupulous about singing any particular antiphons and especially all of them. Choose a selection of three or four and repeat; the people will probably not be able to follow very easily, so providing the text may be wise, but the music is probably unnecessary. However, you should give the faithful the chorus (in square notation, with translation)  of the Gloria, laus et honor, and you should give instructions for every musical element sung this week.

As an aside: henceforth, you should assume that I believe that the faithful should always be given some form of bilingual missals or books with square notation for the easier musical elements; Good Friday may be the only day where there is no congregational singing despite the ease of doing so, and Saturday presents little opportunities for it in the first place but on the other days, there is usually something to sing. The people are not an afterthought, and taking care of their participation through reading and singing fosters their prayerful participation. These ceremonies are too long to not do so.

The schola should walk ahead towards the end, in order to prepare for the door ceremony and the responsory, for which one may need to sacrifice a stronger singer to lead the clergy and people, positioned to do so while able to hear the end of the first chorus and the verses. Ideally, that singer can make it back for the Ingrediente, which lasts long enough for the clergy to change. In any case, the ministers should wait for the chant to end and for the introit to begin before they (the ministers, that is) start the prayers at the foot of the altar. The choir should start the responsory immediately after the subdeacon (crucifer) knocks on the door, returning to their usual place before the introit. By the way, finding a way to let sound out without cracking the door may be necessary. (There may be a window to open or some other interesting way to create a hole that doesn’t totally ruin the ceremony’s effect.)

The Passion should be sung by competent persons or omitted. Do not force a priest or deacon who cannot carry a tune to sing. Ideally, A or B flat is the reciting tone. The fewer sharps or flats, the easier it is to lose the key and then drop in pitch. By using A or B flat, or at least G, you also pitch this such that you do not need a true countertenor to sing the Synagoga and a true bass to sing the Christus. Those parts are simply noticeably higher and lower respectively than the Chronista’s.

If you do not already have one (or three), consider acquiring a legile, or rather three. This article is the folding wooden lectern especially used for the celebrant at Lauds or Vespers and for the ministers singing the Passion, so as to be both more Roman and to use something neater (in the sense of clean, not just fascinating or interesting) than a black metal music stand. These can be repurposed for the choirmaster and for the readings at Tenebrae; as noted above, one is customarily used by the celebrant of Lauds or Vespers in the true Roman fashion, as seen in the photo from the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. For Sunday, you will want three falls, either in the simple fabric without trim used to cover the images; or in the same fabric as the vestments, the frontal, and the tabernacle veil; or otherwise in an appropriate fabric. It need not be “churchy”; too often, fabrics with ecclesiastical patterns look cheap despite being expensive.

Do not pay for such a lectern in an ecclesiastical-goods shop. Find a woodworker. Three can be had for less than the price of one from a catalog if done right. Consider that clergy somehow seem to always fall on the extremes of height, below or above average. My resting elbow drop, from the top of the elbow to the floor, is 48 inches (around 122 cm). This is a bit taller than the shortest examples available to purchase from a manufacturer of such goods off the rack; the surface is plenty big enough for the Passion books, a missal (for the Exsultet or the readings of the Paschal Vigil), etc.

Now, if you can’t do it yourself, and you can’t have someone do it locally in their home shop, then commission a quality woodworking company to make this article. There are several who could produce an excellent product if you give them photos and work patiently through the design process, although giving a recommendation is impossible without revealing too much about my own situation. Naturally, the stain should match or at least complement the other wooden pieces in the church, but otherwise the question of ornamentation such as knobs is up to you.

There are several ways of keeping the legs together (chains or hinges both work) which can be gleaned from internet searches; as to the fall: either its weight plus that of a book will keep it in place, or you can consider a clip that goes the width of the leather. In my opinion (only that), the fall should come to just above the floor in the front and in the back, without a break. It’s not a pair of trousers. In other words, the example from Gricigliano is perfect, except that the fall could be a bit shorter for my liking, but no harm is done otherwise. Plus, if you use the same fabric as the vestments, or at least something that complements those well, a fourth fall can be purchased so as to serve as the broad stole; in fact, it is somewhat easier to just have a separate piece of fabric than to take off, tie up, and put back on the fuller “Gothic” or even conical chasuble even if it could (should) be done.

In the next installment we will continue with Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

Question for Readers: Origin of This Familiar MC Gesture?

I’ve come across a discussion circulating on Brazilian liturgical Instagram pages dismissing a particular gesture—hands joined with fingers extended and touching, instead of folded—as something invented, lacking any historical grounding.

I’ve seen photos, like those of Cardinal Dante using this posture, and I’m convinced it’s rooted in liturgical tradition, not just modern preference. However, I’ve struggled to find solid written sources or rubrical references that explicitly mention or explain this gesture.

Do readers happen to know of any official rubrics, commentaries, or scholarly works that support the legitimacy or origin of this specific form of joined hands? My best guess is that it’s a kind of “courtly” gesture, not something formally documented, but passed down organically through tradition. But I would like to be proved incorrect!

UPDATE: A resourceful seminarian reader, whose comment on Stercky I shared below after the article, sent me two interesting old images in which one can see the old-style surplice that would have required holding hands together to keep it aloft:

Book Announcement: “Prayers in Honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas”

If you’ve been paying attention to the Dominican world, you’ll know we’ve hit some huge Thomistic anniversaries recently:

• in 2023, the 700th of Aquinas’s canonization;
• in 2024, the 750th of his death;
• and in 2025, the 800th of his birth.

To me, as a writer and publisher, it seemed that a special celebratory publication was in order!

Now, books that contain Aquinas’s own prayers and poems are fairly plentiful. That may not have been the case decades ago, but thanks to the efforts of Fr. Paul Murray and others who have rescued Aquinas from the false accusations of proto-rationalism, we are in a good spot today when it comes to familiarity with and use of a broader range of the saint’s writings, including scripture commentaries, sermons, expert opinions, and the like. But when it comes to collecting traditional prayers and devotions in honor of St. Thomas into a single book, the story’s rather different. As far as I can tell, such a thing has never been done. I am therefore delighted to announce the latest release from Os Justi Press, a beautiful prayerbook that brings together the finest of this literature, researched and edited by Thomas O'Sullivan:

• The Little Office of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Antiphons & Responsories from the Office of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Prayer of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity
• Prayers to St. Thomas, Patron of Catholic Schools
• Prayer Before Studying St. Thomas
• Litany in Honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church & Patron of Chastity
• The Six Sundays in Honor of St. Thomas Aquinas

These devotions help us to relate to the Angelic Doctor as first and foremost the Lord’s beloved friend, a miracle-worker, an intercessor before the throne of God, a powerful member of the Mystical Body in its heavenly glory—one who merited to be hailed as “the holy teacher, citizen of the heavenly courts, splendor of the world, guide and light of the faithful, pattern, path, and law of all morality, vessel of virtues.”

Prayers are given in both Latin and English, on facing pages. The meditations for the Six Sundays are in English.
 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

150th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Gabriel García Moreno, President of Ecuador, Daily Massgoer

Exactly 150 years ago, on August 6, 1875, the great Ecuadorean president Gabriel García Moreno, quite possibly the greatest modern Catholic politician and the one who bore the most perfect witness to the social kingship of Jesus Christ, was assassinated on the steps of the cathedral of Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. In spite of many “liberalizing” reforms for his country, his counterrevolutionary conservatism was a constant irritant to the anticlerical and freemasonic elements that plotted his death.

The best account of García Moreno’s life online is that written by Gary Potter, which can be found in a number of places, such as FishEaters. Here is Potter’s account, drawing on the classic biography by Fr. Berthe. That the president was a saintly Catholic is difficult to dispute. In particular, one should note the centrality of the Holy Mass to his life.

According to Fr. Berthe: “Not only did he not fear death, but like the martyrs he desired it for the love of God. How often did he write and utter these words: ‘What a happiness and glory for me if I should be called upon to shed my blood for Jesus Christ and His Church.’”

Did he mean that? Had he been truly transformed, truly converted, when he abandoned the ways of his young manhood and returned to religion? We have heard here about some of the laws he saw enacted in favor of the Church, in favor of the Faith. Let us add to the picture that he attended Mass every day, that he recited the Rosary every day, that he spent a half-hour every day in meditation. Was he sincere in all this, or was all of it a pose, a kind of public-relations campaign in days before PR existed? If he was seen at Mass every morning, was that simply an 1870’s version of the photo-op? […]

Fr. Berthe does quote him talking about hypocrisy as such. This was when he was accused of it on account of letting himself be seen practicing the Faith publicly. “Hypocrisy,” he said, “consists in acting differently from what one believes. Real hypocrites, therefore, are men who have the Faith, but who, from respect, do not dare to show it in their practice.”

If that were not all the answer needed as to whether García Moreno was a hypocrite, it can be demonstrated in various ways that the private man and public one corresponded perfectly. No demonstration could be clearer, however, than citing the rule for himself that he wrote down in his copy of the Imitation of Christ. It was mentioned earlier. Bearing in mind that he did not know death awaited him outside the cathedral on August 6, 1875, that he did not know the Imitation would be found in his pocket that day, and that therefore the rule would ever be read by anyone else, here it is in its entirety:

“Every morning when saying my prayers I will ask specially for the virtue of humility.

“Every day I will hear Mass, say the Rosary, and read, besides a chapter of the Imitation, this rule and the annexed instructions.

“I will take care to keep myself as much as possible in the presence of God, especially in conversation, so as not to speak useless words. I will constantly offer my heart to God, and principally before beginning any action.

“I will say to myself continually: I am worse than a demon and deserve that Hell should be my dwelling-place. When I am tempted, I will add: What shall I think of this in the hour of my last agony?

“In my room, never to pray sitting when I can do so on my knees or standing. Practice daily little acts of humility, like kissing the ground, for example. Desire all kinds of humiliations, while taking care at the same time not to deserve them. To rejoice when my actions or my person are abused and censured.

“Never to speak of myself, unless it be to own my defects or faults.

“To make every effort, by the thought of Jesus and Mary, to restrain my impatience and contradict my natural inclinations. To be patient and amiable even with people who bore me; never to speak evil of my enemies.

“Every morning, before beginning my work, I will write down what I have to do, being very careful to distribute my time well, to give myself only to useful and necessary business and to continue it with zeal and perseverance. I will scrupulously observe the laws of justice and truth, and have no intention in all my actions save the greater glory of God.

“I will make a particular examination twice a day on my exercise of different virtues, and a general examination every evening. I will go to confession every week.

“I will avoid all familiarities, even the most innocent, as prudence requires. I will never pass more than an hour in any amusement, and in general, never before eight o’clock in the evening.”

A statue in honor of Garcia Moreno at the Basílica del Voto Nacional del Ecuador

Another writer, Joseph Sladky, offers more details about his daily horarium, which would put to shame some modern active and contemplative religious orders:

His Rule of Life [as president] also demonstrates the discipline of his daily life. His day was ordered and regular. He arose at 5:00 A.M., proceeded to church at 6:00 A.M., hearing Mass and making his meditation. At 7:00 A.M. he visited the sick in the hospital, after which he worked in his room until 10:00 A.M. After a frugal breakfast, he worked with his ministers until 3:00 P.M. After dinner at 4:00 P.M., he made necessary visits and settled disputes.  At 6:00 P.M. he returned home to spend time with his family until 9:00 P.M.  When others took rest or went to their amusements, he returned to his office, working until 11:00 P.M. or midnight.

Potter resumes with details about the president’s death:

The medical examination of García Moreno after he was killed showed he was shot six times and struck by a machete fourteen. One of the machete blows sliced into his brain.

Incredibly, he did not die immediately. When cathedral priests reached him, he was still breathing. He was carried back inside and laid at the foot of a statue of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. A doctor was called, but could do nothing. One of the priests urged him to forgive his killers. He could not speak, but his eyes answered that he had already done so. Extreme Unction was administered. Fifteen minutes later he was dead, there in the cathedral.

The exact place where Garcia Moreno gave up his spirit to God, marked in the cathedral of Quito

Sladky notes that the uprising expected by the anarchists never materialized; the president was too beloved.

After the assassination of García Moreno, the whole town of Quito went into mourning, with the bells tolling continuously. The conspirators thought that the assassination would break into a revolution. They were to be disappointed. For three days, while his body lay in State in the cathedral, thousands of sobbing people came to pay their respects to the man who had done so much for their country. In the session of 16 September 1875 the Ecuadorian Congress issued a decree in which they paid homage to García Moreno as “The Regenerator of his country, and the Martyr of Catholic Civilization.”

The president’s tomb in the cathedral

In 1921, the centennial of García Moreno’s birth, a poet penned these accurate words:

The eternal passage of time
Has not dimmed the greatness that is thine,
And never will, in all surety,
Leave in darkened obscurity
The brilliant glory of your life sublime!

Sadly, I think it is fair to say even if García Moreno is fully suitable for beatification (as I believe he is, on the basis of an objective evaluation of his life), he would currently be seen as too “off-message” from Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humane, Gaudium et Spes, and so forth. He is a president of Immortale Dei and Quas Primas, documents out of fashion. But perhaps this too will change someday.

After all, García Moreno’s last words were, “God does not die.” And neither does the truth about the primacy of the spiritual and the supernatural over the temporal and the natural, without which the latter withers and dies.

The dead Garcia Moreno

The Life Teen Phenomenon: A Guide to Resources

In this article, “Life Teen” should be understood not only as the program known by this name, but also as representative of a certain mentality that can be found in many programs—some officially named, others nameless, local, and spontaneous.

A friend of mine wrote to me as follows.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

What are your thoughts on the Life Teen phenomenon? Often priests will bring in this program because they say they’ve had success with this outreach to youth, who are “energized” through a youth Mass. They might even admit that the Catholicism preached in Life Teen and the youth Masses is dumbed down, but they say, if the young people are going more often to Confession and Adoration, it must be somewhat a good thing.

One wonders if what’s going on is that most young people have experienced very poor liturgy, so anything different seems like an improvement to them. Plus, if they are required to go to Mass for Confirmation prep (as is the case in many places), their attendance cannot be chalked up as a sign of approval.

Nevertheless, is there long-term fruit from Life Teen? Do these young people stay in the Church after high school? Life Teen has been around for a while, but the huge number of young people leaving the Church seems to keep climbing. If this program was so successful, shouldn’t that exodus at least be leveling off? So maybe young people are involved, but then fall away.

At a meeting with the parish team, we got into a conversation about “externals” that can be changed and adapted with the times, so I brought up the issue of communion in the hand vs. kneeling to receive on the tongue to make the case that form and content cannot be separated so easily—that, when certain forms or externals are removed, the truth of the faith can be obscured. The priest, however, insisted that it’s only a matter of the heart and said he couldn’t imagine anything more reverent than receiving Jesus in the hand (!). At this point, I realized that we see Catholicism in a fundamentally different way, though I was already sensing that.

The difficulty that I’m having is that he supports things like Adoration (he wants to try to establish perpetual Adoration), he talks about helping people know Jesus, and about teaching the lost. I certainly can’t be opposed to those things! It’d be one thing if he just didn’t care. But he’s passionate about restoring the faith in our area. Also, I can’t discount the success he’s had at other places. 

However, traditional liturgy is not a priority for him. He speaks a lot about the liturgy, but he’s more focused on it being “meaningful and uplifting.” He prefers the contemporary church music. To my mind, this is fundamentally misguided, but in parishes he’s been at, numbers have improved. What do you make of all of this?

Sincerely,
A Youth Minister
 

Here was my reply.

All of what you describe is familiar to me, and not least because I went to many retreats in high school that anticipated the Life Teen phenomenon. It is the “new paradigm” of liturgy: somewhat informal, upbeat, very contemporary, like the evangelical Protestants, but with some Catholic flavoring added: devotion to the Virgin Mary, Adoration, Stations. Of course, such Catholic elements are good, but they have been ripped from their proper theological and liturgical context and are now free-floating constellations of devotion. We should not be quick to think that a priest has the right idea about what he’s doing just because he follows the Catechism and wants to encourage “good things.”

Let me begin with Adoration. I am passionately devoted to Adoration. But... it has a proper context and can in fact be abused. On this topic, the best thing to read is a pair of articles by Joseph Shaw (here and here).

As for Life Teen, where to begin? First, the history of its founder cannot inspire confidence. Beyond that, I think one needs to question the general assumption that “youth want contemporary things and it’s the Church’s job to give it to them.” An old article at NLM does a great job dismantling that, but it’s a theme many, many authors have returned to (see John Mac Ghlionn’s “Traditional Catholicism, the new ‘cool’ for young Americans”).

Fr Christopher Smith does a thorough job refuting the “praise & worship” musical genre typical of this movement (here and here; cf. this too). I have addressed this topic at some length in my book Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life.

Samuel Gregg offers keen insights in “A Church drowning in sentimentalism.” The assumption at work is that the reality of an encounter can be measured by its emotional impact. The stronger your emotions, the more real your experience was. There is some truth to this. A great musical or dramatic performance will produce strong emotions. Falling in love (eros) is the most perfect example.

But placing an equal sign between reality and feeling, experience and emotion, is part of the legacy of Romanticism, not a self-evident proposition or a truth that can be demonstrated. In fact, it flies in the face of most of humanity’s assumptions through the ages. The romantics were understandably reacting against rationalism, which had made the opposite error by equating reality with idea, or experience with rational consciousness. Rationalism’s account of the human person was too cerebral, too “thin”; it viewed man as if he were a disembodied mind gazing out indifferently on a world of truth. Romanticism’s reactionary account was too corporeal and sensual, too “thick”; it viewed man as if he were a bundle of emotions ready to catch fire. I wrote about this codependency between rationalism and romanticism here.

In spite of the external glitz, Life Teen and most of these rock-it-up adolescent movements, including the charismatics, have a fairly poor track record. Those who get involved mostly either mature into something else or wander away. I don’t have stats to back it up but I hear it so often from clergy and music ministers and people around the country that I consider it to have at least anecdotal value. Many of the criticisms made about charismatics apply exactly to Life Teen and similar programs: see “Confusion about Graces: A Catholic Critique of the Charismatic Movement” and “Why Charismatic Catholics Should Love the Traditional Latin Mass.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s a lot of Life Teen-critical material out there by now, if you search the internet; and there is an equal amount bearing witness to the unexpected attraction of tradition for youths.

Lastly, you brought up communion in the hand. This is truly one of the most wicked abuses that has ever been introduced into the Church’s worship. The practice had gone away for 1,000 years due to an increased sense of reverence; suddenly bringing it back, and in a Calvinist form, sent the contrary message. The best short article on the topic would be this one: “Debunking the myth that today’s Communion in the hand revives an ancient custom.”

Keep on learning. Your instincts and intuitions are right on.

Dr. Kwasniewski

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

Why the Church’s Religious Should Return to the Traditional Liturgy

A Trappist offering the old rite of Mass

I once received a letter from a religious superior who explained that his community had been quietly integrating the traditional Latin Mass into its life, with several younger members learning the Mass and beginning to delve into the breviary. They all felt they had so much to learn. He asked me for advice and reading recommendations. He also noted that while some prelates had encouraged them to learn the TLM, others had strongly discouraged them, and asked me why I thought there was such a sharp division among prelates over this issue. Here’s what I replied.

Dear Father,

Thank you for your very kind and encouraging letter.

The questions you are raising are enormous ones, and very delicate, too. The problem is, to speak quite frankly, when one starts to enter into the great liturgical tradition, one can’t help noticing all kinds of ways in which it is obviously superior, from the point of view of offering worthy adoration and praise to God, cultivating the right interior and exterior dispositions, and edifying all who participate in it. The old liturgy was slowly built up as a great hymn of glory to the omnipotent God, to the humanity of the Savior, and to the invisible working of the Holy Spirit. It is supple, generous, meditative, profound, and poetic. (I speak now of both the Mass and the Office, and indeed of all the sacramental rites and the blessings.)

As one discovers these things, one also feels pained by the loss of so much beauty and reverence in the reformed rites, which will increasingly look and feel like committee-made rational constructions—which, of course, they are, even if there is no heresy or intentional sacrilege in them as such. The reformers exhibited an almost pathological aversion to symbolism, ceremonial, repetition, silence, chant, and the self-surrender of a fixed order of worship with detailed rubrics.

When Catholics, whether lay or clerical, rediscover the old rites today, they are often struck, on the contrary, by how utterly appropriate all these things are to a mysterious action in which God is the primacy agent and we are His collaborators and cultivators, privileged to step for a moment into the celestial worship of the Eternal High Priest.

Moreover, it cannot be accidental that religious communities around the world began to crumble apart and bleed their members as the liturgical axis around which their entire lives had once revolved collapsed into a shameful chaos. The Second Vatican Council taught in Perfectae Caritatis that “the religious life bears witness to the fruitfulness of the sacraments.” If that is true, what does the catastrophic decline of religious life tell us about the Church’s “updated” sacramental regime?

For these reasons (and others that I go into in this article), I am convinced that the long-term health and even viability of the religious life and of the priesthood will depend on reintegrating—and, for some communities, simply being completely dedicated to—the traditional rites of the Latin Church (and here I include Roman, Dominican, Norbertine, Carthusian, Ambrosian, and other such rites and uses), which have been powerhouses of holiness and touchstones of theology for so many centuries.

Moreover, as we briefly discussed in person, it is remarkable how well the laity respond to traditional expressions of the Faith. Wherever the old Mass has taken root, the congregation suddenly “juventates,” if I may coin an expression: young families pop out of the woodwork, while older folk feel comforted by the calmness and prayerfulness of the rite.

Here is where a difficulty begins to arise. Once a person gets a really good taste, a deep draught, of these rites, he wants to use them more. Eventually, he may want to use them exclusively, because he can so easily rest in their stability, flow along with their naturalness and rightness. Basically, the old liturgy is “built for praying.” No one feels this more viscerally than priests and religious do. As with a taste of freshly baked bread or the finest wine, so in matters liturgical: sensitive souls hesitate to go back to that which is less satisfying to the spiritual palate.

After a time, one who has entered deeply into the old Mass notices that the old Office is perfectly coordinated with it: there is a continual back-and-forth between the lections at Mass and the chapters in the Office, and the calendar, of course, is richer and more coherent. So the Mass leads to the Office, and soon it becomes challenging, if not frustrating, to be switching back and forth between the new calendar and the old, or the new Liturgy of the Hours and the old Mass, etc. Put simply, the two worlds are different, very different, and they do not readily lend themselves to coexistence.
 

Benedictines chanting Tenebrae in Australia

Now, I will qualify that last statement this way. In a community like the Oratorians, where there are many priests and where congregations of the faithful show up on a regular basis for worship, one can have a fairly dense schedule of Masses, confessions, and devotions, with priests taking turns doing various things, and most of the time praying their office privately; so they get to choose whether to use the 1960 Roman breviary or the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours (and most will choose the former). So you get a sort of rough-and-ready coexistence that works well enough on a pastoral level.

In a religious house, on the other hand, the ideal is a daily conventual Mass and at least some common recitation or chanting of the Office. This, therefore, requires a certain uniformity of practice so that everyone can be at peace and not feel “jerked around” by a shifting schedule or by the shifting expectations of different liturgical forms. It isn’t so easy in this environment to “punt” on liturgical questions, as they affect communal exercises.

If religious priests learn the TLM, they will have the freedom to offer their “private” morning Masses in the usus antiquior—regardless of whether or not the conventual Mass is the TLM. Since the daily Mass is so formative of priestly spirituality, this step will already be a great enrichment that does not directly impinge on the communal horarium. It goes without saying that no priest ever needs permission to offer the old rite.

I am happy that you asked me for reading recommendations. I know that time is limited, so I’ll recommend just a few works that I think will be particularly helpful: Joseph Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, if you haven’t already read it (this can be an excellent community read for ongoing intellectual formation); two of mine, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness: Why the Modern Age Needs the Mass of Ages and The Once and Future Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile; Martin Mosebach’s The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy. That being said, frequent experience of the rite will be more beneficial, for most, than reading and arguments—at least for a while. The intellectual component is important but can follow subsequently.

The old liturgy carries the force of conviction in its very practice. Explanations can and will be helpful, but there is a point at which liturgists might seem to be simply flinging opposite opinions at each other: “he says... she says...” Whereas when a Christian, especially a priest, experiences that he can more fervently adore, supplicate, and immolate himself, or that meditation on and assimilation of the Word of God is deepened in the traditional rite, no argument can contradict it, even as no argument can substitute for it.

Along these lines, a genre of reading that I find especially moving and effective in melting resistance or misconceptions is that of priests writing about their own journey. Some fine examples may be found here, here, and here, but many more exist.
 

Card. Burke celebrating Pontifical Mass for the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ca. 2010

As for why some prelates would be opposed to the recovery of liturgical tradition, there is much that can be said, but this much is clear: there was a mighty epidemic of identity confusion and tradition-bashing that took place overtly between 1965 and 1975, but which had roots in the 1940s, and of course, going back to the late 19th century with the Modernist controversy to which Pope Pius X responded. Once Catholics begin to study these matters in depth, they usually realize they’ve been “had,” to a greater or lesser extent. They have been lied to; their birthright has been stolen from them. Older generations do not take kindly to criticism of the novel and enthusiasm for the traditional. (I wrote about this in an article, “Can We Explain the Anti-Tridentine Phobia or Rage?”)

Some anti-traditionalists say that having the old rite in the Church “causes division.” How can they ignore the fact that the Novus Ordo has produced more division than has ever been seen in the history of Western liturgy? Don’t be put off the right path by those who discourage you from pursuing what is clearly your right and indeed your birthright. [1] It seems to me that most of the opponents of the old rite have never celebrated the usus antiquior themselves. In my experience, this is the “Rubicon”: when you know in your heart and your bones that this rite was “made to be prayed”—that it is Christ’s holocaust of love, offered in and through His alter Christus—it becomes impossible to walk away from it, much less to suppress it, without sinning against the light.

I am aware of many communities—most of them obscure, but including various Carmels, and fairly new Oratories in the process of starting up—that are experiencing a mighty tension between the “reform of the reform” and a return to the traditional rite. Their members know that the traditional liturgy is a vessel “full of grace and truth,” like the Incarnate Word who inspired its development in the Church over the millennia; but they are no less acutely aware of the ecclesiastical politics that make a simple switchover, or even a significant accommodation, difficult to achieve.

Every step taken should be gradual, gentle, and understood by all ahead of time, so that all may walk arm-in-arm. However we look at it, the incorporation of the TLM and the breviary and other sacramental rites is an immense enrichment. How could we think otherwise about a liturgy celebrated by countless saints and endorsed by centuries of Roman Pontiffs? It is truly a kind of schizophrenia when people get tied up in knots about it. As Ratzinger asked, what does this say about how we view our own tradition, our own history? When a well-meaning person says “Yes, tradition is good, but don’t get carried away…,” that is the voice of worldly prudence, not the passion of divine love that seeks to give the best and greatest to Our Lord.

Dear Father, the elephant in the room is this: many Catholics are ignorant of or malformed in theology, ignorant of or malformed in liturgy; they are not deeply rooted in the history and tradition of Catholicism. It sounds harsh to say it, but it’s clearly true. Vatican II was like a nuclear bomb. Millions of books (including liturgical books) were thrown into dumpsters in the 1960s and 1970s. The self-styled reformers attempted to make a clean break with the past. Of course, they could never have succeeded completely, and a reaction was inevitable; but the extreme makeover has succeeded well enough to leave us a vast swath of Catholics unacquainted with basic monuments and elements of the Faith, such as the liturgy prayed by the Church from well before St. Gregory the Great down to Pope John XXIII, or the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent.

After the imposition of the Novus Ordo, it was believed that the use of the old Roman rite would gradually vanish. Its endurance was written off as a fetish, a fashion, a niche interest, a bit of nostalgia. Today, decades later, we can see very clearly that it is a magnet for young people, for families, for vocations.
 

Padre Pio celebrating a Solemn High Mass

The question then becomes: How do we integrate our new knowledge of old tradition, with all its truth, beauty, and goodness, into our lives as Catholics, as religious, as priests? It is no easy task, since we are very much still living in the age of rupture, discontinuity, confusion, ignorance, and, I’m afraid to say, bad will.

This much is clear: there is no “stuffing” of the old back into a box; once it comes out, it is too powerful to push down. The priests in your community need to learn the old rite and to offer it, since it is the most perfect, most fruitful, and most formative exercise of the ministerial priesthood, the key to a richer interior life. It should be a standard feature that is accepted as a normal part of day-to-day life, and not fussed over.

Whatever else one may say, it is a time for being “wise as serpents, innocent as doves” (Matt 10, 16).

Yours in Christ our Lord,

Dr. Kwasniewski

[1] Traditionis Custodes changes none of this because it claims to revoke a faculty that was never granted. Benedict XVI did not grant a faculty in Summorum Pontificum, but precisely the contrary: he acknowledged that the old rite had never been abrogated and was always in principle available to priests, and simply proclaimed their freedom to use the older form of the Roman rite, basing his decision ultimately on a dogmatic fact that what was sacred remains sacred and great for us today.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

Clarity on Genuflections Around Communion in the Usus Antiquior

I received the following question from a reader, and given that others might find themselves with a similar question, or might simply wish to doublecheck that they are doing the right thing, I share my response today at NLM.

The Query: I am seeking instruction on the rubric in the Missal of 1962 which directs the priest to genuflect prior to retrieving the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle in the ciborium, and again after reposing it. I know Novus Ordo instructions do not point to this gesture. Would you be so kind as to indicate where such an instruction may be found, should it exist? And the rationale behind it.”

The Response: The instructions can be found in the 1962 Ritus Servandus which read as follows in translation:

X. The Lord’s Prayer and everything else up to the end of Communion…

6. If there are some to communicate during the Mass, the minister [read “server”] warns them a little beforehand with a ring of the bell. The Priest, after drinking the Blood, places the Chalice a little toward the Gospel side, but still within the Corporal, and covers it with the Pall.

• Then, if there are consecrated Hosts upon the Corporal, having made a genuflection, he places Them upon the Paten.
• If They have been consecrated in the same Mass within a Pyx/Ciborium, he places the Pyx/Ciborium in the middle of the Altar, uncovers It, and genuflects.
• If the Hosts to be administered have been consecrated beforehand, having opened the Tabernacle, he genuflects, extracts the Pyx/Ciborium and uncovers It.

He takes the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with the Sacrament in his left hand, and takes one Host in his right, which he holds somewhat elevated over the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with his thumb and index finger, and standing at the center of the Altar, facing the communicants, says: Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi. Then he says: Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. After repeating this the third time, he goes to their right, that is, to the Epistle side, and facing each one, holding the Sacrament, he makes the sign of the cross with It over the Pyx or Paten, saying at the same time: Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.

7. After the Faithful have communicated, the Celebrant returns to the Altar. Then, if there have been any Hosts upon the Corporal, he wipes it with the Paten, and if there are Fragments upon it, places them in the Chalice. If Hosts remain in the Pyx/Ciborium, he places It upon the Corporal, covers It, replaces It in the Tabernacle, genuflects, and closes the door.

Afterward he places in the Chalice any Fragments, which he happens to find upon the Paten, which was placed under the mouths of the communicants. Then he says secretly Quod ore sumpsimus, etc., and purifies himself, saying Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, etc., and does everything as above. If there is a Tabernacle upon the Altar, and a Pyx/Ciborium with consecrated Hosts remains upon the Altar until the end of Mass, They are saved, which is prescribed at the end of Mass on Holy Thursday.

Thus, for the actual rubrics in the missal. The general principle is that any time the Priest and ministers interact with the Blessed Sacrament, a reverence is shown. This is also the case when the proximity between the ministers and the Blessed Sacrament changes, such as when the Tabernacle opens or shuts.

As to why this is done, it should be self-explanatory: under the signs of bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is present, in person, and so we should reverence the Person as we would do when entering the presence of a King, or leaving it. The lack of such a gesture would be nothing better than negligence or contempt, if not a sign of a merely notional assent to the Real Presence rather than the real assent of supernatural faith.

It is worth pointing out, in addition, that the number of genuflections in connection with the Sacrament were reduced in 1962. If one takes a look at Matters Liturgical of 1956 (n. 238), the genuflections were:

• When the tabernacle is opened
• When the Priest uncovers the ciborium and turns for the Misereatur…
  
• When the Priest turns from back the Misereatur…
• After returning to the altar after Communion and placing down the ciborium (if hosts remain) 
• After placing the ciborium in the Tabernacle, before closing the door (if hosts remain)

Even not considering the Confiteor before Communion, there would have been two additional genuflections pre-62, one when the ciborium is uncovered and one at returning from the distribution (presumably connected with the immediate or somewhat immediate covering). Yet another indication of the involvement, in the code of rubrics for the 1962 missal, of the same reductionistic and horizontalizing reformers who would later, as part of the Consilium, take advantage of a wide permission to deconstruct and destroy.

In practice, as would be expected, the strict following of the ’62 Ritus is not universal, with the older practice still finding a place, even as occurs with the repetition of the Confiteor and other carryovers from the past.

Back to the point at hand, I would recommend that every celebrant of the TLM obtain a copy of a translation of the Ritus (it is in the Missal itself in Latin), which the FSSP sells here (along with other items).  It is important to be familiar with the Ritus along with the rubrics to get a full picture of how Mass is to be celebrated.

Photos by Allison Girone.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.