The Masses of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday

The very first Scriptural reading of Holy Week, Exodus 15, 27 – 16, 7, the epistle which forms part of the blessing of the palms, lays out the program for the week to come, and unites all of the main ceremonies of the Triduum with Palm Sunday.

“In those days, the children of Israel came into Elim, where there were twelve fountains of water, and seventy palm trees: and they encamped by the waters. cap. 16 And they set forward from Elim, and all the multitude of the children of Israel came into the desert … after they came out of the land of Egypt, and … murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, (saying) ‘… Why have you brought us into this desert, that you might destroy all the multitude with famine?’ And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold I will rain bread from heaven for you; let the people go forth, and gather what is sufficient for every day, … But the sixth day let them prepare to bring in, and let it be double that which they were wont to gather every day.’ And Moses and Aaron said to the children of Israel, ‘In the evening you shall know that the Lord hath brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord.’ ” (Vespere scietis quod Dominus eduxerit vos de terra Aegypti, et mane videbitis gloriam Domini.)

The Gathering of the Manna, from a Flemish book of Hours, end of the 15th century. (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CLM 28345; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The reading begins with a mention of palms, in reference to the rite of Palm Sunday. The fickleness of the Israelites, who have just crossed the Red Sea in the previous chapter, and now murmur against God’s prophet and priest, the very ones who led them out of Egypt, represents the fickleness of those who were in Jerusalem at the time of the Lord’s triumphal entry, crying out “Hosanna,” and five days later, gathered before Pilate and cried out, “Crucify him!” The gathering of twice as much manna on the day before the Sabbath refers to the consecration of two Hosts on Maundy Thursday, one of the Mass, and one which is reserved for the Mass of the Presanctified on the following day. [1]

The words of Moses and Aaron towards the end of the reading, “Vespere scietis – In the evening you shall know”, refer to the Gospel of the Easter vigil, Matthew 28, 1-7, which begins with the words “Vespere autem Sabbati – on the eve of the Sabbath.” The words “et mane videbitis gloriam Domini – and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord” look forward to the second verse of the Gospel of Easter morning, Mark 16, 1-7, “Et valde mane una sabbatorum – And very early in the morning, the first day of the week.”

A stained-glass window of the Prophet Hosea with three other prophets, holding banderoles with two verses from his book: “On the third day he will raise us” (6, 3), and “O death, where is thy sting?”, St Paul’s citation in 1 Corinthians 15, 55 of the Septuagint translation. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by GO69, CC BY-SA 4.0)

This theme, of the evening and the morning, also appears at two other crucial moments in the readings of Holy Week, both also the first Scriptural readings within their respective ceremonies. The first prophecy of the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, Hosea 6, 1-6, also refers to the Resurrection of Christ in the morning: “In their tribulation, in the morning they shall rise to me… He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. We shall know, and we shall follow, that we may know the Lord, as the daybreak is his going forth prepared.” Likewise, the first prophecy of the Easter vigil, Genesis 1, 1 – 2, 2, contains six repetitions of the formula, “and there was evening, and there was morning.” It is also reflected in the Passion narratives, all four of which are divided into an evening and a morning. [2]

The vigil Mass of Holy Saturday is not a first Mass of Easter, an anticipation of the Resurrection, and was never celebrated as such in the Roman Rite. It is rather a vigil in the true sense of the word, “a keeping watch.” At that point in the celebration of the liturgy, we know, as Hosea says we shall, that Christ has risen, but we do not yet see Him in His glory. This is symbolized by the incomplete character of the Mass, which has no introit, Creed, offertory, or Agnus Dei, while the communio is not a Mass antiphon in the proper sense, but a very short form of Vespers.

The Magnificat antiphon of Vespers at the end of the Easter vigil, also sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline, as it is here: Aña Véspere autem sábbati * quae lucescit in prima sábbati, venit María Magdaléne, et áltera María, vidére sepulcrum, allelúja. (And in the evening of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen and the other Mary came to see the sepulcher, alleluia.)

In the Gospels of both Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, the Risen Lord is mentioned, but does not appear in person. However, with the restoration of the Introit after two days on which it was not sung, on the third day, He speaks directly and in person: “I have risen, and am still with thee.” It is at this Mass, on the morning of Easter, that the fullness of solemnity is restored to the liturgy, and the glory of the Lord is indeed seen. As the prophecy of Hosea continues, “And we will follow, that we may know the Lord: like the daybreak is his going forth”, that is, His going forth from the tomb.

Liturgical scholars have long been wont to describe the unique character of the Easter vigil Mass in reference to something called Baumstarck’s Law, named for the scholar who identified it, the German Anton Baumstarck (1872-1948). This supposed law can be summed up very simply by saying, “The more solemn days change last”, meaning that when a new feature of the liturgy is instituted, people don’t add it to the more important days, or hesitate to do so, because they remember that “we’ve always done it THIS way”, and don’t want to change it. Therefore, the absence of the features named above from the Mass of the Easter vigil is effectively dismissed as a mere archaism, undoubtedly ancient, but per se meaningless. (This is also often applied to the Tenebrae offices, in reference to the absence of the invitatory, hymns, doxology etc.)

It is revealing, and typical of both Germans and the era in which Baumstarck lived, that the phenomenon which he identified is called a “law,” a term which places it in the category of forces like those described by the “laws” of physics: implacable, unavoidable, and above all, impersonal. But changes to the liturgy result from decisions, not forces, and decisions are made by people, not by forces. And this in turn is why Baumstarck’s Law (which has plenty of perfectly legitimate applications) would better be called Baumstarck’s Principle – an explanation of some aspects of liturgical change, but decidedly not of all.

Thus we find the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster, e.g., writing as follows of the Easter vigil Mass in The Sacramentary (vol. 2, p. 308): “Holy Saturday still preserves, almost unaltered, the primitive type of the morning Mass which, during the first three centuries, closed the vigil of preparation for the Sunday.” Likewise Josef Jungmann in Missarum Solemnia (p. 394): “The absence of the Communion song on Holy Saturday recalls the time before the introduction of the chant.” [3]

But to treat this (and many analogous customs) as nothing more than an archaism is fundamentally absurd. Even granting for the sake of argument that the introit, offertory and communio were added later to the Mass, as we know the Creed and Agnus Dei were, nonetheless, someone made a deliberate and conscious decision to NOT add them to two specific days of the year: Good Friday and Holy Saturday. [4] As the prophet says, “He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up.” [5]

The Resurrection, 1463, by Piero della Francesca. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

[1] For the Church Fathers, the manna was understood as a clear prefiguration of the Eucharist. St Cyprian, Epistle to Magnus (PL 3, 1150A): “We see the mystery of this equality (among all believers) celebrated in Exodus, when the manna flowed down from heaven, and as a prefiguration of the things to come, showed the nourishment of the bread of heaven and the food of Christ when He would come.”

– St Ambrose, De Sacramentis (PL 16, 444B), immediately after explaining the words of Consecration: “It was indeed a great and venerable thing, that the manna rained down upon the Jews from heaven: but understand this. What is greater, the manna from heaven, or the body of Christ? The body of Christ, to be sure, who is the maker of heaven. And then, he that ate the manna, died: who shall eat this Body, it shall be unto him the forgiveness of sins, and he shall not die forever.”

– Ambrosiaster, Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul (PL XVII, 234A-B): “ ‘And they all did eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.’ (1 Cor. 10, 3-4) He calls the manna and water (Exod. 16, 15; 17, 6) ‘spiritual’... having in themselves a figure of the future mystery, which we now receive in commemoration of Christ the Lord.”

[2] Many liturgical traditions follow this division by reading the Passion narratives partly on Holy Thursday and partly on Good Friday, beginning the Gospels of the latter at the point where the Evangelist mentions the morning: Matthew 27, 1; Mark 15, 1; Luke 22, 66, and John 18, 28.

[3] With all due respect, especially to the memory of the Bl. Schuster, the liturgical scholars of their era failed to see that their reasoning on this and so many other points was purely circular. “The Easter vigil preserves an archaic form of the Mass… and how do we know that this is an archaic form of the Mass? Because it is preserved at the Easter vigil...”

[4] Not at all surprisingly, analogous customs are also found in other rites. The Ambrosian Easter vigil Mass has no antiphons at all, apart from a brief psalmellus (the equivalent of the gradual) between the first reading and the epistle, and the Alleluia between the epistle and gospel. The Creed and Gloria are both omitted, and the Ambrosian Mass has neither the Kyrie nor the Agnus Dei, so the only part of the Ordinary which is said is the Sanctus. In the Byzantine Rite, the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Saturday is also not treated as a first liturgy of Easter; the Gospel is the whole of Matthew 28, which does include the visible appearance of the Risen Christ to the woman at the tomb, and to the disciples on the mountain of Galilee, but the tropar which characterizes the liturgy of Easter and the whole Paschal season is not yet sung. “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and to those in the tombs giving life.”

[5] As I mentioned earlier this week, the Roman Mass of Holy Thursday also did not originally have an Introit, but this was in function of the total absence of a foremass, and hence, of a lack of anywhere to put it.

Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body

The Risen Christ Appearing to the Virgin, ca. 1640, by the French painter Jacques Stella (1596-1657) 

Liturgical seasons are sometimes like natural seasons, with a season within a season. Summer is a season, but depending on where you are, there are rainy seasons, hurricane seasons, and so forth. One of the stranger mini-seasons found within the traditional Time after Pentecost (combined with the Sanctoral Cycle) is about belief in the resurrection of the dead. In an age where victories over sin, ignorance, and doubt seem to be increasingly rare, it is easy for Catholics to forget that their ultimate hope is not simply in avoiding Hell and reaching Heaven, but in enjoying God with their souls reunited to their bodies. Spiritual masters such as Saint Augustine have even gone so far as to suggest that until that reunion takes place, the blessed in Heaven experience a restlessness or “patient longing.” [1] The Beatific Vision just won’t be the same without new bodies in a new Heaven and a new earth.

Our Glorified Bodies

Belief in bodily resurrection is no easy matter. The difficulty begins with answering a seemingly simple question, “what is the body?” Shakespeare plays upon this when Prince Hamlet describes how a king may go “through the guts of a beggar.” A king dies, his body is eaten by worms, a beggar goes fishing with one of the worms, and then he eats the fish that ate the worm. [2] Whose body is whose?

And yet this ambiguity also belies a great potential. If we can’t pin down the nature of the body, then who can naysay what it is capable of becoming? Saint Paul chides doubters who ask, “How do the dead rise again?” by comparing the body to a seed that must die before it truly lives. [3] It is a metaphor worth dwelling on. The human body, which is a magnificent creation, is a mere acorn in comparison to the oak tree it is destined to become. Acorns retain their substance when they grow into trees (they don’t become butterflies), yet the difference between an acorn and an oak could not be more profound; the former is virtually nothing in comparison to the latter. If our bodies, impressive as they are, are mere acorns now, imagine what they will be as trees on the Last Day.

To give an example of what may await us, consider the four properties of a glorified body as singled out in Catholic theology: agility, subtlety, impassibility, and clarity. Agility is the perfect responsiveness of the body to the soul, which will allow it to move at the speed of thought. Subtlety is the power of penetrating solid matter, while impassibility is the impossibility of suffering or dying. Lastly, clarity is the total absence of bodily deformity and a “resplendent radiance and beauty.” [4]

The astonishing excellence of a resurrected body was cleverly expressed by a young colonial printer named Benjamin Franklin, who at the age of 22 wrote his own epitaph:

The body of

B. Franklin, Printer

(Like the Cover of an Old Book

Its Contents torn Out

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)

Lies Here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be Lost;

For it will (as he Believ’d) Appear once More

In a New and More Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author. [5]

God’s Path to Being All in All

The general resurrection of the body is also a most fitting consummation of Christ’s Paschal victory over death. The Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord open the gates of Heaven to our souls but do not immediately end our vulnerability to the effects of original sin. Those effects include a degradation of the body: every bodily deformity or disease, every violent injury or accident, every misuse or abuse, is a sad reminder that we still live east of Eden. And death remains what it always was, a literal humiliation for one and all, a return of the body to the ground (humus).

As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even for a saint in Heaven. This body of ours, this temple of the Holy Spirit that is mocked and exploited by the world, the flesh, and the devil, is also in need of redemption. How splendid, then, that the Elect are not only promised eternal life in Heaven but a “reform” of “the body of our lowness” into a body like that of our risen Lord, [6] a body that Saint Paul refers to as “glorified” and even “spiritual.” [7] The body, which this side of the grave can be a handful to deal with, will become a luminous reflection of the soul’s divinely-given excellence once it is glorified. In Saint Augustine’s words, “what was once [the soul’s] burden will be its glory.” [8] And how fitting that this glory is part of God’s ongoing transformation of creation until He becomes “all in all.” [9]

The Resurrection, by Raphael, 1499-1502

Easter Sunday

The traditional form of the Roman rite excels in the re-presentation of these eschatological realities, and it does so gradually. Easter, for instance, celebrates not only Christ’s victory over the grave but the first full-fledged instance of a glorified body. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus’ body on that first Easter morning was not a resuscitated corpse like that of Lazarus, for although it was indeed the selfsame body that was born of the Virgin Mary, it had undergone a significant transformation. That is why His closest friends did and did not recognize Him, [10] and it is why the risen Lord was able to pass through locked doors [11] as well as appear and disappear. [12] In other words, His body now possessed the properties of glorification. The implication for the rest of us is clear. As Saint Paul explains, our Savior will take “the body of our lowness” and make it like “the body of His glory.” [13] Consequently, during the Easter Octave we pray that we may be transformed into a “new creature” [14] and pass on to “heavenly glory.” [15]

Ascension

As a whole, however, the theme of our bodily glorification remains rather muted during the Easter season. This is true for the feast of the Ascension as well, since the Church understandably focuses more on Christ’s completion of His earthly ministry and His promise to send the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Collect for the Ascension prays that we learn to “dwell in mind amidst heavenly things,” not in body. Still, there are hints about the future of God’s Elect. To paraphrase Saint Gregory Nazianzus, “What is not assumed is not saved.” [16] Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

The Ascension, depicted in a 6th century Syriac Gospel book known from the name of the scribe as the Rabbula Gospels. 

In fact, by the end of the first Ascension Day, there may have been three bodies: Our Lord’s, Elijah’s—who was finally allowed into the Empyrean Heaven (see below)—and Enoch, the figure in the Old Testament who was mysteriously “taken” by God after his death, but who could not have been allowed to experience the Beatific Vision prior to the resurrection of Our Lord. [17] What we do know is that our Lord did not enter into the true Holy of Holies empty-handed: besides His own glorified body and body, he brought the souls He had rescued from limbo on Good Friday, when “He descended into Hell.” The Breviary hymn for the Divine Office speaks of our ascended Lord at the head of a “triumph,” a Roman parade in which a victorious general showcased all of the slaves he had captured in battle. [18] The hymn artfully inverts this image, showing Christ as the liberator of souls from limbo now parading them into Heaven after having completed his earthy campaign, as it were.

Corpus Christi

Shortly after Paschaltide, the Church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi. Again the main focus is on the meaning of the feast at hand (in this case, the miracle of transubstantiation), but not without reference to our promised glorification. In the Divine Office for Corpus Christi, the Eucharist is called the “pledge of our future glory.” [19] Jesus Himself says as much when He links Holy Communion to the Four Last Things: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day.” [20] The Eucharist is not only essential to our earthly pilgrimage as spiritual food and medicine, it is preparing us, by what it is and what it does, for our final transformation into a glorified creature of God. For the Eucharist is not just the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, but His glorified body and blood. [21] When we receive Holy Communion, we are therefore receiving a token of what we, God willing, will one day become.

And it is not just our bodies that are being glorified by the Eucharist. Pope Benedict XVI writes eloquently of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass transforming the entire landscape of being:

The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15, 28). [22]

Transfiguration, 14th century icon

The Transfiguration (August 6)

The Pope’s reference to the transfiguration of the world brings us to our next feast. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Transfiguration of our Lord is commemorated in order to arouse the faithfuls’ desire for the glory of Easter; and on August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration to reflect more properly on the significance of this event. Part of that reflection involves meditating on the refulgence and majesty that our own glorified bodies will one day have. [23] The Breviary hymn for the feast speaks of the event in terms similar to the praise of the Eucharist we have just seen, as a “sign of perennial glory.” [24] Moreover, the little chapter used during the Divine Office is Philippians 3, 20-21, the passage about reforming our body of lowness. Just as the historical Transfiguration prefigured the Resurrection of Our Lord, so too does the liturgical celebration of the Transfiguration prefigure the general resurrection of the body.

How interesting that both of Jesus’ spiritual companions on Mount Tabor that day had bodies missing in action. Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot, while according to Jude 1:9, Saint Michael the Archangel and the devil fought over Moses’ body after he died. Some have interpreted Saint Jude’s cryptic statement to refer to the struggle between Michael and Satan through their earthly agents in Egypt, Moses being an emissary of God and the angels while Pharaoh and his magicians being minions of the devil. Others interpret the verse in reference to a fight over Moses’ remains, with Satan wanting the body buried in such a way that would seduce the Hebrews into idolatrizing it. [25] But Saint Michael prevailed, and to this day the location of Moses’ grave is unknown.

A third interpretation is that both Moses and Elijah represent different states of the afterlife, Moses’ soul having come from limbo to witness the Transfiguration and Elijah’s body and soul (for they were never separated by death) coming from Heaven—albeit not the “Empyrean Heaven,” according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, for that is only accessible to man through Christ’s Paschal mystery. [26] The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor thus discloses a fascinating spectrum of human existence: the living “acorn” bodies of Saints Peter, James, and John; the disembodied soul of Moses; the departed yet unglorified body of Elijah, and the transfigured body of Jesus as the foreshadowing of total glorification on the Last Day. In particular, our Lord’s Transfiguration foreshadows the gift of clarity, when “His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.” [27]

The Assumption (August 15)

If bodily resurrection is promised to every faithful Christian disciple, then it is eminently fitting that Christ’s first and most faithful disciple should receive this gift before anyone else save Christ Himself. The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

The Assumption of the Virgin, by Guido Reni, 1638-9

The Mass of the Assumption makes this connection explicit. The Collect prays that we “may deserve to be partakers of her glory,” while the Postcommunion beseeches God that through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, “we may be brought to the glory of the resurrection.” This teaching emanates outward from the Mass to various private devotions. A novena to the Blessed Virgin on the occasion of the Assumption prays: “Teach me how small earth becomes when viewed from Heaven. Make me realize that death is the triumphant gate through which I shall pass to your Son, and that someday my body shall rejoin my soul in the unending bliss of Heaven.”

Even the timing of the proclamation of the dogma on the Assumption seems attuned to highlight God’s regard for our bodily existence, now and in the future. I once heard an outstanding sermon from an FSSP priest who speculated that Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition of the doctrine in 1950 was in part (intentionally or not) a corrective to World War II, the bloodiest war in human history. Specifically, the Third Reich, which the Pope so valiantly resisted, harbored an unprecedented hatred of not simply the Jewish religion but Jewish “embodiment,” the DNA of Abraham and his descendents, which is why they tried to exterminate that DNA entirely in their death camps. By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

Time After Pentecost

These festal reminders of the resurrection from the dead elide nicely with the Time after Pentecost, that portion of the liturgical year which commemorates the pilgrimage of the Church from its birthday to the end of days—in other words, the period in which we are currently living. Because the Time after Pentecost symbolizes the time of the Church on earth, it is also a profoundly eschatological season, a season that looks ahead to the “Eschaton,” the Last Day, just as Christians facing east when they pray or assist at Mass do so as a sign of their anticipation of the Second Coming, when Christ shall come in glory from the East.

The eschatological note of the Time after Pentecost becomes noticeable around the Eighteenth Sunday, at which point the readings and prayers grow increasingly apocalyptic in tone. Verses from the prophets become much more common and references to the final manifestation of Christ more insistent. This sense of anticipation grows each week until it crescendos with the last Sunday after Pentecost (the last Sunday of the liturgical year), when the Gospel recalls Christ’s ominous double prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the terrifying end of the world.

But the eschatological theme is present earlier as well, and it includes a meditation on the future of our bodies. On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for example, the Gospel reading is of our Lord’s raising from the dead the only son of the widow of Naim (Luke 7:11-16), while the Postcommunion prays: “In soul and in body, O Lord, may we be ruled by the operation of this heavenly gift; that its effect, and not our own impulses, may ever prevail over us.” And the bodily theme is central on the Twenty Third Sunday, when the Epistle lesson returns to Philippians 3:21 and the Gospel reading proclaims the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, a prominent official of the Capharnaum synagogue (Matt. 9, 18-26).

The Temporal and Sanctoral cycles of the Church calendar thus reinforce each other in marvelously conveying to us the meaning of the article in the Creed we pray every Sunday: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Conclusion

The Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts and seasons that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.

An earlier version of this article appeared as “Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body,” The Latin Mass magazine 20:3 (Summer 2011), pp. 38-42. Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] City of God 13.20.

[2] Hamlet IV.iii.27-31.

[3] I Cor. 15:35ff.

[4] John A. Hardon, S.J. Pocket Catholic Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 79.

[5] The epitaph was not used when Franklin died at the age of 84.

[6] Phil. 3:21.

[7] See Phil. 3:21; I Cor. 15:44.

[8] Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.35.68.

[9] I Cor. 15:28.

[10] See Lk. 24:13-32; Jn. 20:1-16, 21:1-7.

[11] See Jn. 20:19, 26.

[12] See Lk. 24:36, 24:31.

[13] Phil. 3:21.

[14] Postcommunion for Easter Wednesday.

[15] Secret for Easter Tuesday.

[16] Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter (101) to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius.

[17] See Genesis 5:24.

[18] See the hymn Jeus nostra redemptio: “Breaking through the gates of Hell/ Redeeming Those of yours held captive/ A Victor in a noble triumph/ You now reside at the Father’s right hand.”

[19] Magnificat antiphon for II Vespers.

[20] John 6:55.

[21] In fact, this is one of the reasons that Holy Communion is not act of cannibalism, even though it involves consuming the flesh and drinking the blood of our Lord. No cannibal has ever come close to receiving a living and glorified body.

[22] Sacramentum Caritatis, 11; see also 71.

[23] For more on this topic, see Michael P. Foley, “Divine Do-Overs: The Secret of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar,” The Latin Mass 19:2 (Spring 2010), pp. 46-49.

[24] The hymn is Quicumque Christum quaeritis, and the verse is Signum perennis gloriae.

[25] A divergent theory posits that Satan argued that Moses was unworthy of burial at all since he had murdered an Egyptian as a young man.

[26] See Summa Theologiae III.45.3.ad 2.

[27] Mt. 17:2; see Mk. 9:1; Lk. 9:29. 

The Red Cross as a Symbol of the Resurrection

As we move into the second week of Easter, here is a symbolic image of the Resurrection, embroidered onto a chalice pall which was recently commissioned by a priest.

As the patron wrote to the artist when he commissioned the pall:

It depicts the Blood the Lamb, but not into a chalice — which I think would be good for a pall. No reason to have an image of a chalice atop a chalice - that’s the sort of “multiplication of images” that detracts from the Sacred Liturgy. I like this image of the Lamb, the Blood, but no chalice.

The image of the shell and the water (of Baptism) at the top is very meaningful. “From the Savior’s side flowed blood and water, the fountain of the sacramental life of the Church.” We often forget the saving waters. And both wine and water are poured into the chalice. Good imagery for a pall.

The lamb is the sacrificial victim, “standing as if slain”, from chapter 5 of the Apocalypse, and the Resurrection is symbolized by the banner with a red cross on a white background. I am not clear as to precisely how the red cross became the symbol of the Resurrection. From what I can gather, the symbol of the cross in various colors became popular in northern Italian cities from about 1000AD, and people from that area would carry these banners with them on the crusades to the Holy Land that took place in the following centuries. It also became associated in the late middle ages with St George as he became a patron of the crusader knights. It was linked particularly with the Resurrection in the West around this time too.

Since the time of Constantine, who ordered an image of the Christian cross to be put on the Roman standard as he went into battle and was victorious, the Holy Cross has been a symbol of both spiritual and temporal battles against those who wish to destroy the Church in both East and West. An ancient hymn sung to commemorate the Holy Cross in the Eastern churches runs as follows:

Oh Lord, save Your people and bless Your inheritance, grant victory to our country over its enemies and preserve your community by the power of your Cross. 

When I was looking for other images of this symbol, I remembered that Fra Angelico used it in his portrayal of the Resurrection:

I was reminded in looking at both of these images that the halo of Christ contains a red cross too. There is no consistently used color for the cross of the halo in Christian symbolism. However, red is frequently used by Fra Angelico, so I am guessing that in each case, the artist deliberately placed these two symbolic representations close to each other so that we would see the connection. Here is Fra Angelico’s Transfiguration.

The artist who created the pall, incidentally is Kathryn Laffrey, kl-artstudio.com, who is based in Michigan and is currently a student on the Master of Sacred Arts program at Pontifex University.

Why Ponder the Resurrection around Christmas? The Rationale for the Feast of St Thomas on December 21

Last Advent, a peculiar feature of the traditional Roman calendar leapt out at me and prompted some reflection. Since by the time I had reflected on it, Christmas was already past and gone, I made a note to myself to mention it this year!

Since the 9th century, the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle has been celebrated on December 21st, and that is where it remained in the calendar for the 1962 Missale Romanum. In the liturgical reform, however, St. Thomas’ feast was moved to July 3rd, in order to remove it from the major ferial days of Advent. We understand the motivation: simplify the most solemn times of year in order to allow a better focus on their proper character. The same view led to the dispersion of many longstanding feasts that typically fall during Lent. This thinking was necessitated by the unfortunate rationalist assumption that the faithful are not capable of entertaining more than one focus on a given day of the liturgical year, or perhaps that, even if they were capable, they shouldn’t do it.

Yet we should ask ourselves what is gained by having St. Thomas on December 21st, and what might be lost by giving him a warmer date in July.

The traditional Gospel, as anyone might guess, is the key portion from John (20, 24–29):

At that time: Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him: We have seen the Lord. But he said to them: Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you. Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God. Jesus saith to him: Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.

“How peculiar!,” one might think. “We are only four days away from Christmas, from the Nativity of Jesus, from the baby in the manger, the ox and ass, shepherds and magi, angels singing Gloria, hot chocolate and carols and presents” (etc. — you get the idea) “and we’re talking about the Resurrection? What could possibly be the point?”

Yet this episode with Thomas drives home the fact that it is faith that changes how we see all of reality — and, indeed, how we see the very birth of the Christ-child. Thomas insisted on seeing the risen Christ with His wounds, but He still could not see His invisible divinity; he still professed his faith in Jesus of Nazareth’s identity as the Son of God. Even less could anyone see a little child born in poor straits in Bethlehem and know that He was God — except by faith.

As Fr. Hunwicke observes:

The old Roman Mass-texts for Christmas are full of Light; there is poured upon us the new light of the Incarnate Word; God has made this most sacred Night bright with the shining of the True Light; we know the Mysteries of His Light on Earth; the new Light of His brightness has shone upon our minds. This reminds us of the theme of Illumination which the Tradition has always associated with Initiation. So the Baptised might be called the Illuminati; the Johannine pericope of the Healing of the Man Blind from Birth may be part of the Lenten propers preparing for Easter Night. Faith is Enlightenment; Faith is when the penny drops and we see everything rearranged in a new pattern; Faith is not so much the infusion by miraculous means of knowledge inaccessible by natural means as the radical restructuring of what the Carnal Man knows, but knows blindly. S Thomas saw the Risen Lord and thus saw all things differently, saw that the Rabbi of Nazareth was My Lord and My God.

The connection between Thomas and faith is obvious enough, but the traditional Collect underlines it for good measure:

Grant unto us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to glory in the solemn feast of Thy blessed Apostle Thomas: that we may ever both be helped by his patronage, and with due devotion follow his faith. Through our Lord…

There is a certain gentle irony: “follow his faith” is clearly not referring to the faith of one who hears of the resurrection of Jesus from another (say, Mary Magdalene) and believes without seeing. It must rather be referring to the faith by which Thomas — or any man — confesses the divinity of Christ. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 16:17).

Similarly, on the Vigil of the Nativity, the mystery of the resurrection is mentioned in the Epistle of the day (Rom 1, 1–6):

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh: who was predestinated the Son of God in power according to the spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead…

The liturgical reformers typically disliked this kind of mixing together of themes: they wanted each season to be “pure,” without complicated intermingling. But why might the Holy Spirit have moved the Church to place these remembrances of the Resurrection so near to the mystery of the Lord’s Nativity?

The theological reason is twofold. Objectively, it is in virtue of Christ’s Resurrection that every other mystery of Christ’s life continues its efficacy down through the ages and for all eternity. Subjectively, it is our baptism into His Resurrection that enables us to participate in the power of all the mysteries of His earthly life. Think of it this way: we might be emotionally moved by a story told about someone who lived in ages past, we might feel warm fuzzies in our chest, and flip a spare coin to a beggar, Dickens-like; but we cannot and will not receive any grace from a birth that happened 2,000 years ago unless we are united in charity and in the sacrament of charity with the living Christ, so that the grace of His Nativity becomes ours. Nor would His Nativity be efficacious here and now among us if He were not the ever-living glorified Christ who transcends time, who enters it as He will — just as He passed effortlessly through the closed doors of the upper room.

In this way, the old liturgy in every season — indeed in every celebration of the Holy Mass, when the Roman Canon immediately after the consecration recalls the Passion, descent into hell, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven — continues to remind us in various ways of the “lynchpin” of the sacramental and spiritual life, the Resurrection. Hubert van Zeller expresses this point well:

Whatever it was before the coming of Christ, the religious obligation after Christ’s coming could not be more clear. “Other foundation no man can lay but that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” St. Paul comes back to this concept of Christ supporting the whole structure not only of the church but of humanity in general and in particular of the individual soul. Christ the corner stone, Christ the head of the body, Christ whose spirit works through every gift, Christ whose resurrection is the ground of all our faith and the surety of all our hope. Without the dominant theme of Christ running through the whole of our service and spirituality, our faith is vain. At every point, from our baptism in him to our final resurrection in him as our guarantor, as the sole certain promise, as the substance and foundation on which our destiny rests. (Leave Your Life Alone [Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1972], 64–65)

If the resurrection of Jesus presents a challenge to our faith, the birth in time, of a virgin, of the eternal Son of God presents no less a challenge. That the infinite and immortal could be circumscribed by a womb, identified (as it were) with a body and soul, suffer want and necessity and mutability — all this is, and will always be, folly to the Gentiles, a stumbling-block to the Jews, an invitation to Muslim jihad and terrorism. But for us it is the truth, and we are willing, like the once-doubting but now-adoring Thomas, to die for it.

This feast of St. Thomas on December 21st, and with it the paradoxically well-attuned reading from John’s Gospel, were lost in the Novus Ordo calendar revision — or rather, excluded in pursuit of a narrower, historically-focused, sentimental and compartmentalized approach to liturgical seasons. And then the reformers asked us to believe that they were “recovering” lost elements of ancient tradition, such as the centrality of Christ’s Resurrection over against an excessive emphasis on His Passion and death. The stuff the reformers said they were “recovering” was already more present in the old liturgy, but present in a subtle and pervasive way.

There was a deep wisdom after all in celebrating St. Thomas on December 21st, as the apostle who, having fallen before the newly-risen Lord, most closely aligns with the shepherds and the wise men who fell down before the newborn King. As for me and my house, we will follow the Lord — and the old calendar.

[UPDATE: I should have pointed out as well the beauty of having the feasts of two great bearers of the name Thomas equidistant from Christmas, like two orbiting moons: St Thomas the Apostle and St Thomas Becket: 21 | 22 23 24 | 25 | 26 27 28 | 29. The former is an apostle who faltered in weakness but rallied to the confession of the divinity and ultimately gave his life for Christ; the latter, a successor to the apostles who made some of the usual compromises of his era earlier in his career but, when push came to shove, rallied to the primacy of the Church over the State, a truth for which he laid down his life for Christ the King. How appropriate both Thomases are for our own age of materialist skepticism and secular Erastianism!]

Photos by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

God Has Piety? The Collect for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Michel Corneille l’Ancien, La Résurrection (1640-1650)

Lost in Translation #12

In the Epistle for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (1 Cor. 15, 1-10), St. Paul goes to great lengths to establish the historical facticity of the Resurrection, for without it Christianity is an illusion. The Gospel (Mark 7, 31-37), on the other hand, recalls the cure of the deaf and dumb man from Decapolis whom Our Lord healed by moistening his finger and touching him. The Church Fathers saw in this miracle an allegory for baptism, and indeed the ‘Ephphetha’ ritual remains part of the traditional Roman rite of Baptism. Today’s Mass therefore reminds us of the application of Christ’s victorious resurrection to the people of God through baptism.

Extending Christ’s grace is also a priority of the Collect:

Omnípotens sempiterne Deus, qui abundantia pietátis tuae et mérita súpplicum excédis et vota: effunde super nos misericordiam tuam; ut dimittas quae conscientia métuit, et adjicias quod oratio non praesúmit. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Which I translate as:

Almighty and eternal God, who in the abundance of Thy loving kindness goest beyond the merits and desires of the suppliant, pour out Thy mercy upon us, that Thou mayst forgive what our conscience fears and add onto what our prayer does not dare [ask]. Through our Lord.

“Pour out” (effunde) is a liquid metaphor, a possible tie-in to the waters of baptism and the very earthy way that Jesus cured the deaf and dumb man. Mercy is what led Jesus to cure the man, and mercy is what we ask for in the Collect. 

The word pietas appears in this prayer, which I have translated as “loving kindness.” In classical Latin, pietas is a human virtue betokening loyalty to the gods, one’s country, one’s family, etc. If we trust Vergil’s Aeneid, it is the signature virtue of the hero Aeneas, and by extension of the Roman people, the one thing that makes them superior to those impressive but sneaky Greeks. In Christian Latin, pietas is a proper respect or attitude that the believer has towards God; it is both a moral virtue and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

But Christianity also added a new and revolutionary meaning to the word by turning the tables and applying it to God’s attitude to man. And what is that attitude? Thankfully, one of loving kindness. When ascribed to the divine, pietas is essentially a synonym for mercy or clemency. And thankfully, according to this Collect, God has plenty of it.

There is one more twist. Whereas most Christian literature favors the “human” meaning over the “divine,” the orations of the Roman Missal are the opposite. In the sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great, for example, pietas is used 53 times as a human attitude or habit and only 7 times as a divine quality. In the orations, by contrast, pietas is used 27 times in reference to God and only 3 times in reference to man. [1] The Collect for this Sunday is one of those 27 times.

The purpose clause is especially beautiful: forgive what our conscience is afraid of, and add on(to) what our prayer does not dare ask for. The use of “increase” or “add onto” (adjicias) rather than “give” or “bestow” is interesting, for it implies that God is already giving us blessings that exceed our prayers’ wildest dreams; we just want more. On and off for the past several weeks the Collects have been conditioning us to desire big and pray big; here we are told that God will outdo even the greatest of our yearnings and petitions.

Finally, to speak of what we dare not wish for acknowledges the possibility of a lingering despondency or despair about our spiritual condition. Like the Publican in the Gospel from last Sunday, when our conscience is working properly, it gives us enough self-knowledge to see the enormity of our sins; as a result, we do not even feel like looking up to heaven (see Luke 8, 13). Be of good heart, the Collect is telling us: although your conscience is right about your sins, God’s pietas will nonetheless deliver handsomely. For as St. Paul writes in this Sunday’s Epistle, "His grace in me hath not been void."

[1] Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum (Dekker, 1966), 53.

In Defense of Holy Images—The Victory of the Resurrection

The Paschal season’s celebration of Our Lord’s triumph over death is at the same time a reminder of the goodness of the flesh, the material world, the sensible domain, as restored, transfigured, and glorified in the sacred humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the same reason, Easter reminds us of the triple basis of icons: the goodness of creation, which symbolizes the Creator; the exalted position of human nature, as assumed by the Word of God; and the glory of sanctified flesh, as displayed in the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ.

Given the iconoclastic half-century that has passed, it can never be amiss to remind ourselves of why the Catholic Church of East and West has always produced, loved, venerated, and defended “icons” or holy images of Christ, His Mother, and all the saints. Although in what follows I will be speaking primarily of icons in the usual sense of the term, the theological principles definitely apply to stained glass, relief carvings, sculptures or statues—in short, any art that seeks to bring the holy ones into our midst or, more properly, to bring us into contact with their glory.

In response to heretics who were rejecting and destroying holy images (the iconoclasts), the seventh Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, called the Second Council of Nicaea (787), unambiguously affirmed the constant teaching and tradition of the Church:

We declare that we preserve intact all the written and unwritten traditions of the Church which have been entrusted to us.  One of these traditions consists in the production of representational artwork, which accords with the history of the preaching of the Gospel.  For it confirms that the Incarnation of the Word of God was real and not imaginary . . .[1]

The Council continued:

We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit dwells in her), define with all certitude and accuracy that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also, venerable and holy images of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honorable angels, of all saints and of all the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be set forth in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels, on the vestments, on walls and panels, in houses, and on streets.  For the more frequently they are seen in artistic representation, the more readily men are lifted up to the memory of their prototypes and to longing after them; and to these should be given due greeting and honorable reverence, not indeed that adoration (latreia) which pertains to the divine nature alone, but incense and candles may be offered to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, the Book of the Gospels, and other holy objects, according to ancient and pious custom.  For the honor that is paid to the image passes on to what the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.

Much later on, in response to a new wave of iconoclasm fomented by the Protestants who accused Catholics of “idol worship” in violation of the first Commandment, the Council of Trent had this to say:

The images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of other saints are to be kept and preserved, in places of worship especially, and to them due honor and veneration is to be given, not because it is believed that there is in them anything divine or any power for which they are revered, nor in the sense that something is sought from them or that a blind trust is put in images as once was done by the gentiles who placed their hope in idols, but because the honor that is shown to them is referred to the original subjects that they represent. Thus, through these images that we kiss and before which we kneel and uncover our heads, we are adoring Christ and venerating the saints whose likeness these images bear.[2]

The Fathers of Trent mention that this is the teaching of the Councils, especially the Second Council of Nicaea.

St. Thomas says this about the Christ icon in the Summa:

No reverence is to be shown to Christ’s image, insofar as it is a thing (for instance, carved or painted wood); because reverence is not due except to a rational creature. It follows therefore that reverence should be shown to it, only insofar as it is an image. Consequently, the same reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ Himself. Since, therefore, Christ is adored with latria, it follows that His image should be adored with the adoration of latria.[3]

Among the Fathers of the Church, the most famous defender and exponent of icons is St. John Damascene. According to Damascene, icons serve seven functions.[4]

1. They are a means of honoring God, his saints, and the holy angels.  As St. Basil the Great said, in a line often quoted by Damascene and invoked by Nicaea II: “The honor that is given to the icon passes on to its prototype [i.e., original].”

2. They serve to instruct us in the Christian Faith.  They are like books: “What the book is to the literate, icons are to the illiterate, and what speech is to hearing, that the icon is to sight.”  (Allow me to note that all of us are, to some extent, illiterates, in the sense that we do not fully grasp what we read in the Bible, and need many ways of entering into the mystery of God.)  Books and speech teach by words; icons teach by forms and colors.  Damascene: “Icons are . . . the never-silent heralds of the honor that is due to holy persons.  They teach those who see them with a soundless voice.”

3. They remind us of what we have learned.  Like a book always lying open, they serve as a “concise memorial.”  St. Gregory the Great: “The art of painting vividly brings the  story to the mind.”

4. They lift us up to the prototypes; they are anagogical, leading us to the heavenly realm which is our final destiny.  St. Dionysius: “By sensible images, we are led upward, as far as possible, to divine contemplations.”  Cavarnos: “Icons lift our soul from the material to the spiritual realm, from a lower level of being, thought, and feeling, to a higher level.”  Damascene has some beautiful things to say about this: “I enter into the place of therapy for souls, the church, choked by thoughts as by thorns.  The blossom of the paintings attracts me to gaze at it, and as a meadow delights my sight and imperceptibly instills into my soul the glorification of God.”  Later on, we read of the famous iconographer St. Andrei Rublev and his fellow artist Daniel: “On feast days when they did not work, they used to sit in front of the divine and venerable icons and look at them without distraction . . . They constantly elevated their spirits and their thoughts to the immaterial and divine light.”  (This is the light that Rublev was able to transmit in his work.)

5. Icons powerfully incite us to virtue and to holiness, since they urge us to strive to imitate the prototypes—to copy their virtues and to avoid vices contrary to these.  We are to become, as it were, living icons on which the divine Artist inscribes a holy image, beautiful to behold, full of form and color, so that we become a blessing for all who meet us.

6. The sixth purpose is our sanctification.  Damascene teaches that icons of Christ and His Saints “are filled with the Holy Spirit”: during their life on earth, they were filled with the Spirit, and when they died, the grace of the Spirit remained in their souls, their bodies in the grave, and their icons.  (This is why veneration of icons is connected with veneration of relics.)  When we venerate an image of Christ in particular, we become partakers of His divine grace; the icon serves as a quasi-sacrament through which the life of our God is imparted to us.[5]

7. Lastly, icons enhance the adornment of the church building.  They set the house of God apart from common buildings and make it well suited for the divine liturgy that takes place within it.  They make the church, in fact, an earthly image of the heavenly Jerusalem, where Christ and all His saints and angels rejoice in glory.

In conclusion, I should like to make a comparison. The host of iconophile martyrs, so many of whom grace the pages of the Roman Martyrology,[6] are examples and intercessors for all of us today who are carrying the flag of the New Liturgical Movement in difficult times. Just as an icon, bequeathed to us by Tradition, brings the Lord or His friends to us, so too does the Mass—and far more intimately. Handed down to us by a Tradition even older than that of sacred images, the Mass brings the Lord Jesus Christ into our midst not only in the communion of the consecrated offerings but in the communion of all the saints who have come to the altar before us. Those who would suppress the venerable and iconic Mass are the iconoclasts of our age, whom we must peacefully resist, while bearing witness in charity to the truth of what has been handed down to us.

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede for us with the Lord, that we may merit to be helped and saved by Him who lives and reigns, for ever and ever. Amen.


Notes
[1] Cited in CCC 1160.
[2] Council of Trent, Session XXV, December 1563.
[3] Summa theologiae, III, qu. 25, art. 3.
[4] As summarized in Cavarnos, Guide to Byzantine Iconography, 241–45.
[5] I say "quasi-sacrament" precisely because while the icon disposes us to receive the grace it signifies, it does not cause that grace ex opere operato, as a sacrament does. The icon is an occasion through which to beseech and receive grace, not a proper cause of the sanctification of the soul.
[6] Just in the opening days of April, three are commemorated: "April 1. At Constantinople, St. Macarius, Confessor, who under the Emperor Leo ended his life in exile for defending holy images. ... April 3. In the monastery of Medikion in Bithynia, St. Nicetas, Abbot, who suffered much under Leo the Armenian, for the veneration of holy images, and finally, as a confessor, died in peace near Constantinople. ... April 4. At Constantinople, St. Plato, monk, who strove with dauntless spirit for many years against the heretical breakers of holy images."