Good Shepherd Sunday 2026

Alleluia, I am the Good Shepherd, and I know my sheep, and mine know me, alleluja. (The second Alleluia of Good Shepherd Sunday.)

The Good Shepherd, by Cristóbal García Salmerón (1603-66), originally painted for the church of St Genesius in Arles, France, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Alleluja, Ego sum pastor bonus, et cognosco oves meas, et cognoscunt me meae, alleluia.

In the Ambrosian Rite, the Gospel for today is St John’s account of the Baptism of Christ, chapter 1, 29-34, which the Roman Rite reads on the octave of Epiphany. In the oldest Ambrosian lectionary, the Gospels for the Sundays between Low Sunday and the Ascension continue the instruction of those who were baptized at Easter, and are centered on the figure of Christ. Today John calls him “the Lamb of God”, and on the following Sunday (John 1, 15-28), “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father.” On the next two Sundays, Christ speaks of Himself as “the light of the world” (John 8, 12-20) and “the way, the truth and the light (John 14, 1-14).” In the Carolingian era, when the Ambrosian Rite underwent a significant Romanization, the latter three were replaced with the traditional Roman Gospels for these Sundays, but the Gospel of today remained; it is accompanied by the following particularly beautiful preface.

John the Baptist Indicates the Lamb of God to Ss Peter and Andrew; fresco by Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), generally known as Domenichino, in the ceiling of the apse of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome, 1622-28. (Image by AlfvanBeem released to the public domain, from Wikimedia Commons.)

VD... Aeterne Deus: Qui omnia mundi elementa fecisti, et varias disposuisti témporum vices: atque hómini ad tuam imáginem cóndito, universa simul animantia, rerumque mirácula subjecisti. Cui licet orígo terréna sit: tamen, regeneratióne Baptísmatis, caelestis ei vita confertur. Nam devicto mortis auctóre, immortalitátis est gratiam consecútus: et, praevaricatiónis erróre quassáto, viam réperit veritátis. Per Christum.

Truly ... eternal God: Who made all the elements of the world, and arranged the various changes of time, and subjected to man, who was made in Thy image, all living things, and the wonders of creation. And though his origin is of earth, nonetheless, the life of heaven is conferred upon him in the regeneration of baptism. For then the author of death was conquered, he obtained the grace of immortality, and when the error of his transgression was broken, he found the way of truth. Through Christ...

In the Byzantine Rite, today is called the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women from its Gospel, Mark 15, 43 – 16, 8. In the first part of this reading, Joseph of Arimathea requests from Pilate and receives the body of the Lord for burial, wraps Him in the shroud, and lays Him in the tomb; in the second (which the Roman Rite reads on Easter itself, minus the last verse), the women come to the tomb to anoint the body, and meet the angel who tells them that He has risen, and bids them go tell the disciples.

A fresco of the Myrrh-Bearing Women in the Dionysiou Monastery on Mt Athos.

At Matins of Holy Saturday, which is usually sung on the evening of Good Friday, the first set of proper chants at the beginning of the service is based on this Gospel. (The traditional setting in Church Slavonic is one of the best loved and most moving pieces of music among the Slavs.)

The noble Joseph took down from the Cross Thy spotless Body, and when he had wrapped It in a clean shroud with spices, he laid It for burial in a new sepulchre. – Glory be.

When Thou went down to death, o immortal Life, then didst Thou slay Hades by the brightness of the Godhead; and when Thou raised up the dead from the netherworld, all the powers of heaven cried out, ‘Christ our God, Giver of life, glory to Thee.’ – Now and ever.

The angel stood by the tomb and cried to the myrrh-bearing women, ‘Myrrh is fitting for the dead, but Christ has been shown free from corruption.’

At Vespers of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, these same chants are sung at the end, but the first two change places, and the second and third have additions (marked here with *) which make them more appropriate for the Easter season.

When Thou went down to death, o immortal Life, then didst Thou slay Hades by the brightness of the Godhead; and when Thou raised up the dead from the netherworld, all the powers of heaven cried out, ‘Christ our God, Giver of life, glory to Thee.’ – Glory be.
The noble Joseph took down from the Cross Thy spotless Body, and when he had wrapped It in a clean shroud with spices, he laid It for burial in a new sepulchre; * but Thou didst rise on the third day, o Lord, granting great mercy to the world. – Now and ever.
The angel stood by the tomb and cried to the myrrh-bearing women, “Myrrh is fitting for the dead, but Christ has been shown free from corruption. * But cry out, ‘The Lord is risen, granting great mercy to the world!’ ”

This video includes only the first one, which has a rather more cheerful melody in its Paschal version.

The Samaritan Woman in the Liturgy of Lent

In the lectionaries of the various Latin rites, one of the most prominent Gospels of the Lenten season is that of the Samaritan woman who spoke to Christ at the well of Jacob (St John 4, 5-42). Although the Roman, Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites each read this Gospel on a different day, it appears in all three as a lesson of particular importance for the preparation of those who will be baptized at Easter or Pentecost.

In the Roman Rite, it is read on the Friday of the third week, joined with one of the most important epistles of Lent, Numbers 20, 1-13, in which Moses makes water run from the rock in the desert. This story was understood by the early Christians as a prefiguration of the sacrament of baptism, starting with St Paul himself, who tells us that “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea: and did all 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, 1-4) Moses striking the rock to make the water run from it is one of the most frequently depicted Biblical scenes in early Christian art; just in the paintings of the Roman catacombs, it appears over 70 times, along with numerous other representations on ancient sarcophagi.

Moses making the water run from the rock in a fourth-century fresco in the Catacomb of St Callixtus.

On the previous Sunday, the Lenten station is kept at the church of St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls, where anciently the catechumens underwent a formal examination of their Christian faith, the ritual known as the scrutiny. The Gelasian Sacramentary contains a beautiful prayer for them to be said on that day, “that they may worthily and wisely come to the confession of Thy praise; so that through Thy glory they may be reformed to the former dignity which they had lost in the original transgression.” At the same Mass, the Memento of the living has an interpolation to pray for their future godparents, and during the Hanc igitur, the names of the catechumens were read out loud. On the following Friday, the station is kept at another church of Rome’s most venerated martyr, St Lawrence ‘in Lucina’, nicknamed, like so many sacred places in the city, for the woman upon whose property it was originally built. Here, they would hear Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman of the “living water … springing up unto life everlasting”, and understand His words as a clear reference to baptism.

A piece of the gridiron of St Lawrence’s martyrdom, preserved in a reliquary in a side-altar of San Lorenzo in Lucina. Photo courtesy of Orbis Catholicus.

In his treatise on the Gospel of St John (Tract 15, 10), St Augustine explains the woman as a type of the Church, “not yet justified, but waiting to be justified”, like the catechumens themselves. He also reminds us that the Samaritans were not part of the Jewish people; indeed, the Bible itself says that they were a mixed nation of Jews and pagans, observing the customs of both. (4 Kings 17, 24-41) So too, the early Church was a mixture of Jews and pagans, now united in Christ in whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3, 28) Augustine continues by saying, “Therefore, in her, let us hear ourselves (spoken of), and in her, let us recognize ourselves, and in her, let us give thanks to God for ourselves.” (i.e. for what He has done for us.)

The dedicatory inscription on the counter-façade of Santa Sabina in Rome, the only part of the church’s original mosaic decoration which survives, ca. 425 A.D. The two figures on the sides are “the church from the circumcision” on the left, and “the church from the gentiles” on the right. Photo courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

In the Ambrosian Rite, the first Sunday of Lent is called “in capite jejunii – at the beginning of the fast”, a title also used for Ash Wednesday in medieval liturgical books of the Roman Rite. The remaining Sundays are named for their Gospels, all taken from St John, the second Sunday being that of the Samaritan woman, the third ‘of Abraham’ (chap. 8, 31-59), the fourth ‘of the man born blind,’ (9, 1-38), the fifth of Lazarus (11, 1-45) and the sixth ‘of the Palms’ (11, 55 – 12, 11). On the second Sunday, the following antiphon is sung after the Gospel, while the deacon spreads the corporal on the altar in preparation for the Offertory. (As in the Roman Rite, most of the Mass propers use the Old Latin version of the Scriptures.)

For I will take you from among the gentiles, and I will pour upon you clean water; you shall be cleansed from all your iniquities. I will give you a new heart, and renew a righteous spirit within you. (Ezechiel 36, 24, 25 and 26.)

In the Roman Rite, the same prophecy of Ezechiel (though not exactly the same words) provides both the introit and the first epistle of the Mass of the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent, on which day the catechumens were exorcized and blessed at the tomb of St Paul, the great Apostle of the gentiles.

The Ambrosian Missal contains proper prefaces for nearly every Mass of the temporal cycle, generally rather longer than those of the Roman Rite. The Lenten prefaces of the Sundays are each based on the Gospel of the day, and that of the Samaritan woman reads as follows:

Truly it is worthy and just…through Christ our Lord. Who, to instill (in us) the mystery of His humility, being tired, sat at the well, and * asked of the Samaritan woman that a drink of water be given Him, even He that had created the gift of faith in her; and so He deigned to thirst for her faith, so that, as He asked water of her, He might enkindle in her the fire of divine love. * We therefore beseech Thy boundless compassion, that defying the dark depths of vice, and leaving behind the vessel of harmful desires, we may ever thirst for Thee, that art the fountain of life, and source of all goodness, and may please Thee by the observance of our fast. Through the same etc.

The words here noted between the stars form the basis of a Preface used in the post-Conciliar Rite in the first year of the three-year lectionary cycle, when the story of the Samaritan woman is read on the third Sunday of Lent. Since this crucial passage is not included among the readings of the second and third years, a rubric provides that it may be read on Sunday in place of the Gospels assigned to those years, or it may displace one of the ferial Gospels; a similar provision is made for the blind man and Lazarus.

The Orthodox church of Jacob’s Well, also known as St Photini’s, in the city of Nablus on the West Bank. The current church is the fifth structure to stand over the site, which has been venerated by Christians as the Well of Jacob since the fourth century.

In the Byzantine tradition, the story of the Samaritan woman is read in Eastertide rather than Lent, as is that of the man born blind; however, the association of it with the sacrament of baptism is just as clear as in the Latin rites. On the fifth Sunday of Easter, the following three exapostilaria are sung at the end of Matins; the first is that of the Easter season, the second relates to the Gospel of the day’s Divine Liturgy, and the third to the feast of Mid-Pentecost.

Exapostilarion of Easter  Having fallen asleep in the flesh as a mortal, O King and Lord, You rose again on the third day, raising up Adam from corruption, and abolishing death. O Pascha of incorruption, O salvation of the world!
of the Samaritan Woman  You reached Samaria, and talking with a woman, sought water to drink, my all-powerful Savior, who poured out water for the Hebrews from a sharp rock, and led her to belief in you: and now she enjoys life eternally in heaven.
of Mid-Pentecost  At the mid-point of the feast, Lover of mankind, you came to the temple and said: You who are full of thirst, come to me and draw living water welling up, through which you will all revel in delight and grace and immortal life.

Note how the exapostilarion of the Samaritan woman makes the same association between the Lord’s revelations to her and the episode of the water running from the rock that is made in the Roman Rite by the readings of the Mass. This reference to the waters of baptism continues in the third text, which quotes Christ’s second reference to the “living waters” in the Gospel of John, when He speaks in the temple during the feast of Tabernacles. (chapter 7, 37-39.)

The text of this second Gospel of the “living waters” is deferred by the Byzantine Rite to Pentecost itself, a custom which it shares with the Ambrosian and Roman Rites in different ways. The church of Milan preserves to this very day an ancient custom of celebrating two Masses on both Easter and Pentecost, the traditional days for the administration of baptism; one is the Mass “of the solemnity” itself, and another “for the (newly) baptized.” On Easter Sunday, the Gospel at the Mass for the baptized is John 7, 37-39, with the second part of the last verse omitted.

On great day of the festivity, the Lord Jesus stood and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him.

At the Mass for the baptized on Pentecost, this Gospel is repeated, adding the final words of verse 39 which are not said on Easter, “for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” In the Roman Rite, the same text provides the Communion antiphon for the Mass of the vigil of Pentecost, although the Gospel itself is read on the Monday of Passion Week.

The Byzantine Rite has traditionally honored the Samaritan woman as a Saint, and she was often called both an Apostle and Evangelist. Her legend states that she, her five sisters and two sons were among those baptized by St Peter and the other Apostles on the first Pentecost, and afterwards traveled to preach in many places; after evangelizing Carthage, they came to Rome, where they were martyred under Nero. Her given name is Photeine (or “Photini” in the modern pronunciation), the Greek word for “bright”; the cognate “photistes – illuminator” is used in the Byzantine tradition as a title for the saint who first evangelizes a people, the best-known example of this being perhaps St Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia. With the latinized form of her name, Photina, she was added to the Tridentine edition of the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Baronius, along with her family members, on March 20th, the day of her feast in the Byzantine Rite. Her troparion makes the same association between the waters of baptism and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost indicated by the placement of her Gospel on the Sunday after Mid-Pentecost.

Wholly illuminated by the divine Spirit, and sated of your thirst by the springs, you drank deeply of the water of salvation from Christ the Savior, all praiseworthy one, and shared it abundantly with them that thirst; o Great Martyr and Equal to the Apostles, Photini, entreat Christ our God to save our souls.

The Five Prayers of the Candlemas Blessing and the Five Books of Moses

The Gospel of the feast of the Purification, St Luke 2, 22-32, says in its first verse that the Christ Child was presented in the temple in Jerusalem “according to the Law of Moses.” This refers to Leviticus 12, which states that “(i)f a woman having received seed shall bear a man child, she shall be unclean seven days … and on the eighth day the infant shall be circumcised, but she shall remain three and thirty days in the blood of her purification. … And when the days of her purification are expired, … she shall bring to the door of the tabernacle of the testimony, a lamb of a year old for a holocaust, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for sin, and shall deliver them to the priest, who shall offer them before the Lord, and shall pray for her…” In the Tridentine reform of the Roman Breviary, this chapter was made the second and third reading of Matins on February 2nd.

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 1620, by the Flemish painter Cornelis de Vos (1584-1621). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

From the very beginning, as the Church wrestled with the question of whether the observances of the Mosaic law remained valid for its members, one of the strongest arguments in favor of them was that Christ Himself, who said that “not one jot or tittle should pass away from the Law” (Matt. 5, 18), had observed them. The Church Fathers, therefore, emphasize that He did so in order to indicate to us the true meaning of the Law of Moses, as a prefiguration of the new Law of the Gospel. In the mid-3rd century, the great Biblical scholar and commenter Origen, who was very influential on subsequent generations of the Fathers, writes that Christ “ ‘was made under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law’, and subject them to another Law.” (Homily 14 on Luke, citing Gal. 4, 5) In St Ambrose’s time, the Presentation of Christ in the temple was celebrated on January 1st along with the Circumcision, and he comments on this passage of St Luke, “he that is circumcised of vices was judged worthy of the sight of the Lord… you see that the whole succession of the old Law was a figure of the future, for even circumcision signifies the purification of sins.” (Exposition on the Gospel of Luke, II, 56)

St Cyril of Alexandria also comments on the two episodes, the Circumcision and Presentation, at the same time. “(T)oday we have seen Him obedient to the laws of Moses, or rather we have seen Him Who as God is the Legislator, subject to His own decrees…” But the sacrifice of the birds that accompanied the latter has a mystical significance. “The (turtledove)... is the noisiest of the birds of the field: but the (pigeon) is a mild and gentle creature. And such did the Savior of all become towards us, showing the most perfect gentleness, and like a turtledove moreover soothing the world, and filling His own vineyard, even us who believe in Him, with the sweet sound of His voice. For it is written in the Song of Songs, ‘The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.’ (Cant. 2, 12) For Christ has spoken to us the divine message of the Gospel, which is for the salvation of the whole world.” (Sermon III on the Gospel of St Luke, ad finem.)

Finally, we may note the words of St Bede the Venerable, that neither Christ nor His Mother were subject to the conditions of the Law. Moses writes that a woman shall do these things when “she has received seed,” and borne a child, to distinguish from Her that conceived and bore a Son as a Virgin. Christ “was free from the condition of the Law, but deigned to accept it for this reason, that He might approve it as holy, just and good, and by the grace of Faith, free us from the service and fear thereof.” (Exposition on the Gospel of Luke, Liber I in cap. 2)

In the Byzantine Rite, the feast of the Purification is called “the Meeting of the Lord with Simeon”, and the liturgical texts of the feast lay great emphasis on Christ as the giver of the Law which He obeys, and from the observance of which He then releases the Church. This hymn from Vespers typifies the motif: “Today Simeon receiveth the Lord of glory in his arms, even He whom Moses saw of old beneath the darkness on Mount Sinai, giving him the tablets. This is the One who spoke in the Prophets, and the Maker of the Law; this is the One whom David proclaimeth, feared of all, that hath great and rich mercy.”

A painting in the cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Kyiv, Ukraine, based on Proverbs 9, 1-11, the first words of which are written in Greek on the building’s cornice. God the Father, with the seven great archangels to either side sends the Holy Spirit down upon the Virgin Mary, who stands in the middle of Wisdom’s house, with the Christ Child in a halo on Her chest, the icon type known as the “Virgin of the Sign.” The steps ascending towards Her are labelled “Faith (cut off by the frame), Hope, Love, Purity, Humility, Grace, Glory”; to the left are shown David, Aaron, and closest to Her, Moses, to the right, the four Major Prophets. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Several other texts on the feast and during its Afterfeast (the Byzantine equivalent of an octave) refer to the darkness that enveloped Mt Sinai when Moses went up to receive the Law, which is implicitly contrasted with the “light unto the revelation of the gentiles” of which Simeon speaks in the Nunc dimittis. Thus, the old Law, including the rites of circumcision and the sacrifice of purification, was revealed in darkness, and applicable only to the Jewish people. But it was intended to serve as a figure of the new Law, in which circumcision is replaced with baptism, which is applicable to all, “male and female, Jew and Gentile.” And thus, the feast on January 6th, which celebrates the Baptism of the Lord, is called the Theophany, but also simply “the lights.”

The Roman Rite prefers great simplicity and subtlety in its rhetoric. In the context of this feast, it asserts this relationship between the Lawgiver and the Law, and the passage from the Old Law to the New, through the five prayers of the candle blessing, each of which refers, in order, to one of the five books of the Law of Moses.

The first prayer, corresponding to Genesis, begins with the words “Lord, … who created all things from nothing…”, a reference to the creation of the world. This also explains the statement that candles are made for the use of men, and the health of their body and souls, “whether on land or at sea”, since Moses’ account of creation includes the division of the land from the waters, and the creation of man “as a living soul.” (Gen. 2, 7) This is the only one of the five prayers that mentions the Virgin Mary, the new Eve; it asks for the prayers of “all Thy Saints”, perhaps in reference to the holy Patriarchs of the Old Testament. The last part asks that that God “be merciful to all those who cry out to Thee, whom Thou hast redeemed by the precious blood of Thy Son”, a reference to the blood of the just Abel that cries to God from the earth.

The second prayer, which corresponds to Exodus, states that the faithful received the blessed candles “unto the magnificence of Thy name.” This refers to the Canticle of Moses in chapter 15, a passage familiar to all Christians from its presence among the prophecies of the Easter vigil. “Let us sing to the Lord: for he is gloriously magnified… The Lord is my strength and my praise, and he is become salvation to me: he is my God and I will glorify him: the God of my father, and I will exalt him. The Lord is as a man of war, Almighty is his name.”

(Exodus 14, 24 -15, 1, followed by the Tract from chapter 15, verses 1 and 2, sung at the vigil of Pentecost.)

The third prayer corresponds to Leviticus, and asks that the faithful may “be without the blindness of all vices, so that… we may be able to see those things which are pleasing to Thee and useful to our salvation.” This refers to the Church’s distinction between the perennially valid precepts of the moral law contained in Leviticus, and in the Law generally, and the ritual prescriptions to which She is no longer bound. Notice also here the contrast between light and darkness of which the Byzantine liturgy speaks: “so that after the dark ‘discrimina’ (both ‘hazards’ and ‘decisions’) of this age, we may merit to come to the light unfailing.”

The fourth prayer begins with a reference to God’s command to Moses to prepare oil for the lights that burn before Him in the tabernacle of the covenant. In St Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible, this is mentioned three times in Exodus, and twice more in Numbers, the fourth book of the Law, with the verb “concinnare – to make, prepare”, which is also used in this prayer. The prayer that “the light of Thy spirit not be lacking inwardly to our minds” refers, perhaps, to the sharing of Moses’ spirit with the seventy elders of Israel described in chapter 11.

Finally, the fifth prayer, which corresponds to Deuteronomy, asks that we may be “enlightened and taught by the Holy Spirit.” This refers to the canticle of Moses in chapter 32, which begins with the words, “Let my doctrine gather as the rain, … I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God.” At the Easter vigil, after these words are sung in the Tract after the eleventh prophecy, the Church states in the prayer that follows that God “willed to teach the people by the singing of His holy song.” The prayer concludes with the petition that “we may truly know and faithfully love” God, a reference to the words of chapter 6, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength.” This commandment appears nowhere else in the Law of Moses, and is, of course, commended by the Lord Himself as the first and greatest commandment. (Matt. 22, 37)

“Apostle of the Apostles” - Liturgical Notes on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene

In the Missal of St Pius V, the Creed is said on every Sunday, and several categories of feasts: all those of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, Angels, Apostles, Doctors, etc. To this list is added one other woman, St Mary Magdalene, in commemoration of the fact that it was she who announced the Resurrection of Christ, the foundation of the Faith, to the Apostles; for this reason she has often been called “the Apostles of the Apostles.” This custom was widely observed in the Middle Ages, but originally not accepted at Rome itself; the Ordinal of the papal liturgy in the reign of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) specifies that the Creed is not to be said on the feast, indicating that it was known to be done elsewhere. It was still omitted according to the rubrics of printed editions of the Roman Missal in the first half of the 16th century; its addition in the rubrics of 1570 is one of the rare cases where a new custom was added to the Roman Rite from elsewhere in the highly conservative Tridentine reform. (It was removed from her feast in 1955, and from the Doctors in 1961.)

Two pages of a Roman Missal printed at Lyon, France, in 1500 (folio 95 recto and verso). The rubric about the Creed begins in the middle of the right column of the first page. Note that at the break between the two pages, St Bonaventure is listed as a Saint on whose feast the Creed is said; this edition was printed for the Franciscans, who counted him informally as a Doctor before the title was officially given in 1588. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Réserve des livres rares.)

The Gregorian propers of her Mass (Introit, Gradual etc.) are taken from the various common Masses of holy women; in the Middle Ages, the Epistle was that of Holy Matrons, Proverbs 31, 10-31, “Who shall find a valiant woman? etc.” In the Tridentine Missal, a new Epistle was created, the Song of Songs, 3, 2-5 and 8, 6-7, which begins as follows.

I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. (quaesivi illum et non inveni.) The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go ...

St Gregory the Great refers the words “I will seek him whom my soul loveth” to John 20, 11-18, when Mary meets Christ at the tomb and mistakes him for the gardener, in the Breviary homily for Easter Thursday.

We must consider how great was the force of love that had enkindled this woman’s heart, who left not the tomb of the Lord, though even the disciples were gone away. She sought Him Whom she had not found there, (exquirebat, quem non invenerat) and as she sought Him, she wept, … Whence it came to pass that she alone, who had stayed behind to seek Him, was the only one who then saw Him.

“When I had a little passed by them” (i.e. the watchmen of the city) then refers to tomb of the Lord being just outside the city, and the words “I held him: and I will not let him go” to her embracing the Lord, until He says to her, “Cling to me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”

‘Noli me tangere’ by Jacob van Oostsanen, 1507. The words of John 20, 15, that Mary Magdalene at first thought the Risen Christ was the gardener, gave rise to a delightful tradition of portraying Him with various gardening implements, such as the shovel seen here, or the kind of broad-brimmed hat often worn by gardeners.

From the time of St Gregory, the Western Church accepted that Mary Magdalene was also the sinful woman who anoints Christ’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, as recounted in Luke 7, 36-50, the Gospel for her feast. This connection was probably made from the words that immediately follow this passage, or at least reinforced by them, Luke 8, 1-3. “And it came to pass afterwards, that he travelled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with him: And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities; Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, And Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto him of their substance.” (Mark 16, 9 also refers to the seven devils.)

She is also traditionally held in the West to be Martha and Lazarus’ sister, of whom Christ says in the same Gospel “Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10, 38-42) This passage is read on the feast of St Martha on July 29th, the octave of Mary Magdalene; from it, Martha has traditionally been seen as the symbol of the active life, and Mary of the contemplative. The same passage is then read also on the feast of the Assumption, a custom inherited, like the feast of itself, from the Byzantine Rite; this was understood allegorically in the Middle Ages to signify that in the person and life of the Virgin Mary are perfected both the active and the contemplative life.

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, by Henryk Semiradzki, 1886

The Byzantine Rite (in which the Creed is said at every Eucharistic liturgy) keeps July 22 as the feast of the “Myrrh-bearer and Equal to the Apostles, Mary Magdalene,” and on June 4 commemorates “Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus the Just.” Neither of the two Marys thus distinguished is associated with the sinful woman of Luke 7, but the Gospel of Mary Magdalene’s feast day is the passage from Luke 8 noted above. The two sisters are traditionally numbered among the “Myrrh-bearers” who went to the tomb to anoint the body of Christ on the morning of the Resurrection, although they are not named as such by the Gospel; with them are included also Mary, the mother of James and Joses, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, Joanna and Susanna named in Luke 8, and Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee. They are commemorated as a group on the second Sunday after Easter, along with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. At Vespers of the preceding Saturday, the following idiomel is sung, paraphrasing Matthew 28 and Luke 24.

Mary Magdalen and the other Mary came to the grave seeking the Lord, and they saw an Angel like lightning sitting on the stone, who said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He has risen as he said; in Galilee you will find him’. To him let us cry aloud, ‘Lord, risen from the dead, glory to you!’

In the Roman Rite, Matthew 28, 1-7 is the Gospel of the Easter vigil, which concludes with a very much shortened Vespers; the antiphon for the Magnificat is the beginning of the Gospel, “And in the end of the Sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulcher, alleluia.” Even though the term “Apostle of the Apostles” does not occur in the Roman liturgical books, the liturgy itself proclaims this role for her as the first person named in the accounts of the Resurrection.

The church of Rome was traditionally very conservative about the addition of new texts to the Office; one often finds that the proper Office of a saint hugely popular in the Middle Ages, such as St Nicholas, is found in virtually every medieval Breviary except that of the Roman Curia, the basis of the Breviary of St Pius V. Such is the case with Mary Magdalene, whose Roman Office is mostly that of the common of Holy Women. She has proper antiphons for the Benedictus and the two Magnificats, but none for the psalms; there are also three proper hymns, although that of Matins is a single stanza and a doxology. Three responsories at Matins referring to her are borrowed from Easter, but the rest are taken from the common of Holy Women.

Other medieval breviaries, however, adopted one of various proper Offices for the feast, of which the most interesting is that found in the Dominican Breviary. At First Vespers, the antiphon of the Magnificat reads as follows:

Celsi mériti María, quae solem verum resurgentem vidére meruisti mortalium prima: óbtine ut nos visu gloriae suae tecum laetíficet in caelis.
Mary of high merit, that first among mortals did merit to see the true Sun rising; obtain that He may grant us joy by the vision of His glory in heaven.

And at the Benedictus:

O mundi lampas, et margaríta praefúlgida, quae resurrectiónem Christi nuntiando, Apostolórum Apóstola fíeri meruisti! María Magdaléna, semper pia exoratrix pro nobis adsis ad Deum, qui te elégit.
O lamp of the world, and bright-shining pearl, who by announcing the Resurrection of Christ, didst merit to become the Apostle of the Apostles! Mary Magdalene, of thy kindness stand thou ever before God, who chose thee, to entreat him for us.

Outstanding among the responsories of Matins is the eighth, (necessarily not as beautiful in my translation).

R. O felix felícis mériti María, quæ resurgentem a mórtuis Dei Filium vidére meruisti mortalium prima! Pro cujus amore, sæculi contempsisti blandimenta: * sédula nos apud ipsum, quæsumus, prece commenda. V. Ut tecum mereámur, o Dómina, pérfrui felicíssima ipsíus præsentia. Sédula.
R. O happy Mary of happy merit, that first among mortals did merit to see the Son of God rising from the dead; for whose love thou disdained the blandishments of the world: * by thy prayer, we ask thee, commend us to Him with diligence. V. That with thee, o Lady, we may merit to enjoy his most happy presence. By thy prayer.

The Office used by the Premonstatensians shares a number of texts with that of the Dominicans; it contains this very interesting and uncommonly long (and hence rather rarely used) antiphon:

Fidelis sermo et omni acceptione dignus, quia Christus Jesus venit in hunc mundum peccatores salvos facere; et qui nasci dignatus est de Maria Virgine, tangi non dedignatus est a Maria peccatrice. Haec est illa Maria, cui dimissa sunt peccata multa, quia dilexit multum. Haec est enim illa Maria, quae resurgentem a mortuis prima omnium videre meruit Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, quem pro nostris reatibus oret, quaesumus, in aeternum.
A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners; and He that deigned to be born of the Virgin Mary, did not disdain to be touched by Mary the sinner. This is that Mary, to whom many sins were forgiven, because she loved much. This is indeed that Mary, who before all others merited to see our Lord Jesus Christ rising from the dead; and we ask that she pray Him forever for our sins.

Lastly, we may note the Preface of her feast in the Ambrosian liturgy, another text that can only suffer in translation.

Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos te, Pater omnipotens, omni tempore glorificare, et in die festivitatis hodiernae Beatae Mariae Magdalenae exultantibus animis praedicare. Quam sic tui amoris igne accendere dignatus es; ut ad Christi Filii tui vestigia devota corrueret, et eadem pretioso unguento perfunderet. Osculari quoque, ac lacrimis rigare, et capillis non cessat extergere, donec audire promeruit, ‘Dimissa sunt tibi peccata, vade in pace.’ O beata fides, divinae misericordiae munita praesidio! O digna conversio, quae tantum munus accepit, ut quae antea draconis antiqui faucibus merito tenebatur astricta, plena jam gaudens libertate, sanctis Apostolis dominincae Resurrectionis mereretur esse praenuncia. Et ideo…

Truly it is fitting and just, meet and profitable to salvation, that we glorify Thee, Father almighty, in every moment, and on this feast day of blessed Mary Magdalene proclaim Thee with spirits rejoicing. Whom Thou didst so deign to kindle with the fire of Thy love, that in devotion she fell at the feet of Christ, Thy Son, and anointed them with precious ointment; and ceased not to kiss them, to wash them with her tears, and wipe them with her hair, until she merits to hear, ‘Thy sins are forgiven go, in peace.’ O blessed faith, strengthened with the help of divine mercy. O worthy conversion, that merited to receive so great a gift, that she who was formerly deservedly held fast in the jaws of the ancient dragon, now rejoicing in complete freedom, should merit to be the first to announce the Lord’s Resurrection to the Holt Apostles. And therefore with the Angels and Archangels…

The Penitent Magdalene, by Caravaggio, ca. 1594-95.

The Gospel of Nicodemus in the Liturgy of Eastertide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the great day of the festivity, the Lord Jesus stood and cried out, saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him: [for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liturgical Notes on the Conversion of St Paul

In light of the Church’s very ancient tradition of celebrating the Saints’ feasts on the day of their death, when they attain to their heavenly reward, the Conversion of St Paul is almost unique in specifically commemorating the beginning of a Saint’s career. I say “almost” because traditionally, many feasts of bishops are kept on the date of their episcopal ordination. However, this custom arose from cases like that of St Basil the Great, who died on January 1st, where another feast was already in place, or St Ambrose, who died on Holy Saturday of 397, April 4th, a date which frequently occurs in Holy Week or the Easter octave. (A more recent example is Pope St John Paul II, who died on April 2, and is kept on October 22, the day of his Papal inauguration.) There is no feast analogous to the Conversion of St Paul for the callings of the other Apostles, although the Gospel accounts thereof may be read on their feast days.

The Conversion of St Paul, from the Hours of Simon de Varie, 1455 (Public domain image from Wikimedia)

The reason for the choice of date for this feast is unknown. An early martyrology attributed to St Jerome refers to January 25 as the “translation” of St Paul. One would suppose that the feast must therefore be Roman in origin, since the only known major translation of St Paul’s relics took place within Rome. However, it actually originated in the Gallican Rite; it is absent from the oldest Roman lectionary, and the most ancient sacramentaries. At the beginning of the eighth century, the feast first appears with the title of “Conversio” on the calendar of St Willibrord, and by 750, in the second oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite.

With its classic liturgical conservatism, the church of Rome was slow to adopt new liturgical formulae even for some of the most venerated Saints. As I have noted in previous articles, it was almost the only place to have no proper Office for St Nicholas, and only a very partial one for St Mary Magdalene. Likewise, the Roman Mass and Office of St Paul’s Conversion are copied, with some adjustments, from the older and specifically Roman feast on June 30th, originally known as the “dies natalis – the birth (into heaven)” of St Paul, and later as the “Commemoration of St Paul”.

Among the Gregorian propers of the Mass, the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion are the same on both days, while only the Alleluia differs. Of the three prayers, the Collect of the Commemoration is partly rewritten for the Conversion, the Secret is the same, the Postcommunion differs, but the latter two make no reference to the feast. The Scriptural readings of the Conversion, Acts 9, 1-22 and Matthew 19, 27-29, were both originally used on the Commemoration, and then later changed on that day (since the liturgical conservatism of Rome was strong, but not absolute.) The Roman Office of the Conversion has only two musical propers distinct from those of the Commemoration, the Magnificat antiphon of first Vespers (which was suppressed in 1955) and the Invitatory.

The Introit Scio cui credidi

In his History of the Roman Breviary, Mons. Pierre Batiffol dedicates a large portion of the sixth chapter (almost 40 pages in the 1912 English edition) to a congregation appointed by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) in 1741 to make and study various proposals for a reform of the Breviary. The consultors agreed that the Commemoration of St Paul should be suppressed from the general calendar, since the Pope no longer went to the Apostle’s tomb on that day, which was the feast’s original purpose. On the other hand, there was no question that the Conversion of St Paul should be retained. This proposal for the secondary feasts of St Paul was implemented in the post-Conciliar reform, which often claimed to return to the original customs of the Roman Rite, but in this case, completely suppressed a feast which is indisputably Roman and ancient, and retained one which is indisputably not Roman and later.

Batiffol also notes that one of the consultors of the congregation, noticing that the musical propers in the Office of January 25th make no reference to the feast, composed a whole new Office for it based on the reading from Acts 9. The congregation, whose work was never implemented, and whose papers were not rediscovered and published until well over a century later, rejected the proposal. For all his trouble, the poor consultor might just as easily have proposed the adoption of the proper Office for the feast then used by the Dominicans, which contains a number of very beautiful texts, such as the third responsory for Matins.

R. A Christo de caelo vocátus, et in terra prostrátus, ex persecutóre effectus est vas electiónis: et plus ómnibus labórans, multo latius inter omnes verbi gratiam seminávit, * atque doctrínam evangélicam sua praedicatióne complévit. V. Inter Apóstolos vocatióne novíssimus, praedicatióne primus, nomen Christi multárum manifestávit gentium pópulis. Atque. Gloria Patri. Atque.
R. Called by Christ from heaven, and laid low upon the earth, from a persecutor, he became a chosen vessel, and laboring more than all others, sowed the grace of the word much more broadly among all, * and completed the teaching of the Gospel by his preaching. V. Last among the Apostles by vocation, but first in preaching, he made the name of Christ known to the people of the nations. And. Glory be. And.

The Preaching of St Paul at Ephesus, by Eustache Le Sueur, 1649 (Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

In this same Office, the Magnificat antiphon at Second Vespers is the only one taken from one of St Paul’s Epistles, Galatians 1, 15-16.

Aña Cum autem complacuit ei qui me segregavit ex utero matris meae, et vocavit per gratiam suam, ut revelaret in me Filium suum in gentibus, continuo non acquievi carni et sanguine. ~ But when it pleased Him, who set me apart me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me among the Gentiles, immediately I condescended not to flesh and blood.

The Two Feasts of St Peter’s Chair

The feast of St Peter’s Chair was originally kept on one of two dates. Some sources, going back to the fourth century, attest to it on January 18th, among them, an ancient Martyrology formerly attributed to St. Jerome. Others place it on February 22nd, such as the Philocalian Calendar, which contains an equally ancient list of liturgical celebrations. It is not at all clear why exactly the same feast is found on two different dates, and even less clear why a surprising number of early Roman sacramentaries and lectionaries make no reference to it at all. However, in the later Middle Ages, the January 18th observance had been almost completely forgotten, and the liturgical books of the period before the Council of Trent, even those of the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites, are nearly unanimous in keeping the feast on February 22.

In 1558, Pope Paul IV (pictured right), a strong promoter of the Counter-Reformation, added a second feast of St Peter’s Chair to the calendar, on January 18: a response, of course, to the early Protestant Reformers’ rejection of the governing authority of the See of Peter and the bishop of Rome. The newly restored feast was assigned to the day given in the ancient manuscripts, particularly the Martyrology “of St. Jerome,” which the scholars of the era regarded as an especially important witness to the traditions of the Roman Church, where Jerome had once live and served as secretary to the Pope.

Although it was then a very new custom to keep two feasts of St Peter’s Chair, both were included in the revised Breviary called for by the Council of Trent, and issued at Rome in 1568 under the authority of Pope St Pius V. January 18th was now qualified, in accordance with the evidence of certain manuscripts, as the feast of St. Peter’s Chair in Rome, while February 22 was renamed St Peter’s Chair at Antioch, where the Prince of the Apostles was also the first bishop, and where “the disciples were first given the name Christian.” (Acts 11, 25) It should be noted that although the January feast was the more recent in terms of the liturgical practice of not just Rome, but the entire Latin Rite, the more important of the two titles is assigned to it, rather than to the better-established feast in February.

January 18th falls eight days before the Conversion of St Paul; the restoration of a feast of St Peter to this day was also certainly intended to reinforce the traditional liturgical association of the two Apostolic founders of the church in Rome. The early Protestants claimed justification for their teachings in the writings of St. Paul, several of which became for Luther a “canon within the canon” of the Bible. The two feasts, therefore, form a unit by which overemphasis on Paul is corrected by a renewed emphasis on the ministry of Peter. In accordance with the same tradition, the Use of Rome has long added to each feast of either Apostle a commemoration of the other; thus, the eight day period from January 18 to 25 begins with a feast of Peter and commemoration of Paul, and ends with a feast of Paul and commemoration of Peter.

The same day is also the feast of St Prisca, who remains in the Tridentine Breviary as a commemoration. It is possible, though by no means certain, that an ancient relic believed to be the actual chair of St Peter was first kept at or near the same catacomb where this obscure Roman martyr was buried, and later moved to the church on the Aventine hill dedicated to her. This basilica keeps its dedication feast on February 22; it is probably more than chance that both the feast and the dedication of St Prisca should be on days associated with St Peter’s Chair.

The former cathedral of Venice, San Pietro in Castello, also claims to possess a chair of St Peter, that of Antioch. Laying aside the question its authenticity, the writing on it is certainly Arabic, and of the 13th century.

The Breviary of St Pius V also added on January 24th a feast found in many medieval liturgical calendars, which, however, had not previously been kept at Rome itself, that of St Paul’s disciple Timothy. The addressee of two of the Pastoral Epistles, and the Apostle’s companion in so much of his missionary work, St Timothy is very often called an Apostle himself in medieval liturgical books, as is St Barnabas. In the Tridentine Breviary and Missal, he is given the titles Bishop and Martyr, since he was beaten to death by a mob in his episcopal city of Ephesus, many years after St Paul’s death. His feast forms a kind of vigil to the Conversion of St Paul; by this addition, each of the two great Apostles is accompanied, so to speak, by another Saint prominently associated with him.

Whether by coincidence or design, an interesting group of feasts occurs between that Ss Peter and Prisca on the one end, and Timothy and Paul on the other. January 19th is the feast of a group of Persian martyrs, Ss Marius and Martha, and their sons Audifax and Abacum. They were said to have come to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius II (268-70), and after ministering to the martyrs in various ways, were themselves martyred on the Via Cornelia by decapitation.

January 20th is traditionally kept as the feast of two Saints who died in Rome on the same day, but many years apart. The first is Pope Fabian, who was elected in 236, although a laymen and a stranger to the city. According to Eusebius (Church History 6, 29), he entered the place where the election was being held, and a dove landed on his head; this was taken as a sign that he was the choice of the Holy Spirit, and he was forthwith made Pope. Fourteen years later, at the beginning of the first general persecution under the Emperor Decius, he was one of the first to be martyred. He shares his feast with St Sebastian, said to be a soldier of Milanese origin, as attested by St. Ambrose himself, but martyred in Rome in 286. The relics of St Fabian are kept in one of the chapels of the Roman basilica of St Sebastian, built over the latter’s grave in the mid-fourth century.

On the following day, the Church has kept since the fourth century the feast of one of Rome’s greatest martyrs, St Agnes, who was killed in the persecution of Diocletian at the age of twelve or thirteen. She is named in the Canon of the Mass, and a basilica built near her grave was one of the very first public churches in Rome, a project of the Emperor Constantine himself, along with those of Ss Peter and Paul, the Holy Cross, and St Lawrence.

St Vincent of Saragossa, another martyr of the last general persecution, has long been held in a special place of honor by the Church, along with his fellow deacons Ss Stephen and Lawrence, all three of them having been killed in particularly painful ways. The church of Rome added to his feast on January 22 a martyr from three centuries later, St Anastasius; he was a Persian who converted to Christianity after seeing the relics of the True Cross, which had been stolen from Jerusalem by the Persian king. This is a proper custom of the city of Rome itself, imitated by only in a handful of churches before the Tridentine reform. A church was built in his honor by the middle of the 10th century, directly across from the future site of one of the city’s most impressive monuments, the Trevi Fountain.

The 23rd of January was long dedicated to St Emerentiana, the foster-sister of St Agnes, whose murderers she bravely rebuked. While praying at her sister’s tomb two days after the latter’s martyrdom, she was spotted by a gang of pagan thugs, who stoned her to death. She was still a catechumen, but the Roman Breviary of 1529 states, “There is no doubt that she was baptized by her own blood, because she steadfastly accepted death for the defense of justice, while she confessed the Lord.” The mortal remains of both women are currently kept in a silver urn underneath the main altar of the church of St Agnes outside-the-Walls on the via Nomentana, and thus, on the very site of Emerentiana’s martyrdom. (Her feast is now a commemoration on the feast of St. Raymond of Penyafort.)

The Martyrdom of St. Emerentiana, shown on a late 14th century cup in the British Museum.

To sum up, therefore, Peter is accompanied by a Roman martyr, Paul by a martyr of one of the oldest Greek churches, that of Ephesus, where both he and St John the Evangelist had lived and preached. Between their two feasts are celebrated martyrs from the two extremes of the Christian world in antiquity, Persia and Spain; native Romans, one the highest authority in the Catholic Church, and one the least and last of its members; a Roman soldier from the venerable see of Milan, representing the might of the Empire, subjected to Christ; and a young woman who in the pagan world was a person of no standing at all, but in the Church is honored as one of its greatest and most heroic figures. The eight day period from January 18-25, then, becomes a celebration not just of the two Apostles who founded the church in the Eternal City, but of the universality of that church’s mission to “preside in charity” over the whole Church, as St Ignatius of Antioch says, and bring every person of whatever condition to salvation in Christ.

Sacred Rhetoric and the Question of Vernacular Liturgy: Súscipe Sancte Pater

Several weeks ago, in an article entitled “‘An Art Which Leads the Soul by Words’: Sacred Rhetoric in the Roman Liturgy,” I discussed the nature and significance of rhetoric in Western culture and in Christian spirituality. I encourage you to read that article if you haven’t already, but to ensure that all readers will have at least a bare minimum of theoretical foundation before we continue, I’ll provide some key excerpts by way of summary:

• “Rhetoric is, quite simply, the art of language. If my students remember only one definition—or even only one vague definitional idea—of rhetoric, I want it to be this one. Though it requires a bit of elaboration and qualification, it is accurate and pleasing to the ear, and it counteracts the ruinous tendency to equate rhetoric with the deliberate misuse or even abuse of language.”
• “The Church’s ancient liturgies [as well as Sacred Scripture] employed highly rhetorical texts. Indeed, rhetoric is so central to salvation history and the Christian experience that a new definition is called for, one that pertains specifically to Christian education and foregrounds the role of rhetoric in the spiritual and liturgical life of the Church. I will propose one: rhetoric is the sublimation of language.”
• “When we speak of persuasion in the Christian and rhetorical sense, we must look far beyond the impoverished modern sense.... Rhetorical persuasion is language in the service and pursuit of truth.”
• “There is one domain of Christian life” in which we find “a harmonious public ceremony that is persuasive in the fullest, most transcendent, most sanctifying and transformative sense that this word could ever hope to have. The domain of which I speak is the sacred liturgy, which glorifies the eternal God while marshalling every imaginable rhetorical resource to persuade fallen man that this God exists, and that His words are supremely true, and that His works are wondrously good.”

In the present article, we will examine the rhetorical qualities of one short prayer found in the Roman Mass. Our objectives are three: First, to appreciate the poetic excellence that informs our traditional liturgical texts, which emerged from an intellectual culture that, in its ability to craft language and achieve eloquence, far surpasses our own. Second, to explore a serious yet often overlooked difficulty surrounding the issue of vernacular liturgy. Third, to more fervently bemoan and bewail the fact that the Latin Church has lost the will to teach her children the Latin language.

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The analysis below involves obscure rhetorical terminology. I understand that most people have not studied this terminology and do not find it enjoyable. If you have no interest in it, feel free to ignore it, but I have an important reason for including it: I want to demonstrate that the expressive techniques found in our inherited liturgical texts are part of a venerable and well-documented tradition of rhetorical education that extends through medieval culture and the Patristic era all the way back to Greco-Roman antiquity. These techniques have names because they were studied and taught and employed for centuries by societies that believed in the power of language to change hearts and reshape the world.

As Christians, we can understand this as the power of language to achieve “divine persuasion”—in other words, to achieve conversion, in the broad sense of the word. The good God wants us to convert to Him, that is, to continually turn back to Him with greater fidelity and obedience and affection. He does not compel us to do this, for we are intelligent beings with free will, but He does persuade us, and one of His most persuasive texts is the traditional Eucharistic liturgy of western Christendom, also known as the Latin Mass.

Today we will examine the Súscipe sancte Pater, which is currently the first fixed oration in the Mass of the Faithful. This lovely prayer signals a sacred crescendo in the liturgical drama, as we move from preparatory prayers and scripture readings to the sacrificial action of the Offertory and Canon. This is the text as it appears in the 1962 Missal:

Súscipe, sancte Pater, omnípotens æterne Deus, hanc immaculátam hostiam, quam ego indignus fámulus tuus óffero tibi Deo meo vivo et vero, pro innumerabílibus peccátis, et offensiónibus, et neglegentiis meis, et pro ómnibus circumstántibus, sed et pro ómnibus fidélibus christiánis vivis atque defunctis: ut mihi et illis proficiat ad salútem in vitam æternam.

And this is the English translation given in my hand missal:

Receive, O holy Father, almighty, eternal God, this spotless host which I, thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my own countless sins, offenses, and negligences, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, living or dead; that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life eternal.

This prayer is, by the standards of traditional liturgy, quite new. Along with other Offertory prayers and the prayers at the foot of the altar, it was introduced during the Middle Ages, and it was in limited use until the Roman Rite, whence it originated, spread far and wide with the liturgical standardization decreed by St. Pius V. Let there be no mistake, though: this prayer existed long before the Counter-Reformation. The following example is taken from a French manuscript produced sometime before the middle of the thirteenth century:

And here is another, from the early fourteenth century:

This is how the prayer appears in a printed Missale Romanum published in 1607, thirty-seven years after the promulgation of Quo primum.

One thing we should observe about liturgical texts such as this one is that punctuation cannot be considered part of the original composition. Though the punctuation in the 1607 text is similar to that of the modern text, the punctuation—or “pointing,” to use a more medieval term—in the older manuscripts is sparse and not consistent with modern practices.

As you’re reading through the analysis, keep the following question—which we’ll discuss further in a future article—in mind: How successfully could all this rhetorical excellence be translated into another language, especially if that language is not closely related to Latin? (And let us remember also that from a stylistic perspective, the Romance languages are closer to one another than to Latin.)    

  

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Súscipe, sancte Pater, omnípotens æterne Deus, hanc immaculátam hostiam: The prayer begins with a sense of grandeur and upward movement through auxesis (or in Latin, amplificatio), which is a general rhetorical strategy for achieving eloquence and richness of thought through expansive language. Various specific rhetorical figures can contribute to auxesis. In this case we have  antonomasia, because the descriptive phrase “holy Father” initially replaces the appellation “God”; appositio, where the descriptive phrase “almighty eternal God” builds upon the initial address to “holy Father”; and pleonasm, which is eloquent redundancy—the title “God” implies “holy,” “almighty,” and “eternal,” and therefore it is not strictly necessary to include these adjectives. Finally, note the overall structure of this clause: imperative verb → elaborate identification of the subject of the verb → object of the verb. This creates interest and emotion, since we must wait a few moments to learn what is to be received, and a sense of urgency in calling upon God the Father, whose grace and goodness make the offering of this “immaculate victim” possible.

quam ego indignus fámulus tuus óffero tibi Deo meo vivo et vero: Let’s focus here on rhetorical figures of sound, which I have indicated with underlining and which are remarkably abundant in this passage. We have assonance (general repetition of vowel sounds), with the particularly melodic phrases indígnus fámulus tuus and Deo meo vivo et vero; we also have dramatically rhythmical alliteration (repetition of initial consonant sounds) in vivo et vero and pleasing consonance (repetition of final consonant sounds) in indígnus fámulus tuus. The result is a sonorous and memorable phrase whose beautiful music contrasts, in paradoxical and therefore thought-provoking fashion, with the righteous self-abasement expressed on the semantic level (i.e., the level of direct meanings that the words convey).

pro innumerabílibus peccátis, et offensiónibus, et neglegentiis meis: The evils for which the Victim is offered—sins, offenses, negligences—are listed in order of decreasing severity. This is called catacosmesis, and here it creates a sense of alleviation and hope, as though our various moral failings in the service of God are diminishing as we approach the consummation of the expiatory sacrifice. We also see hyperbole (eloquent exaggeration), a favorite rhetorical figure in biblical and devotional literature. Many saintly priests have said these words day after day, year and year, and it would not be reasonable to repeatedly accuse them of “countless” misdeeds. And yet, the prayer reminds us that there is a certain immensity, a transgression that is somehow immeasurable, in every act that violates the laws of an infinitely loving God.

et pro ómnibus circumstántibus, sed et pro ómnibus fidélibus christiánis vivis atque defunctis: Elegance and emphasis are achieved through anaphora (repetition of initial words in nearby phrases), with the addition of sed in the second phrase imparting rhythmical intensity that I find highly effective. That one extra syllable, considered only on the level of sound, creates a sense of urgency that harmonizes with the words: the vast multitude of Christians everywhere, even those who have died and now languish in Purgatory, are in desperate need—the Victim must be offered; the sacrifice must be performed.

ut mihi et illis proficiat ad salútem in vitam æternam: Note the number of monosyllabic connecting words—ut, et, ad, in—placed between longer words. This resembles polysyndeton, which is defined as the use of many conjunctions between clauses; here we have two conjunctions and two prepositions, and they mostly join nouns or pronouns rather than clauses, but the effect is similar: pauses multiply, the reading tempo changes, and our thoughts slow down as we meditate upon this concluding idea with its crucial and resounding significance.

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Let us recall that this is but one short prayer selected from the vast collection of writings in the Roman Missal. The traditional Latin liturgy is a rhetorical masterpiece of epic proportions, and the persuasive objectives of all this finely crafted language are the noblest imaginable: God’s glory, and man’s salvation.

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For thrice-weekly discussions of art, history, language, literature, Christian spirituality, and traditional Western liturgy, all seen through the lens of medieval culture, you can subscribe (for free!) to my Substack publication: Via Mediaevalis.