On Passion Sunday, the Lenten station is kept at the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican. Each year on this day, Vespers is celebrated with particular solemnity, and one of the most beloved rituals of Rome's liturgical year is done, the exposition to the faithful of the Veil of St. Veronica. The altar is decorated with relics in a special arrangement, as also on the Ember Saturday of Lent.
Before Vespers, the canons and clergy in attendance gather on the west side of the main altar, facing the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles; the Litany of the Saints is sung, with the invocation "Sancte Petre, ora pro nobis" repeated three times.
This is the signal for the procession to begin slowly making its way down and back up the longest church nave in the world.
When the procession returns to the apse, Vespers is sung as usual on Sundays on holy days of obligation, underneath the magnificent Chair of St. Peter by Bernini. The celebrant (very often a bishop) is accompanied by two coped assistants, one of whom reads the lesson after the psalmody.
The other coped assistant, (not a thurifer in cassock and surplice) performs the incensation of the choir and the faithful; I have been told that this custom is a holdover from the pre-Conciliar traditions of the Basilica.
The choir then processes to the front of the altar, to the singing of the hymn Vexilla Regis, while two canons of the Basilica ascend to the balcony of the pillar of St. Veronica. (Each of the four pillars that support Michelangelo's massive dome was built also with a staircase inside it, and a balcony from which one of the principal relics of the church could be exposed on solemn occasions such as this one.) An antiphon and versicle are sung by the choir, followed by the prayer of the Veil of St. Veronica. A set of silver bells are then rung, and then the Veil is shown to the faithful from the balcony. This is not the place to comment on the authenticity of the Veil, which has a long and very complex history. I can only say that I have witnessed this ritual several times, and on each occasion, when it is shown to the crowds, the church becomes completely silent, even though many of the people present are obviously tourists who have no idea what is happening. (The canon here on the right is Mons. Camille Perl, former Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei commission; due to a technical fault wholly beyond my kenning, I had to convert this photograph to black and white.)
Here one can see the exposition of the Veil in the year 2008; my thanks to Mr. Lucas Viar for permission to use this video.
The prayer of the Veil as currently used at St. Peter's:
Deus, qui nobis signatis lumine vultus tui imaginem tuam relinquere
voluisti: per passionem et crucem tuam tribue nobis, quaesumus; ut sicut
nunc in terris per speculum et in aenigmate ipsam veneramur, ita facie
ad faciem venientem judicem te securi videamus. Qui vivis.
God, who didst wish to leave Thy image to us, who are marked with the light of Thy countenance: through Thy passion and Cross grant us, we beseech Thee; that as now upon the earth we venerate it through a glass darkly, so in safety may we see Thee face to face when Thou comest to judge. Who livest etc.
The original version composed by Pope Innocent III in 1208:
Deus, qui nobis
signatis lumine vultus tui memoriale tuum ad instantiam Veronicae
sudario impressam imaginem relinquere voluisti, per passionem et crucem
tuam tribue nobis quaesumus, ut ita nunc in terris per speculum et in
aenigmate ipsam adorare et venerari valeamus, ut facie ad faciem
venientem iudicem te securi videamus.Qui vivis.
God, who didst wish to
leave as a memorial of Thee to us, who are marked with the light of Thy
countenance, an image impressed upon a cloth at the urging of Veronica: through Thy passion and Cross grant us, we beseech Thee;
that we may now upon the earth be so able to venerate and adore it through a glass darkly, that in
safety may we see Thee face to face when Thou comest to judge. Who livest
etc.
As our readers undoubtedly know, the use of the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is reserved to the Pope. (Exceptions are made very rarely, and only by permission of the Holy Father.) Recently, a new pulpit has been placed next to it, and, unlike the other liturgical furnishings for the Papal Mass, left in its place after the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, although it is not scheduled to be used again for a while. In Italy, as elsewhere, older churches have suffered much from the addition of modern liturgical furnishings which are quite incongruous with their surroundings, some of them rather grotesquely so. (link courtesy of Orbis Catholicus.) As with other aspects of the liturgies celebrated by Pope Benedict, here we have a model of the hermeneutic of continuity in action, and one which we may hope will serve as an example to others of a better way to "update" a sanctuary.
The front of the pulpit shows the Annunciation, perhaps a reference to the Greek tradition in which the feast is known as the Ευαγγελισμός - the Evangelization or Proclaiming of the Gospel to the Virgin Mary. In the background is shown the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden: the fall of man proclaimed in the Old Testament, and his redemption in the New.
The left side (as you face the front) shows Saint Peter, and the right side Saint Paul. This represents a return to an important theme of the Constantinian basilica of St. Peter, in which the two Apostles of Rome were depicted together in several places: most prominently in the huge apsidal mosaic, but also on the marble baldachin over the altar and St. Peter's tomb. The ancient church was torn down in stages over the 16th century, and into the beginning of the 17th, to make way for the new structure of Michelangelo. In the new basilica, built at the beginning of the Counter-Reformation, images of St. Paul are very few; their absence highlights the importance of St. Peter as the first Pope, against the denial of Papacy itself by the early Protestants, and rebukes the Protestant emphasis on St. Paul's writings as a "canon within the canon" of Scripture. (Elsewhere in Rome, the two Apostles continued to be shown together very often.) The epistles of St. Paul form a very significant part of the Scriptural lessons at Mass, and two epistles of St. Peter are read among the seven Catholic Epistles; the images on the pulpit therefore also refer broadly to each of the three readings in the modern lectionary system.
A while ago we mentioned that after the conferences of 2008 and 2009, the Italian Association Giovani e Tradizione (Youth and Tradition) and the Sodality Amicizia Sacerdotale Summorum Pontificum (Priestly Friends of Summorum Pontificum), are organising another convention on the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in Rome at the Angelicum in May 2011, which will conclude with another Pontifical Mass according to the usus antiquior in St. Peter's, this time celebrated by H.Em. Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, at the Altar of the Cathedra, on Sunday 15 May 2011. Giovani e Tradizione has now released the definitive programme for the convention: see here and here. Assistant Priest, Deacon and Subdeacon of the Mass will be officials of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. The remaining liturgical service will be provided by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, while one of the two choirs will be directed by Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci himself.
After the conferences of 2008 and 2009, the Italian Association Giovani e Tradizione (Youth and Tradition) and the Sodality Amicizia Sacerdotale Summorum Pontificum (Priestly Friends of Summorum Pontificum), are organising another convention on the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in Rome at the Angelicum in May 2011 (cf. NLM coverage of the past conferences here and here). See the programme of the upcoming conference here. After last year's conference had brought us the momentous Pontifical Mass in the Sacrament Chapel of St. Peter's Basilica celebrated by Archbishop Raymond Burke - the first Pontifcal Mass in the usus antiquior celebrated in St. Peter's since the reforms (see picture above and more here) -, next year's conference will conclude with another Pontifical Mass according to the usus antiquior in St. Peter's, this time celebrated by H.Em. Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, at the Altar of the Cathedra, on Sunday 15 May 2011.
On the Fifth Sunday of Lent (First Sunday of the Passion in the 1962 Calendar), St. Peter's at the Vatican is witness to a particularly elaborate celebration of Vespers that begins with a long penitential litany-procession composed of dozens of priests and seminarians, as well as the basilica's canons, around the nave, cleared of worshippers, who are clustered in the side-aisles facing inward.
After Vespers at the Altar of the Chair, a bell rings and a prelate and other assistants appear on the balcony above the monumental statue of St. Helena, which has been draped with velvet and adorned with candles. Great clouds of incense have begun to rise from the nave floor scores of feet below. The relics shown and the manner of showing them has varied somewhat in recent years; a colleague in Rome mentioned one year he had seen the Holy Lance, while during my time there the people were blessed with the large reliquary cross holding splinters of the True Cross, and then the Veronica in its silver case was simply shown to the people without blessing.
A current correspondent in Rome notes this same order was repeated last year, and was viewed by some (perhaps incorrectly) as diminishing somehow the status of the Sudarium as a relic. Whatever the reasons behind this choice, which can only be guessed at, this video reproduced below indicates the Veronica was used to bless the people this year with a cruciform gesture, first to the front and then to the sides. I have seen woodcuts from the fifteent century that show a very similar ceremony at Old St. Peter's associated with the same relic, so there is clearly an old precedent at work here.
For those of you in Rome for Holy Week, I recall that the ritual is repeated on the morning of Good Friday, though as my memory may be faulty it is best to check ahead for time and date.
