Other Gospels for the Ascension

The Roman Rite has various ways of arranging the Masses during an octave. That of Easter, for example, has a completely proper Mass for every day, that of Pentecost for every day but Thursday, which was originally an “aliturgical” day; when its Mass was instituted later, it was given proper readings, but everything else is repeated from Sunday. The feast of Ss Peter and Paul is continued with one Mass for the days within the octave, and another for the octave day itself, plus the special Commemoration of St Paul on June 30th. Some others, however, especially the relatively late ones like Corpus Christi and All Saints, simply repeat the Mass of the day throughout the octave.

A folio of the Echternach Sacramntary, 895 AD, with the last two prayers of the Mass of St Paul, those of Ss Processus and Martinian on July 2, and the first two prayers of the octave of Ss Peter and Paul.

The feast of the Ascension falls into the latter category, although the Mass of the Sunday within the octave, which is older than the octave itself, is different. Octaves are for the contemplation of mysteries that are too great for a single day, and it is certainly true that “repetita juvant”, a proverb which the Roman Rite, with its habitual conservatism, historically took very much to heart. One might argue, however, that there was some room for expanding the repertoire of readings within this octave in particular, in a way that would have been fully consonant with the tradition of the Rite, and expanded the scope of such contemplation.

The very oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Comes (the Latin word for “companion”) of Wurzburg, attests to the Roman system of readings as it was in the middle of the 7th century. (The manuscript itself was copied out in roughly 700-750.) Although there are some notable differences, it is unmistakably the same system as that of the Missal of St Pius V. Its Gospels for the Easter season are almost entirely the same, while those of the second oldest Comes, that of Murbach, are exactly the same. Both of them also attest to a feature which was not included in the late medieval Missal of the Roman Curia, the immediate predecessor of that of St Pius V, namely, a series of ferial readings for the Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. In Wurzburg, this feature is very irregular; some weeks have readings for both days, some have one for Saturday as well, but others them have only for one day, and others have none. In Murbach, which is from roughly a century later, it has been completely regularized, and every Wednesday and Friday has readings assigned to it.

On the Wednesday after the Ascension, the Gospel is the very end of St Luke, chapter 24, 49-53. (Ss Matthew and John do not describe the Ascension, although Christ Himself refers to it in John 20, 17, in the words that form the antiphon for the Benedictus, “I go up to my Father and yours, my God and yours, alleluia.”) The Roman Rite tends to choose shorter passages than both the Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites, which have a longer selection from this passage, verses 36-53 (everything after the Supper at Emmaus), as the main Gospel of the feast; the Byzantines read the Roman Gospel at Orthros. In the Neo-Gallican Use of Paris, which expanded the Roman corpus of Scriptural readings considerably, while keeping to the traditional structure of the lectionary, verses 44-53 were assigned to the octave day of the Ascension.

Another passage which is connected to the feast is one of the most beautiful in St John’s Gospel, chapter 17, which Biblical scholars now often call the “priestly prayer.” On the vigil of the Ascension, the Missal of St Pius V has only the first 10½ verses, breaking off at vs. 11 “… and I come to thee.” The rest of the chapter is not read in either the temporal or sanctoral cycles, but verses 11-23 are the Gospel of the Votive Mass to remove a schism. In the Murbach lectionary, the rest of passage is read on the Wednesday following the Fourth Sunday after Easter; on the Sunday after the Ascension, the Ambrosian Rite reads the full chapter, while the Byzantine reads the first 13 verses. The revised Parisian Use kept the traditional Roman Gospel for the vigil, then very cleverly divided the rest into two parts. Verses 11b-19, in which Christ prays for the Apostles, is read on the Friday within the octave of the Ascension; the rest of the chapter, in which He prays “also for those who shall believe in Me though their word”, is assigned to Tuesday.

Two leaves of the Parisian Missal of 1736, with part of the propers for the Mass for the Friday after the octave of the Ascension, and the beginning of the vigil of Pentecost.

The Parisian Use is in many respects inspired by tradition, as in the examples given above, but did not shy away from innovations, which vary in quality. One of its better innovations, which has no precedent in the ancient Roman lectionaries, is the Gospel chosen for the Friday between the Octave of the Ascension and the vigil of Pentecost, which is traditionally celebrated as a kind of extension of the octave. (The Roman Missal repeats the Gospel of the Sunday). The liturgy of the Ascension often looks forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; an example is the responsory “If I do not go, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, will not come.” With the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles will go out in the world to preach the Gospel, for which they, and many others after them, will receive the crown of martyrdom. The Parisian Use therefore moves away from St John, who dominates the Easter season, and takes this passage from St Luke, 12, 8-12, which looks forward to the ongoing witness to the life and teachings of Christ in the mission of His Church.

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God. But he that shall deny me before men, shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but to him that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they shall bring you into the synagogues, and to magistrates and powers, be not solicitous how or what you shall answer, or what you shall say; For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what you must say.”

The Legend of St Denis

October 9 has traditionally been kept as the feast of Ss Denis (“Dionysius” in Latin) and Companions, who were martyred at Paris in the 3rd century. St John Leonardi, the founder of a small congregation of clerks regular, died on this day in 1609; when he was added to the general calendar in 1940, his feast was placed on top of that of the martyrs, who were thus reduced to a commemoration. In the post-Conciliar reform, however, both feasts have been made optional memorials, which means that the martyrs may now be celebrated more freely in the Novus Ordo than in the Roman Rite. That they should be present at all in the modern liturgy is very surprising, since St Denis is the subject of one of the most famous hagiographical confusions, of exactly the sort that led to the suppression or downgrading of so many other feasts.

A statue of St Denis, from the treasury of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Paris. One legend tells that St Denis was beheaded on the hill of Montmartre which overlooks Paris, after which he picked up his head and walked about 4 miles to the site where he is buried, the future location of the abbey which bears his name. (Photo courtesy of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.)

In his History of the Franks (I.30), St Gregory of Tours (538-94) lists Denis as one of seven men sent to Gaul as bishops to evangelize various cities during the reign of the Emperor Decius (249-51), and says that sometime after, he was “afflicted with various sufferings for the name of Christ, and ended the present life at the blow of a sword.” In the Martyrology incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, Denis is named on October 9th together with a priest and a deacon, Rusticus and Eleutherius, who are also mentioned in the prayer of their collective feast day. Their bodies were buried at a site a few miles to the north of Paris, and a church built over it, which Gregory of Tours mentions twice, once in connection with a miracle, and again when describing its profanation. Not long after his time, King Dagobert I (603-39) established a monastery under royal patronage at the site, and completely rebuilt the church; it was rebuilt again in the days of Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne, the latter of whom attended its consecration in 775.

According to the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints, even before the Carolingian period, St Denis of Paris had already been confused in some quarters with the Biblical figure of the same name (i.e. Dionysius), who was converted by the preaching of St Paul in Athens (Acts 17, 22-34). This preaching took place at the “Areopagus – the hill of Ares”, a large outcropping of the Athenian acropolis which was used as a place of judgment for serious crimes like murder; St Luke calls Dionysius “the Areopagite”, i.e., one of the judges who sat on the court held there. The Church historian Eusebius reports (3.4.11), on the witness of another Dionysius (a very common name in antiquity), bishop of Corinth in the later 2nd century, that the Areopagite was the first bishop of Athens; by the turn of the seventh century, he was believed to have died as a martyr, being burnt alive by the Emperor Domitian.

The Preaching of St Paul at Athens; a preparatory cartoon made by Raphael in the 1510s as part of a series of designs intended to be woven into tapestries; now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Sometime in the later 5th or early 6th century, an unknown Greek-speaking theologian produced a series of four treatises and ten letters, purporting to be works of Dionysius the Areopagite. This is not a case like those of Ss John Chrysostom or Augustine, among many others, to whom writings were very often mistakenly ascribed in later generations; the author clearly and deliberately intended to pass himself off as the contemporary of St Paul. To this end, he claims to have been present, along with Ss Peter and James, for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary (Div. Nom. 3, 2), and addresses letters to Ss John the Evangelist, Timothy and Polycarp. Scholars generally suppose him to have been a Syrian; the dating of his works depends in part on the obvious influence upon them of the neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus, who died in 485. Further attempts to glean information about the author from his writings remain speculative.

By the first decades of the sixth century, these writings were cited by authors on both sides of the debate over the Monophysite heresy, which the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon had condemned in 451. Most notably, at a council held in Constantinople in 533, the Monophysites cited them in support of their teaching, to which the leader of the Catholic party replied that they were forgeries. Nevertheless, as the controversy continued, and as the heresy evolved into Monotheletism in the 7th century, they came to be gradually accepted as both genuine and orthodox by several important figures, the most significant being St Maximus the Confessor, who cited them at a council held in the Lateran Basilica in Rome in 649, under Pope St Martin I. They were further defended and cited to the same effect at the next two ecumenical councils, Third Constantinople in 680, and Second Nicea in 787. To this day, the Byzantine Rite’s liturgical texts for St Dionysius, “the Holy Martyr and Areopagite”, bishop of Athens, are filled with references to the writings, as for example, this hymn at Vespers: “Having made thy mind equal in honor to that of the Angels through virtue, o all-wise father Dionysius, thou didst write an account in (thy) holy books of the heavenly order of their hierarchy, and according to it, didst organize the orders of the Church’s government, likening them to the ranks of heaven.” (He is also the titular Saint of the Roman Catholic cathedral of Athens.)

An early 11th-century mosaic of St Dionysios the Areopagite, in the monastery of St Luke in Boeotia, Greece. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the year 827, the Byzantine Emperor Michael II (820-29) sent a copy of the writings to Charlemagne’s son, King Louis the Pious, along with several other gifts. By coincidence, they happened to reach the king on the evening of October 8th, when he was at the royal abbey of St Denis for the vigil of the titular Saint’s feast day. The abbot, Hilduin, who was very close to the king, had them translated into Latin, although this translation was not very well done, and was replaced by another about 30 years later. At the king’s behest, he also wrote a life of St Denis, which definitively conflated the bishop of Paris with the Areopagite, ascribed his mission in Gaul to Pope St Clement I towards the end of the 1st century, and acknowledged the writings as his. This conflation was henceforth accepted, and remained the common legend of St Denis in western Europe for the next 700 years. The writings became extremely influential in the High Middle Ages; Hugh of St Victor, St Albert the Great, and yet another Denis, the great Carthusian theologian, wrote commentaries on them, and they are cited well over 2000 times in the works of St Thomas Aquinas.

In the Renaissance, when many of the certainties of the medieval tradition were being called into question, the authenticity of the writings, and the identification of the two Denises as the same person, were challenged by two of the most prominent among the great humanist scholars, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57), who also unmasked the forgery known as the Donation of Constantine, and later Erasmus. The question was the subject of much controversy and debate over the following centuries, with learned men, Catholic and Protestant, offering their opinions as both defenders and detractors of the tradition. The neo-Gallican revision of the Parisian liturgical books sided with the detractors by separating Denis into two persons, one of Athens, kept on his Byzantine date, October 3rd, and the other of Paris on the traditional date, without the title “Areopagite”, a change which was later harshly condemned by Dom Prosper Guéranger.

A leaf of a 15th century Missal according to the Use of Paris, with the Epistle of the Mass of St Denis, Acts 17, 22-34. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 859A)

However, this diffidence towards the traditional legend of St Denis was not a novelty of the neo-Gallicans. The pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary devotes only a single lesson of less than 70 words to St Denis and his companions, which makes no mention of the theological treatises. It also says that he was sent to Gaul “by the Roman Pontiff”, without specifying which one, a clear sign of doubt about the legend that it was St Clement.

Much more tellingly, the pre-Tridentine Parisian Breviary also pointedly does not refer to Denis as the author of the Areopagitic corpus, although it does accept him as the Athenian disciple of St Paul and the contemporary of St Clement. The Matins lessons for the feast day and the days of its octave are taken directly from Hilduin’s life of the Saint, but omit the chapters (9-17) which describe the theological writings, nor is there any reference to them in any of the proper antiphons or responsories of the Office, or in the Sequence of the Mass. (The Epistle of the latter is the passage from Acts 17 cited above.)

In point of fact, it was only with the Tridentine revision that the Roman Breviary accepted Hilduin’s conflation of the Athenian and Parisian Denis as the same person. Furthermore, a sentence is added to the effect that “He wrote wondrous and indeed heavenly books, on the divine names, on the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, on mystical theology, and certain others.” This is perhaps the only case in the Breviary of St Pius V in which the legend of a Saint moves further away from the more skeptical view, almost certainly due to the influence of Cardinal Baronius, who defended the traditional legend in his notes on the revision of the Martyrology.

As late as 1857, when the Abbé Migne put together his great corpus of Patristic writings, the Patrologia Graeca, which is arranged in chronological order, he put the Areopagitic corpus and associated writings, including several defenses of its authenticity, between the works of St Clement I and those of St Ignatius of Antioch. However, in 1895, two Catholic scholars, Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayer, working quite separately from each other, demonstrated the dependence of the writings on the works of Proclus, and the question is now universally regarded as settled in the negative. This also explains what was, of course, the strongest objection to their authenticity all along, namely, the complete absence of any reference to them in the writings of earlier Church Fathers.

Part of the choir of the abbey of St Denys. Around the year 1135, the abbot Suger began the process of enlarging the Carolingian church, during which the choir was rebuilt from 1140-44. Inspired by the Areopagite’s theology of light as an expression and manifestation of God’s presence, Suger created the idea of having huge walls of windows which flood the church’s interior with light; this is the foundation of the architecture style which we now call Gothic, and this choir is the first example of it. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0)

As with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, the assumption behind this debate was to a large degree that if a work is not genuinely by the author to whom it is attributed, it is therefore a forgery, and hence worthless. And likewise, as with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, this assumption has more recently been to a large degree subsumed by an understanding that authenticity is principally an historical question, and one that need not always impinge on the value of a writing as a work of theology. In his series of Wednesday audiences on the Church Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the author of these writings (May 14, 2008), and explicitly rejected the idea that he passed himself off as the Areopagite in order to vest his work with the authority of one close to the Apostles, but rather, did so “to make an act of humility; he did not want to glorify his own name, he did not want to build a monument to himself with his work but rather truly to serve the Gospel, to create an ecclesial theology, neither individual nor based on himself.”

A Liturgical Curiosity for the Feast of the Sacred Heart

Just as devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is older than the liturgical feast of Corpus Christi, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus predates the formal institution of a feast in its honor, by many centuries in fact. For example, St Gertrude the Great, who lived from 1256 to the first years of the following century, writes of a vision of St John the Evangelist which she beheld on his feast day, in which he brought her to lay her head upon the breast of the Lord, as he himself had done at the Last Supper. St Gertrude than ask John if he had also heard the beating of the Lord’s heart as she did, and when he replied that he had, and that the sweetness of it had penetrated into his very marrow, she asked him why he had not written about this in the Gospel. St John replied:

My duty was to write to the young Church only about the uncreated Word of God the Father, ... To speak of the sweet beatings of (this heart) was reserved for modern times, so that from the hearing of such things, the world might grow warm again when it had become old and tepid in the love of God. (The Herald of Divine Piety, 4, 4)

The Last Supper, by Ugolino di Nerio, 1325-28

Like the feast of Corpus Christi, that of the Sacred Heart was first proposed in a vision vouchsafed to a nun; during a Forty-hours Devotion held within the octave of Corpus Christi in 1675, the Lord appeared to the French Visitandine St Margaret-Mary Alacoque, the consummation of a long series of visions. He then asked her to work for the institution of a feast in reparation for the ingratitude and indifference which so many show to Him “in the sacrament of love,” to be kept on the day after the Octave of Corpus; this day is of course Friday, the day of His Passion. Within the Saint’s lifetime, the feast had begun to be celebrated by her order and among certain other congregations; as it slowly gained ground, it was formally recognized and permitted by Pope Clement XIII in 1765, and extended to the universal calendar of the Church by Blessed Pius IX in 1856.

When the neo-Gallican Missal of Paris was issued in 1738 by the Archbishop Charles de Vintimille, the feast had not yet been formally approved by Rome or widely accepted outside a few religious orders; however, the new Parisian Missal did fulfill one aspect of the request made by the Lord to St Margaret Mary. Among the collection of votive Masses is a special Mass “for the reparation of injuries done to Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament.” This Mass is placed between the votive Mass of the Sacrament and that of the Passion; furthermore, a rubric after the Octave of Corpus Christi prescribes this Mass be said on the following day, which is now kept everywhere as the feast of the Sacred Heart. Here is the full text of the Mass. The translations of the prayers are my own; the Scriptural quotations are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation, with a few modifications necessary to the sense.

The Apparition of Our Lord to St Margaret Mary Alacoque; stained glass window in St Brendan’s Church, Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Introit Quanta malignatus est in- imicus in sancto! in terra pollue- runt tabernaculum nominis tui, Domine. Usquequo, Deus, irri- tat adversarius nomen tuum in finem?	What things the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary! they have defiled the dwelling place of thy name on the earth. How long, O God; doth the adversary provoke thy name forever?  Psalm 73
Psalm. Ut quid, Deus, repulisti in finem? iratus est furor tuus super oves pascuae tuae. Gloria Patri. Quanta malignatus...	O God, why hast thou cast us off unto the end: why is thy wrath enkindled against the sheep of thy pasture? Glory be. What things.
Oratio Gementes et dolentes su- per cunctis abominationibus quae fiunt in domo tua, propi- tius respice, Deus omnipotens; et pro contumeliis quibus in Sa- cramento sui amoris impetitur Dominus Jesus, ipsum fac pro nobis esse apudte propitiatio- nem. Qui tecum.	The Collect Look with mercy, God almighty, upon those who mourn and grieve for all the abominations that take place in Thy house; and for the injuries by which the Lord Jesus is assailed in the Sacrament of His love, make Him the propitiation before Thee for our sake. Who liveth and reigneth with Thee...

The Epistle, Hebrews 10, 22-31 Brethren: Let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with clean water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering (for he is faithful that hath promised), And let us consider one another, to provoke unto charity and to good works: Not forsaking our assembly, as some are accustomed; but comforting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins, but a certain dreadful expectation of judgment, and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries. A man making void the law of Moses, dieth without any mercy under two or three witnesses: how much more, do you think he deserveth worse punishments, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath esteemed the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified, and hath offered an affront to the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said: Vengeance belongeth to me, and I will repay. And again: The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Graduale Viderunt altare profa- natum, et sciderunt vestimenta sua, et planxerunt planctu ma- no. V. Imposuerunt cinerem su- per caput suum, et ceciderunt in faciem super terram, et cla- maverunt in caelum.	They saw the altar profaned, and they rent their garments, and made great lamentation. V. They put ashes on their heads, and fell down to the ground on their faces, and they cried towards heaven. 1 Macc. 4, 38-40
Alleluja, alleluja. Zelus domus tuae comedit me, et opprobria exprobrantium tibi ceciderunt super me. Alleluja,	Alleluja, alleluja. Zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fal- len upon me. Alleluja. Ps. 68, 10

The Gospel, Matthew 22, 1-14 At that time: Jesus spoke again in parables to the chief priests and Pharisees, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants, to call them that were invited to the marriage; and they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my calves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the marriage. But they neglected, and went their own ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise. And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king had heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city. Then he saith to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready; but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways; and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

Offertorium Ad Christum acce- damus cum vero corde in ple- nitudine fidei, aspersi corda a conscientia mala, et considere- mus invicem in provocationem caritatis, et bonorum operum.	Let us draw near to Christ with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil con- science, and let us consider one an- other, to provoke unto charity and to good works. Hebrews 10, 22 & 24
Secreta Deus, qui Unigenitum tuum in Cruce pro transgresso- ribus orantem exaudisti; quae- sumus, ut nos, qui in altari tuo ipsum offerimus pro contami- atoribus mensae illius orantes, clementer exaudire digneris. Per eundem.	The Secret O God, who didst harken to Thy Only-Begotten Son as He prayed upon the Cross for the trans- gressors; we ask that Thou mercifully deign to hear us, as we pray upon Thy altar for them that defile His table. Through the same.
Communio Quanta putatis me- reri supplicia, qui Filium Dei conculcaverit, et sanguinem testamenti pollutum duxerit, in quo sanctificatus est?	Communion How great punisments do you think he deserveth, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath esteemed the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified? Hebrews 10, 29
Postcommunio Domine Jesu Christe, qui zelo domus Dei succensus, vendentes et e- mentes de templo ejecisti: da comedentibus panem tuum, eodem zelo animari; et propter reos corporis tui aut tabescere gementes, aut ad prohibendum fortes ignescere. Qui vivis..	Post Communion Lord Jesus Christ, who, kindled with zeal for the house of God, didst cast out from the tem- ple them that bought and sold: grant to those that eat Thy bread, that they may be filled with the same zeal; and either to languish with mourning over those guilty of Thy body, or to burn mightily to stop them. Who livest and reignest.

The Parisian Mass for the Octave of Corpus Christi

Some of the oldest Roman octaves, such as those of Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence, have a Mass on the octave day itself which is different or partly different from that of the main feast; Peter and Paul also have another Mass for the days within the octave. However, by the time the feast of Corpus Christi was promulgated in the mid-13th century, this custom was no longer being developed for new celebrations, and the Mass of the feast was simply repeated though the octave. As I noted recently, the neo-Gallican Parisian Missal of 1738 added a proper Epistle and Gospel for each day within the octave of Corpus Christi, a development which by the standards of its time was certainly an innovation, but one in keeping with tradition. This Missal also contains a special Mass for the octave day, which is for the most part quite well composed from a literary point of view.

The Mass of the Octave of Corpus Christi, from the 1738 Parisian Missal

The introit is taken from the book of the Prophet Malachi (1, 11), a text which was already understood to be a reference to the Eucharistic sacrifice by St Justin Martyr in the mid-2nd century.

Introitus Ab ortu solis usque ad occasum, magnum est nomen meum in gentibus, et in omni loco sacrificatur et offertur nomini meo oblatio munda, quia magnum est nomen meum in gentibus, dicit Dominus exercituum. Ps. 49 Deus deorum Dominus locutus est, et vocavit terram a solis ortu usque ad occasum. Gloria Patri. Ab ortu solis.

Introit From the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. Ps. 49 The God of gods, the Lord hath spoken: and he hath called the earth from the rising of the sun, to the going down thereof. Glory be. From the rising.

The Collect is taken from an ancient Sacramentary of the Gallican Rite.

Oratio Deus, qui magno misericordiae tuae munere, docuisti nos redemptionis nostrae sacrificium celebrare, sicut óbtulit Póntifex noster Jesus Chrifius in terris: da nobis, quaesumus, ut sanctifìcati per oblatiónem Córporis et Sanguinis ejus, cum ipso mereamur in sempiternum consummari; Qui tecum.

Prayer God, who by the great gift of Thy mercy, taught us to celebrate the sacrifice of our redemption, as our priest Jesus Christ offered (it) upon the earth: grant us, we ask, that sanctified by the offering of His Body and Blood, we may merit to be perfected for ever with Him who liveth and reigneth...

The neo-Gallican revisers were very fond of creating themes in the liturgy, and this Mass is no exception. The Epistle, Hebrews 7, 18-28, continues the thought of the Introit and Collect on the universal priestly offering of Christ. This passage is perhaps also chosen for Corpus Christi as a deliberate rebuke or challenge to the Calvinists, who often cited the words of verse 27, “Who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices first for his own sins, and then for the people’s, for this He did once, in offering Himself”, against the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Gradual joins the line of Psalm 109 quoted above by St Paul with the figure of Melchisedech, whose appearance in the book of Genesis (14, 17-20) is read as the Epistle on Friday within the Octave.

Graduale Melchisedech rex Salem, protulit panem et vinum, erat enim sacerdos Dei altissimi. V. Juravit Dominus, et non poenitebit eum: Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech.

Graduale Melchisedech, the king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, for he was the priest of the most high God. V. The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech.

The Offerings of Abel and Melchisedech, mosaic from the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, 526-547 AD. (Image from Wikipedia by Roger Culos - CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Alleluia is also taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews (9, 26), after which St Thomas’ Sequence Lauda, Sion is said as on the feast day.

Alleluia, alleluia. Christus in consummatione saeculorum, ad destitutionem peccati, per hostiam suam apparuit, alleluia. – Alleluia, alleluia. Christ at the end of ages hath appeared for the destruction of sin, by the sacrifice of Himself, alleluia.

The Gospel, John 6, 58-70, is the fourth of a series of readings chosen to give a broader selection from the Eucharistic discourse of that chapter than the four verses (56-59) originally provided by St Thomas’ version of the Mass. (Monday, verses 27-35; Tuesday, 41-44; Wednesday, 51-55.) The neo-Gallican revisers, like most “right-thinking” liturgists, were painfully obsessed with making the liturgy more Scriptural and more didactic; the results of their tinkering are often comically inept, as for example, in the damage which they did to St Thomas’ Office of Corpus Christi. Here, however, they have shown a commendable respect for the original tradition, while at the same time building from it, an example which the modern revisers of the lectionary might profitably have heeded.

The Offertory is taken from the First Epistle of St Peter, 2, 4-5.

Offertorium Ad Christum accedentes lapidem vivum, et ipsi tamquam lapides vivi superaedificamini, domus spiritualis, sacerdotium sanctum, offerre spirituales hostias, acceptabiles Deo per Jesum Christum, alleluia.

Offertory Coming unto Christ, as to a living stone, be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, alleluia.

The first part of the Secret (up to the asterisk) is taken from a very ancient prayer found in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries; in the latter, as in the Missal of St Pius V, it is assigned to the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. (The Latin version of this prayer, moved to the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, somehow managed to survive the Consilium intact; the 1973 ICEL version of it was one of the old translation’s most grotesque failures, as Fr Zuhlsdorf noted here in this very useful commentary.) The second part was composed specifically for this Mass.

Secreta Deus, qui legalium differentias hostiarum unius sacrificii perfectione sanxisti: accipe sacrificium a devotis tibi famulis; et pari benedictione, sicut munera Abel, sanctifica; ut * Christo sacerdoti et victimae per fidem adunati, nosmetipsos tibi hostiam viventem, sanctam, et beneplacentem exhibere valeamus. Per eundem...

Secret O God, who by the perfection of the one sacrifice didst ratified variety of offerings prescribed by the Law; receive (this) sacrifice from the servants devoted to Thee, and sanctify it by a blessing (as Thou did with) the gifts of Abel; so that * we, united by faith to Christ, who is priest and victim, may be able to offer to Thee ourselves, as a living, holy and well-pleasing sacrifice. Through the same...

The Secret “Deus qui legalium” in the Echternach Sacramentary, 895AD. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9433) In the Gelasian Sacramentary, it appears in the third of sixteen Masses under the heading “for Sundays”, without further qualification. Later sacramentaries would reorganize the material in the Gelasian in broadly similar, but not identical ways; in the Echternach, it is assigned to the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, rather than the Seventh.

The Communion antiphon is taken from 1 Corinthians 11, 24-25, an unusual (for neo-Gallicans) example of a partial and inexact quotation.

Communio Hoc corpus quod pro vobis tradetur: hic calix novi testamenti еst in meo sanguine, dicit Dóminus: hoc facite, quotiescumque sumitis, in meam commemoratiónem.

Communion This (is the) body, which shall be delivered for you: this chalice is the new testament in my blood: do ye this, as often as you shall receive it, for the commemoration of me.

The Postcommunion is a new composition, which cites the idea of the Communion antiphon, again keeping to a theme.

Postcommunio Domine Jesu Christe, qui corpus et sanguinem tuum esse voluisti humanae salutis pretium, Ecclesiae tuae sacrificium, et nostrae infirmitatis alimentum; praesta, quaesumus, ut haec sancta, quae in tui commemorationem nos súmere praecepisti, sempiternam nobis redemptiónem operentur. Qui vivis.

Postcommunio Lord Jesus Christ, who willed that Thy Body and Blood be the price of man’s salvation, Thy Church’s sacrifice, and the nourishment of our weakness; grant, we ask, that these holy things, which Thou didst command us to receive in commemoration of Thee, may effect for us everlasting redemption. Who livest.

Other Readings for the Octave of Corpus Christi

The Roman Rite has various ways of arranging the Masses during an octave. That of Easter, for example, has a completely proper Mass for every day, that of Pentecost for every day but Thursday, which was originally an “aliturgical” day; when its Mass was instituted later, it was given proper readings, but everything else is repeated from Sunday. The feast of Ss Peter and Paul is continued with one Mass for the days within the octave, and another for the octave day itself, plus the special Commemoration of St Paul on June 30th. Some others, however, especially the relatively late ones like Ascension and All Saints, simply repeat the Mass of the day throughout the octave.

Folio 87r of the 9th century Lectionary of Alcuin, showing the Epistle then in use for the Octave of Ss Peter and Paul, Galatians 2, 6-10.

Corpus Christi, originally instituted in the mid-13th century, and slow to be received in many places, falls into the latter category, although the Mass of the Sunday within the octave, which is much older than the octave itself, is different. Octaves are for the contemplation of mysteries that are too great for a single day, and it is certainly true that “repetita juvant”, a proverb which the Roman Rite, with its habitual conservatism, historically took very much to heart.

In the mid-17th century, most of the churches of France began revising their liturgical books on their own initiative, and without reference to the authority of the Holy See, as part of the liturgical movement which we now often call “neo-Gallican.” Paris was, of course, one of the leaders of this trend, and the first See of importance to change the order of the Breviary Psalter, which would later become the model for the reformed Psalter of St Pius X.

When the first neo-Gallican Parisian Missal came out in 1685, the Mass of Corpus Christi remained unchanged. However, the Mass for the Sunday within the Octave was extensively revised to make it fit in more with the theme of the feast. (The neo-Gallican revisers were very fond of easily grasped themes.) The 1602 Paris Missal has the same Epistle as the Roman Rite, 1 John 3, 13-18; the 1685 Missal changes it to 1 Corinthians, 10, 16-21, principally because of the opening words, “The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread.” This is clearly very suitable for Corpus Christi, and in fact provides the text for a responsory of the feast which was composed by St Thomas, and found in almost every liturgical Use apart from the Roman. The Gospel, Luke 14, 16-24, beginning with the words “A certain man made a great supper, and invited many,” is left unchanged for obvious reasons.

If one Archbishop of Paris could arrogate to his office the right to re-edit the liturgical books used in his See without reference to the Roman authorities, there was no particular reason why subsequent Archbishops should not avail themselves of the same right. Consequently, the liturgical books of Paris went through multiple revisions between 1680 and their definitive abolition in 1873. The most momentous of these were the editions of Abp Charles de Vintimille, the Breviary of 1736, and the Missal of 1738.

The frontispiece of the 1685 Parisian Missal; conspicuously absent are the words “ad formam sacrosancti concilii Tridentini emendatum – emended according to the form (laid down by) the sacred council of Trent.”

This newer revised Parisian Use is in many respects inspired by tradition, but did not shy away from innovations, which vary in quality; in regard to the Mass lectionary, it retained the traditional two-reading structure, while expanding the corpus of readings considerably. For the octave of Corpus Christi, a separate pair of readings is provided for each day; the Sunday readings of the 1685 Missal are retained as part of the series.

Friday: Genesis 14, 17-20 – Matthew 26, 26-29
Saturday: Exodus 12, 1-11 – Luke 22, 7-20
Sunday: 1 Corinthians 10, 12-21 – Luke 14, 16-24
Monday: Exodus 16, 13-18 – John 6, 27-35
Tuesday: Wisdom 16, 20-28 – John 6, 41-44
Wednesday: 2 Corinthians 6, 14 - 7, 1 – John 6, 51-55
Thursday: Hebrews 7, 18-28 – John 6, 58-70

The first two of the added Gospel readings are taken from Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the Institution of the Eucharist; a parallel passage from St Mark (14, 17-25) is added to the readings assigned for the Votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament. The four Gospels from John 6 (Monday to Thursday) give a broader selection from the long passage known as the Eucharistic Discourse, ending with St John’s account of St Peter’s confession. “Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.”

Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter, by Perugino, 1482; Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. The background on the left represents Christ speaking to the people at Capharnaum in John 6; on the right, the figures that seem like they are dancing are actually trying to stone Him, in response to some of the sayings like “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” In the foreground, St Peter is rewarded for his confession of Christ.

The passage from Genesis 14 tells of the bread and wine given to Abraham by Melchisedech, the king of Salem, after the defeat of the five kings. These have been taken from the most ancient times as a symbol of the elements of the Eucharist, as described by St Cyprian in the Matins readings of Tuesday within the octave. “In Genesis, therefore, in order that the blessing might in due order be pronounced upon Abraham through the priest Melchisedech, there was first offered the image of the sacrifice, consisting of bread and wine. And the Lord, completing this and perfecting it, offered bread and a cup of wine mingled with water; and He that is the fullness fulfilled the truth of that which was prefigured.” This is also, of course, why Melchisedech is mentioned in the Canon of the Mass.

Of the two readings from Exodus, the first is repeated from Good Friday, describing the preparation of the Paschal Lamb; the second is the instruction given to the children of Israel about collecting the manna in the desert. These were certainly inspired by the citation of the same passages in the first two Matins responsories of St Thomas’ Office for Corpus Christi.

The second half of the book of Wisdom (from verse 10, 16 to the end) is a long meditation on the events of the Exodus; the passage given above for Tuesday also refers to the manna with which God fed the children of Israel in the desert, and to which Christ and His interlocutors refer in John 6. The words of verse 20, “Thou gavest them bread from heaven ... having in it all that is delicious”, are the versicle of Vespers of the feast, and also sung at Benediction.

The Wednesday Epistle from St Paul is included here as an admonition on the proper disposition for reception of the Sacrament: “You are the temple of the living God... Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” That of the Octave day speaks of the worship of the New Covenant as “a setting aside of the former commandment.” This passage is perhaps also chosen for Corpus Christi as a deliberate rebuke or challenge to the Calvinists (by far the most prominent group of Protestants in France), who often cited the words of verse 27, “Who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices first for his own sins, and then for the people’s, for this He did once, in offering Himself”, against the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

The neo-Gallican revisions made a number of very bold changes to the Missal; it was a common preoccupation of the revisers that original liturgical compositions should be replaced with Scriptural quotes, but St Thomas’ Mass for Corpus Christi was already mostly Scriptural anyway, and was therefore left alone in 1685. (Their great enemy of the movement, Dom Prosper Guéranger, speaks of these changes, with classic French délicatesse, as “Honteuses et criminelles mutilations, témérités coupables – shameful and criminal mutilations, rash acts deserving of condemnation.”)

St. Thomas Aquinas in Glory among the Doctors of the Church, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1631

One change was then made to it in the Missal of 1738, by replacing the original Communio, “As often as you shall eat this Bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until He comes. Therefore whoever eats this Bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Alleluia.” Anticipating one of the more inexcusable changes made by the Novus Ordo lectionary, this is replaced by an exact quote of Wisdom 16, 20, “Thou didst feed thy people with the food of angels, and gavest them bread from heaven prepared without labour; having in it all that is delicious, and the sweetness of every taste.”

The Missal of 1738 has a few other interesting things to note in regard to Corpus Christi. The first is that during the Sequence Lauda Sion, the verse “Ecce panis Angelorum” is sung three times on the feast day itself, and on the octave, but only once on the days within the octave. The celebrant and the major ministers kneel when it is sung, while the members of the choir “face the altar until the end of the Sequence.”

Abp de Ventimille also added to the Parisian Missal new prefaces for Advent, Holy Thursday (also said at votive Masses of the Sacrament), Corpus Christi, All Saints (also said on the feasts of Patron Saints), Saints Denys and Companions, and for Masses of the Dead. When the neo-Gallican Uses were gradually suppressed over the course of the 19th century, some of their features were retained by being incorporated into the French supplements “for certain places” in the Roman liturgical books, these prefaces among them. The 2020 decree Quo magis gives universal permission to use those of All Saints and Patron Saints, the Dedication of a Church, and Corpus Christi; the text of the last is as follows:

“VD: per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Qui, remótis carnalium victimárum inánibus umbris, Corpus et Sánguinem suum nobis in sacrificium commendávit: ut in omni loco offerátur nómini tuo, quae tibi sola complácuit, oblatio munda. In hoc ígitur inscrutábilis sapientiae, et immensae caritátis mysterio, idipsum quod semel in Cruce perfécit, non cessat mirabíliter operári, ipse ófferens, ipse et oblatio. Et nos, unam secum hostiam effectos, ad sacrum invítat convivium, in quo ipse cibus noster súmitur, recólitur memoria Passiónis eius, mens implétur grátia, et futúrae gloriae nobis pignus datur. Et ídeo... –

The high altar of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome. In the magnificent painting over the high altar, The Crucifixion by Guido Reni (1575-1642), the body of Christ is pale and white against a much darker background, a reminder of the Elevation of the Host during the Mass. The effect can be seen even when one is standing outside the church in the piazza. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Rabax63, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Truly it is worthy... through Christ our Lord. Who, the vain shadows of carnal sacrifices being removed, entrusted to us His Body and Blood as a sacrifice; that in every place there may be offered to Thy name that pure sacrifice that alone hath pleased Thee. Therefore, in this mystery of unsearchable wisdom and boundless charity, that very thing which He completed once in the Cross ceaseth not wondrously to have effect, He himself being the one who offers and the offering. And He inviteth us, who are made one victim with Him, to the sacred banquet, in which He himself is received as our food, the memory of His passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us. And therefore with the angels and archangels ...”

When the Parisian Missal of 1738 was issued, the feast of the Sacred Heart had not yet been formally approved by Rome, or accepted outside a few religious orders; however, this Missal did fulfill one aspect of the requests made by the Lord to St Margaret Mary Alacoque in His appearances to her. Among the collection of votive Masses is a special Mass “for the reparation of injuries done to Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament”, placed between the votive Mass of the Sacrament and that of the Passion. A rubric after the Octave of Corpus Christi prescribes this Mass be said on the following day, which is now kept everywhere as the feast of the Sacred Heart. The proper texts of this Mass can be read in Latin and English here.

The Feast of the Holy Relics

In the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, the entry on Relics states that “It has long been customary especially in churches which possessed large collections of relics, to keep one general feast in commemoration of all the saints whose memorials are there preserved. (As will be explained below, this is something of an overstatement.)

Part of the relics collection of the basilica of St Petronius in Bologna.

An Office and Mass for this purpose will be found in the Roman Missal and Breviary, and though they occur only in the supplement Pro aliquibus locis and are not obligatory upon the Church at large, still this celebration is now kept almost universally. The office is generally assigned to the fourth Sunday in October.” The author, Fr Herbert Thurston SJ, wrote “generally” because there was a variety of uses in regard to the date. I have seen the feast on October 26 in a 19th century breviary printed at Naples, while the Dominicans kept it on the 30th, and the Premonstratensians on November 14th. The Catholic Encyclopedia article was published just prior to the reform of St Pius X, which abolished the custom of fixing feasts to particular Sundays; after that reform, the most common date was November 5th.

The Divine Office for the feast is that of the common of Several Martyrs, with lessons in the second nocturn taken from St John Damascene’s Treatise on the Orthodox Faith, which perfectly summarize the Church’s theology of relics.

“Christ the Lord granted us the relics of the Saints as fonts of salvation, from which very many benefits come to us. … In the (old) law, whosoever touched a dead person was deemed unclean, but these (i.e. the Saints) are not to be reckoned among the dead. For from that time when He who is life itself, and the Author of life, was reckoned among the dead, we do not call them dead who have fallen asleep in Him with the hope and faith of the resurrection.”

This mid-11th century fresco in the lower basilica of St Clement in Rome shows the translation of the relics of St Clement, which Ss Cyril and Methodius discovered while they were evangelizing the Slavs in the region to which Clement had been deported, and where he had been martyred in the early 2nd century. The two Saints are depicted at left with Pope St Nicholas I, to whom they gave the relics; in the middle, St Clement is depicted as a living person, lying on a bier and covered with a red blanket, holding up his head, to indicate that the relics are his living presence among us. At the right, the Pope is celebrating Mass, with the Missal open to the “Per omnia saecula” and “Pax Domini” before Communion. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia.)

He goes on to note various kinds of miracles that are worked by relics: “demons are expelled, illnesses driven away, the sick are healed, the blind regain sight, the leprous are cleansed, temptations and sorrows are scattered, and every best gift descendeth through them from the Father of lights (James 1, 17), unto those who ask with unwavering faith.”

As a theologian and Doctor of the Church, St John is best known for his defense of sacred images against the iconoclast heresy. “Iconoclasm” literally means “the breaking of images”, but in its Byzantine form, it also attacked the Church’s devotion to relics, just as the Protestant form would eight centuries later. Shortly after the Synod of the Hieria, which took place in the Emperor’s palace in Chalcedon in 753, and made iconoclasm the official policy of the Byzantine Empire, the altar of the nearby basilica of St Euphemia was dismantled, and her relics removed from it and cast into the sea. This was the first in a twenty-year long campaign of similar desecrations, and persecution of the iconodules. When the Second Council of Nicea was convoked in 787 to reestablish the orthodox faith, several accounts of miracles worked by both images and relics were adduced in their favor, and incorporated into the Council’s official acts, following the line set out by St John.

The Mass of the Holy Relics found in the supplement to the Missal is a fairly recent composition; its three prayers are all proper to the feast, but the Gregorian propers and Scriptural readings are selected from other Masses. The Introit is taken from the feast of Ss John and Paul,the first martyrs whose relics were buried inside a church within the city of Rome. “Many are the afflictions of the just; and out of them all will the Lord deliver them. The Lord keepeth all their bones, not one of them shall be broken.” The Epistle, Sirach 44, 10-15, is that of the octave day of Ss Peter and Paul, over whose tombs and relics the Emperor Constantine built two of Rome’s earliest public churches; it is here selected for the verse “Their bodies are buried in peace, and their name liveth unto generation and generation.” The Gradual Exsultabunt Sancti and the Gospel, Luke 6, 17-23, the beginning of the Sermon on the Plain, are both taken from the vigil of All Saints, since the feast of the Holy Relics is effectively celebrated as a part of All Saints’ Day. The remaining chants are taken from the Masses of various Martyrs.

A 15th-century reliquary of St James the Greater, the presence of which in the cathedral of Pistoia made that city into one of the major pilgrimage centers of medieval Italy.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of relics in the devotional life of the medieval Church, and a general commemoration “of the relics” is often found in medieval breviaries among the series of votive commemorations known as “suffrages.” However, a general feast of relics per se is actually quite rare in the Middle Ages; one of the few notable examples is found in the Use of Sarum, which kept such a feast on the Sunday after July 7th. This date was chosen because July 7th was the feast of the translation of perhaps the most important relics in pre-Reformation England, those of St Thomas of Canterbury. Translation feasts were also celebrated for St Martin of Tours and St Benedict, and indeed, all three were kept within a single week, with the former on the 4th and the latter on the 11th.

In point of fact, it was a much more common practice to celebrate the translation or reception of a specific relic or group of relics, rather than a feast of relics in general. In 1194, a feast of this kind was established at Paris, celebrated on December 4th under the title “Susceptio Reliquarum – The Receiving of the Relics.” The objects in question were believed to be several of the Virgin Mary’s hairs, three of St John the Baptist’s teeth, the arm of St Andrew the Apostle, some of the stones with which St Stephen was killed, and a large portion of the skull of St Denis. The pre-Tridentine Breviary of Paris has a special Office for the day, which mixes together parts of the Offices of these Saints with others from that of All Saints’ Day, and the hymns of Several Martyrs. Particular emphasis is laid on the Virgin, to whom the cathedral of Paris, where these relics were kept, is dedicated, and on local hero St Denis. This Office remained in use in the post-Tridentine period, with modifications that did not change its basic tenor.

(Many of the relics kept at Notre Dame de Paris were destroyed during the Revolution; the following video shows the monthly exposition of one of the most famous ones that survived, the Crown of Thorns, which had its own feast on the Parisian calendar on August 11th.)

I am sure that some of those who read this article will smile (or perhaps smirk) at the idea of relics of the Virgin Mary’s hair or the stones used to kill St Stephen. In this, they will not be alone. In the early decades of the 18th century, the church of Paris turned to a general and radical revision of its liturgical books, the reform which we now call “neo-Gallican.” This reform embraced many of the rationalist critiques brought against some of the Church’s traditional stories and legends; in the 19th century, Dom Prosper Guéranger, the great enemy of the neo-Gallicans, complained bitterly of their splitting up of both St Mary Magdalene and St Denis into different personages according to the various parts of their legends.

Likewise, suspicious (to say the least) of the authenticity of these relics, the neo-Gallican reform completely erased the original character of the “Susceptio Reliquiarum”, transforming it into a general feast of relics. Renamed as “the Veneration of the Holy Relics”, and transferred to November 8th, the octave day of All Saints, it was then given a completely new Office, which contains no references at all to the specific relics for which it was originally instituted, or the Saints whose relics they were.

The neo-Gallican liturgical reforms contain a great many lapses in taste and judgment which almost beggar belief; however, the new Office of the Holy Relics, whatever its history may be, is from a literary point of view one of the better efforts of its kind. Like most people who put their hand to changing historical liturgies, the Neo-Gallican revisers were painfully obsessed with making everything “more Scriptural,” and the new antiphons and responsories consist almost entirely of direct citations from the Bible. But they are very well chosen from a wide selection of books, and do demonstrate effectively that the Church’s veneration of relics is a tradition thoroughly grounded in Scripture. Just to give one example, the following responsory cites an Old Testament episode which was later used by Cardinal Newman in his Apologia to justify the veneration of relics.

R. They cast the body into the sepulcher of Elisha, and when it had touched the bones of Elisha, the man came back to life, and stood upon his feet. (4 Kings 13, 21) V. By faith they received their dead raised to life again. (Hebr. 11, 35) And when…

It is also, I believe, the only example of a neo-Gallican Office that was adopted for use outside France, and continued to be used, at least in part, even after the neo-Gallican liturgies were definitively suppressed in the 19th century. The Neapolitan breviary which I mentioned above contains it in almost exactly the same form as it appears in the 1714 edition of the Parisian Breviary. The one feature of the Office which the neo-Gallican reforms could not make into a chain of Scriptural citations is the corpus of hymns, to which a great many new compositions were added. The new Parisian Office of the Holy Relics includes a hymn written by a cleric of the diocese of Paris named Claude Santeul (1624-84) which was adopted by the Benedictines for their version of the feast, and is thus still part of the Antiphonale Monasticum for the Office to this very day. The meter is one used by the classical poet Horace called the Third Asclepiadean, not previously part of the traditional repertoire of Christian hymns. Some of Santeul’s odd vocabulary (e.g. “Christiadum” instead of “Christianorum”) is determined by the need to find words that fit the meter, but his complicated word order is a deliberate imitation of Horace’s style.

Reverence their poor and sadly dear remains!
Folded in peace their earthly vesture lies,
Dear pledges, left below, but thence to rise,
Pledges of heavenly bodies, free from pains!

And here ye may lift up your thankful strains,
Ye Christian companies. The spirit flies,
And hath its recompense in quiet skies,
And leaves with you below its broken chains:

Yet for their bones meek Piety shall plead,
Blest Piety, which honoureth the dead!
Though scatter’d far and wide, yet God’s own eye
Doth keep them that they perish not; and when

The promised hour shall come, their God again
Shall gather them, and as He builds on high
His habitation, each there, moulded by His grace,
Shall live and find a sure abiding place.

To us the places where your ashes be
Shall be as altars, whence shall steadier rise
Our prayers to Heav’n; and that blest Sacrifice,
Where God the Victim cometh down from high,

Shall consecrate to holier mystery;
He here accepts your deaths as join’d with His,
Here builds all in one body, and supplies
Our dying frames with immortality.

And hence your graves become a tower of aid,
A refuge from bad thoughts, a sacred shade;
Until, fresh clad with new and wondrous dowers,
Our flesh shall join the angelic choirs, and be

A living temple crowned with heavenly towers;
Where evermore the praises shall ascend
Of the great undivided One and Three,
And God be all in all, world without end. Amen.

(English translation by Isaac Williams from Hymns translated from the Parisian Breviary, Rivington, London, 1839)

The neo-Gallican use also has a different Gospel from the one named above for the feast of the Holy Relics, Luke 20, 27-38, in which Christ disputes with the Sadducees about the nature of the final Resurrection. The conclusion of this passage is particularly important as the foundation of what St John Damascene says, that the Saints are not truly dead. “Now that the dead rise again, Moses also showed, at the bush, when he called the Lord, The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live to him.” In the Parisian Breviary, the homily that accompanies it is taken from a treatise written by St Jerome against a priest from Gaul named Vigilantius, who had denied the value of praying to the Saints and venerating relics, a work in which we see the Saint at his wittiest and most acerbic.

“Vigilantius is vexed to see the relics of the martyrs covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown down the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped. Are we, therefore guilty of sacrilege when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius guilty of sacrilege when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and those who dwell in Vigilantius (i.e. the devils) confess that they feel their influence. And at the present day, is the Emperor Arcadius guilty of sacrilege, who after so long a time has conveyed the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea to Thrace? Are all the bishops to be considered not only sacrilegious, but fools as well, because they carried that most worthless thing, dust and ashes, wrapped in silk in golden vessel? Are the people of all the churches fools, because they went to meet the sacred relics, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they beheld a living prophet in their midst, so that there was one great swarm of people from Palestine to Chalcedon with one voice re-echoing the praises of Christ? They were forsooth adoring Samuel and not Christ, whose Levite and prophet Samuel was. You imagine he is dead, and therefore you blaspheme. Read the Gospel: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

St Jerome the Penitent, by Titian, 1575; when depicted in this fashion, he is traditionally shown holding a rock with which he is said to have beaten his breast as an act of penance. Given the ferocity of Jerome’s polemical writings, and a general apprehension of his character (he quarreled violently with several of his friends), Pope Benedict XIV is supposed to have remarked on seeing such a representation of the Saint, “If it is true, that would be the only way you got into heaven.”

Other Gospels for the Ascension

The Roman Rite has various ways of arranging the Masses during an octave. That of Easter, for example, has a completely proper Mass for every day, that of Pentecost for every day but Thursday, which was originally an “aliturgical” day; when its Mass was instituted later, it was given proper readings, but everything else is repeated from Sunday. The feast of Ss Peter and Paul is continued with one Mass for the days within the octave, and another for the octave day itself, plus the special Commemoration of St Paul on June 30th. Some others, however, especially the relatively late ones like Corpus Christi and All Saints, simply repeat the Mass of the day throughout the octave.

A folio of the Echternach Sacramntary, 895 AD, with the last two prayers of the Mass of St Paul, those of Ss Processus and Martinian on July 2, and the first two prayers of the octave of Ss Peter and Paul.

The feast of the Ascension falls into the latter category, although the Mass of the Sunday within the octave, which is older than the octave itself, is different. Octaves are for the contemplation of mysteries that are too great for a single day, and it is certainly true that “repetita juvant”, a proverb which the Roman Rite, with its habitual conservatism, historically took very much to heart. One might argue, however, that there was some room for expanding the repertoire of readings within this octave in particular, in a way that would have been fully consonant with the tradition of the Rite, and expanded the scope of such contemplation.

The very oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Comes (the Latin word for “companion”) of Wurzburg, attests to the Roman system of readings as it was in the middle of the 7th century. (The manuscript itself was copied out in roughly 700-750.) Although there are some notable differences, it is unmistakably the same system as that of the Missal of St Pius V. Its Gospels for the Easter season are almost entirely the same, while those of the second oldest Comes, that of Murbach, are exactly the same. Both of them also attest to a feature which was not included in the late medieval Missal of the Roman Curia, the immediate predecessor of that of St Pius V, namely, a series of ferial readings for the Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. In Wurzburg, this feature is very irregular; some weeks have readings for both days, some have one for Saturday as well, but others them have only for one day, and others have none. In Murbach, which is from roughly a century later, it has been completely regularized, and every Wednesday and Friday has readings assigned to it.

On the Wednesday after the Ascension, the Gospel is the very end of St Luke, chapter 24, 49-53. (Ss Matthew and John do not describe the Ascension, although Christ Himself refers to it in John 20, 17, in the words that form the antiphon for the Benedictus, “I go up to my Father and yours, my God and yours, alleluia.”) The Roman Rite tends to choose shorter passages than both the Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites, which have a longer selection from this passage, verses 36-53 (everything after the Supper at Emmaus), as the main Gospel of the feast; the Byzantines read the Roman Gospel at Orthros. In the Neo-Gallican Use of Paris, which expanded the Roman corpus of Scriptural readings considerably, while keeping to the traditional structure of the lectionary, verses 44-53 were assigned to the octave day of the Ascension.

Another passage which is connected to the feast is one of the most beautiful in St John’s Gospel, chapter 17, which Biblical scholars now often call the “priestly prayer.” On the vigil of the Ascension, the Missal of St Pius V has only the first 10½ verses, breaking off at vs. 11 “… and I come to thee.” The rest of the chapter is not read in either the temporal or sanctoral cycles, but verses 11-23 are the Gospel of the Votive Mass to remove a schism. In the Murbach lectionary, the rest of passage is read on the Wednesday following the Fourth Sunday after Easter; on the Sunday after the Ascension, the Ambrosian Rite reads the full chapter, while the Byzantine reads the first 13 verses. The revised Parisian Use kept the traditional Roman Gospel for the vigil, then very cleverly divided the rest into two parts. Verses 11b-19, in which Christ prays for the Apostles, is read on the Friday within the octave of the Ascension; the rest of the chapter, in which He prays “also for those who shall believe in Me though their word”, is assigned to Tuesday.

Two leaves of the Parisian Missal of 1736, with part of the propers for the Mass for the Friday after the octave of the Ascension, and the beginning of the vigil of Pentecost.

The Parisian Use is in many respects inspired by tradition, as in the examples given above, but did not shy away from innovations, which vary in quality. One of its better innovations, which has no precedent in the ancient Roman lectionaries, is the Gospel chosen for the Friday between the Octave of the Ascension and the vigil of Pentecost, which is traditionally celebrated as a kind of extension of the octave. (The Roman Missal repeats the Gospel of the Sunday). The liturgy of the Ascension often looks forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; an example is the responsory “If I do not go, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, will not come.” With the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles will go out in the world to preach the Gospel, for which they, and many others after them, will receive the crown of martyrdom. The Parisian Use therefore moves away from St John, who dominates the Easter season, and takes this passage from St Luke, 12, 8-12, which looks forward to the ongoing witness to the life and teachings of Christ in the mission of His Church.

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God. But he that shall deny me before men, shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but to him that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they shall bring you into the synagogues, and to magistrates and powers, be not solicitous how or what you shall answer, or what you shall say; For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what you must say.”