Msgr. Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary bishop from Kazakhstan and traditionalist luminary, has recently aired some fresh episcopal opinions about both the 1911-3 and 1955-6 alterations to the Roman liturgy. The old Holy Week was a mere wish list item and the Divino Afflatu changes were absolutely off limits. Now a canonically regular bishop and genuine friend to tradition can look at these changes and clearly see them as a modern frame of thinking filtered into the old rite; much was lost and comparatively little was gained.
This blog has written extensively in advocacy of not only the old Holy Week but also the entire old Office, perhaps with a refreshed kalendar more balanced than those which post-date Trent, so there is little new to say here, but perhaps readers have some ideas.
Kazakhstan Bishop Athanasius Schneider has criticised two liturgical “revolutions” which preceded Paul VI's 1970 disastrous Novus Ordo reform. Talking to OnePeterFive.com (September 21), Schneider pointed to Pius X's 1911 reform of the breviary. For Schneider it is “an enigma how he could do this”. Pius X radically changed the distribution of the psalms. The Roman Church had kept this order almost unchanged since or even before Pope Gregory I (+604). For Schneider it is “reasonable” to return to the former breviary which he calls “the breviary of all ages”. The second revolution Schneider localises in Pius XII's 1955 failed reform of the rite of Holy Week. According to Schneider a similar thing has "never happened in the entire history of the Church”. Pius XII replace "the beautiful rites of Holy Week" with a “manufactured” construct, Schneider adds.
Through the miracle of time I have rediscovered the office of Compline. Although it was the first hour I really learned to say on my own accord I fell out of the practice of saying it in the years since finishing school and finding my life regulated by the daily and monthly pulse of American corporate finance, month end close, and quarterly reports to the Street. I began Vespers several years ago and anticipate Mattins and Lauds for Sundays and major feasts, but the non-major hours (horae minores are during the day???) rarely appear in my life, save Sundays and long vacations.
I was introduced to the old Latin liturgy long ago in the form of the "Traditional Latin Mass," but did not discover the Divine Office until 2011, when I went to Oxford and found the Office to be the pulse of St. Aldate Street. The Dominicans said the full Liturgy of the Hours in English daily while the Oratorians, where my shadow haunted for latria, used the 1962 Vespers for Sundays and the eve of major feasts. At some level I grew to love the Office more than the Mass if only because the Mass is required out of obligation, whereas a layman only attends the Hours out of devotion. Upon return to the States I began saying Compline according to the Tridentine form before going to bed. For a tired mind looking for an evening blessing, Compline is more focused than "Bless mommy, bless daddy, good night, Lord."
Compline is an altogether different sort of Office, both in structure and purpose, from the rest of the hours in the Roman breviary. The major hours (Vespers, Mattins, Lauds) descend from the vigil of psalms and readings that took place at night before the Eucharistic sacrifice in ancient days and which solidified in their extant, pre-1911 form by the age of St. Benedict, if not earlier. The daytime hours (Terce, Sext, None) grew out of non-cleric devotion in the major Roman basilicas by those who wished to pray and sanctify the entire day; because those who sang it were commoners unable to print book on demand, the psalter remained fixed for these hours. Prime and Compline have their origin in the monasteries around Jerusalem and functioned as "fillers" for gaps in the day when a monk might lapse in his prayer. St. John Cassian remarked during his 382 AD visit to Bethlehem that Prime had not yet been adopted everywhere in the East. Similarly, he knows nothing of the tradition already practiced by St. Basil of reciting psalm 90 (Qui habitat in adiutorio) before bed. When Benedict left Rome and brought the basilica psalter with him, he may have brought a newly settled custom of praying other psalms with psalm 90 before sleep.
Compline's distinction in structure and repetition in text makes it an easy hour to commit to memory and hence very suitable for those tiresome moments before bed when creative thought and reflection fail. The words themselves carry a weight of reassurance and tenderness:
Procul recedant somnia, Et noctium phantasmata; Hostemque nostrum comprime, Ne polluantur corpora.
For a brief while I attempted the Divino Afflatu rendition of this hour, but found the variable psalms and antiphons antithetical to the very purpose of this Office. Indeed, Compline helped me realize that Pius X and Paul VI's overhaul of the Roman Office was far more radical than what the latter did to the Missal.
Compline represents a marvelous entry point into the Roman Office and deeper liturgical prayer. This prayer for a safe rest under Our Lord's watch, like an "apple to His eye", is approachable in its brevity and constancy while being less mundane than the horae minores of the day: a Confession, a few psalms, a short hymn, a canticle, and a prayer to Our Lady; most remarkable to me, at least in the Tridentine Office, is that the last words on the Christian's lips before sleep are the Pater, the Ave, and the Apostles' Creed. Seven Office sanctify the day, but only one the night!
July is a brutally 1570 sort of month, but August is a very 1910ish month, with the ferial office hardly appearing between the octaves of St. Lawrence and the Assumption as well as a number of very Roman double feasts. The General Roman Calendar created by the Consilium—nominally administered by Cardinal Lercarco, in fact run by the man Louis Bouyer described as the "despicable Bugnini", a "man as bereft of culture as he was basic honesty"—is quite modern and quite general, but in very few ways is it Roman.
August begins with the very Roman feast of St. Peter's Chains, which is also the name of an ancient Roman church that holds the reputed link of chain which held the Prince of the Apostles while he await execution. Peter went to Antioch, where the various Catholic and Orthodox descendants remember him in their own way, and then to Rome, where he acted as bishop before his inverted crucifixion. To Felix Roma was given the privilege of claiming the two greatest as its patrons and fathers in faith. Christians in Jerusalem held the holy places in high esteem and continued their devotion to them between the time of the Ascension and the edict of Milan, so much so that when St. Helen came to the holy city seeking relics she found consistent narratives of the Crucifixion's site and the True Cross. Roman Christians followed this instinct in venerating the ossuaries and objects associated with its saints, as did Christian of every church. Jerusalem's devotion effected the received practices of Holy Week, Rome's created the phenomena of local feasts and stational Masses. Throughout August, the old rite presents the feasts of St. Peter's Chains, the Dedication of Our Lady of Snows (St. Mary Major), the feast of St. Lawrence (with a vigil and octave of proper Mattins), and a unique date for St. Bartholomew's day. Notably all these feasts could supersede a Sunday Mass. Additionally, the Latin Church celebrated the Finding of St. Stephen, a Gallican feast imported as part of the medieval synthesis of the Frankish and first millennium Roman traditions. The significance granted to these feasts is remarkable by our post-Divino Afflatu standards, but hardly surprising to the Romans: they were feasts concerning the character and encounters with the Divine of the Roman Church. Every rite has Pascha, Theophany, and Epiphany; only the Latin rite has "St. John at the Latin Gate."
What came out of the Consilium's conference rooms and reserved trattoria seats reflects the view that the Roman rite is the rite of the Latin Church rather than a template for the Roman Church. St. Bartholomew is not celebrated on the Roman day (!), gone is St. Stephen, and while St. Lawrence and Our Lady of Snows remain, their festive rankings have been stripped such that they do not appear on Sundays, even if once every seven years. Above all, the feast of the Apostle of gone without a trace. The revised calendar's inorganic nature betrays the centralizing mindset of its creators, who must have known that they were creating ex nihilo a calendar for the entire Latin Church. Local additions, with regulatory approval, would be exceptions rather than the norm. Rome was not alone in having local feasts. Sarum's calendar is replete with saints whose names are almost forgotten after the Reformation: Edmund of Abindgon, Kenelm, Osmund of Salisbury to name a few; also, many particular devotions to the Holy Name and Five Wounds found their way into the English liturgy. The neo-Gallican French rites reflected similarly local saints like Genevieve as well as contemporary [and unhealthy] interest in St. Augustine. While the revised liturgy allows approved local additions, the locale implicit in the Roman rite lacks the gravitas of Romanitas. Our Lady of the Apparition type feasts carried over from before the reforms, but what of the Commemoration of St. Paul, St. Peter's Chair, or St. John at the Gate?
Interestingly, many local "dialects" of the Roman rite, Sarum among them, have those distinctly Roman feasts. Ancient and medieval churches sought to imitate Roman practices while allowing for their own saints and miracles, too, which proved that the Church was quite alive in those days. A medieval diet was about 3,000-4,000 calories daily depending on one's social class; the proliferation of holy men in diverse places aided in the multiplication of feasts which would "gladden the heart of man" (ps. 103). The revised calendar is more a novelty diet which allows a few "cheats" per year.
I, for one, would like to see the delicious return of some savory local feasts.
I am embarking on my annual reading of the Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo. In book nine, which recounts his immersion in the regenerative waters of Baptism and his early days as a Catholic, he describes what is most likely the origin of the Ambrosian Office:
"And how I cried out to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those songs of faith, whose pious music will not admit the haughty spirit, while yet untutored in your true love and a catechumen...." (9.4.8)
"Nor, during those days, could I be satiated with the wondrous sweetness of contemplating the depth of your counsel for the salvation of mankind. How wept at the hymns and sacred songs of your Church, how moved was I at its tuneful voices! Those voices flowed in through my ears, and the truth, pressed and trained out of them, entered my heart and from my heart a pious longing came boiling up and overflowed. My tears ran; I wept, and it was well with me.
" It was not long since the Church at Milan had instituted this manner of strengthening and encouraging themselves, with brothers thronging together, full of zeal, singing with voices and hearts in harmony. There was a year, not much more, during which Justina, mother of the boy king Valentinian, was persecuting Ambrose, the man of God, in the interests of her own heresy; she had been seduced by the Arians. The devout populace mounted watch in the church, ready to die with their bishop, your servant. My mother, your handmaid, was there, and took her stand as one of the foremost in those anxious vigils, living on prayers. I too, though as yet unwarmed by the heat of your Spirit, was none the less excited by the consternation and uproar in the city. It was then that the custom was established of singing hymns and psalms after the Eastern fashion, to keep the people from growing weary and faint-hearted; and the custom then established has been maintained, and many if not all your flocks throughout the rest of the world have imitated it." (9.6.14-9.7.15)
Liturgical theology is, according to Aidan Kavanagh, not a theological examination of the liturgy, but theology done by means of the liturgy. Liturgy is the theologia prima of the Church. When someone asks a Catholic how to learn more about the faith, the believer never directs the inquirer to obtain a copy of Denzinger. Invariably, the believer tells the non-Catholic to go to Mass (and hopefully at a carefully selected location). With this in mind, let us [very succinctly] consider what the Church told and taught us about the Assumption of the Mother of God today.
Apse of St. Mary Major with mosaic of Mary as Queen of Heaven,
crowned by and reigning with Christ.
source: Rad Trad's collection
Mattins—or the "vigil," as Dobszay insisted on calling the first major hour—consists of nine psalms and readings divided evenly into three nocturnes. Contrary to the eccentric and rich local traditions of northern Europe, which created special texts for Marian feasts, the Roman rite retains a primitive and sparse text. The psalms and hymns for the feast are typical of any Marian feast prior to the 1860s when Pius IX issued a unique liturgy for the Immaculate Conception. Where the Assumption stands alone is in the Mattins lessons and the text of the Mass. According to Dom Gueranger:
"the Lord Pope went to St Mary Major, where, surrounded by his court, he celebrated First Vespers. At the beginning of the night the Matins with nine lessons were chanted in the same church.
"Meanwhile an ever-growing crowd gathers on the piazza of the Lateran, awaiting the Pontiff's return.... Around the picture of the Saviour, within the sanctuary, stand twelve bearers who form its perpetual guard, all members of the most illustrious families, and near them are the representatives of the senate and of the Roman people.
"But the signal is given that the papal retinue is redescending the Esquiline. Instantly lighted torches glitter on all sides, either held in the hand, or carried on the brancards of the corporations. Assisted by the deacons, the Cardinals raise on their shoulders the holy image, which advances under a canopy, escorted in perfect order by the immense multitude. Along the illuminated and decorated streets, amid the singing of the psalms and the sound of instruments, the procession reaches the ancient Triumphal Way, winds round the Coliseum, and, passing through the arches of Constantine and Titus, halts for a first Station on the Via Sacra, before the church called St Mary Minor.... In this church, while the second Matins with three lessons are being chanted in honor of the Mother, some priests wash, with scented water in a silver basin, the feet of the her Son, our Lord, and then sprinkle the people with the water thus sanctified. Then the venerable picture sets out once more, crosses the Forum amidst acclamations.... it at least enters the piazza of St Mary Major. Then the delight and the appluse of the crowd are redoubled; all, men and women, great and little, as we read in a document of 1462 (archivio della Compagnia di Sancta Sanctorum), forgetting the fatigue of a whole night spent without sleep, cease not till morning to visit and venerate our Lord and Mary. In this glorious basilica, adorned as a bridge, the glorious Office of Lauds celebrates the meeting of the Son and the Mother and their union for all eternity." (The Liturgical Year, August 15)
All rungs of Roman society paused regular life and joined Christ and Mary in the divine life for a night and an octave, celebrating Mary joining her Son in eternity and anticipating their own union with Christ in eternity. Mary was the first of what Christ wants all Christians to become by the Sacraments, albeit in a lesser degree.
The first three lessons are extracted from chapter 1 of the Song of Songs:
1 Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine,2 Smelling sweet of the best ointments. thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee.3 Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee.4 I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.5 Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept.6 Show me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions.7 If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds.8 To my company of horsemen, in Pharao's chariots, have I likened thee, O my love.9 Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove's, thy neck as jewels.10 We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver.11 While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof.12 A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts.13 A cluster of cypress my love is to me, in the vineyards of Engaddi.14 Behold thou art fair, O my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as those of doves.15 Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and comely. Our bed is flourishing.16 The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.
Some of these verses are very sensual and even sexual. Let no one say that the medievals were prudish on matters of intimacy! These verses can be applied both as the Church's acclamation to the Virgin, joyfully exclaiming her maternal nurturing of us Christians working out our salvation in fear and trembling. These words can also, with some care and reservation, be interpreted as a dialogue between Mary and her Creator. The first verse "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine" speaks to Mary on a level of intimacy that no man ever knew, but Christ did. He nursed from her, yes, but He, in the Father, also created her in accordance with His divine plan for mankind. The image of the breast conjures immature sexual ideas today, but previous peoples instantly affiliated it with nurturing and familial ties: the affection of the husband, the nurturing of the children—two kinds of love, the second generated from the first, which reflects the Divine Love. At this level of power and privacy did Mary know God, of course without the sexual element. Should the dialogue interpretation continue, Mary is both removed from conventions "I am black, but I am beautiful" and presented as close with God on the level of bride in the King's chamber, as the versicle before the third nocturne says.
The readings in the second nocturne come from St. John of Damascus' second treatise on the Dormition of the Mother of God. These readings replaced the writings of St. Dionysius of the [pseudo] Areopagite —which would have been the lessons read at St Mary Minor—with the Tridentine reforms. St. John explains the typology of the Virgin, her prefigurement in the Ark of the Covenant, which housed the old promise between God and mankind, and its fulfillment in her, who housed the new and eternal promise between God and mankind. And like Christ, she did not refuse death, but embraced it as a path to life away from the death wrought by Adam:
"From her true life had flowed for all men, and how should she taste of death? But she yielded obedience to the law established by Him to Whom she had given birth, and, as the daughter of the old Adam, underwent the old sentence, which even her Son, Who is the very Life Itself, had not refused; but, as the Mother of the living God, she was worthily taken by Him unto Himself."
In the treatise from which the above passage in extracted, the Damascene saint goes on to teach that Mary's body could only be assumed into heaven because its use by Christ consecrated it as a thing of heaven. The treatise goes on to recount the entire event of the Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, which ran the course of three days:
"An ancient tradition has been handed down to us, that, at the time of the glorious falling-asleep of the blessed Virgin, all the Apostles, who were wandering throughout the world preaching salvation to the Gentiles, were caught up aloft in the twinkling of an eye, and met together in Jerusalem. And when they were all there, a vision of Angels appeared to them, and the chant of the heavenly powers was heard; and so with divine glory she gave up her soul into the hands of God. But her body, which bore God in an effable manner, being lifted up amid the hymns of Angels and Apostles was laid in a tomb in Gethsemane. There for three whole days the angelic song was heard.
"But after three days, the chant of the Angels ceased, and the Apostles who were present (for Thomas, the only one who had been absent, came after the third day, and wished to adore the body which had borne God) opened the tomb; but they could by no means find her sacred body in any part of it. But when they only found those garments in which she had been buried, and were filled with indescribable fragrance which emanated from them, they closed the tomb. Amazed at this wonderful mystery they could only think that he, who had been pleased to take flesh from the Virgin Mary, to be made man, and to be born though he was God the Word, and the Lord of glory, he who had preserved her virginity without stain after childbirth, should also have been pleased to honor her pure body after her death, keeping it incorrupt, and translating it into Heaven before the general resurrection."
The best sermon this writer ever heard preached about the Assumption, or "Dormition" given the setting, was that of a Melkite deacon. Paraphrasing and condensing ten minutes into a few sentences, "Heaven and earth were not vast enough to hold Gods' glory, but Mary's womb was. Christ received His Divine nature when He was begotten of the Father in eternity. He received His human nature when He was conceived and born of Mary in time. When her earthly course was run, Mary died and her body was taken into heaven by the One Who created her because it was inconceivable that the womb which ore God-made-Man could decay in the ground. But this does not separate Mary from mankind. God became united to mankind through her. Mary was the first. We will never know God as closely as she did on earth, except perhaps when we receive Holy Communion, but we can pray to know Him in eternity because of her."
The Annunciation by Fra Angelico
source: joyfulheart.com
At the third nocturne we arrive at the Gospel of the day, also used in the Mass of the day. The pericope, Luke 10:38-42, is the same Gospel story applied in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the Greek tradition for this feast, adding verses 11:27-28. The last verses used in the Byzantine liturgy highlight the entire point of the Gospel for this day: "And it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. But he said: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it." Is any depiction in pre-modern art more popular than that of the Annunciation? Mary became special because she bore Christ. She is a powerful intercessor with Him, indeed the most powerful intercessor with Him precisely for this reason. But also for this reason Mary is not a lone, solitary figure of power. She matters because wherever she is, Christ is nearby. Practically every depiction of the Virgin before the vulgar kitsche artwork of the 19th century showed Mary and our Lord Jesus together. In the various pieta paintings and sculptures, the great paintings depicting the Crucifixion and Norman rood screens recounting the same event, and first millennium holy images—Eastern and Western alike—Mary is with her Son. So let us agree with the woman in the crowd: blessed is the womb that bore the Lord! And then let us turn our attention from Mary to Christ by hearing the word of God and by keeping it.
Culminating with the Mass, the Introit invites us to enter into the heavenly abode of joy, elevated from the earthly joy and instruction in Mattins and Lauds, as well as the rites local to the diocese of Rome described by Gueranger above. In the Mass God's presence begins as a mystic one and elevates into a literal presence that can be seen and touched, a presence similar to the one Mary knew as Christ's mother. The collect of the Mass is among the best in the Roman tradition:
"Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy servants: that we who by our own deeds are unable to please thee, may be saved by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord."
This collect, as Fr. Hunwicke has stated, is the theology of Mary East and West. What words could better express our Lady's place in the plan of salvation? The Mass became the integral part of the Assumption liturgy and, in time, many stunning settings of the Mass were written by the great polyphonic and choral composers. Palestrina's setting of the Ordinary of Mass is a personal favorite. The below sequence of videos has both the proper chants and Palestrina's setting concatenated, as for a Mass.
Lastly, the feast is an octave. This blog has discussed in other posts the concept of the eighth day and the theology of the Resurrection. Christ rose on the eighth day after He entered Jerusalem and He appeared to the Apostles on the eighth day after that, one octave after another. Moreover, the Resurrection constitutes the eighth day of the week, the new day of Creation, or re-creation. Mary's tomb, like her Son's was found empty. While the myrrh-bearing women and the Apostles Peter and John only found a few burial garments in Christ's tomb, Mary's tomb was found full of flowers and sweet scents. Christ's Resurrection brought mystery only clarified with the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Mary's Assumption was clear and a fruit of Christ's Resurrection.
Unfortunately, this historic and gladsome liturgy was altered in 1950 after Pius XII's definition of the Assumption—wherein he says nothing new and clears up none of the controversy stemming from the chirpy immortalist crowd, even if the accompanying letter did in fact say she died. The Office readings were altered severely: the first reading is now taken from Genesis chapter 3 and the next two readings from Corinthians (the same passage used in the Requiem Mass). The Pope's encyclical Munificentissimus Deus replaces one of the lessons from St. John of Damascus. The hymns are new and utterly ghastly. And the Mass is entirely new. The Introit is no longer an invitation to joy, but instead an excerpt from Revelation chapter 12. The collect is banal beyond belief and the Gospel is the account of the Annunciation heard at practically every Marian feast now other than the Immaculate Conception. Of all the changes to the feast in 1950, the insertion of Genesis chapter 3 at Mattins and the new Introit of Mass stand out most. Far from according to a "hermeneutic of continuity" with the previous liturgy, these texts exude the images of plaster statues and devotional lithographs so common in the 19th and early 20th century. Who has not seen a plaster statue of the Virgin, clothed in blue, perhaps with a bulbous baroque crown rimmed in twelve stars, standing on a blue globe and crushing the head of a green snake? The problem that arises from this depiction of Mary as crushing sin and standing above the moon, crowned with stars is not so much what it says as much as what it fails to say. The Mary of these images, pieces of art, and, to some extent, devotions is an aggrandized Mary not entirely dependent on Christ for her importance. There is nothing wrong with these texts doctrinally, but they replace other texts that were more coherent, beautiful, and holistically reflective of the Church's understanding of our Lady. The octave was stripped in 1955.
As with Holy Week, the same people who created the Pauline liturgy restored a few small portions of what they vitiated in the 1950s. The old Gaudeamus omnes Introit is made available as an option. The Mass as a whole is just as bad as the Pian Mass though. The readings are respectively Revelation 12 and the 1951-1969 Mattins readings from Corinthians; the Gospel is again the Annunciation. Mattins The Office of Readings gives Ephesians 1:16-2:10 and again Pius XII's encyclical as the lessons. The mystical understanding of Mary in union with Christ, representing the Church, and the link between the God-Man and mankind is obscured or forgotten. Who can deny that even the most pious of Roman Catholics—far better people than the Rad Trad—only know of Mary through the kitsch statue or as the object of the line "Hail, full of grace"? Again, there is nothing strictly heterodox about this folkish interpretation, but it comes at the cost of the stronger, traditional interpretation of the feast.
On a happy note I know of at least one priest who celebrated the old Mass and kept the old Office for August 15 and the octave! This feast, like so many of the most ancient feasts in the Roman rite, brings the faithful deep into the mens of the Church and her theology of the mysteries of God.
After Spy Wednesday evening's Tenebrae services, I conversed with a small clique about our upcoming plans for the rest of the Triduum. We agreed to attend one of the area's Byzantine rite churches on Friday for Vespers, the procession, and the burial service (Slavic tradition, different from the Greek and Arab praxis). A woman proximate to us inquired as to what the service entail. After explaining it, she asked, "So what, there's no Communion? I'll go to [Tradistan] instead. There's Communion here." Retrospectively, this was a formative moment in my understanding of why the Divine Office's popularity tapered off in recent generations: because we expect something whenever we go to church.
In the Mass or Divine Liturgy, we take bread and wine and the Lord gives us His Body and Blood which we offer "for the sins of all Christians, living and dead" (Roman offertory), "we offer You Your own from what is Your own, from all and for all" (Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom). In return, we are permitted to partake of the Lord's mystical supper and benefit definitely from the propitiatory sacrifice made. The result satisfies our prehensile souls.
The Divine Office has no such trait. In it we pray for many things, including the specific intentions of the litanies of the Eastern rites as well as the preces and suffrages of the Latin tradition. Still, nothing concrete is given in return, which we have grown accustomed to expect. For centuries people attended weekday low Masses in the Western Church without any distribution of Communion at all. Perhaps this was a deviation from the purpose of confecting the Sacrament, but the point stands: the congregants attended the Mass not because they were expecting something to be given to them, but because they wanted to see the "Miracle of the Mass," they believed that the action itself had value before God.
The same is true of the Office. Nothing tangible and immanent should be expected in return for praying it. Praying the Divine Office is praising God for God's own sake alone.
Never has the Word of God been more discussed than in the last two centuries. Vatican II's Dei Verbum is an entire document on interpreting it. Protestantism is an entire religion founded on most of it. Nineteenth century German biblical scholarship assured us it was mostly second century bosh while late twentieth century scholarship has shown it originated frighteningly proximate to Christ and the Apostles. The average American household owns four copies of it. Never before has it been more read, more discussed, and less heard.
Our modern relationship with Scripture is abecedarian. A layman sits at his reading desk or cozies himself in his arm chair in quiet repose, opens his Ignatius Study Bible to whatever section of the Johannine gospel looks interesting, and reads while imagining the events described, as though he is the woman at the well. Could anything be more Ignatian? Could anything be more modern? Could anything be more removed from how our fathers in the faith interfaced with the Word of God?
The dispute over the place of liturgical theology and the value of the pre-20th century Roman rite—the real thing, I call it—is closely related to a long lost dispute over the place of Scripture in the liturgy. The Byzantine rite long replaced most of the Scriptural portions of the liturgy with hymns and symbolic gestures, although readings of substance remain at Vespers for great feasts and the pre-Sanctified weekday rites of Great Lent. The un-reformed Roman rite retained the place of Scripture from ancient times, although some abbreviations took place, such as the reduction of the psalm verses in the introit. Holy Writ narrated the Mass and the Office. The liturgy was how people encountered what we call the Bible. Liturgical worship outside the Eucharistic sacrifice culminated in the reading of the words of Christ by the herald of the Gospel, the deacon, from a lecturn or ambo in the midst of those destined to hear it. In the Roman rite this singing of Christ's words took place in medio choro, in the Greek rite from an enormous stone ambo in the center of the Hagia Sophia.
In neither of these settings was the place of proclamation a rival or equal to the altar of sacrifice that so much heterodox architecture now presents it to be. The Gospel was sung from a prominent place amid the congregation. The Eucharist is offered from the most prominent point, somewhat veiled, and removed from the congregation until Holy Communion. The Word anticipates the Sacrament as it did for the Israelites in the desert of Egypt.
source: lamprotes1 on YouTube
The Gospel was sung either in vernacular or in a mostly intelligible language proximate to the common tongue. Slavonic is near enough to most Slavic languages as is Latin to French and Italian. If not directly understood, the gospel readings would be comprehended to some degree and decorated with some ornament of mystery. A few oddities did and do exist, like Classical Arabic, which is far removed from vernacular Arabic. We Anglophonic men also seem to have been born outside of the Lord's good liturgical graces, condemned to a bastard Germanic language well removed from the tongues of liturgy.
Above all the reading of the Gospel was the greatest encounter with the spoken word of God a human being would have. God the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets and Christ spoke to the Apostles His commandments. Christ wrote nothing, but He did say, "Blessed are they who hear the word of God and who keep it." The extravagant actions of the Greek rite and the Scriptural narration of the Office and fore-Mass in the Roman rite climaxed with the solemn speaking of God-made-Man. The words of Christ and the actions of Christ are renewed in the presence of the faithful for their edification and holiness. Previous generations, enriched in their poverty of electronic entertainment and television, understood that anticipation and fulfillment meet the imagination's ideas about God. Gestures, actions, and words together synthesize into a taxis which follows the plan of Revelation: the anticipation of the prophets and the fulfillment of Christ.
The marriage of Protestantism and book-printing changed the purpose of the word of God in people's minds. What was something sacred and removed became a pocket-size product for individual interpretation and personal consumption. A Romanian friend once confided that his mother had never heard of a Bible before she came to America: "Oh yes, we have the prophets and the gospels, but not everything bound up in one nifty package." St. Augustine recalls in his Confessions that when the child said "Take and read" he picked up the letters of St. Paul, not the Revised Standard Version. There is nothing wrong reading the Scriptures on one's own outside a liturgical setting for knowledge or spiritual meditation, but who will deny that generally the accessibility of the words of God has resulted in a decline of reverence for those words. God's word has become my Bible. Some well meaning but very lost celebrants of the Pauline spoken Mass try too hard to imbue rediscovered significance in the spoken Gospel by "proclaiming" the "Good news" in theatrical voices punctuated by long, awkward pauses and eye-piercing stares at the congregation. Father, you are trying too hard. The religion founded on [most of] the Bible has reduced the Bible's gravitas. Combined with emotionally and intellectually dulling forms of entertainment like television, the abecedarian approach to Scripture given to us by the Protestants has removed our awe in encountering and keeping the Word of God when we hear it.
In spite of these losses, hope is not gone. Even in the reformed rites of Holy Week ('62 or Pauline) people find the non-Sacramental gestures and readings powerful. People attend these rites for these ceremonies and readings almost exclusively. Were Thursday of Holy Week just a Mass, how many would attend? Most go because of what makes it unique: the reading of the Mandatum periscope and the washing of the feet. The same is true for the singing of the Passion and the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday as well as the blessing of the fire and the prophecies on Holy Saturday. They are going to find Christ in His words and actions, something previous Catholics were able to see more regularly than we can, who Platonically peer into the water which reflects the Sun those before us saw so brilliantly.
As a follow up to this post on the Liturgy of the Hours, I would like to share this brief comparison of the Roman rite as various stages in the last four a half centuries.
Liturgy & Feast
I Vespers
Mattins/Lauds
Mass
II Vespers
1570: Octave day of St. Lawrence
Vespers of St. Lawrence; comm. X Sun. after Pentecost and oct. of
Assmpt.
Festive. Three nocturnes of three psalms and three lessons; last
lesson concatenates dominical readings. Comm. of Sunday and Marian oct. at
Lauds
Of St Lawrence. Comm. of Sunday and oct. of Assmpt. Last Gospel from
Sunday
Vespers of St. Lawrence; comm. X Sun. after Pentecost and oct. of
Assmpt.
1910: St. Joachim
Vespers of St. Joachim; comm. X Sunday after Pentecost, oct. day of
St. Lawrence, oct. of Assmpt., and of St Hyacinth
Festive. Three nocturnes of three psalms and three lessons; last
lesson concatenates dominical readings. Comm. of Sunday, St. Lawrence oct.
day, Marian oct. and St. Hyacinth at Lauds
Of St Joachim. Comm. of Sunday, St. Lawrence oct. day, Marian oct.
and St. Hyacinth at Lauds. Last Gospel from Sunday
Vespers of St. Joachim; comm. X Sunday after Pentecost, oct. day of
St. Lawrence, oct. of Assmpt., and of St Hyacinth
St Pius X: X Sunday after Pentecost
Vespers of St. Joachim, comm. of oct. day of St Lawrence, X Sunday
after Pentecost, St. Hyacinth, and oct. of Assmpt.
Of Sunday, three nocturnes of three psalms and three lessons; comm.
of St. Hyacinth, oct. day of St. Lawrence and Marian. Oct. at Lauds
Of Sunday. Comm. of oct. day of St. Lawrence, St Hyacinth, and oct.
of Assmpt.
Optional private Mass of St.. Joachim with comm. of Sunday and proper
Last Gospel
Of Sunday. Comm. of oct. day of St. Lawrence, St Hyacinth, and oct.
of Assmpt.
1962: X Sunday after Pentecost
Vespers of St. Joachim, comm. of X Sunday after Pentecost
Of Sunday. One nocturne of nine psalms and three lessons.
Of Sunday.
Of Sunday.
Paul VI: XXth Sunday of “Ordinary Time”
Evening Prayer scheme I for Sundays of Ordinary Time
Of Sunday. Three psalms and two [very long] readings
Of Sunday. Readings of year A
Of Sunday.
I am sure some of this is wrong, so JohnR and Rubricarius can disabuse me of my errors. The Rad Trad advocates no specific year here, although he would not mind the 1570 scheme with St. Joachim permanently fixed for August 16.
This blog fondly analyzes and discusses less considered aspects of the old Roman liturgy which have been lost both during the mid-20th century reforms and the cultural milieu in the days prior to then. Among these forgotten facets is the Divine Office. For more thoughts on the Office changes in general click here.
The changes to the Divine Office in the 20th century were more radical than those to the Mass and they occurred in several turns. There was the new psalter, kalendar ranking system, and rubrics governing feasts in 1911-1913, the drastic reduction in readings and feasts as well as another re-ranking in 1956-1960, the abolition of Prime in 1964 and the introduction of vernacular, and then the full blown new Office in 1970 with translations becoming available over the following five years. Unlike the Mass, which although different in much of its content at least retained its primitive outline (entrance, readings, Gospel, offertory, Canon, Communion, dismissal), both the structure and the ornament of the Office were re-done entirely.
Except for the so-called "Office of Readings," all the hours follow the same structure of an introduction, a hymn, three psalms (often fragments and often Biblical texts other than the psalms), a reading, and a canticle (sometimes non-song text made into song) followed by petitions and the dismissal. The readings hour may be recited at any time. Lauds and Vespers are rebranded Morning and Evening Prayer. And the little hours are replaced by three choices of "Daytime Prayer"—only one need be used. The old journey through the psalms to the Benedictus or Magnificat at the major hours or the familiar simplicity of the [mostly] unchanging minor hours is gone. The "Readings" Office is the oddest of them all, with long, turgid passages that are unsingable and clearly meant to be read sitting in a chair. Another unique feature of the Pauline Office is that since now Mattins/Readings may be read at any time prior to Vespers, the psalm that began Mattins in the old rite (94/95) has been misplaced to whatever hour is celebrated first.
Below is a comparison of Lauds for Holy Saturday in the old rite, for which I take the pre-Pius X as the text, and the Pauline Morning Prayer for the same day, copied from ebreviary.com's edition using the English Grail psalter.
Old Roman
Pauline
None
Invitatory rites
None
Hymn
Ps. 50, 42, 62 & 66, Canticle of Ezekiel, ps. 148-150
Ps. 64, Canticle of Isaiah, ps. 150
Responsory (replaces chapter for Triduum)
Reading from Osee 5:15-16:2
Benedictus with antiphon Mulieres
Benedictus
with antiphon Save us/Salva nos
Oration Christus factus est and
psalm 50
Pseudo-Byzantine intercessory prayers
Prayer Respice, concluding
in silence
Concluding rites
Some features of the Pauline Office for this day are thoroughly un-traditional, such as having a hymn or using Gloria Patri.... during the Triduum, a time in which the rubrics and prayers are somewhat like those for a Requiem Mass and Office because the Church is in mourning. The old Benedictus antiphon about the women at the tomb—and the stone cold tomb is the point of consideration for this day—is replaced by a general text about salvation. The intercessory prayers, which in the Pauline Office are subject to options, as printed have the Greek response "Lord, have mercy" after each petition, but lack the character of the Byzantine litanies; Roman responsories are traditionally that, with the two sides of the choir exchanging prayers, something un-accomplished here. And the subtle, silent ending of the old Lauds is replaced with "May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen."
Lastly, the inversion of the old Office seen in praying Vespers after the morning Mass and Mattins and Lauds in the darkening evening, a strong reflection of one's spirit during the Triduum and the uniqueness of this time of year, is discarded in favor of using the same prayers and rubrics as are used the entire year round. Mattins and Lauds, since 1955/6, are now prayed in the morning as they are every other time of year during public recitation and Vespers (non-existent in the Pian Holy Week actually) are prayed at night.* Of course the strepitus, symbolizing the earthquake when our Lord died on the Cross, also died in 1955/6.
The new Holy Saturday Morning Prayer may not be heterodox, but it is heteropractic.
For more on the old Holy Saturday, especially the Mass with pictures, click here.
* = to be fair, there are provisions for praying the Pauline Readings and Morning Prayer at night, but scheduling often puts this at an un-pastoral hour like 10:00 PM.
Let me begin with a clarification concerning my most recent post: it was an April Fools joke, clearly visible at the bottom of the page, and not a serious posture concerning the liturgy, papacy, Ultramontanism, or general Catholic life. Private correspondence has shewn not a little confusion over this post. Next time, just scroll....
Now let us consider one of the most and least discussed aspects of the new liturgy, the transitional liturgy, and the old liturgy: the Office. We talk about the Office often on this blog, particularly as it existed prior to the 1911 reforms. John R and Rubricarius are among those who promote the older Office in some form or another, but discussion of the unreformed Office on this blog usually contrasts it with the Divine Office of Pius XII/John XXIII (same commission made alterations of both popes). The 1961 Office used as the "extraordinary form" is based on the Pian psalter of 1911, a heavily reduced kalendar, fewer patristic readings, and the Missal used at the same time. And the 1961 is very reduced when compared to the 1911 Office, which is itself reduced from the 1570-1910 Office. Consider that this past Monday one using the Tridentine Office would have prayed:
12 psalms at Mattins with 3 readings
8 psalms at Lauds with the preces and psalm 129 and then the Suffrages
Mattins and Lauds of the Dead
the full little hours
5 psalms at Vespers with the preces and psalm 50 and then the Suffrages
Compline with the preces
Were one at a collegiate church he would have seen a Lenten ferial Mass and a Mass of the Dead
In the 1961 scheme the preces and Suffrages are gone, 12 full psalms at Mattins and 8 at Lauds are reduced to 9 and 5 fragments respectively. Ditto for Vespers. The Office of the Dead is axed. Previously a private recitation of the Office on a Lenten feria—with the Office of the Dead—would take upward of 90 minutes. The 1961 Office could be prayed in about 45 minutes. Quantity does not equate with quality, but we must admit something has been lost.
This we all know. Let us turn our attention to the Office of Paul VI, the Liturgia Horarum.
The name Liturgia Horarum seems ill-suited for the Office of Pope Paul VI given that it does very little to follow any concept of time. There are comparatively few first Vespers when considered with the ancient Roman Office. Indeed, feasts are rather un-festive and undistinguished from normal days. The ancient Office, and even the Pian Office until 1955, especially emphasized time and creation by extending the great feasts of the Church year for eight days periods called "octaves", signifying the eighth day of creation, the Resurrection, the aeon, the last day of the world. If one were to rank the most important feasts of the older Office theologically and liturgy the top four results in order would likely be:
Pascha
Pentecost
Epiphany/Theophany
Nativity
source: newliturgicalmovement.org
Other great feasts—the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Ss. Peter & Paul, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, Corpus Christi, All Saints and more—similarly broke from the brutal ferial psalter to celebrate the work of Christ through these persons and events for eight days, enlightening every mystery by the Resurrection.
The Liturgia Horarum does none of this, reducing the number of octaves to two (!). The 1961 Office has three octaves, including Pentecost. The LH has just two, the two that the secular world often perceives as the most important Christian holy days: "Easter" and the Nativity.
Perhaps the most apparent and arbitrary feature of the LH is its structure of hours, times, and psalms. Whereas the old Office descended from public prayer vigils prior to great feasts and Sundays, replete with psalms and Scripture readings in alternation, the LH, although in theory a restoration, is actual something meant to be read at a desk or in a chair. The old Office of course was usually said privately by clergy outside of monasteries as was the Pian Office, but both retained the structure and concepts of time latent in the Roman tradition. Moreover both the Pian and ancient Offices are singable because of their psalms and hymns. The LH, with its turgid passages and misuse of non-musical texts, is exclusively readable.
The hourly structure of the Pauline Office reveals the rational attitude towards prayer and religious supplication held by its creators. In the older Office(s) the majors and minors hours varied considerably in their character and purpose, and so their formatting both reflected those causes and effected a uniqueness to those hours which the person praying them could anticipate. For example Mattins begins with psalm 94, a hymn, then between three and twelve psalms followed by scriptural pericopes. The other majors hours were structured to have five "psalms", followed by a hymn, a canticle, and the orations of the day. The minor hours held the same structure except for Compline, which is again unique. With the lonely exception of Mattins, rebranded the "Office of Readings"—again betraying its new essence, every hour of the Pauline LH has the exact same structure: opening rites, a hymn, three fragments of psalms, a short reading, another canticle, some responsory prayers, and an Our Father. The hours must be prayed in order, except for the Office of Readings, but not in entirety. One can pray just one of the three daytime hours, the estranged riche nouveau cousins of the little hours of the Roman Office. The psalms themselves are read in fragments of ten to fifteen lines over the course of four weeks rather than one week. Of course the praying of all the psalms is a Roman practice and not a universal one (psalms in the Byzantine Office hardly ever change), but it is Roman. It is our tradition. It is part of our liturgical mind. The LH, by eviscerating any distinction between the hours and by trekking through bits of the psalms at a time, enters time rather than sanctifying it. What distinguishes "Evening Prayer" from "mid-morning prayer?" The title. Psalm 143 was prayed today at Evening Prayer and will not be prayed again for a month, ensuring very little familiarity with it among those who pray it.
One may be tempted to protest these observations and demonstrate the virtues of the LH by highlighting the increased number of laypersons now praying the Office. Surely this is an improvement over the older state of affairs, is it not? No, it is not. The Divine Office is a public prayer, not a private one. Would one be happy if an increased number of priests were celebrating Masses which no one ever attended? Surely not. "Liturgy" comes to us from a Greek word meaning "public service." The service is one provided by God for us and not the other way around. And never before has the Office been celebrated so sparingly in public. Prior to the 1960s one could certainly find Vespers at some church on a Sunday night in a city or major town. Most well staffed churches had Tenebrae during the Triduum. In the local rites Vespers would be interpolated into the Communion rites for the Triduum. Even today in Oxford one could have a pick of Vespers on a Sunday night (Oratory, Blackfriars, Ordinariate). The average parish today however never so much as considers a public celebration of the Office, and why should it? The same things the Rad Trad finds troublesome about recited Mass hold true for the LH: its spoken nature makes following it and praying it exceedingly difficult.
There are some things in the LH which are [mild] restorations. Clement VIII reduced the length of many Mattins lessons in the ancient Office for the convenience of priests. The LH revives the idea of long readings, but not necessarily the longer readings themselves. On the whole, not an inspiring liturgy.
I have prayed the LH on maybe four occasions in my life, all of them times when a friend of mine happened to have his hard copy LH and would not listen to reason. What is your experience?
P/S - for a detailed illustration of the Roman Office in different stages of its existence look here.
The Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Newton (aka the Melkite Catholic diocese of the United States) has given a wonderful Christmas present to the faithful this year. The gift is a small book, 87 pages and about the size of the palm of my hand, called A Book of the Hours. It is an abbreviation of the Byzantine Divine Office (missing the variable daily parts) arranged for use by the faithful at any point in the day. An appendix in the back has the introductory rites for the various hours, some of the more common troparia (Greek antiphons), prayers for before and after meals, and Communion devotions.
We are thankful to the bishop of Newton, Nicholas Samra, for this kind and clairvoyant means of uniting our personal prayers with those of the Church universal.
No, not that secular commercial holiday called Christmas (not to be confused with the Holy Day called Christmas) which is preceded by a month or so of mindless ditties about snow and "40% off overpriced stuff" sales. The most wonderful time of the year for the Rad Trad is Advent, the time during which we contemplate the unspeakable mystery of the Incarnation and the period before it, an epoch of hope for a salvation not then visible.
Advent is a time for thinking about sin, more so than Lent in my book. During Christ's 40 days in the desert and the days leading up to the Triduum He at least dwelt on earth and walked among men like us. The people of prior times had no such consolation. They had hope, or at least those aware of their own sins had hope. Without sin why yearn for redemption? Without falling why rise? Without darkness why seek light? When I sin I can drive a few miles to a parish that has daily Confession and take a "spiritual shower." What about the peoples of that time before Christ, whose difficulties are recalled during Advent? Advent seems to be the proper time for reflection on sin, on one's burning need for God's mercy in every moment of life, and on the great gift given to us at the end of it, the Incarnation. As St. Athanasius wrote, "God became man so that man might become God."
My challenge to readers is, if you do not already, to pray one major hour of the older Divine Office every day of Advent and through the Octave of Christmas. Oh no, that's a whole month! Exactly. You will appreciate Christmas all the more when it comes at the end of a month's rumination on sin and forgiveness with the Church. It will mean all the more when its mysteries permeate your life for an entire week. As always, I suggest Vespers or Lauds. It is customary during Advent and Lent to pray the Office of the Dead on Mondays in addition to the Office of the day. If you do not have the time for both (although Vespers/Lauds can easily be recited in seven minutes or so) I would pick the Office of the Dead on Mondays and the regular Office on weekdays just for the sake of some balance. However, if you do this do not pray the Office of the Dead on Monday December 23rd; instead pray the Office of the day so that you might have the seasonal "O" antiphon.
On a related note, please notice that the tab for the Officium Defunctorum is now gone as there will be no more opportunities to pray for the dead this month.
In the not-so-distant future the Rad Trad will give a very brief, one post overview of the development of the ancient Roman psalter and the Office surrounding it. The ancient psalter survived Pope Nicholas III's imposition of the Franciscan Breviary secundum usum Curiae Romanae, but the rest of the Office was not so lucky. Yet some of the ancient Office continues in the pre-1911 Tenebrae offices, as well as Vespers and Compline of the Triduum, Mattins and Lauds of Pascha and Pentecost, and Mattins of Epiphany. Structural hints also survive in the Officium Defunctorum.
Many readers are aware that St. Pius X re-distributed the psalms in a seemingly unprecedented move with the Apostolic Constitution Divino Afflatu. What some may not know is that the rest of the Office (the translation of the psalms, the antiphons, the use of hymns, the introductory rites etc.) underwent a similar revolution in the high Middle Ages. The more ancient Roman Office had survived in the major basilicas of Rome into the twelfth century. By the early thirteenth Innocent III lamented that the ancient Office and Mass were only used by the Papal Court on feast of St. Peter's Chair in Rome! More on how the transition happened later. Still, at least in some capacity, the ancient Office survives!
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