Liturgical Musings

Recently, some of my parishioners approached me and suggested that I start blogging again.  I didn't really have the courage to say what a total failure I am at blogging, being sporadic at best.  It's not that I don't have anything to say--anyone who knows me understands that that's far from accurate.  I suppose I've just never thought that I had anything to say that's worth reading.  Well, multiple parishioners (read: more than one) disagree, and so I have elected to try, yet again, to grace the internet world with my presence.  I begin by offering various reflections that I have been composing for my own parish bulletin, "The Lewis County Catholic Times."  

These "Liturgical Musings," as they are known, were never intended for distribution beyond my parish.  Some of the content is rather parish-specific, and many of them, due to a lack of space and time, lack academic citations and are not nearly as well-researched as they might otherwise be.  Nevertheless, I present here the first of my "Liturgical Musings" which was a note on the Common Postures at Mass.  

By way of a little context, several years ago the Bishop of our Diocese decreed that the Faithful should remain standing after the Agnus Dei as a means of establishing a common posture for this part of the Mass.  Recently there has been much discussion in the Diocese about whether the current Bishop should rescind this decree in order to conform to all of the dioceses which surround ours--and from which we receive many confused visitors.  Having fielded several questions, I elected to write the following to my parishioners:

A Note on Common Posture

To kneel or not to kneel: that is the question.  Several have made known their observation that a number of our parishioners are no longer standing following the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).  I offer here a brief clarification.  In 2003, Bishop Schmitt issued a directive establishing for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston specific common postures within the Mass.  This came as a result of the publication of the latest version of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) attached to the Third Edition of the Roman Missal (the one which was fully implemented in 2011).  The GIRM instructs that “[t]he faithful kneel after the Agnus Dei unless the Diocesan Bishop determines otherwise” (no. 43).  The GIRM further states that to be avoided is any imposition of “private inclination or arbitrary choice.”  As the posture of standing was established that in our Diocese the faithful are to remain standing, that is what ought to happen.
All things being equal, however, there is no shortage of variation of this norm in our nation and even within our own diocese.  Ultimately, a priest or bishop may give instruction, but it is up to the faithful to determine for themselves that which most effectively “expresses the intentions and spiritual attitude of the participants” (GIRM no. 42).  As an act of conscience, an individual may always adopt a posture most conducive to his or her own spiritual well-being, and no ecclesial authority may infringe upon that right.  This applies not merely to the sit/stand/kneel of participation at Mass, but applies rather to all aspects of our worship of God, including whether one receives Holy Communion standing or kneeling, in the hand or on the tongue, etc.  The GIRM claims that the Church assigns common postures as a means of seeking to demonstrate the unity of Faith in a visible manner.  However, our Catholic liturgical tradition, which spans 2,000 years and a variety of liturgical rites in the West and the East, hinges on a unity of Faith that exists in spite of variations in worship, not because of it. Thus, any individual who freely deviates from the norms of posture (which are not a matter of theology but of discipline) as a matter of conscience can no more be seen to be rejecting the Church’s authority than if he or she were to dare to kneel and silently pray during the Entrance Hymn or Offertory!
In summation, as the parish priest, I am obliged to inform the faithful of Diocesan norms, but I remain without authority to enforce anything which might impinge upon an individual’s conscience or personal piety.

Some thoughts on Passiontide

For those of you paying attention, yesterday was the Fifth Sunday of Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday (not to be confused with Palm Sunday, on which the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ is first proclaimed).  Having noticed an outbreak of liturgical minimalism and spiritual mediocrity in my part of the world with regard to some of the most beautiful and ancient traditions that the Roman Rite has to offer vis a vis Passiontide, I submit to you some reflections from that indomitable liturgical scholar, Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB.

During the preceding four weeks, we have noticed how the malice of Jesus' enemies has been gradually increasing.  His very presence irritates them; and it is evident that any little circumstance will suffice to bring the deep and long-nurtured hatred to a head.  The kind and gentle manners of Jesus are drawing to Him all hearts that are simple and upright; at the same time, the humble life He leads, and the stern purity of His doctrines, are perpetual sources of vexation and anger, both to the proud Jew that looks forward to the Messiah being a mighty conqueror, and to the pharisee, who corrupts the Law of God, that he may make it the instrument of his own base passions.  Still, Jesus goes on working miracles; His discourses are more than ever energetic; His prophecies foretell the fall of Jerusalem, and such a destruction of its famous temple, that not a stone is to be left on a stone.  

The doctors of the Law should, at least, reflect upon what they hear; they should examine these wonderful works, which render such strong testimony in favor of the Son of David; and they should consult those divine prophecies which, up to the present time, have been so literally fulfilled in His person.  Alas! they themselves are about to carry them out to the very last iota.  There is not a single outrage or suffering foretold by David and Isaiah, as having to be put upon the Messiah, which these blind men are not scheming to verify.  [And the same lamentable conduct that characterizes the Synagogue of the day] is but too often witnessed nowadays in those sinners, who, by habitual resistance to the light, end by finding their happiness in sin.  

Neither should it surprise us, that we we find in people of our own generation a resemblance to the murderers of our Jesus: the history of His Passion will reveal to us many sad secrets of the human heart and its perverse inclinations; for what happened in Jerusalem, happens also in every sinner's heart.  His heart, according to St. Paul, is a Calvary, where Jesus is crucified.  There is the same ingratitude, the same blindness, the same wild madness, with this difference: that the sinner who is enlightened by faith, knows Him whom he crucifies...

Everything around us urges us to mourn  The images of the saints, the very crucifix on our altar, are veiled from our sight.  The Church is oppressed with grief.  During the first four weeks of Lent, she compassionated her Jesus fasting in the desert; His coming sufferings and crucifixion and death are what now fill her with anguish...It is to express this deep humiliation that the Church veils the cross...Let us go back, in thought, to the sad day of the first sin, when Adam and Eve hid themselves because a guilty conscience told them they were naked...Our first parents sought to hide themselves from the sight of God.  But it will not be thus forever.

This Sunday is called Passion Sunday because the Church begins, on this day, to make the sufferings of our Redeemer her chief thought. 

We owe it to ourselves during this blessed Passiontide to seek to be drawn into the great salvific mystery of Christ's suffering and death by meditating day and night on how it was not the scribes and pharisees who crucified Our Lord, but our own sins--past, present, and future.  How great a mystery it is to contemplate how our sins--the very sins that scourged Him, that crowned Him with thorns, that placed a cross on His shoulders, that mocked and beat Him, that drove nails into His hands and feet, that pierced His heart with a lance--should be overcome by the very agony that they inflicted...that the great death that they brought about would ultimately be their very nullification!  

It's not too late for us all to make of this Passiontide an intense spiritual exercise by which we become more acutely aware of our sins, and by which we seek to hide ourselves from the gaze of Almighty God, that, in being truly repentant and seeking forgiveness, we might be called to that Heavenly Banquet wherein we may look upon the face of God and bask in the rays of His ineffable glory at Christ's Resurrection, and in the life to come!

(Cynical re-cap: Stop being pansies.  Veil your images.  Repent.  Acknowledge your sins.  Confess them. Gain Eternal Life.)

Halfway there...

My apologies for the unexpected cessation of posts...as they say, "Lent happens!"

For your consideration, some inspirational words from Dom Prosper Guéranger in The Liturgical Year.  (Just pretend it's still Thursday of the Third Week of Lent!)

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This day brings us to the middle of Lent, and is called mid-Lent Thursday.  It is the twentieth of the forty fasts imposed upon us, at this holy season, by the Church.  The Greeks call the Wednesday of this week Mesonestios, that is, the mid-fast.  They give this name to the entire week,which, in their liturgy, is the fourth of the seven that form their Lent.  But the Wednesday is, with them, a solemn feast, and a day of rejoicing, whereby they animate themselves to courage during the rest of the season.  The Catholic nations of the West, though they do not look on this day as a feast, have always kept it with some degree of festivity and joy.  The Church of Rome has countenanced the custom by her own observance of it; but, in order not to give a pretext to dissipation, which might interfere with the spirit of fasting, she postpones to the following Sunday the formal expression of this innocent joy, as we shall see further on.  Yet, it is not against the spirit of the Church that this mid-day of Lent should not be marked by some demonstration of gladness; for example, by sending invitations to friends, as our Catholic forefathers used to do; and serving up to table choicer and more abundant food than on other days of Lent, taking care, however, that the laws of the Church are strictly observed.  But alas! how many even of those calling themselves Catholics have been breaking, for the past twenty days, these laws of abstinence and fasting!  Whether the dispensations they trust to be lawfully or unlawfully obtained, the joy of mid-Lent THursday scarcely seems made for them.  To experience this joy, one must have earned and merited it, by penance, by privations, by bodily mortifications; which is just what so many, now-a-days, cannot think of doing.  Let us pray for them, that God would enlighten them, and enable them to see what they are bound to do, consistently with the faith they profess.

At Rome, the Station is at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, in the forum.  The Christians of the middle ages (as we learn from Durandus, in his Rationale of the Divine Offices) were under the impression that this Station was chosen because these two saints were, by profession, physicians.  The Church, according to this explanaton, would not only offer up her prayers of this day for the souls, but also for the bodies of her children: she would draw down upon them--fatigued as she knew they must be by their observance of abstinence and fasting--the protection of these holy martyrs, who, whilst on earth, devoted their medical skill to relieving the corporal ailments of their brethren.  The remarks made by the learned liturgiologist Gavantus, in reference to this interpretation, lead us to conclude that, although it may possibly not give us the real motive of the Church's selecting this Station, yet it is not to be rejected.  It will, at least, suggest to the faithful to recommend themselves to these saints, and to ask of God, through their intercession, that they may have the necessary courage and strength for persevering to the end of the holy season in what they have, so far, faithfully observed.

Ash Wednesday

To begin the Holy Season of Lent, I can think of nothing more appropriate than to present here the full text of the Ash Wednesday reflection of Dom Guéranger, OSB, from his magnum opus, The Liturgical Year.  His liturgical writings are some of the most profound I've ever come across, and it has convinced me of what I am now sure will become my mantra: To know the Sacred Liturgy is to know the Heart of the Church.

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ASH WEDNESDAY

Yesterday, the world was busy in its pleasures, and the very children of God were taking a joyous farewell to mirth: but this morning, all is changed.  The solemn announcement, spoken of by the prophet, has been proclaimed in Sion: the solemn fast of Lent, the season of expiation, the approach of the great anniversaries of our Redemption.  Let us, then, rouse ourselves, and prepare for the spiritual combat.

But in this battling of the spirit against the flesh we need good armor.  Our holy mother the Church knows how much we need it; and therefore does she summon us to enter into the house of God, that she may arm us for the holy contest.  What this armor is we know from St. Paul, who just describes it: "Have your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice.  And your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.  In all things, taking the shield of faith.  Take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6: 14-17)."  The very prince of the apostles, too, addresses these solemn words to us: "Christ having suffered in the flesh, be ye also armed with the same thought" (1 Peter 4:1).  We are entering, today, upon a long campaign of the warfare spoken of by the apostles: forty days of battle, forty days of penance.  We shall not turn cowards, if our souls can but be impressed with the conviction, that the battle and the penance must be gone through.  Let us listen to the eloquence of the solemn rite which opens our Lent.  Let us go whither our mother leads us, that is, to the scene of the fall.

The enemies we have to fight with are of two kinds: internal and external.  The first are our passions; the second are the devils.  Both were brought on us by pride, and man's pride began when he refused to obey his God.  God forgave him his sin, but He punished him.  The punishment was death, and this was the form of the divine sentence: "Thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return" (Genesis 3:19).  Oh that we had remembered this!  The recollection of what we are and what we are to be would have checked that haughty rebellion, which has so often led us to break the law of God.  And if, for the time to come, we would persevere in loyalty to Him, we must humble ourselves, accept the sentence, and look on this present life as a path to the grave.  The path may be long of short; but to the tomb it must lead us.  Remembering this, we shall see all things in their true light.  We shall love that God who has deigned to set His heart on us notwithstanding our being creatures of death: we shall hate, with deepest contrition, the insolence and ingratitude, wherewith we have spent so many of our few days of life, that is, in sinning against our heavenly Father: and we shall be not only willing, but eager, to go through these days of penance, which He so mercifully gives us for making reparation to His offended justice.

This was the motive the Church had in enriching her liturgy with the solemn rite, at which we are to assist this morning.  When, upwards of a thousand years ago, she decreed the anticipation of the lentent fast by the last four days of Quinquagesima week, she instituted this impressive ceremony of singing the forehead of her children with ashes, while saying to them those awful words, wherewith God sentenced us to death: "Remember, oh man, that thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return!"  But the making use of ashes as a symbol of humiliation and penance is of a much earlier date than the institution to which we allude.  We find frequent mention of it in the Old Testament.  Job, though a Gentile, sprinkled his flesh with ashes, that, thus humbled, he might propitiate the divine mercy (Job 16:16): and this was two thousand years before the coming of our Savior.  The royal prophet tells us of himself, that he mingled ashes with his bread, because of the divine anger and indignation (Psalm 101: 10-11).  Many such examples are to be met with in the sacred Scriptures; but so obvious is the analogy between the sinner who thus signifies his grief and the object whereby he signifies it that we read such instances without surprise.  When fallen man would humble himself before the divine justice, which has sentenced his body to return to dust, how could he more aptly express his contrite acceptance of the sentence than by sprinkling himself, or his food, with ashes, which is the dust of wood consumed by fire?  This earnest acknowledgement of his being himself but dust and ashes, is an act of humility, and humility ever gives him confidence in that God, who resists the proud and pardons the humble.

It is probably that, when this ceremony of the Wednesday in Quinquagesima week was first instituted, it was nto intended for all the faithful, but only for such as had committed any of those crimes for which the Church inflicted a public penance.  Before the Mass of the day began, they presented themselves at the church, where the people were all assembled.  The priests received the confession of their sins, and then clothed them in sackcloth, and sprinkled ashes on their heads.  After this ceremony, the clergy and the faithful prostrated, and recited aloud the seven Penitential Psalms.  A procession, in which the penitents walked barefooted, then followed; and on its return, the bishop addressed these words to the penitents: "Behold, we drive you from the doors of the church by reason of your sins and crimes, as Adam, the first man, was driven out of paradise because of his transgression."  The clergy then sang several responsories, taken from the Book of Genesis, in which mention was made of the sentence pronounced by God when he condemned man to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, for that the earth was cursed on account of sin.  The doors were then shut, and the penitents were not to pass the threshold until Maundy Thursday, when they were to come and receive absolution.

Dating from the eleventh century, the discipline of public penance began to fall into disuse, and the holy rite of putting ashes on the heads of all the faithful indiscriminately became so general that, at length, it was considered as forming an essential part of the Roman liturgy.  Formerly, it was the practice to approach bare-footed to receive this solemn memento of our nothingness; and in the twelfth century, even the Pope himself, when passing from the church of St. Anastasia to that of St. Sabina, at which the station was held, went the whole distance bare-footed, as also did the Cardinals who accompanied him.  The Church no longer requires this exterior penance; but she is as anxious as ever that the holy ceremony, at which we are about to assist, should produce in us the sentiments she intended to convey by it, when she first instituted it.

As we have just mentioned, the station in Rome is at St. Sabina, on the Aventine Hill.  It is under the patronage of this holy martyr that we open the penitential season of Lent.