Clear Creek Abbey in northwest Oklahoma (diocese of Tulsa: located at 5804 W Monastery Road in Hulbert) will once again be hosting a week-long instruction in Gregorian chant, based on the course called Laus in Ecclesia, from Monday, July 13, to Friday, July 17. The course will be offered at three different levels of instruction:
1) Laus in Ecclesia, level 1, for beginners: Gregorian initiation, covering the basics of Gregorian chant, that is, reading the neums, rhythm, modality, Latin pronunciation and verbal rhythm. This level targets the beginner or simply amateur in Gregorian. The student must know how to hold a tune. ~ Instructor: Kathy Reinheimer.
2) Laus in Ecclesia, level 2, for cantors: covering Gregorian Psalmody and the Divine Office, this level builds on and sharpens the skills learned in the first degree. Prequisites to join level 2: Level 1 or equivalent. Instructor: Mark Donnelly.
3) Laus in Ecclesia, level 3, for directors of scholae: the concentration is on chironomy and the interpretation of bigger Gregorian pieces. Instructor: Br. Mark Bachmann, OSB.
Opportunities to sing the chant: two Masses sung in Gregorian chant by the sessionists; daily Prime in the morning, Compline at night. In the evening, attendance at monastic Vespers at the abbey is recommended.
Lodging is available on site.
More information and the link for registration can be found at the Clear Creek Abbey website: https://clearcreekmonks.org/learnchant/.
https://clearcreekmonks.org/learnchant/.
This is the first in a four-part series in which I explore what art is, what makes it beautiful, and why beauty matters – not merely aesthetically, but also theologically and even economically.
Over these four posts, I hope to lay out a coherent Christian philosophy of art and beauty, drawing on classical thought, the insights of St Thomas Aquinas, and the living tradition of the Church. This week, I begin at the beginning: with the question of what art actually is. It sounds almost too simple to ask, and yet we live in an age that has quietly abandoned any agreed answer – with consequences that surround us on every side. I will also consider what distinguishes good art from bad, and what makes art distinctively Christian, arguing that a work need not carry an explicitly religious subject matter to be genuinely Christian in spirit.
The Million Dollar Banana, conceptual art, by Maurizio Cattelan, Italian, 2024
We live in an age that has largely lost confidence in its own artistic tradition – an age that fills galleries with objects whose claim to be “art” rests not on beauty, skill, or purpose, but on the artist’s assertion alone. To recover a culture of beauty, we must begin at the beginning: with a clear understanding of what art actually is, what makes it good, and what makes it distinctively Christian. This long article sets out to do precisely that. Drawing on the ancient traditions of both Greece and Rome, on the philosophical insights of St. Thomas Aquinas, and on the living wisdom preserved in the Church’s artistic heritage, we will explore art not as an arbitrary exercise in self-expression, but as a purposeful act of making – one rooted in skill, ordered toward beauty, and capable, at its highest reaches, of drawing the human soul toward God. Along the way, we will consider how beauty is known and judged, why tradition is a more reliable guide to it than individual taste or critical fashion, and why the creation of beautiful things is not a luxury to be weighed against other needs, but a form of participation in God’s own creative work that pays for itself.
What is Art?
The word ‘art’ can have a variety of meanings today, and it might be impossible to come up with a definition that all will accept, but here we will focus on ideas of art that are likely to appeal to the traditionally minded Christian and for which we might find a consensus amongst non-Christians also.
Looking to traditional understandings in Western culture, we find that the ancient Greek techne and Latin ars both denoted “skill,” “craft,” or “technique” – a learned proficiency in creating or producing, encompassing all practical trades, such as carpentry, as well as what today we might call the fine arts, such as poetry or painting. An “artefact” is the product of techne in action, and the artisan is the one who creates an artifact. When we speak of an “artist” today, we typically have in mind someone who creates works of fine art.
But how precisely would we define fine art today? How does the mainstream art world define it? We want to answer this question, if only to be sure that when we discuss art with others, we at least know what they believe it to be.
One might think that the major art galleries would provide a definition, given that their whole raison d’être is the exhibition of art. However, a review of the websites of major art galleries such as MoMA, Tate, and the National Galleries of England and America doesn’t provide much help. In fact, I couldn’t find any definitions. Perhaps they assume we all know what art is and that a definition is unnecessary; or perhaps they hesitate to put anything in words because they struggle to find a definition that applies to all the artifacts they show in their galleries.
The British Museum, which is more traditional in its outlook, provides (albeit buried in a training program newsletter) a good working definition of what we would call fine art, closer to the ancient idea of art as the product of techne, as described above. This can be a good working definition for us. It says:
“The definition of art can vary depending on the context and the cultural, social, and historical background in which it is created. However, art in general can be defined as a creative expression of human skill and imagination that aims to communicate an idea, emotion, or message to an audience. This can include a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, music, literature, film, and other forms of artistic expression.” 1
Good Art and Christian Art
For Christians, adopting this working definition from the British Museum and building on it, we might then ask: what constitutes good art? And, what constitutes Christian art?
In response, I would say that good art is art (as defined above – “a creative expression of human skill and imagination”) that fulfills a good purpose well. We define a good purpose as one consistent with a Christian worldview. This means that art can be Christian even if it does not explicitly express a religious theme or message. For example, a beautiful landscape that communicates the beauty of Creation is a work of Christian art, even if the artist had no explicitly religious intention in painting it and was not a Christian himself.
We would further say that all art is a manifestation of an idea (which might also be an emotion or a message) or an image that first exists in the artist’s imagination before being fashioned into material form. This picture in the artist’s imagination is, in traditional Christian anthropology, taken directly or assembled as a composite from information gained through sensual experience.
The creation of art, from the Christian perspective, is bound up with the creation of something beautiful. Art requires beauty to fulfill its purpose – if a work is not beautiful, it is not good; this might seem a strange proposition given that there is a place for the representation of ugliness, evil, and suffering in art. However, if the art is to portray a Christian understanding of these things, it must also communicate the purpose of these evils within the economy of grace. God must permit evil in the world for good reason, and it is the responsibility of the Christian artist to communicate that message, too. Otherwise, he is not communicating the full truth
For the Christian, even in the face of evil, suffering, and ugliness, there is hope. When infused with hope, the portrayal of these otherwise ugly realities becomes beautiful. This is exemplified by depictions of the Crucifixion. A well-executed Crucifixion is a beautiful work of art. This beauty is created through the artist's treatment of the image – through skillful choices in line, tone, contrast, and composition, for example. In this way, a good artist presents the greatest crime ever committed without diminishing the profound evil it signifies, but rather by infusing the work with Christian hope – a hope that surpasses all the evil and suffering depicted.
Crucifixion, Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, French, 19th century. Using the baroque style, the artist intentionally contrasts the light on Christ with darkness to symbolize the Light overcoming evil and suffering. This stylistic choice is meant to communicate a sense of hope.
To depict suffering or evil without simultaneously offering hope is, for a Christian, not the full truth. It presents an incomplete picture that can lead to despair. It is through beauty that Christ’s hope is communicated to us, for beauty naturally speaks of God's love (more on beauty later).
Sacred art is the highest form of art, characterized by an explicitly sacred or religious purpose. Liturgical art—created to help us worship God – is the noblest form of sacred art, since worship of God is the highest expression of love for Him and the greatest human activity.
For Christians, the creation of art is intertwined with the pursuit of beauty and divine inspiration. When we recognize the goodness of a work of art, we call it beautiful. As such, good art serves as a sign of the divine – beauty in good art is a visible sign of the work of the unseen God, either as Creator, as seen in the beauty of the universe, or as the God who inspired its creation, through human effort. Therefore, beauty tends to awaken in us a desire for something greater than what we see – the source of that beauty, who is God Himself.
As the Church reaches the culmination of the liturgical year in the ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter, the tenor of the lectionary shifts; where the first four weeks of Lent focus on lessons for the catechumens who will be baptized at Easter, Passiontide, and especially Holy Week, closely follows the events of the Lord’s death and Resurrection. As in the earlier part of Lent, and indeed the other seasons when stations are kept, the choice of Roman stational churches in Holy Week is closely tied to the Scriptural readings of the Masses. A notable difference is that where the earlier part of Lent took the Pope and his court to every corner of the city’s historical center, the stations of Holy Week are all quite close to the ancient papal residence at the Lateran. The furthest away is Santa Prisca, just a little over a mile distant, with the rest being much closer; the Pope and his court would thus keep their travel to a minimum in a period of lengthy and taxing ceremonies.
On Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry of the Savior into Jerusalem is quite rightly celebrated at the cathedral of Rome dedicated in His name. In the early Middle Ages, a large number of chapels and oratories were constructed by various Popes around the Lateran basilica; one of these was dedicated to Pope St. Sylvester I, and large enough that at least one medieval source refers to it as a basilica. The palms for the procession were blessed there by the cardinal archpriest of St. Lawrence outside-the-Walls, and then brought to the large dining hall known as the triclinium of St. Leo III; there, the Pope distributed them to the clergy and faithful, before the procession made its way through the complex into the cathedral itself. In the later Middle Ages, the Popes often preferred to reside at the Vatican, and so Palm Sunday also has a station informally assigned at St. Peter’s; on these occasions, the palms were blessed in an oratory known as S. Maria in Turri (St. Mary in-the-Tower), directly underneath the bell-tower within the large courtyard that stood before the ancient basilica. During the extensive renovations of the Lateran and Vatican complexes in the 16th and 17th centuries, S. Sylvester in Laterano and S. Maria in Turri were both demolished; and nowadays, the Pope routinely celebrates Palm Sunday at St. Peter’s.
The Basilica of St. Peter as it stood ca. 1450, by H.W. Brewer.
Ss. Sylvester I and Leo III both sat upon the chair of St. Peter during events of the greatest importance for the history of relations between Church and State. Sylvester was the first Pope to be elected under the peace granted by the Emperor Constantine, and received the property of the Lateran as a gift from him; he was later held to be the recipient of the temporal state of the Church as part of the so-called Donation of Constantine. While this document has long been known to be a fiction, it did not create the Papal State, but rather a legal sanction for the long-standing de facto possession of central Italy by the Papacy after the collapse of the Roman Empire. St. Leo III was the Pope who crowned Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor, after his predecessor had effectively made the Papal State a protectorate of the Frankish empire. The blessing and distribution of the palms in parts of the Lateran complex associated with these Popes is probably behind the text of the preface which forms part of the blessing of the palms in the Missal of St. Pius V; as many liturgical writers have noted, it is unusual as a preface in that it makes no specific reference to the occasion on which it is used.
Truly it is worthy and just etc. … Who gloriest in the counsel of Thy Saints. For Thy creatures serve Thee, because they know Thee to be their only author and God, and all Thou hast made praiseth Thee, and Thy saints bless Thee. Because with free voice they confess the great name of Thy Only-Begotten Son before the kings and powers of this age. Before Whom stand the Angels and Archangels, Thrones and Dominations, and with all the army of the heavenly host, they sing the hymn of Thy glory, saying without end. Holy, Holy, Holy etc.
On Monday of Holy Week, the station was originally kept at the church known as the “titulus fasciolae – the title of the bandage,” to the south of the Caelian Hill near the Baths of Carcalla. Several explanations have been proposed for this odd name; an ancient tradition states that when St. Peter had been released from prison by his jailers, and was fleeing Rome, he stopped on the site of this church to change the binding on the wound where his fetters had been. The church was also associated with two of the most venerated Roman martyrs of the early centuries, Ss. Nereus and Achilleus; nothing is now known of them for certain beyond their martyrdom and that they were soldiers who renounced their military service to follow Christ. Their unreliable legend states that they were baptized by St. Peter himself, and in the years after the Apostle’s death, made many converts among the Roman nobility, among them, Flavia Domitilla, a relative of the Emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. Being close by the Lateran, their church (now much smaller after extensive restorations in the mid-15th and late 16th centuries) would have made a convenient station after the lengthy ceremony of the previous day.
The interior of Ss. Nereus and Achilleus. Photograph by Fr. Lawrence Lew O.P.
By the High Middle Ages, it had fallen into ruins, and the station was transferred to the church of St. Praxedes on the Esquiline hill, a few steps away from the basilica of St. Mary Major. Her legend says that during the persecutions, she and her sister Pudentiana expended their patrimony in tending to the saints, providing for their material needs, sheltering them, visiting them in prison, and burying them after they had received the crown of martyrdom. After many years spent in helping the Christians, she prayed God to release her from the sight of such cruelties as were inflicted upon them, and so died a peaceful death. Her feast day is kept on July 21, the day before that of St. Mary Magdalene, who appears in the Gospel of Holy Monday (John 12, 1-9) anointing the feet of Christ. Just as Praxedes and her sister tended to the needs of the martyrs before and after their suffering and death, Mary and her sister Martha tended to Christ before and after His Passion. Today He is received as a guest in their home, and His feet are anointed by Mary Magdalene, who will later come with several other women to His tomb to anoint His body.
Ss. Praxedes and Pudentiana, together with the Virgin Mary, from the mausoleum of Theodora, (portrayed on the left) the mother of Pope St. Paschal I, (817-24). Paschal rebuilt the church and added this funeral chapel on the north side of it; it is also called the Chapel of St. Zeno, but in the Middle Ages was often referred to as the Garden of Paradise. Theodora was still alive when the image was made, hence the square blue halo.
On Tuesday, the station is kept at the church of St. Prisca on the Aventine Hill. This church is built on the site of a very ancient title and house-church, long believed on good evidence to be one of the places where St. Peter stayed during his years in Rome. The titular saint shares the day of her martyrdom, January 18, with the feast of St. Peter’s Chair in Rome, and the anniversary of the church’s dedication is kept on the feast of St. Peter’s Chair in Antioch. It has been proposed that her association with St. Peter derives from presence of the relic venerated as the Apostle’s chair at the place of her burial, and perhaps later at her church, before it was moved to its present location at the Vatican.
The Gospel read at this Mass was originally John 13, 1-32, a longer version of the gospel of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In this first chapter of the five which St. John devotes to the events of the Last Supper, St. Peter himself figures very prominently, first as the only disciple to speak when Christ washes the feet of the Twelve, and then as he asks John to ask the Lord which of the disciples is the traitor among them. Later on, it was replaced by the Passion according to St. Mark, the longest of the four Passions in proportion to its Gospel as a whole. St. Jerome, who lived for a time in Rome on the Aventine hill, records the tradition (also attested in much earlier sources) that Mark was the disciple and interpreter of Peter, who calls him “my son” in his first epistle, (5, 13) and composed his gospel in Rome before going to evangelize Egypt. It is therefore possible that St. Prisca stands on the very place where Mark wrote the Gospel, having learned of the life of Christ from one of the most important eyewitnesses.
On the first three days of Holy Week, the first troparion of the Byzantine service of Orthros (the equivalent of Roman Matins and Lauds) is this very beautiful text, which has given its name to the service, Bridegroom Matins. This English version is sung with the same music as the traditional Church Slavonic version, an edifying example of how to celebrate a rite in the vernacular without destroying its musical patrimony. Before the tropar, a threefold Alleluia is sung with four verses of Isaiah 26.
“Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, oh my soul, do not be weighed down sleep, lest you be given up to death, and lest you be shut out of the kingdom; but rouse yourself, crying, Holy, Holy, Holy are Thou, o our God. * Through the Mother of God, have mercy on us!”
Matins are often anticipated to the evening of the day before, so that the first of the Bridegroom Matins, that of Holy Monday, is celebrated on the evening of Palm Sunday, the second, that of Holy Tuesday, on the evening of Holy Monday, and the third, that of Holy Wednesday, on the evening of Holy Tuesday. The troparion is sung three times, with the two parts of the doxology between them. According to a Greek Holy Week book which I have, the final words “through the Mother of God, have mercy on us!” as given above are only sung the third time. On Holy Monday, the first two times end with the words “by the protection of the Bodiless Ones”, on Holy Tuesday, “by the prayers of the Forerunner”, and on Holy Wednesday, “by the power of the Cross.” However, in the Slavic usage, the end is always “through the Mother of God...”
A similar melody, sung in Ukrainian by seminarians of the Basilian Order at their chapel outside of L’viv.
Another very beautiful version, in Arabic.
The original Greek text, sung by monks of the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos.
Ingrediente Dómino in sanctam civitátem, Hebraeórum púeri, resurrectiónem vitae pronuntiantes, * cum ramis palmárum Hosanna clamábant in excelsis. V. Cum audisset pópulus, quod Jesus veníret Jerosólymam, exiérunt obviam ei. Cum ramis palmárum Hosanna clamábant in excelsis. (The responsory sung as the Palm Sunday procession enters the church.)
The Triumphal Entry of Christ in Jerusalem, depicted in the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry by the Limbourg brothers, ca. 1411-16. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
As the Lord entered the holy city, the children of the Hebrews, declaring the resurrection of life, * with palm branches, cried out, Hosanna in the highest. V. When the people heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they went forth to meet Him; * with palm branches, they cried out: Hosanna in the highest.
My heartfelt thanks to Mr Gerhard Eger of Canticum Salomonis for his help in researching this article.
The Saturday before Palm Sunday was originally one of the so-called aliturgical days of the Roman Lent, on which no Mass was celebrated, the others being the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, and the six Thursdays between Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. When this custom was changed for the Thursdays by Pope St Gregory II (715-31), the respect for the musical tradition codified by his sainted predecessor and namesake was such that it was deemed better not to add new pieces to the established repertoire. This is why the Masses of these days have no proper chant parts, borrowing their introits, graduals, offertories and communions from other masses. (There is one exception, on the Thursday of Passion week.)
However, the two formerly aliturgical Saturdays already have Masses in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, the oldest of its kind for the Roman Rite, the contents of which predate Gregory II. Evidently this change was made before his time, but we do not know by whom. This is also why the missing chant parts for these Masses were supplied in a different fashion, by simply repeating those of the previous day.
The Communio of both Passion Friday and Saturday (Ps. 26, 12): “Ne tradíderis me, Dómine, in ánimas persequentium me, quoniam insurrexérunt in me testes iníqui, et mentíta est iníquitas sibi. (Give me not up, o Lord, to the souls of them that persecute me, for unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity hath lied for itself.)”
A number of lectionaries of the mid-8th century, and the earliest versions of the Gregorian Sacramentary about 30 years later, mark this day with the rubric “elemosina datur – alms are given.” Within the first half of the 9th century, the liturgical writer Amalarius of Metz reports (De eccl. offic. I, 9) that in both the sacramentary and antiphonary, (his term for the book we now call the gradual), the rubric reads “Dominus papa elemosinam dat. – The lord pope gives alms.”
Later medieval commentators on the liturgy took it for granted that this meant that the pope personally distributed alms to the poor, and in this they are followed by modern writers such as Dom Guéranger and the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster. The former writes in The Liturgical Year that “(t)he Pope presided at this distribution, which was no doubt made ample enough to last the whole of the coming week, when, on account of the long ceremonies, it would scarcely be possible to attend to individual cases of poverty. The liturgists of the Middle Ages allude to the beautiful appropriateness of the Roman Pontiff’s distributing alms with his own hand to the poor, on this day, the same on which Mary Magdalene embalmed with her perfumes the feet of Jesus.” Schuster, on the other hand, says that it was done “in imitation of the Saviour who, on the occasion of the Pasch, was wont to entrust Judas with the duty of giving alms to the poor.” (The Sacramentary, vol. 2, p. 168, citing John 13, 29)
The Mass of Passion Saturday, with the rubric “Sabbato ad Sanctum Petrum, quando elemosina datur – Saturday at St Peter’s, when the alms are given”; in the Echternach Sacramentary, ca. 895 A.D.
However, none of the ancient Ordines Romani, the documents which explain how the liturgy was celebrated in Rome, give any details about how this was done, or why, or at what scale. (A fortiori, we cannot say what connection, if any, the custom may have had to the formerly aliturgical quality of the day.) I make bold, therefore, to offer an alternative explanation.
The oldest text of the Gregorian Sacramentary notes the station for this day “at St Peter’s, when alms are given,” but there is another tradition, attested in various lectionaries, which marks the day as follows: “Sabbato datur fermentum in consistorio Lateranensi – On Saturday, the fermentum is given in the hall (lit. ‘place of assembly’) at the Lateran.” (As noted by Theodor Klauser (1894-1984) Das römische Capitulare evangeliorum, p. 69; 1935) This refers to the custom by which hosts (or pieces of them) consecrated by the pope were sent to the main churches in Rome, and used when the priest performed the fraction rite at Mass, as a symbol of communion between the bishop and his clergy. There do not, however, appear to be any liturgical sources that note both the distribution of the fermentum to the clergy, and of alms to the poor, even though they took place on the same day.
A reconstruction of the Lateran complex as it stood in the Middle Ages; the hall where five of the ecumenical councils were held is in the structure in the middle with five small apses sticking out the side. The complex was rebuilt many times over the centuries, and it is difficult to say where exactly the “consistorium” mentioned above was. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)
Guéranger and Schuster simply take it for granted that the popes did both, but offer no explanation as to how they fit them both into the day, even as Schuster explicitly says that it was supposed to be a day of rest before the lengthy ceremonies of Holy Week. Much less do they explain how the pope and his court fit in the trip from the Lateran to St Peter’s on the opposite side of Rome, and back again. Well before them, the scholars of the Congregation of St Maur, in their commentary on the first Ordo Romanus, admit their perplexity over this discrepancy (PL 78, 887A), while perhaps offering the clue that explains it.
As they note, the famous collection of papal biographies known as the Liber Pontificalis says that Pope Zachary (741-52) “established that on many days, expenses for food, which even now are called ‘elymosina’, be brought from the venerable residence of the patriarch (‘de … patriarchio’, i.e. the Lateran) by the (papal) cellarers to the poor and pilgrims who stayed at St Peter’s, and given out to them, and further established that the same distribution of ‘elymosina’ of food be made to all the needy and infirm throughout all the regions of the city of Rome.” (The author makes a particular note of the word “elymosina”, which has many variant spellings, because it comes from Greek; it is the origin of the English word “alms” and its derivatives.)
While this passage says that the pope distributed alms to all the poor, it singles out St Peter’s basilica as a particularly important center of this work. And indeed, there were several pilgrim hospices in the neighborhood of the Vatican. Many such institutions, not just those in Rome, also took care of the needy in their cities, especially in the winter, when fewer pilgrims traveled, leaving more space within the buildings, and the poor were liable to suffer more. (This is why the Latin word “hospitium – a place to welcome guests” evolved into the English word “hospital.”)
The church of the Holy Spirit “in Sassia”, in the Borgo region near St Peter’s basilica. The nickname “in Sassia” derives from a hospice for Saxon pilgrims established here by the English king Ine of Wessex in 727, one of many such institutions in the area. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by gaspa, CC BY 2.0; incorrectly labeled as a photo of the nearby church of Santa Maria in Traspontina.)
More importantly, it says that the pope frequently sent alms from the Lateran to St Peter’s, not that he personally brought them there or distributed them. So perhaps we should understand that the special Paschal distribution of alms on the Saturday before Palm Sunday was likewise made “by the pope” in the moral sense, but not in the sense that he personally handed them out.
This would explain several things. The distribution would have been made at St Peter’s because it was already an important center of the Roman Church’s charitable activities. This would also be a sign that the alms came from the pope acting as the vicar of the Apostle, much as we still refer to the charitable collection taken each year around the feast of Ss Peter and Paul as “Peter’s pence”, not “Leo’s pence” or “Benedict’s pence.” And perhaps the later form of the rubric, which uses the term “dominus papa – the lord pope”, refers to the pope’s position as the civil ruler of Rome, first de facto, later de jure, a position which was consolidated precisely in the era when the rubric appears, in the days of Pope St Adrian and Charlemagne.
More importantly, if the pope did not personally distribute alms to the poor, but only did so in a figurative sense, it would explain how he could personally distribute the fermentum to the clergy, a much less taxing activity on a day that was supposed to be an opportunity for rest. And it would also perhaps explain why the aliturgical quality of the day was abolished so soon, if it was felt to be more convenient (and safer) to have a Mass at the Lateran, rather than to consecrate hosts for the fermentum at the station Mass of Passion Friday, and then carry them back to the Lateran.
As texts were supplied for the Masses of the formerly aliturgical days, there are inevitably found some variants from one place to another. The most common epistle for the new Mass of Passion Saturday is the one found in the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval predecessors, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, the appropriateness of which is obvious. This is already attested in the lectionary of Murbach ca. 750 A.D.
“Come, and let us invent devices against the just man, … let us strike him with the tongue, and let us give no heed to all his words. Give heed to me, o Lord, and hear the voice of my adversaries. … Remember that I have stood in thy sight, to speak good for them, and to turn away thy indignation from them. … thou, O Lord, knowest all their counsel against me unto death.”
Christ the Man of Sorrows between the prophets David and Jeremiah, ca. 1495-1500, by the Spanish painter Diego de la Cruz.
By the 9th century, the so-called lectionary of Alcuin gives the passage from the prophet Zachariah (9, 9-16) which St Matthew cites (21, 5) in the Gospel which is read at the blessing of the palms. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout for joy, o daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy King will come to thee, the just and savior: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” This carries on through the Middle Ages in a small number of places, sometimes cut down to just the first three or four verses, but in some places, it was read at the blessing of the Palms instead of the more common reading from Exodus.
The Gospel of Holy Monday was originally John 12, 1-36. In Rome, this reading was later divided into two, with the first ending at verse 9. The second part, verses 10-36, was then used to supply the Gospel reading for Passion Saturday, which includes the plotting of the priests to kill Lazarus (10-11), the events of Palm Sunday (12-19), and Philip and Andrew bringing some gentiles to Christ (20-23). It therefore sets the tone of the day as a kind of vigil of Palm Sunday, while the Apostles’ introduction of the gentiles to Christ is read one week before the baptismal ceremonies of Holy Saturday, at which the successors of the Apostles fulfill the great Commission, to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28, 19)
This was, however, very much a minority tradition in the Middle Ages; the Usuarium catalog of medieval liturgical books shows it in only 5% of documented Uses. The most common reading, attested in just under 55% of cases, is John 6, 54-72 (alias 53-71).
“Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” This first verse and those that come immediately after it, from the passage known as the Eucharistic Discourse, would perhaps have been chosen to encourage acceptance of the once-novel practice of celebrating Mass on this formally aliturgical day. Then, when many of the disciples abandon the Lord, “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.’ … Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve; and one of you is a devil?’ Now he meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon: for this same was about to betray him…” This of course foreshadows Christ’s betrayal by Judas, and abandonment by the disciples, which are read at the Mass of Palm Sunday in the Passion of St Matthew.
The readings of Passion Saturday, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, and John 6, 54-72, in a Sarum Missal printed ca, 1500.
There is yet another Gospel for this day, which was read in about one-third of the medieval Uses of the Roman Rite, the whole of John chapter 17. This is the last part of Our Lord’s discourse at the Last Supper, the prayer which He makes to the Father before undergoing His Passion; in the liturgy, it serves as a prelude to the first reading of the Passion the next day.
This passage supplies the antiphons for the Benedictus (verse 5) and Magnificat (verse 25) for this day in the Divine Office, even though the Roman Missal does not read this Gospel. However it came about, this custom is very ancient, and indeed, these antiphons are consistently found also in Uses that read the Gospel from John 6 at Mass.
Devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary originated in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. The feast that emerged as a formal liturgical expression of this devotion was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates, but usually in Passiontide, or just after Easter. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained well into the 20th century by the Dominicans, who also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It also appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” Its popularity continued to grow in the Tridentine period, until Pope Benedict XIII finally extended it to the whole of the Roman Rite in 1727, fixing it to the Friday of Passion week.
The image which introduces the Stabat Mater in a French book of Hours made ca. 1500-1530.
As is often the case with later feasts, there was a considerable variety in its liturgical texts from one place to another, and between the traditions of the various religious orders. But of course, one of the most widespread was the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which is universally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of later medieval devotional poetry. The author of this hymn is unknown, and has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly conjecture. For a long time, many attributed it to a Franciscan friar name Jacopone da Todi (‘Big James from Todi’, about 80 miles north of Rome in Umbria; 1230 ca. – 1306); however, a fairly recent manuscript discovery has made this attribution untenable. Others have ascribed it to Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198-1216, and was certainly a very prolific writer in various genres, but this remains no more than a plausible conjecture.
In the Roman liturgical tradition, it is sung as a hymn in the Divine Office in one melody of the sixth Gregorian mode, and in another of the second mode as a Sequence at Mass, between the Tract and the Gospel.
Many great composers have also put their hand to setting it polyphonically, such as Josquin des Prez.
Palestrina’s version, composed shortly before his death in 1594, was traditionally sung in Rome on Palm Sunday.
One of the best known versions is by the Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (1710-36), who is generally known by the nickname “Pergolesi”, after Pergola, the small town in the Italian Marches from which his family came. This was also composed very shortly before the author’s death, of tuberculosis at the age of only 26. It became the single most frequently printed work of sacred music in the 18th century, and, in the common fashion of the Baroque era, was reused by several other composers, including JS Bach, who turned the music into one of his German cantatas, albeit with a completely different text based on Psalm 50.
Composing, Singing, Conducting Institutes With Sir James MacMillan, Gabriel Crouch, Tim McDonnell, and Peter Carter
The Catholic Sacred Music Project (CSMP), led by Peter Carter, is once again hosting workshops on the Princeton University campus this coming summer. As in 2024, the CSMP is hosting three institutes - composition, singing, and conducting – with unparalleled opportunities to work with an incredible faculty that includes Sir James MacMillan (whose Angels Unawares was premiered by The Sixteen in the Sistine Chapel on March 22nd – see the video below), Gabriel Crouch of Princeton University, and Timothy McDonnell of Hillsdale College. See posters for each workshop below.
The event is co-sponsored by the Scala Foundation, and there will be talks to the attendees by me and Margarita Mooney Clayton. Margarita, Executive Director of Scala, has been giving tours of the Gothic Princeton University Chapel. She will explain the content and the symbolism of the spectacular stained glass and the images depicting the unity of human reason and supernatural knowledge. (Mass takes place for the students in this beautiful chapel on the University campus on a daily basis during the academic year, and the choir director for Sunday Mass is Peter Carter.) I will talk to the young musicians on the faculties of creativity and co-creation with God in the creative process in art and music for the liturgy.
Tim McDonnell directs at the CSMP Institutes, 2024, in Princeton Theological Seminary Chapel
In addition, there will be public events on June 13 and June 19:
Scala Foundation is pleased to once again welcome the musicians to the chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary for a free public lecture and performance on Saturday, June 13th, at 11:30 am.
A second public concert with talks will take place at 7 pm, Friday, June 19th, at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Princeton, NJ.
More details forthcoming, but save the dates for these incredible public events!
Please share this incredible opportunity with young musicians—applications are open until mid-April.
In-depth information about each program can be found on the CSMP website. There will be more details about each program soon, but for now, please look at the programs to see if you would be interested in applying, and forward the information to any musicians you know who may be interested. sacredmusicproject.org
Here is a video of the world premier of Sir James MacMillan’s oratorio in the Sistine Chapel on March 22.
On Thursday, the Church offers spiritual sacrifices, through which it may obtain joy, but because mercy is only obtained by confessing justice, therefore She says in the introit, as a way of confessing God’s justice towards us, “All that Thou hast done to us, o Lord, thou hast done in true judgment.” Which is to say, if Thou hast sent tribulations, it is well done, because we have sinned against Thee. And afterwards, she asks for mercy: “Give glory to Thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of Thy mercy.” …
Introitus Omnia, quae fecisti nobis, Dómine, in vero judicio fecisti: quia peccávimus tibi, et mandátis tuis non oboedívimus: sed da gloriam nómini tuo, et fac nobiscum secundum multitúdinem misericordiae tuae. ~ All that Thou hast done to us, o Lord, thou hast done in true judgment; because we have sinned against Thee, and have not obeyed Thy commandments: but give glory to Thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of Thy mercy.
The same is said in the epistle, which is taken from the book of Daniel (3, 25; 34-45), “Daniel prayed, ‘Lord God, despise us not, etc., because we have sinned, and there is no sacrifice.” Thus did the children of Israel say when they were in Babylon; and so also we can say when we are in sin, “There is no sacrifice, sed with a humble spirit and contrite heart, let us be received by Thee, o Lord.” (The post-Tridentine Roman Missal changes the incipit of this reading to conform it to the Biblical text, “Azarias prayerd...”)
The gradual, “Bring up sacrifices, and come into his courts,” urges us to offer spiritual sacrifices. The verse is, “He will uncover the thick woods,” for one cannot make such a spiritual sacrifice unless God remove darkness from the heart. It is sung in the fifth tone, to indicate that one must make such a sacrifice with the five senses.
Graduale, Ps. 95, 8-9 Tóllite hostias, et introíte in atria ejus: adoráte Dóminum in aula sancta ejus. V. Ps. 28, 9 Revelávit Dóminus condensa: et in templo ejus omnes dicent gloriam. (Bring up sacrifices and and enter into His courts; adore ye the Lord in His holy court. V. The Lord uncovers (or ‘lays bare’) the forests, and in His temple all sspeak of His glory.)
There follows the Gospel (Luke 7, 36-50), which tells of how Mary Magdalene obtained forgiveness by her tears, because she sacrificed everything that she formerly had in delight, and thus offered herself as a spiritual sacrifice to God in her body.
The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1570, by Paolo Veronese; originally painted for the refectory of the Servite church in Venice, gifted by the Venetian Republic to King Louis XIV of France in 1664, and since then, kept in the Chateau of Versailles. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)
The offertory shows how one ought to weep and mourn. There are two things that bring us to this: the memory of past sin, and the remembrance of the heavenly Jerusalem. For when a man compares his miseries with the purity of the angels, he weeps over the rivers of Babylon. (Babylon here means the sinful world in general.) This is sung in the first tone, because this must be first in the memory, the end for the sake of which we exist. The verse “On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments” is said, because after this day, no Gospel is read which tells of the Lord preaching publicly to the Jews. (This refers to one of the added verses of the offertory which is included in the ancient chant books, but not in the missal. ~ Excerpts from William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, VI, 64)
“Super flúmina Babylónis illic sédimus et flévimus, dum recordarémur tui, Sion.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered thee, o Zion.”
One of the most widely used sequences for the feast of the Annunciation in the Middle Ages is known from its opening words as Mittit ad Virginem. It is often attributed to the famous (or infamous) scholar Peter Abelard (1079-1142), but it should be noted that the Analecta hymnica, the massive collection of medieval hymns and scholarly notes about them, makes no mention of him in its entry on this particular text. (vol. 54, pp. 296-98) In some uses, such as that of Sarum, it was not sung on the feast, since the Annunciation usually occurs in Lent (three years out of four), and it was a common custom to omit sequences altogether in Lent; at Sarum, it was used at the Advent votive Mass of the Virgin instead, which shares many of its texts, including the Gospel, with today’s feast. The Latin text with English translation is taken from Sequences from the Sarum Missal, with English Translations, by Charles Buchanan Pearson (Bell and Daldy; London, 1871. Click images to enlarge.) This recording was made by the monks of Clear Creek Abbey.
A polyphonic setting by the mighty Josquin des Prez, in two parts; the second begins at the words “Accede, nuntia.”
The Annunciation, depicted on the doors of a triptych by an anonymous French artist known as the Master of Moulins, within the last two decades of the 15th century. Many altarpieces were designed to be kept closed during Lent, and then opened back up at the Easter vigil. The outsides of the wings were very often painted with images of the Annunciation in shades of black and grey, a technique known as grisaille, since the feast usually occurs in Lent; the absence of color in the image thus did not compromise the austerity of the church’s appearance, but marked the solemnity of the feast in an appropriate manner.
Anatomy of Transcendence is a brilliant work of scholarship that studies the themes of rapture, spiritual transport, and excessus mentis in the theology of St Thomas Aquinas. I found it a totally absorbing read. The author must be congratulated for his meticulous scholarly study of the writings of St Thomas in order to show and detail not only the beauty of the Angelic Doctor’s teaching on ‘ecstasy’ but also that that this teaching was based on Thomas’ own personal experience.
This work is primarily for scholars and fellow academics and must not be seen, as the author himself has made clear, as a spiritual guide for those seeking to pursue contemplative prayer. Yet it is by no means foreign to this aim.
In the mystic way, there is a clear difference between the ‘ecstasy’ that is experienced by a believer who is in what St John of the Cross would call the purification in ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ and the ‘ecstasy’ experienced in what St Teresa of Avila would call the Mystical or the Spiritual Marriage when the purification in the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ has ended. In the ‘Dark Night’, ecstasy is predominantly experienced in the ‘apex mentis’; however, in the mystical Marriage, when the purification of the mind and the body has been completed, the experience of ‘ecstasy’ is also experienced in the body, therefore in the emotions and in the feelings too, when what are called ‘the gift of tears’ becomes commonplace.
This is a far more complete, all-embracing and enthralling experience, the experience that finally impelled St Thomas to put down his pen and refer to all he had previously written as if it were straw. Perhaps we can see here the difference between the two ‘ecstasies’ of St Paul, the one that takes him up and into the third Heaven and the one which takes him up into Paradise. Kwasniewski does an excellent job carefully exploring this experience of St Paul with the aid of the Angelic Doctor.
I was delighted to find that in addition to St Thomas’ devotion to the liturgy, and above all else to the Mass, the author showed how St Thomas gave daily time for the personal contemplative prayer without which all his works could not have been written. True ecstasies are not arbitrary capricious events; they only regularly arise from a long-since experienced contemplative prayer life, such as Aquinas certainly enjoyed, contrary to the vain babblings of Adrienne von Speyr who wrote him off as an unrepentant rationalist.
When in addition to studying and expounding the teaching of St Thomas, his modern disciples follow him into the deep personal prayer that leads to contemplation, then they would receive the infused virtues of wisdom and prudence that would enable them to represent his teaching for the benefit of the modern Church, and the world that it is committed to serve.
Then they will be able to claim to be true Thomists, because like St Thomas they practice what they preach, and so become the long-lost apostles needed to help resurrect a decaying and dying Church, so that God’s Kingdom may once again become on earth, as it is in Heaven.
Dr. Kwasniewski is to be thanked for helping all of us to become much more aware of this vital dimension to the life and work of a theologian who has too often been reduced to a mountain of syllogism. For him, that was only the external skin of the living body, with a heart of love beating within, animated by a soul consumed with love and longing for God.
.jpg)
_(14597922217).jpg){kind=link}
