Friday, August 25, 2006

Communio Problems and Solutions

On Monday, I posted on the problem of finding a full setting of the Psalms attached to the Communion Antiphon. It's Friday now, and thanks to readers, and after some very frustrating troubleshooting (I now know more about embedded fonts in .doc to .pdf conversions than I ever sought to know), we now have a very nice solution, at least the beginnings of a solution, as posted on MusicaSacra.com.

See these three communions, applicable to the next three Sundays:

They were created by hand by Richard Rice, a blog commentator on NLM, using Meinrad fonts in .doc and then exported to .pdf, yielding outstanding quality for viewing and printing and even publishing. I see no reason why this can't continue week by week.

They will be listed in alphabetical order to accommodate both the new and old rites.

Again, so far as I know, there is no existing book that is accessible that prints these, and yet they ought to be used in commuions in every parish in which it is viable, as least if we want to fulfill what is the ideal as presented in the GIRM: "...the antiphon from the Roman Missal or the Psalm from the Roman Gradual as set to music there..."

86. While the priest is receiving the Sacrament, the Communion chant is begun. Its purpose is to express the communicants’ union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, to show joy of heart, and to highlight more clearly the “communitarian” nature of the procession to receive Communion. The singing is continued for as long as the Sacrament is being administered to the faithful. If, however, there is to be a hymn after Communion, the Communion chant should be ended in a timely manner. Care should be taken that singers, too, can receive Communion with ease.

By the way, using the Communio attached to the rite itself solves the entire problem of singers receiving the sacrament. If you have a a half dozen singers, some can receive while others sing, and then they can switch out when the others return. This way, there is no break in the chant and no one feels pressure receive if they do not wish to.

That aside, I'm just thrilled to announce that these are finally going to be available to people. I would rather have Solesmes or someone else print them. But until they do, this is a great method.

More recent articles:


The Messenger Angel
Anonymous, the Archangel Gabriel, depicted on the predella of the high altar at the subsidiary church of Pesenbach, Upper Austria, 1495In the traditional Roman calendar, the feast days of saints are sometimes clustered together to form archipelagos of holiness that allow the faithful to meditate longer on a sacred mystery. These archipelagos do not...

The Third Sunday of Lent 2025
At that time: Jesus was casting out a devil, and the same was dumb: and when he had cast out the devil, the dumb spoke: and the multitudes were in admiration at it: But some of them said: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And others tempting, asked of him a sign from heaven. But he seeing their thoughts, said to them: Every ...

Pictures of Montecassino Abbey
Following up on yesterday’s post of pictures of the crypt of Montecassino Abbey, here are some of the main church and some of the things around it, starting with the most important part of it, the burial site of St Benedict and his sister St Scholastica, behind the high altar.As I am sure our readers know, Montecassino Abbey was heavily bombed duri...

The Prodigal Son in the Liturgy of Lent
In his commentary on the Gospel of St Matthew, St Jerome writes as follows about the parable of the two sons who are ordered by their father to go and work in the vineyard (21, 28-32). “These are the two sons who are described in Luke’s parable, the frugal (or ‘virtuous’) and the immoderate (or ‘wanton’).” He then connects these two sons with the f...

Another Chant for the Byzantine Liturgy of the Presanctified
Now the powers of heaven invisibly worship with us, for behold, the King of Glory entereth! Behold, the mystical sacrifice, being perfected, is carried forth in triumph. With faith and love, let us come forth, that we may become partakers of eternal life, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia! (Recording by the Lviv Archeparchial Clergy Choir.) Нині сили ...

The Crypt of Montecassino Abbey
For the feast of St Benedict, here are some pictures of the crypt of the abbey of Montecassino, the site where he ended his days. The crypt was built in the early 16th century, and originally decorated with frescoes, but by the end of the 19th century, these had deteriorated so badly from the humidity that they were deemed unsalvageable. The decisi...

An Interview with Fr Uwe Michael Lang on Liturgy
I am sure that our readers will enjoy this interview with the liturgical scholar Fr Uwe Michael Lang of the London Oratory, which was recently published on the YouTube channel of the Totus Tuus Apostolate. It covers a wide range of subjects: Pope Benedict’s teaching on the liturgy, the liturgical abuses in the post-Conciliar period and our own time...

Dives and Lazarus in the Liturgy of Lent
Before the early eighth century, the church of Rome kept the Thursdays of Lent (with the obvious exception of Holy Thursday) and the Saturdays after Ash Wednesday and Passion Sunday as “aliturgical” days. (The term aliturgical refers, of course, only to the Eucharistic liturgy, not to the Divine Office.) This is attested in the oldest liturgical bo...

The Feast of St Joseph 2025
Truly it is worthy and just... eternal God: Who didst exalt Thy most blessed Confessor Joseph with such great merits of his virtues, that by the wondrous gift of Thy grace, he merited to be made the Spouse of the most holy Virgin Mary, and be thought the father of Thy only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Wherefore, venerating the day of his b...

Why Should We Build Beautiful Confessionals?
Confession is a sacrament in which we confess dark deeds, shameful sins, cowardly compromises, repeated rifts. It is something we often wish more to be done with than to do; we know we must go, that it is “good for us” as a visit to the dentist’s or the doctor’s is good for us. It might seem as if the place where we fess up, red-handed, and receive...

For more articles, see the NLM archives: