Liturgical Notes on the Commemoration of St Paul

The joint commemoration of the Apostles Peter and Paul is one of the most ancient customs of the Roman Church, attested already in the oldest surviving Roman liturgical calendar, the Depositio Martyrum, written in 336 A.D. A verse of the hymn Apostolorum passio, agreed by most authorities to be an authentic work of St Ambrose († 397), and still used in the Ambrosian liturgy, says that “the thick crowds make their way through the circuit of so great a city; the feast of the sacred martyrs is celebrated on three streets.” These “three streets” are the via Cornelia, the main street running up to and over the Vatican hill; the via Ostiensis, where the burial and church of St Paul are; and the via Appia, on which sits the cemetery “in Catacumbas”.

This last is the ancient Christian cemetery now called the Catacomb of St Sebastian; the word “catacomb” was in fact originally the name of the site of this cemetery specifically, and only later came to be used as a generic term for ancient subterranean Christian burial grounds. The basilica over the cemetery, now also entitled to St Sebastian, was originally known as the “Basilica Apostolorum”, in memory of a tradition that the bones of Peter and Paul were kept there for a time, probably to save them from destruction in the era of persecutions. This is referred to in various ancient sources, including the Depositio Martyrum, and confirmed by modern archeological research. The celebration of the feast “on three streets” would refer then to a procession to visit the site of St Peter’s burial at the Vatican, that of St Paul on the via Ostiensis, and the cemetery where their remains were once kept.

The building of which this wall is a part was constructed over the Catacomb of St Sebastian about 250 A.D., and is covered with dozens of devotional graffiti like the one seen here. “Paule ed (et) Petre, petite pro Victore - Paul and Peter, pray (lit. ‘ask’) for Victor.” 

The poet Prudentius, writing in the very early fifth century, calls the day “bifestum – a double feast”, and attests that on that day the Pope would say a Mass at the Basilica of St Peter, and then hasten to say another at St Paul’s. He does not refer to a visit to the Catacombs on the via Appia, but assuming this visit was made on the way back to the Papal residence at the Lateran, the total circuit is nearly nine-and-half miles, to be made at the height of the Italian summer. However, only seven years after Prudentius visited Rome in 403, the city was sacked by the Goths, then sacked again by the Vandals in 455; over the sixth and seventh centuries, it was largely reduced to ruins and depopulated by the long wars between the Goths and Byzantines, and the invasion of the Lombards.

It should not be surprising, then, that at a certain point the double feast was divided, and kept in a more manageable way as two separate feasts. In the Gelasian Sacramentary, we find three Masses of Ss Peter and Paul assigned to June 29th; the oldest copy of the Gelasianum dates to roughly 750, but much of the material is considerably older, some of it reaching back even to the days of St Leo the Great 300 years earlier. In some manuscripts, however, one of the three, “the proper Mass of St Paul”, has already been assigned to June 30th. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, written roughly a century later, we find the feast of St Peter on June 29th, and that of St Paul on the 30th; each Mass contains references to the other Apostle, but they are nevertheless clearly distinct. Thus, by the time of Charlemagne, the “bifestum” of Prudentius had already been separated into a two day feast.

At the Mass of June 29th, the majority of the texts refer either to St Peter alone (Introit, Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Communion) or to Apostles generically, as in the Gradual “Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.” The sole reference to St Paul is in the Collect, “O God, who hast consecrated this day by the martyrdom of Thy Apostles Peter and Paul, grant Thy Church to follow in all things the teaching of those through whom she first received the faith.” The Office is likewise dedicated almost entirely to St Peter, the notable exceptions being the hymns of Vespers and Lauds, and the antiphon of the Magnificat at Second Vespers. This latter is in both the structure of its text and in its Gregorian melody very similar to the Magnificat antiphon at Second Vespers of Pentecost, to indicate that the mission of the Holy Spirit is fulfilled in the lives and deaths of the Apostles, and thereafter in their successors.

Ant. Hodie * Simon Petrus ascendit crucis patibulum, alleluia: hodie clavicularius regni gaudens migravit ad Christum: hodie Paulus Apostolus, lumen orbis terrae inclinato capite pro Christi nomine martyrio coronatus est, alleluia.

On this day, Simon Peter ascended the gibbet of the cross, alleluia: on this day, he that beareth the keys of the kingdom of heaven passed rejoicing to Christ: on this day, Paul the Apostle, the light of the world, inclining his head, for the name of Christ was crowned with martyrdom, alleluia.

The following day, therefore, the whole of the liturgy is dedicated to St Paul, and is not called a day within the octave of the Apostles, but rather “the Commemoration of St Paul.” The variable texts of the Mass all refer to him, but a commemoration of St Peter is added to the feast, in accordance with the tradition that the two are never entirely separated in the veneration paid them by the Church. (The same is done on the feast of St Paul’s Conversion, and commemorations of him are added to the feasts of St Peter’s Chairs and Chains.) The Office is likewise dedicated entirely to him; both the Mass and Office, however, make use of St Paul’s own testimony in Galatians 2 to the mission of the two Apostles: “For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision, worked in me also among the gentiles; and they knew the grace of God that was given to me.” In the 1130s, a canon of St Peter’s Basilica named Benedict writes that it was still the custom in his time for the Pope to keep the feast of St Peter at the Vatican, but then celebrate Vespers at the tomb of St Paul in the great Basilica on the Ostian Way, “with all the choirs” of the city.

The apsidal mosaic of the St Paul’s Outside-the-Walls, executed in the 1220s, and heavily repaired after most of the ancient church was destroyed by fire in 1823. To the left of Christ are St Luke and St Paul, on the right St Peter and his brother St Andrew.

Originally, the Gospel for the feast was St Matthew 19, 27-29, and from this passage are taken the antiphon of the Benedictus and the Communion of the Mass. This same Gospel is used on several other feasts of Apostles, including the days within the octave of Ss Peter and Paul, and the feast of St Paul’s Conversion. It was changed in the Tridentine liturgical reform to St Matthew 10, 16-22, evidently because of the words “you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the gentiles,” an eminently appropriate choice for this feast. It is also used on the feast of St Barnabas, who, after Paul’s conversion, when the members of the Church feared that it was perhaps a ruse to further the persecution, “took him, and brought him to the Apostles, and told them how he had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken to him.” (Acts 9, 27) The Epistle of the Mass, Galatians 1, 11-20, has been added to the traditional readings for the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul as the Epistle of the vigil Mass in the new rite.

The Apostles Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (Acts 14, 5-18), by Jacob Jordaens, 1645; Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

In the Novus Ordo, the Commemoration of St Paul has been abolished, and the texts of both Mass and Office for June 29th rewritten to give equal space to both Apostles. So for example, of the two responsories in the Office of Readings, the first refers to Peter, and the second to Paul. (Inexplicably and unjustifiably, the Magnificat antiphon “Hodie” cited above was not retained in the Liturgy of the Hours.) June 30th is now the feast of the “Protomartyrs of the Roman Church”, the Christians whose martyrdom at the hands of the Emperor Nero is described in a famous passage of the Annals of Tacitus.

But all human efforts … did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration (which destroyed much of Rome in July of 64 A.D.) was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed. (Book XV, chapter 44)

The Torches of Nero, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1876

Despite the early and explicit attestation of this martyrdom by an historian with no bias in favor of the Christians, there is no historical tradition of devotion to this group of martyrs “whose number and names are known only to God”, as we read in Donald Attwater’s revision of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. A notice of them was added to the Roman Martyrology in the post-Tridentine revision of Cardinal Baronius, but their feast was not added to the calendar of the diocese of Rome until the early 20th century, by Pope Benedict XV.

The “circus” to which Tacitus refers as the site of the martyrdom was a chariot-racing facility that sat immediately to the south of the via Cornelia, next to where St Peter’s Basilica is today. It was allowed to fall to ruins after the death of Nero, and apparently razed to the ground by Constantine to make space for the original basilica. Left in place, however, was the Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome by Caligula, and set up on the “spine” of the circus, as the Romans called it, the wall down the middle around which the chariots raced. The turning posts on the end are called “metae” in Latin, and the apocryphal Acts of Peter, a work of the mid-2nd century, say that Peter was crucified “inter metas”; the obelisk, then, would have been among the last things St Peter saw in this world. After sitting next to the old Basilica for over 12 centuries, it was moved in 1586 to the area in front of the new church, then still under construction, later to be surrounded by Bernini’s Piazza. Its former location is marked by a plaque in the ground to the side of the modern basilica; the surrounding area was renamed by Benedict XV “Piazza of the First Martyrs of Rome.”

The Basilica of St Peter in 1450, according to the reconstruction of H.W. Brewer, 1891. The obelisk is seen immediately in front of the first rotunda on the left side of the basilica.

Gratias quam maximas refero Bono Homini, quo sagacior et diligentior consulendus non invenitur!

The Vesper Hymn of Ss Peter and Paul

As I have noted on other occasions, the specific Use of the Divine Office originally created for the chapel of the Papal court, the ancestor of the Breviary of St Pius V, was very conservative in its use of hymns. A good example of this may be seen in the feasts of the Apostles; although many proper hymns were composed for the various Apostles in the Middle Ages, the only one adopted into the Roman Office is this one for Ss Peter and Paul. Aurea luce, known since the revision of Pope Urban VIII as Decora lux aeternitatis, is traditionally ascribed to a fictitious first wife of Boethius named Elpis; in reality, it is the work of an unknown writer of the Carolingian era.

Aurea luce et decóre róseo
Lux lucis, omne perfudisti sáeculum:
Décorans caelos ínclyto martyrio
Hac sacra die, quae dat reis veniam.

(Light of light, Thou hast suffused all the world with golden light and rosy beauty, adorning the heavens with a famous martyrdom on this holy day, that gives pardon to the guilty.)

Jánitor caeli, Doctor orbis páriter,
Júdices saecli, vera mundi lúmina:
Per crucem alter, alter ense triumphans,
Vitae senátum laureáti póssident.

(The door-keeper of heaven, and likewise the teacher of the world, the judges of the age, the true lights of the world, triumphing, the one by the cross, the other by the sword, are crowned and take possession of the assembly of life.)

O felix Roma, quae tantórum Príncipum
Es purpuráta pretióso sánguine!
Non laude tua, sed ipsórum méritis
Excellis omnem mundi pulchritúdinem.

(O happy Rome, that art adorned with the precious blood of such great Princes, not by thy own praise, but by their merits dost thou excel the beauty of all (the rest of) the world. – This stanza is not part of the original text, but was added to it by the Breviary reform of St Pius V.)

Olívae binae pietátis únicae,
Fide devótos, spe robustos máxime,
Fonte replétos caritátis géminae
Post mortem carnis impetráte vívere.

(O ye twin olive trees of one devotion, obtain life after the death of the flesh for those devout in faith, most mighty in hope, filled from the double font of charity. – This stanza is part of the original, but dropped out of use long before the Tridentine reform; it has been restored in the post-Conciliar Liturgy of the Hours. The use of the two olive trees as symbols of the two Apostolic founders of the Roman church comes from the fourth chapter of the Prophet Zachariah.)

The Prophet Zachariah, by Michelangelo, depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12).

Sit Trinitáti sempiterna gloria,
Honor, potestas atque jubilatio,
In unitáte, cui manet imperium,
Ex tunc et modo, per aeterna sæcula. Amen.

(To the Trinity be everlasting glory, honor, might, and rejoicing, in that unity that ever hath rule from then and now, through all ages. Amen.)

Traditionally, this hymn in its various versions was sung at both Vespers of Ss Peter and Paul. In the post-Conciliar Liturgy of the Hours, it is sung only at First Vespers, but in the original version, with the added stanza O felix Roma, and the restored fourth stanza Olivae binae. (This is the text used in the recording above.) At Second Vespers, the hymn by Paulinus of Aquileia, ca. 800 AD, which provided the stanza O Roma felix, is now sung.

The two stanzas of the traditional hymn of Lauds were originally also part of Aurea luce, placed between Janitor caeli and Olivae binae; the doxology Sit Trinitati is repeated at the end.

Jam, bone pastor, Petre, clemens accipe
Vota precantum, et peccati vincula
Resolve tibi potestate tradita,
Qua cunctis caelum verbo claudis, aperis.

(Now, good shepherd, Peter, mercifully receive the prayers of those who beseech thee, and by he power given to thee, release the bonds of sin, who by thy word open or close heaven to all.)

Doctor egregie, Paule, mores instrue
Et mente polum nos transferre satage,
Donec perfectum largiatur plenius
Evacuato, quod ex parte gerimus.

(Renowned Doctor, o Paul, instruct our manners, and work greatly to bring us in mind to heaven, until that which is perfect be bestowed more fully, and what we do imperfectly annulled.)

Revisiting the Date of the Visitation

The authors of the 1970 General Calendar suppressed a number of devotional feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary “so that the people could give greater honor on those feasts of the Lord in which Mary has a particularly important role.” [1] The Visitation was one of the feasts that was spared, but it was also part of a shuffling of Marian holy days. The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was moved from August 22 to the day after the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Queenship of Mary was moved from May 31 to August 22, and the Visitation was moved from July 2 to May 31.

The official reason for transferring the Visitation was to “achieve better accord with the Gospel narrative” (quo aptius consentiat narrationi evangelicae) by placing the feast somewhere between the Annunciation (March 24) and the Birth of John the Baptist (June 24). [2]

At first blush, the decision is perfectly understandable. In the Byzantine Rite, July 2 commemorates the Deposition of the Robe of the Most Holy Theotokos at the church of St. Mary of Blachernae in Constantinople in A.D. 479. For the Gospel reading, Luke’s account of the Visitation would be used. The Franciscans picked up this custom in 1263 and renamed it the Visitation of Mary. In 1389, Pope Urban VI placed the feast on the universal calendar in order to beseech the Blessed Virgin to end the Great Schism. July 2, then, seems unrelated to the Gospel chronology.

The current Church of St. Mary of Blachernae

But appearances can be deceiving. The liturgical reformers implicitly depict the Visitation as an episode that lasted from March 24 to June 24, a depiction at odds with both the Gospel that they claim to be tracking as well as the realities of childbirth.

Regarding the former, if John the Baptist was born on June 24, he would have been circumcised and named on July 1, in accordance with the Law. Saint Luke relays that the circumcision was the occasion of a family gathering—in other words, a party. Since the Blessed Virgin Mary’s only motive in visiting Elizabeth was to help her, it is highly unlikely that she would have left before the big circumcision party, leaving an aged, postpartum Elizabeth and her literally dumb husband Zechariah to fend for themselves. No, Mary’s generous heart would have anchored her to the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth until she was no longer needed, and the earliest possible date for that would have been July 2, the day after John’s circumcision--and the day after the dishes had been washed.

The realities of childbirth--which I suspect were not well known to the clerics who revised the calendar, since all of them were celibate and almost none of them had any pastoral experience--reinforce July 2 as the earliest likely departure date. For many women, the pangs of labor are the easy part. The first few days of motherhood can be mentally and physically exhausting, especially for a first-time mother and especially for a mother who is not in the springtime of her youth. Add to that the various difficulties that often accompany nursing for the first time, and you can have a new mom on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Again, I doubt that Holy Mary would have left her cousin under such circumstances.

Scenes from the Life of St. John the Baptist, by Francesco Granacci, ca. 1506-7

A third consideration is that Mary was most likely an eyewitness of the events of July 1 because according to tradition, she was a key resource for St. Luke, who is the only evangelist to record the Annunciation and Visitation.

The July 2 date thus enables the faithful to remember not only the joyful beginning of the Visitation but its entire arc, that three-month period when the Mother of God aided her cousin, witnessed the miracle of Zechariah’s recovery of his voice (on July 1), and returned home, pondering these things in her heart. (Lk. 2, 19)

May 31, on the other hand, has no real connection to the timeline of the Visitation. The liturgical reformers assert that it better accords with the Gospel because it occurs between March 24 and June 24, but so do 90 other days. The most likely reason that May 31 was chosen out of a total of 91 options is that the reformers had created a void on May 31 by transferring the Queenship of Mary from May 31 to August 22, and it may have struck them as odd to end Mary’s month of May without a Marian feast. Understandable, but those are prudential responses to the liturgical game of musical chairs that they themselves initiated; the Gospel narrative has nothing to do with it.

If one truly wanted the most Scripturally accurate date--and if one, for whatever reason, did not want the date of Mary’s departure from the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth--one would try to assign the feast to the date when Mary first arrived at their home and saluted Elizabeth. (Luke 1, 40) Mary lived in Nazareth and Elizabeth in Ein Karem, a village about five miles west of Jerusalem. As the crow flies, the distance between the two is approximately 64 miles, but because Jews, then as now, avoided the direct route through Samaria, Mary would have had to travel about 100 miles to reach her cousin. Mary “went with haste” to Ein Karem as soon as she learned that Elizabeth was with child (Luke 1, 39), but that does not mean that she set out immediately and by herself. The mountainous regions of Judea were notoriously rife with highway robbers, and it would therefore have been irresponsible of Mary, a fifteen-years-old girl and new Ark of the Covenant, to journey alone. It is more reasonable to conjecture that Mary joined a caravan, possibly accompanied by her betrothed, Saint Joseph. Supporting this conjecture is Luke’s wording: “And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country with haste…” (Lk. 1, 39, emphasis added) It may very well have taken Mary several days to find an available caravan.

Church of the Visitation, Ein Karem, Israel

Another variable is how fast the caravan moved. A Roman legion could march twenty miles a day, a donkey could typically cover twelve to fifteen miles a day, and Ezra averaged fourteen miles a day when he traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezra 7, 9). Because a caravan would presumably consist of young and old, fit and not-fit, a conservative estimate of twelve miles a day (maybe even less) seems the most reasonable, especially since the latter half of the journey involved a steep ascent into mountains.

On the other hand, because Jews could not travel far outside a walled city on the Sabbath, the caravan probably took shelter for at least one day during the journey.

The best-case scenario, then, is that Joseph and Mary found a caravan leaving that very day, although, as I have just argued, I highly doubt that they did. If the Annunciation occurred on March 25, if the young couple left Nazareth with a caravan the same day, if the caravan averaged twelves miles a day but stopped one day for the Sabbath, and if the journey between Nazareth and Ein Karem was 100 miles, then the very earliest date on which the voice of the Lord’s mother could enter Elizabeth’s ears would be April 1--although a later date, such as around mid-April, is in my opinion far more likely. Either way, May 31 is not even a remote contender.

And thus we are left with the question: which of the two dates, July 2 or May 31, “better accords with the gospel narrative”?

Further Reading

Peter Kwasniewski, "Revisiting the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary"

Gregory DiPippo, "Liturgical Notes on the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary"

Notes

[1] Roman Calendar (United States Catholic Conference, 1976), 29

[2] Roman Calendar, 83; Calendarium Romanum (Vatican, 1969), 93, 128.

How Is Your Reeducation Going?

Since the Catholic media world is abuzz with rumors of soon-to-be-issued further restrictions on the celebration of the traditional Roman Rite, and the third anniversary of Traditionis Custodes approaches, I thought it would be a good idea to share this video from the ever-wise Phillip Campbell of the blog Unam Sanctam Catholicam, and do a little polling.

TC ordered the world’s bishops to establish a new inquisition to root out the supposed false conversos of the liturgical reform. In their new role as branch managers of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, Their Excellencies are now being saddled with the equally unenviable task of explaining the “spiritual depth and richness of the renewed Missal” to the faithful. (This is quoted from a recent letter of the DDW to an arch-branch-manager, a letter which informed him that the words of the letter accompanying TC, “It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962”, do not extend to how His Grace runs his own cathedral.)

Mr Campbell is quite correct to speak of this in his video with the classic Soviet term “re-education”, and this got me to thinking: what exactly, if anything, is being done to re-educate the faithful, and convince them of the depth and richness of the post-Conciliar Rite as the Roman Rite is taken away from them? So I would invite our readers to watch the video, and leave comments as to: A. whether they disagree with anything that it says, and if so, why; B. what, if anything, is being done in their parish or diocese to teach people that the new rite is an improvement over the old; and C. whether they found it convincing; if so, why; if not, why not.

Things and times being what they are, I hasten to add that no names of bishops, dioceses, or churches should be used, nor should any personal comments be made, much less, of course, personal attacks.

The Cathedral of St Vigilius in Trent

Last month, we published pictures of the basilica of St Simplician in Milan, which houses the relics of Ss Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander, a group missionaries who were martyred at Anaunia, north of Trent, where they had been sent by St Ambrose at the behest of St Vigilius, the bishop of Trent. Today is the feast of Vigilius himself, who followed in their footsteps, and was also martyred while preaching to the pagans, in the year 405. The cathedral of Trent is dedicated to him, and is of course is also famous as the site of the great ecumenical council of the 16th century. Here are some photos taken by Nicola de’ Grandi.

The church was begun in the year 1212 at the initiative of bishop Federico Vanga, under the architect Adamo D’Arogno, to replace a much older structure. The Romanesque façade was meant to be seen up close, since the piazza in front of it was quite small until the 19th century. The original plan was to have a bell-tower on either side, but only one was completed; in the 18th century, it was capped with an onion dome of the kind seen all over the Adige valley. (In point of fact, this architectural form, which is thought of as typically Russian, was introduced into that country by Italian and German architects during the great Westernization movement of Tsar Peter I.)

The north side of the church, with a rose-window designed to represent the Wheel of Fortune, and the bishop’s palace behind the church (to the left in this photo).

The “bishops’ door”, which they would use to enter the church for major ceremonies, made in the 16th century with several pieces reused from an earlier version: the image of St Vigilus above the door, the two lions on which the front columns rest, and the lunette above the door with Christ the Pantocrator and the symbols of the Four Evangelists. 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

If Shakespeare Survived the Adapters, the Old Mass Will Survive the Reformers

The digital grapevine is astir with forebodings. I am told that the eucharistic liturgy of my ancestors—not the Protestants who settled in Pennsylvania, that is, but rather the von Keims of medieval Germany—is once again ritus non gratus at the Vatican.

Actually, the rite threatened with imposed obsolescence is not exactly that of my ancestors. Liturgical forms, like the living beings who enact and behold them, tend to change and grow in response to their environment, even after they have reached maturity. Tradition is not stagnation, after all, and the act of “handing down” implies both a giver, in the past, and a recipient, in the future. In fact, a certain Professor Grillo, of whom I know very little, explains that tradition is the future: “la tradizione non è passato, ma futuro.”

I agree that tradition is not the past, or at least not merely the past, but I do not see how it can be equated with the future. The professor no doubt recognizes how impossible this maxim is given the etymology and standard denotations of the word “tradition,” so I will assume that his language here is operating on an alternative plane of meaning—and I don’t fault him for that. I teach rhetoric, the sister of poetry, and therefore spend a great deal of time on alternative planes of meaning.

And it is precisely because I spend so much time wandering the poetic uplands of life that I do fault Professor Grillo, not for the style of his discourse, but for the apparent objective of his discourse—namely, the disappearance of the Roman-Frankish Mass of western Christendom from the lived reality of the modern Church. Such an objective is incomprehensible to me, for this Mass is not merely a means to a sacrificial or sacramental end. It is a work of art that transcends every other cultural achievement in European history. This Mass is poetry in the fullest sense of the word—a poetic masterpiece, in fact, encompassing and sublimating every facet of the artistic experience, and appealing to every facet of the human experience. What society treats their artistic heritage this way? Who even in the secular world—a world of convulsive re-evaluations and tenacious presentism, a world where nothing is sacred and where the very concept of sacrality is questioned—who even in that world espouses the wholesale suppression of an artistic corpus so magnificent and influential and historically momentous as the liturgical rites of western Christianity?

Let us at least be consistent. If we are to bury the Old Mass under the shifting sands of the Pauline rite, let us also bury Shakespeare and everything he wrote. We have plenty of new plays, including some written in the 1960s, and these are better anyway: shorter, more colloquial, more “relevant” to modernity, and of course, much easier to understand—all that archaic language and iambic pentameter and rhetorical artistry is passé de mode and just makes Shakespeare’s plays even less like a television show.

At least Shakespeare didn’t have the gall to write in a dead language like Latin—well, actually, Latin words and phrases do occur regularly in his plays, and one of these is among his most famous: Et tu, Brute? Dante condemned Brutus to the lowest circle of Hell, because he betrayed Julius Caesar, his benefactor and his lord. Two others were there with him. One was Cassius, also a leading figure in the betrayal and assassination of Caesar. The other was Judas Iscariot.

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Shakespeare’s works are still known, admired, and loved all over the world. And despite the widespread penchant for non-historical costuming and a few other experimental tendencies, modern scholars and readers and theater-goers are interested above all in the “authentic” Shakespeare, that is, in the plays as he originally wrote them. This was not always the case.

Shakespeare died in 1616. In 1642, the Puritans ordered all of the theaters in London to close. The prohibition was lifted in 1660, which marks the beginning of the historical period known as the Restoration. Newly reopened theaters needed something to perform, and since playwrights had little reason to compose new plays during the puritanical clampdown, the works of Shakespeare and other pre-1642 playwrights were revived.

However, Shakespeare’s style had already gone out of fashion—oh “cruel fate / And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, / That goddess blind, / That stands upon the rolling restless stone” (Henry V, III, 6). Since something very serious was at stake (namely, profits), the theaters called in the Reformers. The result was that “Shakespeare” plays performed in the Restoration and in the eighteenth century were commonly rewritten to satisfy a new generation of audiences. Some infamous examples include King Lear with a happy ending and a patchwork mutilation of As You Like It entitled Love in a Forest.

King Lear in the Storm, by Benjamin West (d. 1820).

But Shakespeare survived the adapters. The reason is simple: superlative poetry endures. This was known even in the early first century, when the Roman poet Ovid was writing the Metamorphoses:

And now a great work I have completed,
which not the ire of Jove, nor fire,
nor sword or devouring old age can unmake.
Whenever it will, let that day—
which only over this body hath power—
let that day bring an end for me
to life’s uncertain span.
In my better part, however, I, immortal,
shall be borne above the stars on high,
and my name shall never die.
Wherever Roman power to conquered lands extends,
by the mouth of the people I shall be read
and—if any prophecies of poets have truth—
I shall live in fame, till all ages end. (Book XV, lines 871–79)

The poet was right. Ovid is long dead, but his literary creations are still studied and admired to this day.

The precise status of poetic works, even the finest works ever created, will rise and fall as the great waves of fashion and ideology and innovation crash upon the shore of human society. Nevertheless, poetry has proven remarkably resilient. Like the divine Word from which its power ultimately flows, artistic language captivates, enchants, and purifies the hearts of men, in every age and in every land. I speak here of language in all its forms: verse, music, narrative, oratory, supplication, clothing, iconography, symbolic gesture, ritualistic movement, and yes, even silence. The “Latin” Mass speaks many languages, and not one of them is dead.

---

The Metamorphoses survived the fall of the Roman Empire. Shakespeare survived the Puritans and the Age of Adaptations. And the Old Mass will survive the current pontificate. A poetic lamp so brilliant and edifying and passionate as the traditional Roman liturgy cannot be hidden under the bushel basket of papal directives, for the simple reason that it will set those directives aflame before the ink is dry. The Old Mass will endure, because it is a sanctifying, Truth-telling masterpiece wrought by God and man during the Church’s most fervent and fruitful centuries, and because ordinary Catholics all over the world thirst for its ancient, elevating, life-changing poetry.

If I live to see the day when the liturgy of my fathers is once again loved and honored by the popes and prelates of the Church, I’ll have an excellent reason to recall a few more of Shakespeare’s Latin words, this time spoken by King Henry V after his miraculous victory at Agincourt:

Come, go we in procession to the village,
And be it death proclaimèd through our host
To boast of this or take that praise from God
Which is His only.
...
Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung Non nobis, and Te Deum,
The dead with charity enclosed in clay,
And then to Calais, and to England then,
Where ne’er from France arrived more happy men.

---

For thrice-weekly discussions of art, history, language, literature, Christian spirituality, and traditional Western liturgy, all seen through the lens of medieval culture, you can subscribe (for free!) to my Substack publication: Via Mediaevalis.

Pro-Life Arts Event in New York City This Coming Saturday

This Saturday, June 29, there will be a celebration and examination of the Culture of Life as understood through the prism of artistic endeavor, taking place at St Vincent Ferrer Church Hall, located at 869 Lexington Ave in New York City. (Thanks to Chris Reilly for bringing this to my attention). It will be a day of live performances, artwork displays, presentations, and panel discussions with writers and artists and those working in the fields of fiction, poetry, film, and television.

Tickets are $50 at full price; $30 special discounted rate for artists and under 30. The cost includes lunch, coffee breaks and snacks, and wine and cheese reception.

The event is sponsored by the Human Life Foundation in cooperation with Arthouse2B and the parish of St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena.

For more information, go to the webpage here. You can find a listing of the full schedule and of the speakers. Participants are welcome to join for the whole day or drop in for any of the scheduled events.

As a personal contribution to the conversation, and in anticipation of what promises to be a wonderful and inspiring day, I have written an article, here, on the meaning of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and how we know that Our Lady is with a child in this famous image.

The Prominence of St John the Baptist in the Old Roman Rite

Unknown Master, 15th cent. Birth of John the Baptist (photo by Fr Lawrence Lew)

Each year in the Western rites of the Catholic Church, the birthday or nativity of St John the Baptist, Precursor of the Lord, is celebrated on June 24, exactly six months away from the nativity of Jesus Christ Our Lord. The simplest explanation for the date is that, as the St. Andrew’s Daily Missal says, “in the Gospel of March 25th we read that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that three months later [i.e., end of June], Elizabeth, in virtue of a divine miracle, would have a son.”

But there is also an allegorical explanation given by all the liturgical commentators across the ages. As John himself said, concerning the Messiah: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3, 30). Right around Christmas in the northern hemisphere falls the shortest day of the year, when the darkness is at its peak; after this, the light will slowly increase. Similarly, right around St John’s nativity falls the longest day of the year, after which the light—John’s light—will decrease. The cycle of nature itself proclaims the right relationship between the Son and Word of God and all of His disciples, no matter how great.

Those who study liturgical, architectural, and artistic history in our times, in which St. John the Baptist is, to be quite frank, an almost marginal figure in Catholic life, may be astonished as they discover the magnitude of the traditional devotion to the Baptist, greatest of the prophets, over all the centuries of the Church, in lands Eastern and Western. In Europe there were thousands of churches dedicated to him, statues and innumerable windows, paintings of every description. He was one of the most popular patrons of places. After the Virgin Mary, there is practically no saint more often invoked.

We can see the evidence of this devotion in the classical Roman rite. Not only does he have two feasts, one of which (the Nativity’s) has a proper Vigil Mass as well, and one of which (again today’s) enjoyed an octave; but in each and every celebration of the Tridentine Mass he is invoked six times in the thrice-repeated Confiteor; again in the great “Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas” prayer at the end of the Offertory; yet again in the Roman Canon; and finally in the Last Gospel. That means nine times each Mass.

By comparison, before 1962, St. Joseph wasn’t mentioned even once in the Order of Mass!

The text of the traditional Confiteor readers:

Confíteor Deo omnipoténti, beátæ Maríæ semper Vírgini, beáto Michaéli Archángelo, beáto Ioánni Baptístæ, sanctis Apóstolis Petro et Paulo, ómnibus Sanctis, et tibi, Pater: quia peccá­vi nimis cogitatióne, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa. Ideo precor beátam Maríam semper Vírginem, beátum Michaélem Archángelum, beátum Ioánnem Baptístam, sanctos Apóstolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos, et te, Pater, orare pro me ad Dóminum, Deum nostrum.
       (I confess to almighty God, to the blessed Mary ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, and to thee, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and thee, Father, to pray to the Lord our God for me.)

The Suscipe, sancta Trinitas, the last prayer of the Offertory, reads:

Súscipe, sancta Trínitas, hanc oblatiónem, quam tibi offérimus ob memóriam passionis, resurrectiónis et ascensiónis Iesu Christi Dómini nostri: et in honórem beátæ Maríæ semper Vírginis, et beáti Ioánnis Baptístæ, et sanctórum Apostolórum Petri et Pauli, et istórum, et ómnium Sanctórum: ut illis proficiat ad honórem, nobis autem ad salútem: et illi pro nobis intercédere dignéntur in cælis, quorum memóriam ágimus in terris. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.
       (Receive, O holy Trinity, this oblation which we make to Thee, in memory of the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honor of Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of all the Saints, that it may avail unto their honor and our salvation, and may they vouchsafe to intercede for us in heaven, whose memory we celebrate on earth. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.)

How powerful it is to remember—and yet so often forgotten!—that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered not only “in remembrance of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” but also “in honor of blessed Mary ever Virgin, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, of these, and of all the Saints.”

The mention once again of the two patrons of the Church of Rome reminds us that only five days after the Nativity of John, on June 29, comes the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, who are also, like John, mentioned nine times each in the Tridentine Order of Mass: six times in the thrice-repeated Confiteor; once here, in the Suscipe; once in the Roman Canon; and once in the Embolism after the Lord’s Prayer. For those who know their numerology, nine is a special number because it honors the Blessed Trinity (3+3+3 or 3x3), as in the ninefold Kyrie of the authentic rite of Mass.

The Roman Canon mentions the Baptist in the second list of saints, after the Consecration:

Nobis quoque peccatóribus fámulis tuis, de multitúdine miseratiónum tuárum sperántibus, partem áliquam et societátem donáre dignéris, cum tuis sanctis Apóstolis et Martýribus: cum Ioánne, Stéphano, Matthía, Bárnaba, Ignátio, Alexándro, Marcellíno, Petro, Felicitáte, Perpétua, Agatha, Lúcia, Agnéte, Cæcília, Anastásia, et ómnibus Sanctis tuis: intra quorum nos consórtium, non æstimátor mériti, sed véniæ, quaesumus, largítor admítte. Per Christum, Dóminum nostrum. Amen.
       (To us also, Thy sinful servants, confiding in the multitude of Thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with Thy holy Apostles and Martyrs, with John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and with all Thy Saints, into whose company we beseech Thee to admit us, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)

That ”John” here is none other than the Baptist is acknowledged by all liturgical commentators (see, e.g., Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, The Saints Who Pray with Us in the Mass, Romanitas Press, 2017, p. 26).

The Last Gospel, taken from the Prologue of the Gospel of John, includes these words (John 1, 6-8):

Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Ioánnes. Hic venit in testimónium, ut testimónium perhi­béret de lúmine, ut omnes créderent per illum. Non erat ille lux, sed ut testimó­nium perhibéret de lúmine.
       (There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to testify concerning the Light, that all might believe through Him. He was not the Light, but he was to testify concerning the Light.)

How sad it is to reflect on the fact that nowadays, at nearly all celebrations of the Novus Ordo, the name of St John the Baptist, the greatest man born of woman, will not be mentioned even once. (The only time he’d be mentioned at all is if the Roman Canon were chosen ad libitum.)

This is the kind of thing traditionalists have in mind when they speak of the different spiritualities of the old and new “forms” of the Mass. The devotional worldview of those brought up on the novel production of Paul VI is not the same as that of our predecessors in the Faith and of those who retain the traditional form of worship. Thank God, more and more Catholics are coming to see the immense value in reconnecting with their birthright: the lex orandi and lex credendi of the Roman Church of the ages.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

“Grillo’s Tradition resembles too much the Progress of the Marxian-Pragmatist rhetoric of yore”: Pietro de Marco Responds to Grillo, and Grillo Replies

The following article appeared first in Italian at Messa in Latino and is published here for the benefit of NLM readers. Pietro De Marco (b. Genoa, 1941) taught Sociology of Religion in the Faculty of Education at the University of Florence. He has taught Comparative Religious Systems in the Faculty of Political Science in Florence. A philosopher by training, under the guidance of Eugenio Garin, he worked on the history of the European intellectual field (Renaissance and nineteenth and twentieth centuries) and on ancient Jewish and Christian thought and medieval Islamic thought. He then conducted studies in church history and theology at the Institute for Religious Sciences in Bologna. He was editor of the Encyclopedia of Religions (Vallecchi) from 1969 to 1974 and collaborator of the Chair of Church History at the Faculty of Letters in Florence.

I have been asked to convey my opinion on the arguments with which Andrea Grillo responded to his interlocutor and somewhat mistreated readers of Messa in Latino. We have had a couple of confrontations with Andrea, over time, and that makes it easy for me, even in choosing the right tone. But it also makes clear my position, which I recall for those who have never read me: I do not intervene as a “traditionalist faithful to Rome,” as MiL legitimately expresses itself. Since I have been writing, and particularly, since I have felt it my duty to show disagreement with the communicative and governing acts of the reigning pontiff—I, who have always been pro-Roman!—I have spoken as a common christifidelis, endowed with some capacity for judgment, but first and foremost filled with concern for the Church, which since childhood, by God’s gift, I have truly felt to be my Mother.

I knew and shared, in the 1960s and 1970s, the conciliar reforming “point of view” and its radicalities. But, except perhaps for a very brief period, no one could convince me that much, if not all, of the past living human-divine history of the Catholic Church had been error or relative blindness or deviation. One failed to realize, as many still do not even now, that the possibility of thinking this way had already occurred, with all its consequences: it had been at the heart of the great Protestant crisis. The hermeneutic of rupture and restart from supposedly pure origins, proper to the Reformers, is not, cannot be, the Catholic one. Despite a certain theological greatness in the Reformed churches, which I know and recognize, the Reformation constitutes a paradigm of error already worked out in Christian history, all the more seriously in its “liberal” versions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I find it incredibly naive to retrace, with the blind tâtonnement of those seeking regenerations or rebirths, the dead-end roads already imagined or traveled by others.

I will not be kicked to the “right,” therefore, either my insignificant self or the theologians, clergy, intellectuals, and churches who in the world stand firmly in the center in opposing the destructive elites, to which unfortunately Grillo also belongs, who make use of a contradictory and disorienting pontificate, endowed with fixed personal ideas as much as an individual Christian can be in difficult decades, but not a pope. This premise was appropriate as a preliminary to all the remarks and boutades that Grillo reserves for “faithful traditionalists” but which want to hit very distant and lofty targets.

Marxian-Pragmatist Rhetoric

We see this immediately in what he argues in the first response. Having said that the “ritual parallelism” instituted by Benedict XVI’s Summorum pontificum had no theological foundation, Grillo asserts, with the drasticness of reformers who renounce all dialogical masquerade, that to be “faithful” one must acquire the ritual language communally established by Rome—in other words, the one established by the recent Traditionis custodes. Indeed, Tradition incorporates “a legitimate and unsurpassable progress, which is irreversible”; this would also be the meaning of the title of the motu proprio that seemed to many to be mocking.

But Grillo’s Tradition resembles too much the Progress of the Marxian-Pragmatist rhetoric of yore (its motion is unsurpassable, irreversible) to have anything to do with Christian traditiones, and with religious traditions in general. There is, strictly speaking, no progress in the Christian traditum (what is “dogmatic progress” I will not bother to remind Andrea), and nothing new is irreversible. It is curious that I have to remind someone of this who elsewhere would deny that Trent (and perhaps Chalcedon) were unsurpassable and irreversible moments of progress.

What does not hold up—and what I am sorry to see proposed instead as obvious—is that Traditionis custodes is deemed unsurpassable and irreversible, but not Summorum Pontificum. Yet neither document has more value than that of an act of government willed by the prudentia of the head of the Church. Instead, it will be a matter of debate which of the two prudentiae is to be recognized as more solicitous of the good of Christians.

About Summorum pontificum, Grillo and I publicly debated back in 2007, in Parma Cathedral, with Luise moderating. At that time I supported the following perspective, and I remain fully convinced of it:

The new “legitimization” of the Missale romanum [of 1962] decreed by SP brings Catholic life back to its essential nature as complexio. Catholic history “preceding” the Second Vatican Council is proposed as a vital horizon for the “spirit” of the Council itself and its realization—a “realization” that many extremisms have experienced instead as incompatible with the past. Thus the goal of “internal reconciliation within the bosom of the Church” becomes part of a broad medicinal intervention for the universal church…. The recovery of the Latin rite may, contrary to objections, act as a stabilizing paradigm for the fluctuating and impoverished modern-language liturgies. As Cardinal Lehmann said, the motu proprio is good reason to promote with new attention a worthy celebration of all Masses.

The misunderstanding of many bishops has moved politically against this stabilizing paradigm of the liturgy. I cannot help but add that the sensibilities and/or theories stated by Grillo stand against the perennial, ever-acting value of mystery-sacramentary ontology in the millennial life of the Church. I firmly think, against what Grillo derisively dismisses in his answer to the fifth question, that “what was sacred for past generations cannot but be sacred for us as well”; breaking with the Christian Sacred, with the sacramentaria, was the illusory and dramatic act of Calvinist Entzauberung. Here is not the place to argue this point, but having taught and worked in the sociology of religion for decades, I distinguish between the sensory variability (but not volatility) of the sacred and its ontological status. Grillo and I both admire Odo Casel, but we may not be reading the same author, so to speak.

Christological Void

Let us therefore not be fooled: the defense of postconciliar reforms is, for the leading liturgists, only political. Hostile to the Ratzingerian correction of 2007, they aimed and have aimed for decades to proceed (as soon as possible) much further subversively and authoritatively, toward an opposite atheological polarity: abolition of liturgical books, threshold situations, effervescence, theatricalizations, and ritual primitivisms. Grillo knows just what I am talking about. It is the desperate hope of the generative negation of the new or the authentic.

The common ecclesial life, even as it is not devoid of differences of opinion and practice, and the (mostly) wise governance of the bishops, have prevented this outcome, but liturgical celebrations in general have conflicted with common sense, have been lacking strong paradigms, and have shown frequent slips toward designification. These slippages have, moreover, a worrying de fide relevance—opening up a Christological void perceptible to anyone—that catechesis is incapable of correcting.

In this recent poverty of lived meanings, of fides quae and of fides qua, the “non-ordinary” form of worship and and its language bring back the certainty of an antiquitas of the Christian rite, of its originality in Christ, into which the present may profoundly and necessarily implant itself, maintaining continuity. Nothing nostalgic, then, about this, I would say to Grillo; rather, it’s a matter of fundamentals of the Faith.

Don’t Adopt Left-Wing Strategies

I turn to the next questions and answers. Grillo opposes to MiL’s emphases on the weight of the “traditional charism” in the church—the vitality of the families of traditionalists, their “una cum Papa” response to the famine of seminarians—a sort of disqualification, or condemnation of the theological, formative, pastoral paths of “traditionalism.” They are, he thinks, the “easy” solutions: they seek refuge in the normativity of the past, finally in “contrast to tradition” (in Grillo’s sense, of course) rather than in conformity to the present Church.

I leave to Andrea the responsibility and consequences of maintaining this certainty about the inconsistency of other fellow Catholics—especially if in his head he really does believe what he is saying, for that makes all the difference. Ridiculing one’s opponent creates illusory scenarios, soothing but incapable of diagnosis and prognosis. The world that he trivializes, even just the one that self-describes and self-limits as “traditional,” has much more reason and much more substance to it that he lets on. It is the Church; moreover, it occupies Catholic spaces abandoned by “reformers” and little frequented by the average christifidelis.

I pause on the answer to the fifth question, which I would summarize as follows: “Is it possible that a ritual form that has been normative for long centuries can no longer have a place, within the admittedly pluralistic framework of the universal Church? And why be afraid of the variety of charisms?” Indeed, this formulation has the weaknesses of a defensive tactic, as well as being imitative of the opposing reformist tactics of decades ago: it makes an argument from existing pluralism, an argument from diverse charisms, etc. Such a tactic may work with a benevolent interlocutor, who might then answer, “Sure, that’s fair, but…”

Personally, I would discourage the various “right-wing” critical constellations of today from using arguments that are already “left-wing.” First of all, arguments aimed at weakening the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome. In fact, “progressive” arguments are not neutral, they are inherently instrumental. They do not care about merit; they are technically revolutionary; they are, in short, catholically unusable. Thus, when Grillo uses rhetorical indignation, exclamation, or perhaps here, precisely apostrophé (“And you cannot use from the right the great Pauline ideas so shamelessly…to nurture a ‘top-down anarchy’...”), he perfectly evokes those decades gone by, not even too long ago, when this top-down anarchy was demanded of the pontiffs “from the left,” a “free for all” for theologians and local churches. The pontiffs rightly objected. “From the right,” nothing should be done that would lead to retracing à rébours that widespread and inauspicious strategy.

Reducing Tradition to a Dispensable “Covering”

A nod to the depositum fidei and its “coverings”: here is yet another deterrent argument in Andrea’s skillful tactics, for the history of Christian doctrines, lef to liberal historicism, shows how insidious is the criterion for differentiating between the covering and the authentic body or core. Theoretically inconsistent, I consider it; consequently, an unusable concept in serious discussion.

That Grillo then thinks that it is “nostalgia” that makes us protect the authentic body of fides quae so as not to dismiss it as a mere “variable” garment shows that we have put behind us the great and decisive dogmatic debate that has accompanied Christendom since the Tridentine age, up to and including the discussions of Vatican II. The rhetoric of “coverings” [namely, that we need to remove the useless externals] remained the preserve of the external pseudo-council, the journalists, and the battle theologians, of the intelligentia of yesterday and today.

It remains to comment on what Grillo ascribes, somewhat blindly (as in a fistfight) to Pope Benedict XVI. I have already spoken about “anarchy from above.” This involves a subversive intelligentia dictating to the ruler in order to allow him to survive. Quite otherwise was Benedict XVI’s intent, considering how much his solution was intended to reduce the structural disequilibrium of recent practices. That it may have been inadequate strategy and theology is an empirical judgment, but could we agree on the parameters to be used to judge it?

When Grillo and I worked together, each in his own trench, on Universal Church or Introverted Church: A Debate on the Motu Proprio ‘Summorum Pontificum’ , the liturgical question was in the hearts of many, and in the heart of the pontiff. By the time St. Paul’s Editions published the volume in 2013, no one was interested—first and foremost in Rome. Sic transit.

But the subsistence, the bare subsistence, of the traditional liturgy—that which Andrea and other radical liturgist friends see as an unbearable stumbling block for the life of the Church (not only liturgically speaking), and which, by now, in contrast, I see as a cornerstone of a realized and lived paradigm of ancientness, placed there as an icon of the Church that cannot be renounced—is crucial as a concrete dialectic. That is, it counts as a dialectical negation of the fragile ecclesial presentism to which the Catholic Church seems reduced nowadays (and for whose gift we thank the Lord anyway), a negation that realizes a perennial ideal and reality of the Church. All in the synthesis of the Mystical Body.

Minutiae

A last thought. Concerning the “failure” of the liturgical reform, I agree with Grillo that the argument of numbers is weak. First, because correlations between church practices and numbers of practitioners are very difficult to obtain and to interpret; interpretation presupposes licit utterances of the if-then type that we lack. And then, as usual, the argument for the decline of practice has been contested by the most diverse, indeed opposing, factions for decades. Over the years I have formed my judgment rather in the experienced practice—mixed Vetus and Novus—of missalizing, listening to homilies, evaluating what is said as well as what can’t/won’t be said anymore, in observing the behaviors (within and outside the rite) of clergy and people.

I note, in closing, that Grillo’s final jab—“tradition is not past but the future”—characterizes well (I don’t know how willingly and consistently) an underlying philosophy of my liturgist friend, namely a Nietzsche-Bloch-style ontological and nihilistic utopianism, cultivated by many today, even among young philosophy undergraduates. This much can be said: it is certainly incompatible with the theology of salvation history, therefore with Christology also; and finally, with common sense.

* * *

Prof. Andrea Grillo’s Response

Dear Pietro,

Once again we are involved in a discussion. I read your article and, as always, I admire its tone and culture and always find that, even in the harshness of definitions, you never cease from being affectionate. While with Alcuin Reid we have so many times conducted a dialogue of the deaf—with the perception that, on the other side, there was a theological and liturgical simplism, nourished only by arrogance—with you I have always perceived not only the friendship that has bound us together for decades, even when we have argued most strongly, but fairness and mutual esteem. That is why we wrote together, in 2013, a book in which we constructed a small “medieval quaestio disputata,” with “videtur quod” and “sed contra.”

Even then, it seemed to me that you had, of liturgists, a vision only political and only fixed on the ’68 revolution. This, I pointed out to you even then, is not a good way to understand liturgists. For your approach has in common, with Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the demonization of the “enemy,” which does not bear good fruit in the reconstruction of either the Liturgical Movement or the Liturgical Reform.

Those who are seriously concerned with liturgy do not instrumentalize the rites politically, but want to restore to the rites their authority, which cannot in any way be reduced to “politics,” as traditionalism and progressivism do. You are always tempted to move me to a “progressive” extreme and to confuse me with a “Marxist,” while I am simply a theologian who tries to give everything its value, and who cannot remain silent in the face of a pope’s attempt to make an ecumenical Council incidental. The fact that I take Vatican II just as seriously as I do the Council of Trent—which you know how much I appreciate for its reforming intent—cannot be read as “Marxism,” but as an opening of the Church to the future.

Connecting tradition to the future is the oldest sense of paradosis and traditio, for otherwise we make fidelity to the Lord Jesus a contradiction to the gift of the Holy Spirit. Compared to the book, today we argue in reverse: then Summorum Pontificum was in force, today Traditionis Custodes is in force. Back then, I already argued that SP had no theological foundation: the idea of two parallel “leges orandi” was and remains a true theological “monstrum.” That it was the “theologian pope” who conceived it is aggravating. In regard to the liturgy, as we know well, not only evidence, but feelings, affiliations, and attachments that are difficult to rationalize are triggered.

Today, thanks to Francis—against whom you repeatedly lash out; we have discussed this over the years—we have gained a more traditional point of view. It is curious that it was Benedict XVI who gave in to the postmodern spirit of anarchy, while it is Francis who reestablishes the conditions of an ecclesial fidelity. It would be a mistake for you to go along (not with words, but in feeling) with the idea that Benedict was a liberal pontiff, while Francis would be a Stalinist. Instead, I think that the former succumbed to the ideological reading of the Council that threatened the Council Fathers (including him), while the latter is just a “son of the Council” and enjoys this primarily biographical condition. I see more “political” conditioning in the former than in the latter and believe that an “ecclesia universa” cannot be an “ecclesia introversa.”

I am grateful for your reply and consider even this small exchange a sign of friendship.

Andrea Grillo

(source in Italian)

The Vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist

In the Roman Rite, the term “vigilia – vigil” traditionally means a penitential day of preparation for a major feast. The Mass of a Saint’s vigil is celebrated after None, as are the Masses of the ferias of Lent or the Ember Days, and in violet vestments; however, the deacon and subdeacon do not wear folded chasubles, as they do in Lent, but the dalmatic and tunicle. The Mass has neither the Gloria nor the Creed, the Alleluja is simply omitted before the Gospel, not replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said at the end in place of Ite, missa est. 

Folio 89r of the Gellone Sacramentary, 780 AD; the Mass of the vigil of the Nativity of St John, which is here called “jejunium Sancti Johannis Baptistae - the fast of St John the Baptist”, begins with the large decorated P at the bottom of the page. Note the hole where the parchment gave way in the process of preparation; the text is copied out around it on both sides. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

Because they are penitential days, they are not celebrated on a Sunday, but anticipated to the previous Saturday, which is the case this year for the vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. Before 1908, the feast of St Paulinus of Nola was ranked as a simple feast, and the vigil would have taken precedence over it, but in that year, St Pius X raised it to the rank of a double. The vigil is therefore observed in the Divine Office with the ninth lesson at Matins, and a commemoration at Lauds. Private Masses may be said of either the vigil or the feast, with the commemoration of the other; in major churches, the Mass of the feast is said after Terce, and that of the vigil after None.

The vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist is attested in all liturgical books of the Roman Rite until 1969, when vigils in the traditional sense were abolished. The same chants and Scriptural readings which it has in the Missal of St Pius V are already found in the oldest graduals and lectionaries, and the same prayers are all in place in the Gregorian Sacramentary at the beginning of the 9th century. The Baptist’s conception is noted on September 24th in many early Western calendars and martyrologies, but does not seem to have been kept as an actual feast as it is in the Byzantine Rite (one day earlier). This is because the vigil itself serves as the liturgical commemoration of his conception, the announcement of which by the Angel Gabriel to his father Zachariah is read as the Gospel of the day. This custom mirrors that of the Ember Wednesday of Advent, on which the Gospel of the Annunciation is read in preparation for Christmas.

The introit of the vigil sums up the Angel’s message, and prepares us for the great feast of the following day, on which “many will rejoice at his birth.”

Introitus Ne tímeas, Zacharía, exaudíta est oratio tua: et Elísabeth uxor tua pariet tibi filium, et vocábis nomen ejus Joannem: et erit magnus coram Dómino: et Spíritu Sancto replébitur adhuc ex útero matris suae: et multi in nativitáte eius gaudébunt. V. Dómine, in virtúte tua laetábitur rex: et super salutáre tuum exsultábit vehementer. Gloria Patri. Ne tímeas. (Do not be afraid, Zachary, thy prayer hath been heard, and Elizabeth thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John; and he shall be great before the Lord, and shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb; and many will rejoice at his birth. V. O Lord, in Thy strength the king shall be glad; and in Thy salvation shall he rejoice exceedingly. Glory be. Do not be afraid.)

It has very often been noted that the birth of the Baptist occurs shortly after the summer solstice, when the hours of daylight begin to grow shorter, and the birth of Christ occurs shortly after the winter solstice, when the hours of daylight begin to grow longer. This arrangement is traditionally understood as a reflection of St John’s words about Christ, “He must wax, and I must wane.” (John 3, 30) The Collect of the vigil seems also to refer to this when it speaks not of the upcoming festivity, but rather of John’s role in sending us to Christ.

“Præsta, quáesumus, omnípotens Deus: ut familia tua per viam salútis incédat; et, beáti Joannis Praecursóris hortamenta sectendo, ad eum, quem praedixit, secúra perveniat, Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum etc. – Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that Thy household may walk in the way of salvation and, by following the exhortations of blessed John the Forerunner, safely come to Him whom he foretold, even our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, etc.”

The Preaching of St John the Baptist, ca. 1665 by Mattia Preti (1613-99); public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Epistle, Jeremiah 1, 4-10, is chosen particularly for the words of verse 5, “Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations.” This makes a perfect complement to the Gospel, since it parallels the words of the angel to Zachariah so closely. “For … and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. … And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias (i.e. of a prophet).”

The association of this passage with John the Baptist goes back to the very origins of Latin Christianity, already cited in Tertullian’s treatise On the Soul, chapter 26. “Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her womb; Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had so impelled Her. The mothers recognize each other’s offspring, being each herself recognized by them, who were of course alive, and not merely souls, but spirits also. So also do you read the word of God (spoken) to Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.’ … And God made a man, and breathed into him the breath of life, and God would not have known him to be a man in the womb, unless he were whole: ‘and before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee.’ ”

The Prophet Jeremiah, by Piero della Francesca, 1452-66, in the church of St Francis in Arezzo.

And likewise, in St Ambrose’s highly influential commentary on the Gospel of Luke (1.33): “There is no doubt that this promise of the Angel is true; for indeed, Saint John, before he was born, while still in his mother’s womb, showed the grace of the Spirit received. For when neither his father nor his mother had done any wonders, leaping in the womb of his mother, he proclaimed the good tidings of the coming of the Lord to his mother. For thus do you read, that when the mother of the Lord had come to Elizabeth, she said to Her, ‘For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.’ For he had not yet the spirit (i.e. breath) of life, but the spirit of grace. And then, we have also been able to note elsewhere that the grace of sanctification precedes the essence of living, since the Lord saith, ‘Before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee, and set thee as a prophet among the nations.’ ”

The Gradual is one of only two in the historical corpus [1] of the Roman Missal whose texts are taken from the Gospels, the other being that of the feast of John the Evangelist. This acknowledges the unique roles that the two Saints John played in Our Lord’s life on this earth, and perhaps also reflects the fact that they share the dedication of the cathedral of Rome with Him. Both graduals are in the fifth mode, but their music is different.

Graduale Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Joannes. V. Hic venit, ut testimonium perhibéret de lúmine, paráre Dómino plebem perfectam. (There was a man sent by God, whose name was John. V. This man came to bear witness concerning the light, to prepare for the Lord a perfect people.)

The Gospel, Luke 1, 5-17, is titled in the Missal “The beginning of the Holy Gospel according to Luke”, since the first four verses, which are not traditionally read in the Roman Rite, are treated as a prologue. This part explains who John’s parents were, and tells us of their childlessness and of the Angel’s words to Zachariah when he appears to him in the temple. However, the second part, verses 18-25, which narrates Zachariah’s doubt and punishment, and the actual conception, is not read. Beginning in the Carolingian era, the Nativity of the Baptist was celebrated with two Masses, one at dawn and one during the day, which are analogous to the second and third Masses of Christmas. Luke 1, 18-25 was historically read as the Gospel of the dawn Mass, but disappeared from the Roman Rite when that Mass fell out of use. In the post-Conciliar lectionary, these verses have been restored to the lectionary, not in connection with the Birth of St John, but in Advent, on December 19th when that day is a feria.

The so-called Leonine Sacramentary contains a special preface for the vigil, a shortened version of which is found in many manuscripts of the Gregorian sacramentary and in the traditional Ambrosian rite; here is the older Leonine form.

VD: exhibentes sollemne jejunium, quo beati Johannis baptistae natalicia praevenimus. Cujus genitor et verbi Dei nuntium dubitans nasciturum vocis est privatus officio, et eodem recepit nascente sermonem; quique Angelo promittente dum non credit obmutuit, magnifici praeconis exortu et loquens factus est et profeta: materque pariter sterilis aevoque confecta non solum puerperio fecunda processit, sed etiam, quo beatae Mariae fructum sedula voce benedictione susciperet, spiritu divinitatis impleta est; ipseque progenitus, utpote viae caelestis adsertor, viam domino monuit praeparari, seraque in suprema parentum aetate concretus et editus, procreandum novissimis temporibus humani generis disseruit redemptorem.

Truly it is worthy… holding the solemn fast, by which we anticipate the birth of blessed John the Baptist. Whose father, when he doubted the message of God’s word that he was to be born, was deprived of the use of his voice, and received it back when he was born; who grew silent when he did not believe the Angel’s promise, but at the birth of the glorious herald, gained his speech and became a prophet. And likewise his mother, being sterile and worn by old age, did not only become fruitful in childbearing, but was also filled with the Holy Spirit, so that she might receive the fruit of the Blessed Mary with a blessing with eager voice. And himself that was begotten, as the one who shows the way to heaven, urged that the way of the Lord be prepared, and being lately conceived and brought forth in the last age of his parents, proclaimed that the Redeemer of the human race would be born in the last times.

[1] The graduals of two very late Masses, both promulgated by Pope Pius XI, also take their text from the Gospels, those of St Thérèse of Lisieux (1925) and the votive Mass of Christ the Eternal High Priest (1935).