When a Liturgist Was King

A presidential debate recently occurred in a nation-state that some consider the modern world’s first democracy. Though I did not watch the debate, I have read enough about it to recognize that this is an appropriate time to reflect on the benefits of hereditary monarchy.

The Middle Ages produced many kings and queens of the first order, and many also of the second (or third, or fourth...) order. Dante, for one, had grown weary of monarchs—“regi, che son molti, e ’ buon son rari” (“kings, who are many, and the good are rare”; Paradiso 13). Anyone who had that much close contact with Italian politics can be excused for growing a bit cynical. Likewise, anyone who has endured close contact with modern electoral democracies can be excused for reminiscing, perhaps with immoderate affection, on the days when a king reigned for life and left the kingdom to his heir.

The halls of Christendom are adorned with heroic kings, holy kings, even sainted kings. Their exemplary lives, which have ennobled monarchy itself, are a precious inheritance and deserve our greatest admiration. And yet, the ruler who most excites my imagination—the one that seems the very incarnation of human monarchy, in all its mysteries and contradictions—was born long before the Middle Ages, and even before Christ Himself. His name was David.

David is anointed by Samuel.

He was a shepherd and a warrior, an adulterer and a murderer, a penitent and a poet, a prophet and a king. He is the archetypal religious musician: a harpist (1 Samuel 16, 16), a singer (2 Samuel 22, 1), and a composer (2 Samuel 23, 1). He brought prosperity to Israel, death to Goliath, glory to God, and an example of faithful, pious, courageous leadership to princes of all ages. Nowhere else in the great works of literature is such a monarch to be found. The charm and power of his life story is beautifully expressed in Psalm 77, a masterpiece which I elsewhere described as “a soaring journey in verse through Israel’s epic history and tempestuous relationship with God”:

[The Lord] appointed David his servant,
      and took him up from the flocks of sheep,
out from the ewes in milk he brought him,
      to be the shepherd of Jacob his people: of Israel, his possession;
and in the innocence of his heart,
      he pastured them, he led them forth: with the skill of his hands.

David refuses Saul’s arms. Courtesy of the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes - CNRS.

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To live in the days of David was to live in the reign of a liturgist. I don’t mean that David was a liturgical scholar (though he must have been); that is but one definition of “liturgist.” Two others are attested: “one who advocates the use of liturgy,” and “one who celebrates divine worship.” David was a celebrant indeed:

And David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with joy.... And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.... And it was so, as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out at the window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the Lord. (2 Samuel 6, 12-16)

“Leaping and dancing”—this is not the solemn, celestial liturgy of traditional Christianity, to be sure. The New Covenant is not one with the Old; it is the fulfillment of the Old, just as the sublime poetry of the Catholic Mass is the fulfillment of David’s joyful dance in procession with the Ark, which in the sacred author’s bold metonymy is simply “the Lord.” No metonymy is needed when speaking of the Catholic priest, for he faces the tabernacle, and thus his angelic dance—a dance of the soul rather than the body—is seen by the Lord Himself. And I, a layman, can only imagine how the priest’s heart must leap with wonder and holy fear when he leans in close and whispers to the Beloved—and in a mystical sense, to himself, for he speaks in the first person, and acts in persona Christi—“this is My body.” The bread, now God, is lifted up into divine Life, and the priest, now victim, is lifted up onto the Cross, there to complete, as St. Paul says, the sacrifice of his Lord.

It’s easy to overlook, I think, this mysterious mirroring of the eucharistic oblation: the sacramental Christ and His sacerdotal servant, gazing at each other in that liturgical embrace of mutual self-sacrifice. It is said that Padre Pio suffered grievously while offering Mass. King David was all gladness on that day when he processed in homage to the Ark, but his royal vocation led him through the via crucis as well. Postbiblical Jewish writers were reluctant to accept that David was a sinner; they sought an almost mythical hero—a supernaturally innocent king who would more perfectly prefigure the messiah. They didn’t realize that his sins were prefiguration, for David suffered agonies on their account, much as his divine Descendant suffered agonies for sins that, though not His in commission, were made His for the sake of Redemption.

David slays Goliath and brings his head to Saul. Courtesy of the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes - CNRS.

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The Scripture says that David “was girded with a linen ephod.” This is the garment of a priest. Though not of the sacerdotal class, David was anointed by God, and his kingship was a sacred one:

And they brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, in the midst of the tent that David had pitched for it: and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had made an end of offering the burnt offering and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts. (2 Samuel 6, 17-18)

O how dull and desolate is the timeworn face of modern secular politics when we must compare it to the warrior-king of Israel, dancing before the Ark of the Lord “with all his might”! Eyes alight with interior fire, he exchanges his royal robes for priestly vesture, offers a pleasing sacrifice unto the Lord, blesses his people in God’s holy name, and sends every man and woman home with “a cake of bread, and a portion of flesh, and a cake of raisins” (2 Samuel 6, 19).

This was a fine liturgy indeed, with a fine gift from the king—and it was also a vivid foreshadowing of liturgies to come, when a pure and perfect sacrifice would be offered, and the people would receive the flesh of the incarnate God.

Liturgical and Eucharistic Reflections in New Collection of Bishop Schneider Interviews

Over the years, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has granted many illuminating interviews that offer guidance, challenge, and comfort to the storm-tossed faithful.

This new volume — A Shepherd Solicitous for the Whole Church: Bishop Athanasius Schneider in Conversation with Dániel Fülep & Others — collects seven of them for the first time in one place: two substantial interviews conducted with His Excellency by the Hungarian theologian Dániel Fülep, plus five others, shorter but no less potent.

In wide-ranging exchanges, we hear Bishop Schneider reflecting on versus populum • the validity of the new sacramental rites • celibacy • patriarchy • women’s ordination • papal elections • papolatry • Amoris Laetitia • La Salette • the conversion of Russia • the European Union • migration • Islam • the conversion of the Jews • Freemasonry • modernism • aggiornamento • the SSPX • the Neocatechumenal Way • praying the Rosary during Mass • Pius X’s reform of the breviary • episcopal conferences • and much else besides.

We learn delightful revelations:

• how the bishop’s little book Dominus Est changed the Vatican’s liturgical policy;

• how, after a lapse of 27 years, he was able to visit the priest, then 86 years old, who had given him his First Communion—and who then humbly served his Mass like an altar boy;

• how, as a child, he was forced to sing Soviet propaganda songs in school—an experience that helped prepare him to sniff out progressivist propaganda in the Catholic Church years later;

• why he made the unusual choice of a Greek phrase, “Kyrie eleison,” for his episcopal motto.

In these edifying pages we hear, again and again, the voice of a good shepherd who is truly and ardently solicitous for the whole Church.

May be ordered directly from Os Justi Press here, or from Amazon here. (Available also at the other Amazon locations.)

Liturgical Notes on the Visitation of the Virgin Mary

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary is surely one of the most beautiful stories in the Gospels, the account of a younger woman’s act of charity towards her older kinswoman, at a time when both find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. It is the occasion on which St Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, speaks to the Virgin the words which form the second part of the Ave Maria, “Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb.” Mary’s reply to her is the canticle which in the Western church is sung at Vespers every day of the year, the Magnificat. Despite the importance of this story, the Roman Rite originally read it only on the Ember Friday of Advent, in a Mass that makes no other reference to it, two days after reading the Gospel of the Annunciation.

For many centuries, the latter was one of the classic group of four Marian feasts, along with her Nativity, Purification and Assumption, which the Latin Church had received from the Byzantine Rite in the first millennium. At the end of the 13th century, the liturgical commentator William Durandus notes that some people celebrate a fifth feast, that of the Virgin’s Conception. This feast was the cause of some notable discussions and controversies, and was not received by the Roman Church until 1476, more than 200 years after it was first kept by the Franciscans. The Visitation, on the other hand, was officially embraced and promulgated almost a century before the Immaculate Conception, and properly ranks as the Latin Church’s first “new” Marian feast, a native creation of the Roman Rite, not a Byzantine import.

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary, by Giotto, in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, 1303-6.

It is traditionally said that the Franciscans adopted the feast, along with that of the Immaculate Conception, at a general chapter held in 1263, when St Bonaventure was Minister General. It is certainly true that St Francis’ order greatly promoted devotion to the Virgin and new feasts in Her honor, also adopting the feast of Our Lady of the Snows in 1302. Evidence for their celebration of the Visitation in the 13th century, however, is not conclusive, and the authenticity of the relevant sources is debated. The first certain attestation of the feast is found in Prague, where it was celebrated in 1386 at the behest of Archbishop John Jenstein, who composed a Mass and Office for it. Cardinal Jenstein was also present at a consistory held in Rome in April of 1389, as the Great Schism of the West was in its twelfth year, and it was he who suggested to Pope Urban VI that he extend the feast to the whole Church as a way of asking for the Virgin’s intercession to end the Schism.

Pope Urban did in fact agree to do this, but died before he could sign the necessary decrees; the official promulgation of the feast was one of the first acts of his successor, Boniface IX, by the bull Superni benignitas Conditoris, dated November 9, 1389. As is also the case with other liturgical bulls of that era, it is a supremely beautiful and spiritual piece of writing, elegant and learned in its Latinity; it was even read in the Divine Office in some places, despite the fact that its author was a notorious simoniac (and the reason why the name Papal name ‘Boniface’ has not been used since.)

The very Queen of heaven, in whose womb the Son of God enclosed Himself and became a man, from the height of that great honor proclaimed to her by the Angel, took unto herself no spirit of pride, but as a humble servant, though she had become the mother of the Lord, fulfilled the office of her humility, upon which the Lord had looked with favor, and arising went unto the mountains, … O great mystery, o wondrous commerce, and ineffable sacrament, that these mothers should know beforehand and even prophecy about the children which they bore in their wombs; and, as the sacred history of the Gospel reveals, the Queen of Heaven, who was pregnant, and would be consecrated by the birth of God, as an even greater mark of humility, should render service to the pregnant mother of Her Son’s Precursor.

The altarpiece of the Lady Chapel in Prague Cathedral, with the Visitation in the central panel. The events depicted on the wings are the other Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary: the Annunciation (upper left), the Birth of Christ (upper right), the Presentation in the Temple (lower left) and the Finding of Christ in the Temple (lower right.)

When the feast was first kept at Prague, it was celebrated on April 28; other dates are attested in other places, but Pope Boniface’s bull fixes it to July 2nd, the day after the Octave of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. This may seem an odd choice, since the Visitation comes right before the Baptist’s birth in St Luke’s Gospel. Wishing to keep the feast with the fullness of solemnity according to the custom of his era, Pope Boniface originally gave it a vigil and an octave; both of these were removed in the Tridentine liturgical reform, although the octave was retained by many religious orders, and all the dioceses of the kingdom of Bohemia. Vigils were not kept in the Easter season, and if the feast were set in May or June, its octave would continually clash with those of the Ascension, Pentecost and Corpus Christi. (The date of the Visitation in the Novus Ordo, May 31, will fall on the Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday or Corpus Christi 13 times in the current century; adding the vigil of Pentecost, its octave and that of Corpus, it will be impeded a further 42 times). By the end of the 15th century, the July 2nd date had been received throughout the western Church, even at Prague, and this is the date that would carry through to the Tridentine liturgical books.

In the Ambrosian Rite, the Visitation is ranked as a Solemnity of the Lord, and as such, may be celebrated on a Sunday, which is not permitted even for the very greatest solemnities of the Saints, such as the Assumption or the feast of St Charles Borromeo. Nevertheless, the texts of both Mass and Office are essentially about the Virgin Mary. The major exception is the first chant of the Mass, the “Ingressa”, repeated from the Sixth Sunday of Advent, which speaks of the first meeting of the Lord and His Precursor as children in their mothers’ wombs.

Videsne Elisabeth cum Dei Genitrice Maria disputantem: Quid ad me venisti, mater Domini mei? Si enim scirem, in tuum venirem occursum. Tu enim Regnatorem portas, et ego prophetam: tu legem dantem, et ego legem accipientem: tu Verbum, et ego vocem proclamantis adventum Salvatoris.

Dost thou see Elizabeth discussing with Mary, the Mother of God: Why hast Thou come to me, o mother of my Lord? For if I had known, I would have come to meet Thee. For thou bearest Him that reigneth, and I the prophet; Thou the Giver of the Law, and I him that receiveth it; Thou the Word, and I the voice of him that proclaimeth the coming of the Savior.

The Byzantine Rite also keeps July 2nd with a feast of the Virgin, called “The Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Holy Mother of God in Blachernae.” Blachernae was the name of a suburb of Constantinople, later enclosed within the city walls, where in the mid-5th century the Empress St Pulcheria built a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary; this church would become the city’s most important Marian shrine, and among all of its churches second in importance only to Hagia Sophia. Shortly thereafter, two citizens of the imperial capital were said to have found the robe of the Virgin Mary while visiting the Holy Land, and to have brought it back to the city, where it was enshrined in the church at Blachernae; an ancient icon of the Virgin was also housed therein, of the type now called from it Blachernitissa.

The Synaxarion of the Byzantine Rite (the equivalent of the Martyrology) tells the story that when Constantinople was besieged by the Avars and Persians in 626, the patriarch Sergius processed various relics around the city walls, including those of the Cross, and the Virgin’s Robe. Shortly thereafter, the besieging armies were completely defeated by the much smaller Byzantine forces, and the enemy fleet wrecked just off the shores of the Blachernae region. The Byzantine tradition states that the famous hymn to the Virgin known as the Akathistos was first sung on this occasion, to honor the Mother of God for protecting and delivering the city. The Virgin of the Blachernae was believed to have delivered the city from at least three other sieges, twice by the Arabs in 677 and 717, and again by the Russians in 860; the icon and robe of the Blachernitissa came to be venerated as the palladia, the protecting talismans of the city.

The Siege of Constantinpole, in a mural of the Moldovita Monastery in Romania, painted in 1537. (Image from wikipedia; click to enlarge.) On the upper part of the city walls are seen the Blachernitissa icon of the Virgin, and the Holy Mandylion, the cloth with the face of Jesus on it.

Later Byzantine writers tell of a miracle which took place in the church so often it came to be known as the “habitual miracle.” This tradition found its way to the West, and is recorded in the rubrics of the Missal of Sarum, as an explanation of the custom of celebrating a Mass in honor of the Virgin every Saturday.

In a certain church of the city of Constantinople, there was an image of the Blessed Virgin, before which there hung a veil which covered the whole image. But on Friday after Vespers, this veil withdrew from the image, with no one moving it, by a miracle of God alone, as if it were being born up to heaven so that the image could be fully seen. Once Vespers had been celebrated on Saturday, the veil descended once again before the image, and remained there until the following Friday. Once this miracle had been seen, it was decreed that that day should always be celebrated in honor of the Virgin.

The rubric continues with a beautiful meditation on the Virgin Mary’s faith in the Resurrection.

Another reason is that when the Lord was crucified and had died, as the disciples fled and despaired of the Resurrection, complete faith remained in Her alone. For She knew that She had carried Him without distress, and born Him without pain, and therefore she was certain that He was the Son of God, and must rise from the dead on the third day. And this is the reason why Saturday (i.e. the day between the death and Resurrection of Christ) belongs more than any other day to the Virgin.

A 17th century copy of the Blachernitissa icon of the Virgin Mary, from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The original seems to have been lost when the church of the Blachernae was destroyed by fire in 1434.

Conference and Premiere of Mass in Honor of Blessed Karl of Austria, Washington DC, October 18-20

Thank you to composer Paul Jernberg of the Magnificat Institute for bringing this to my attention: his newly composed Mass will be premiered this weekend, with himself conducting the choir. For further information about the event, contact Suzanne Pearson at sdpearson@verizon.net.

Blessed Karl of Austria was the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ascending to the throne in 1916. He died in 1922, and his cause for canonization was opened in 1949. 

Here is the poster:

Sermon for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus

Six years ago today at St. Mary's Oratory in Wausau, Canon Heitor Matheus of the Institute of Christ the King preached the following sermon for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. NLM shared the text at that time, and now we share it again for the benefit of those who haven't seen it.

Today's feast is a marvelous example of how the liturgy expands over the centuries to ponder more deeply and enter more fully into the mysteries of God. First, from ancient times, there was Maundy Thursday; then in the Middle Ages, Corpus Christi; then when the love of men had grown cold under Jansenism, the Sacred Heart; and finally, in the revolutionary Europe of the mid-19th century, the Precious Blood.

Each of these feasts draws out a further dimension of the inexhaustible love of the Redeemer whose victory is greater than the forces of darkness arrayed against Him. Each feast makes present to us the reality and power of the particular mystery commemorated.

Sermon for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood

Canon Heitor Matheus

July 1, 2018

On the night before His most sorrowful Passion, Our Lord gathered His apostles around Him. On that night, the last night of His mortal life, Our Lord Jesus Christ, as a father, called His children in order to make known His “Last Will.” Every word, every gesture here is full of importance.

So He took bread into His holy and venerable hands, and raised His eyes towards heaven, unto God, His Almighty Father, and giving thanks, He blessed it, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying: “Take and eat, you all, of this, for this is my body.”

In like manner He took the chalice into His holy and venerable hands, He blessed it, and gave it to His disciples saying: “Take and drink, you all, of this, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal testament, which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.”

Through these words, through these gestures, Our Lord gave His own Body and Blood to His apostles. In His poverty, Jesus Christ did not have anything to give but Himself. And that’s what He left for His children: the treasure of His Real Presence in the most Holy Eucharist.

And it was the will of Our Lord that all of His children, from all places and all times, would be able to partake of this precious gift. And for this reason, He gave an order to His apostles:

Do this in commemoration of Me.

By these words, Our Lord gave His apostles the power to do what He Himself had done: to change the bread and the wine into His own Body and Blood. By these words, the apostles were ordained Priests of the New Law, in order to offer the Sacrifice of the New Law. “Do this in commemoration of Me,” which means, offer this Sacrifice of my Body and Blood for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls.

So, priests are the executors of the “Last Will” of Jesus Christ. And His last will was that His apostles, and their successors, would do what He Himself did on that blessed night… that the Church would carry on this mystery, until the end of time.

This Feast we celebrate today gives us the opportunity to reflect on the fact that the Blood that Our Lord shed on the Cross for our Salvation is really present on the Altar. After the Consecration, the Chalice doesn’t have wine anymore, but Blood. The Precious Blood of the Lamb of God, which was sacrificed for us.

It is not a fable, or a pious imagination, like the Protestants would say. It is not a figure, but it is the reality. If you wish, you can go and ask Our Lord Himself: Lord, what is inside that Chalice? And He will say, as He said on that blessed night: It is my Blood.

So how could someone dare to doubt the word of God?

So many miracles during the centuries have attested the Real Presence of Our Lord in the most Holy Eucharist! What an infinite treasure Our Lord left to His Church: His own Body and Blood really present among us!

From the very beginning, the Holy Church received this precious treasure with reverence and love. And she surrounded the sacred words of the Consecration with many prayers and ceremonies: everything to render glory to the Real Presence of Our Lord.

This monument of piety that we call the Liturgy is the most valuable patrimony of the Church. Saint Paul says that Christ showed His love for the Church by dying for her. And we could say, without any hesitation, that the Church shows her love for Christ through the Liturgy, because the Liturgy is the great chant of love that the Church sings to God.

And we know that it was not a work of one day, of one year, but of many centuries. Beginning with Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the holy apostles, passing through many saints and popes, the Liturgy of the Roman Church was always growing organically, until it found its completion in the codification made by Pope Pius V after the Council of Trent. The “Tridentine Mass,” as we call it, always was and will always be the authentic expression of the Faith of the Catholic Church. That is how, for almost two thousand years, the Church has accomplished, day by day, the “Last Will” of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to “do this in commemoration of Me.”

It is not so surprising that the enemy would try to attack the Liturgy of the Church, that he would push for a reform, in order to deform this most beautiful Chant. Because the devil knows very well that the Liturgy is linked to the Faith. When you touch the Liturgy, you touch the Faith. When you change the way people pray, you change the way they believe. And when you change the way people believe, you change the way they behave. As Cardinal Burke said: “The abuses in the Liturgy are strictly correlated with lack of faith and moral corruption.” These are the consequences of bad liturgy.

And the way to discern a good liturgy from a bad one is the manner the Blessed Sacrament is treated. If the Body of Our Lord is treated like a mere wafer, and if the Chalice of His Blood is treated like a glass of wine, we can clearly see how this way of doing things will deform the faith of the people, who will be inclined not to believe anymore in the Real Presence of Our Lord. And this deformed faith will lead to a deformed life.

Perhaps this is the key to understand all the crisis we have been going through in the Church and in the world: a lack of care toward the Liturgy. How has the Liturgy been celebrated? How have people been treating the most holy Eucharist? If the angels could cry, they would, seeing what we see in so many churches nowadays.

What we need to understand is that if we believe it is the Lord, we must treat Him accordingly, with all respect and love. So we can see how important it is that the Liturgy of the Church should be well celebrated, for the glorification of God and the salvation of souls. If the downfall of a person, of a family, or a society comes from the lack of care and respect towards the things of God, the restoration of all things will only happen when we learn how to give God the adoration He deserves—when we learn how to honor, with due respect, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

So my brethren, let us adore the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament; and in a spirit of reparation for so many abuses, let us say many times during the day the prayer that the Angel of Portugal taught the three children at Fatima: My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love Thee, and I ask pardon for all those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love Thee.