The Extra Stormy Orations of the Reconfigured Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Lost in Translation #110

We call the “leftover” Sundays at the end of the Time after Pentecost reconfigured rather than resumed, because they are not identical to the Sundays after Epiphany, but have been altered both by a different set of Mass propers, (Graduale/Alleluia, Offertory verse, and Communion verse) and by context.

The different context is the apocalyptic note that is sounded near and at the end of the liturgical year, a note that changes our approach to the propers of the day. For example, the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany is of a ship in a storm. For the Church Fathers, if the ship is the Church, the raging wind is a type for the devils whose pride stirs up waves of persecutions against God’s people, and the sea becomes troubled by the passions and malice of men which, as Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, puts it, is “the great source of disobedience to authority and of fraternal strife.”

It is a frightening image in every age, but especially during the End Times. When Jesus chides the Apostles for screaming out “Lord, save us, we perish!” he asks them, “Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?” The phrasing is redolent of another question that Our Lord asks about the end of days: “But yet the Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18, 8).

A lack of faith characterizes the End Times; once great Christian civilizations will likely go awash in apostasy and infidelity. The storm that the Gospel reading describes is the storm that characterizes the final conflict; it is the storm described in the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany but now ratcheted up to a new level of terror. And it is tempting, with such mighty winds and waves about us, to wonder about the sleeping Christ. Why is He not waking up and helping us while the devil roams about, seeking whom he may devour, more, it seems, than he has ever done before? Yet just as we despair, we hear the voice of the Christ: “Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?” It is time to buck up, and like good and faithful sailors weather the storm.

And the Orations give us the naval manuals for good seamanship, even during an aquatic Armageddon.

The Collect fits the violent image of a storm hand-in-glove:

Deus, qui nos in tantis perículis constitútos, pro humána scis fragilitáte non posse subsístere: da nobis salútem mentis et córporis; ut ea quæ pro peccátis nostris pátimur, te adjuvante vincámus. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

O God, who knowest us to be placed in dangers so great that, on account of human frailty, we cannot withstand them; grant to us health of mind and body: that those things which we suffer on account of our sins we may conquer with Thy help. Through Our Lord.

In the prelude (the protasis), we are surrounded by dangers that we are incapable of withstanding because of our frailty or fragility. “Of all the things that breathe and move upon it,” Odysseus laments in the Odyssey, “Earth nurtures nothing feebler than man.” [1] “Man’s days are as grass, as the flower of the field so shall he flourish,” chants the psalmist. “For the spirit shall pass in him, and he shall not be: and he shall know his place no more” (Ps. 102, 15-16). “Man is nothing but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature.” Pascal adds. “…It is not necessary for the whole universe to arm itself in order to crush him; a vapor, a drop of water, is enough to kill him.” [2]

The solution to weakness is strength, and so we pray for health or vitality in both body and soul. It is good to have both: when the spirit is strong but the flesh is weak, we are at a disadvantage. The image of being weak in both body and soul on a ship during a storm calls to my mind the beginning of the Aeneid. Caught in a terrible storm designed by the gods to capsize the Trojan fleet, Aeneas loses heart and buckles. Vergil describes the pious hero’s limbs growing slack as he wishes in prayer, Job-like, that he had been killed at Troy with his fallen comrades. [3] 

Aeneas in the storm

The verb “- subsistere - withstand” is an interesting choice. Again with the Gospel story in mind, the verb can take on two other meanings. Subsistere literally means to “remain standing,” which is difficult to do when a ship is pitching and rolling. But it also means to “stop,” as in Jesus immediately stopping the storm in order to bring a “great calm.” Man in his frailty cannot do that.

The petition (apodosis) adds another consideration: our frailty is caused or at least compounded by our sins. And yet despite our feeble, sinful condition, we dare to think that we can prevail with God’s help. The strong verb used for “overcome” (vincere) makes me hear the cry of “Vincerò!” (I will conquer) in the aria “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s opera Turandot.

The Secret also speaks of frailty:

Concéde, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut hujus sacrifícii munus oblatum, fragilitátem nostram ab omni malo purget semper, et múniat. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Which I translate as:

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the oblation of this sacrifice may ever purify and protect our frailty from all evil. Through Our Lord.

Finally, in the Postcommunion we pray:

Múnera tua nos, Deus, a dilectiónibus terrénis expédiant: et cæléstibus semper instáurent aliméntis. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

May Thy gifts, O God, set us free us from earthly delights, and ever restore us with heavenly nourishments. Through Our Lord.

Munus (gift, offering) connects us to the Secret, and the prayer for restoration (instaurare) connects us to the Collect. We need to be restored in order to be strengthened, and the means of our restoration is the heavenly nourishment of the Eucharist.

Expedio (set us free) literally refers to the foot being set free from a snare, and that brings us back to standing straight despite the ship’s destabilizing movements. But it also reminds us what the snares in this life are. Earthly delights are not evil per se, but the Evil One can use them to ensnare us and make us beholden to what is lowest in us rather than what is highest in us. May Christ the Skipper bring calm to the Barque of Peter and help us stand straight and free as His dignified disciples.

Notes

[1] Homer, Odyssey 18, 138-39, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 280. 

[2] Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Paris: Georges Crès et Cie, 1919), 147, translation mine. 

[3] See Vergil, Aeneid I.91ff.

The Vigil of All Saints 2024

In those days, behold I, John, saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing as it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes: which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne. And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures, and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.

The representation of this scene in an illustrated manuscript of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The Lamb is represented on a medallion on Christ’s chest and another on top of his staff, although they are barely visible as such. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

And they sung a new canticle, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; because thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation. And hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the ancients; and the number of them was thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction.’ ” (Apocalypse 5, 6-12, the Epistle for the vigil of All Saints.)

The Relic of St Peter’s Chair Exposed in the Vatican Basilica

In preparation for the upcoming Jubilee, a lot of work is being done inside St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican to clean up and restore some of its major features. One of these is the great sculpture in the apse by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which is simply known as the Cathedra. I took this photograph of it decorated for the feast of St Peter’s Chair more than 13½ years ago.

It is often forgotten that this feast is not only the commemoration of St Peter’s ministry as chief of the Apostles, but also the feast of a relic long reputed to be his actual throne. Although it never attained to the popularity of the Veil of St. Veronica, the Vatican Basilica’s relic par excellence in the High Middle Ages, it was regularly seen and venerated by the faithful, being first explicitly named “the Chair of St. Peter” in 1237. Before the long period of the Popes’ residence in Avignon (during which many medieval customs of the Papal liturgy disappeared), the Pope was enthroned on the relic for part of his coronation ceremony, and used it as his liturgical throne in the basilica on the feast of February 22. Since 1666, it has been kept within Bernini’s Cathedra, and very rarely brought out. The magnificence of the sculpture, and its presence as the visual culmination of the church, has overwhelmed its purpose as a reliquary; all the more so since the relic itself cannot be seen within it, and has so rarely been removed from it for viewing. It was last exposed in 1867, at the behest of Blessed Pope Pius IX, during the celebrations of the eighteenth centennial of the martyrdoms of Ss. Peter and Paul. A copy is displayed in the treasury of St. Peter’s, but with little to indicate the prominence which the original formerly held.

This week, however, as the cleaning up of the Cathedra comes to a close, the relic has once again, for the first time since 1867, been put on display for the faithful to venerate, and a friend was kind enough to share his pictures of it with us. It should be pointed out that, as scholars have long acknowledged, the chair was actually made in the time of the Emperor Charles the Bald as a gift for Pope John VIII, who crowned him as the Holy Roman Emperor in the old basilica in 875. However, the ivory panels on the front of it are much older, dating from sometime in the 2nd century B.C. They originally belonged to some other object, possibly also a chair, and showed the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twelve labors of Hercules: nine of each survive.
 

The great baldachin over the high altar and the tomb of St Peter has also just been unveiled after a good cleaning.

On the right side of the central aisle sits this bronze statue of St Peter made by Arnolfo di Cambio to be displayed in the old basilica for the Jubilee of 1300. The extended right foot of St Peter has been worn away by pilgrims rubbing and kissing it for well over 700 years.

Introducing the Newest Jubilee Mascot: Tenebro

I am sure that by now, all of our readers have met Luce, the official mascot of the upcoming Jubilee, who was introduced to the world on Monday as an expression of the Church’s desire “to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth.” However, as many have noted, the style of the new mascot seems geared to appeal to those who are so young that they are just as likely to fall asleep under a pew as to sit in one, leaving the unfortunate impression that the Faith is something to be grown out of. Rightly might one suspect that she holds little interest for groups within the Church whose numbers are growing, such as young men, and those who love traditional forms of worship. 

To meet this problem, the wise men of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith have decided that the Jubilee of 2025 will have a whole range of mascots, designed to appeal to a variety of demographics. New Liturgical Movement is very proud to have been chosen as the outlet for introducing the world to the first new character in the Luce expanded universe, her putative (n.b.!) nemesis Tenebro.

The official backstory of Tenebro is that he is one of the Rigidicons, a group who are reputed to have the dark power to gradually extinguish all the lights of progress that have been lit within the Church over the last 60 years. (This power is suggested by the fact that they dress primarily in black.) In early episodes of the upcoming animated series, it will appear to many that Tenebro is trying to hinder Luce from completing her pilgrimage to Rome.

But, as is so often the case, the real story is a lot more complicated. (Spoiler alert!) It will be gradually revealed that another character, the Pontiff Supreme Benedicto, transformed the power of the Rigidicons, such that the lights which they extinguish come blazing back to life and illuminate the whole Church. Tenebro is one of a growing faction among the Rigidicons who have embraced this transformation of their power for good, which is conveyed through the diadem on his chest. (It will also be Tenebro who teaches the young Luce that a rosary is not a necklace...)

New Liturgical Movement will be the first to let you know as each of a whole spate of new Jubilee mascot characters is brought out to an eagerly waiting Church and world.

The Relics of St John Southworth: Guest Article by Mr Sean Pilcher

In England, today is the collective feast of all the martyrs of the English College, a seminary located in the town of Douay in France, which trained men to for the priesthood, and sent them to minister to the few remaining Catholics in their native land. Our friend Mr Sean Pilcher has very kindly shared with us this article he wrote about one of this holy company, numbering one-hundred and fifty-eight, St John Southworth, who was martyred at Tyburn in 1654. It was previously published in a slightly different version at The Lamp, and is here reproduced by the kind permission of the editors. Mr Pilcher is the director of Sacra: Relics of the Saints (sacrarelics.org), an apostolate that promotes education about relics, and works to repair, research, and document relics for religious houses and dioceses.

The relics of the saints have a kind of long-sightedness, a way of hanging on in times of difficulty, and of resurfacing when they are needed again. There are, unfortunately, horror stories of the mistreatment or disposal of relics in the last century, but here is one of triumph, the kind of humble, unassuming victory of the saints, worked out in centuries of grace-filled struggle.

The crystal urn which contains the relics of St John Southworth, now regularly kept in one of the side chapels of Westminster Cathedral. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gryffindor, CC BY-SA 3.0) 

The Long Parliament of 1640-60 afforded the clandestine Catholic clergy of England an unexpected breath of fresh air, more than it had known in recent memory. The previous century saw Edmund Campion brought to the scaffold and the fortunes of noble Catholic families drained by heavy recusancy fines. Even a generation earlier, hysteria from the Gunpowder Plot drew the knot tighter on England’s Catholics. Hurried trials made honest protestant juries blush. Every family was required by law to attend and commune at the Protestant service. England had no bishops. Priests made due, saying Mass and hearing confessions. Simply being a priest was an act of high treason, and harbouring or aiding clergy was also a criminal offence.

The political tensions provoked by the reign of Charles I saw a nation in civil war, and favourable public opinion of Catholics waned. Charles married a Catholic and was rumoured to be sympathetic to the Roman Church. Parliament pressed harder for mandatory oaths that would exclude Catholics from political offices, impose restrictions on travel, and Catholics could not even own a horse valued above £5 – all while Charles secretly sought French aid against his own opposing ministers. The yet nascent Established Church had spent much time fighting against an increasing Puritan minority with even more force.

Men who enter at Douay, the English seminary established in France to educate priests to be sent back to England, knew that they were being prepared for a lonely ministry, and one very often fraught with difficulties, whose only real reprieve would be martyrdom. One such man was John Southworth, a Lancashireman who had been instructed in the Faith at home in secret. Being from the north, a kind of heartland of recusancy, he would have felt very keenly the greater restrictions on Catholics, and valued the faith of the Apostles more than anything. He knew that labourers were needed in the vineyard; resolving to enter Douay, he left home for France at age twenty-one.

The English College was one of several colleges within the university which King Philip II founded in 1559 at Douay, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. In 1886, it was merged with two other universities to form the University of Lille. This image made between 1590 and 1611 shows three of the colleges; the Royal College, the Jesuit, and the college of the nearby town of Marchiennes.

After at least one return to England because of poor health, he was ordained priest six years later by the Archbishop of Cambrai and sent back to England. The Diary at Douay read: ‘John Southworth (here known as Lee), alumnus and priest of this College, with the usual faculties for the winning of souls, was chosen for the vineyard of England.’ Southworth operated in London for a time and later in his native Lancashire. There is record of his being arrested and imprisoned, and being narrowly rescued from a death-sentence at the insistence of Queen Henrietta Maria, who arranged for him and others to be deported to France.

Southworth made little of this upset and returned to his work in England. He was arrested another four times, spending three years in the London prison auspiciously named The Clink. On three occasions his release was negotiated by the Secretary of State, Windebank, at the Queen’s direction. At his fourth arrest, he managed his own escape. Here was a man undaunted by the threat of imprisonment, whose resolve was little disturbed by discomforts and failures which his work necessarily included. His mission was to attend to souls, and this he did wherever he found himself. When there was an outbreak of plague in London, he visited those who had lapsed from the Faith out of convenience or fear of the new regime. He was by all accounts a likeable and agreeable man, even among those who did not share his religion or cause. It was during this time also that he earned the nickname ‘Parish Priest of Westminster.

A portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria of England (1609-69), the Catholic wife of King Charles I of England; 1636-68, by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), or his workshop. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

By the end of 1640, King Charles had lost the governance of the country in all but name. Sympathy with the rising Puritan faction had grown immensely. Secretary Windebank was summoned to Parliament to be reprimanded for his friendly actions toward Catholics, and he was forced to flee to France where he was received into the Church. There too went the Queen, who feared for her safety, leaving Catholics without allies in any position of great authority. The regicide of Charles I and the seizure of power by Cromwell in 1649 put Catholics definitively on the losing side of the Civil War. Parliament directed the expulsion of all recusant families, but these directives could hardly occupy the attention of anyone with executive authority. The country was everywhere divided. England did not yet have a standing army, and Parliament found it difficult to enforce its laws; the legitimacy of the Established Church was questioned because of its popish trappings and monarchical support, while Cromwell’s officers lived in domineering, if irreproachable, austerity. Nevertheless, house priests enjoyed relative freedom to continue their work for souls, if they kept out of sight. Southworth carried on, but was caught while lodging in Westminster. He was found with ‘all the requisites for the celebration of Mass,’ and taken prisoner. The arresting officer was one of Cromwell’s more zealous followers, which led to harsh treatment and an unusually fast indictment.

Despite this, Southworth’s good nature won the pity of his judges. He openly confessed that he was a priest, but the judge cut him off, and his testimony was delayed. The judges wanted Southworth to plead ‘not guilty,’ since his only crime was being a priest, and for this there was no proof. He had only been found near the Mass kit, but was not caught administering the sacraments. This suggestion, it seems, was even made in court while the magistrate implored him to deny his charges. Southworth was unmoved, and the magistrate was ‘so drowned in tears,’ that he could barely pass the sentence.

John Southworth was dragged on a hurdle to Tyburn, beheaded, and quartered on 28 June 1654. The other men executed with him were charged with forging currency; Southworth’s only crime was being a priest. He was the last to face the executioner, and after a brief address to the crowd there gathered, he prayed in silence and went to his reward. An onlooking royalist found his vocation, and entered the Society of Jesus in Rome the same year. As was the custom of the house when it was graced with a new martyrdom, the English College at Douay sang the Te Deum and a Mass of thanksgiving when they received the news of his death.

This marker in a traffic island in central London, at one of the corners of Hyde Park, marks the site of the Tyburn Tree, as it was called, the public gallows on which many of the Catholic martyrs of England met their deaths. Photo by the author.

Now we pick up the story of Southworth’s relics, one no less full of false starts, and no less unrelenting. The sentence prescribed that the four quarters of the body be placed at the four corners of London, but the Spanish Ambassador, Alonzo de Cardenas, bribed the gaoler with forty shillings, and took the body to be embalmed. The man ‘who embalmed ye body,’ was ‘Chirugeon James Clark,’ who removed a bone from the spine to be kept as a relic by the English clergy. The body was kept by the Ambassador until it could be safely returned to France in 1655. Bishop Challoner records in 1741 that it was interred at Douay in the church near St Augustine’s altar. The faithful gathered there to pray and venerate the body of the martyr, and the miraculous healing of a boy was recorded. A fever deemed incurable subsided after the sufferer’s family lay his head upon the cushion that supported Southworth’s head.

The French Revolution brought with it the destruction of countless sacred relics, precious works of precious art and church plate. The English clergy who had long had refuge and acceptance at Douay were now viewed with double suspicion. King Louis XVI was killed on 21 January 1793, and war declared on England. The Catholics of France had sided with the king, and the clergy who refused to swear the so-called Constitutional Oath were seen as enemies of the State. Fearing imprisonment, the residents of the College buried their plate and relics, carefully hidden and noted. Fr Thomas Stout, one of the priests involved in the burial, made a rough diagram, noting that Southworth was buried exactly six feet deep. Soon after, their fears were confirmed, and the clergy were taken prisoners by the National Guard. They were held in captivity in France until their return to Dover was negotiated in 1795.

Readers will be aware that France and England have long behaved like feuding siblings, now making war upon one another, now peace, here rallying together against a greater enemy. Some more crazed English minds saw potential in the French Revolution, but most saw another way forward. French nobility fled the country and devout commoners were forced into much the same conditions under which the English Catholic faithful had long suffered: Mass was offered in secret and the authorities rounded up priests for the guillotines. The fathers of Douay earnestly desired to return to their home of more than two hundred years, but the circumstances of neither country allowed for this a possibility.

Catholic Emancipation came to England in 1829, but the popular view of Catholics was little affected by these reforms. Clerics were no longer treated as capital offenders, but England’s Catholic hierarchy was not restored until 1850. Immigration from Ireland and an increasingly Catholicising wing of the Church of England gradually pushed the trappings of the Roman Church further into the public eye. Slowly the new hierarchy began to take stock of what could be done. Cardinal Manning acquired land for a cathedral in the City of Westminster (also the newly-created seat of the primate of England), where the first Catholic cathedral since the English Reformation would be built. This project would not see its beginning until Manning’s successor, Cardinal Vaughan, broke ground in 1895, but as soon as the land was bought in 1856, permissions were obtained to go and make a search of the grounds at Douay, in the hope of recovering what had been buried there for safe-keeping.

Westminster Cathedral. Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Frank Kovalchek, CC BY 2.0

The buildings of the College at Douay had been made into barracks, and their layout significantly altered, so that when the search party arrived, the sketch they had to follow made very little sense. Some of the church plate was found, but no Southworth; it was thought that after some seventy-five years, the coffin and its contents were likely to have disintegrated. The diocese of Westminster continued its recovery of hidden church furnishings which had survived the Reformation, but her martyred parish priest lay yet hidden in France.

In 1923, plans were made for the demolition of the barracks where the buildings of the College had stood, in order to level the ground for a new road. In 1927, as workmen were digging a cellar for a new building in the area, they uncovered a lead coffin, which was brought first to the local morgue for inspection, and then to the Institut Médico-Légal in Lille for detailed examination of the remains.

The investigation found a body whose form had been mostly preserved, though some water had entered through a hole in the coffin, presumably made by digging of the earlier search party, which had come painfully close to finding it. The physical description of the man fit that of Southworth, and x-rays of the body confirmed his identity by his sentence: beheading and quartering. After the body was recovered, the precise location could be again compared to Fr Stout’s sketch made in the eighteenth century, and now that the barracks were gone, other landmarks could be used to show that the location of the body corresponded exactly to the sketch.

On 1 May 1930 Westminster’s parish priest was brought in triumphant procession to the great cathedral. His return brought with it the whole weight of the restoration of England’s hierarchy, and was a turning point for the English faithful. Led by a papal legate, religious from the entire country turned up to greet their saint, flanked by a multitude of faithful carrying candles, banners, and singing hymns. Girls wearing their Easter best strew flowers in front of the ornate feretory which bore Southworth’s restored relics, vested in his priestly vestments and Canterbury cap behind the crystal.

Footage of the event (without soundtrack) from the archives of the newsreel company British Pathé.

He now keeps watch over the English Church from her capitol. Every year when the chosen men of Westminster lay on the pavement of the cathedral to receive priestly ordination, St John’s feretory is moved to the main aisle to lay next to them as they hear his name sung in the Litany.

The story of St John Southworth’s relics is a story of the triumph of the English martyrs, and of the unconquerable resolve of England’s Catholics, which continues to this day. It also reflects our sensibility toward the relics of the saints, one little shaken by chaos of these centuries past: to guard them with everything in us, to protect them in times of distress and to lean on their intercession, and to bring them out with all the pomp we can muster when a better day comes. “May their bones spring up out of their place: for they strengthened Jacob, and redeemed themselves by strong faith.” (Ecclesiasticus 49, 12).

Why Beauty Matters

And “Art for Art’s Sake” Is Anti-Human

The purpose of art and the role of beauty in the culture have been subjects of ongoing debate. While some view art as existing purely for its own sake - ‘art for art’s sake’ - divorced from any broader utility or message, others argue that art must serve a didactic or ideological function. The traditional Christian perspective, however, offers a distinct understanding that avoids these extremes, and the result is art for God’s sake, which, if done well, will always be art for our sake too.

The interior of St Mark’s Cathedral Venice: Is this art for art’s sake, or art for God’s sake? (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Rob Hurson)

Central to the Christian view is the recognition of the profound unity of the material and spiritual dimensions in the human person. As beings composed of both body and soul, humans possess material and spiritual needs. Consequently, the purpose of art cannot be reduced solely to aesthetic considerations or purely practical or ideological aims. Rather, true art must harmonise these aspects, reflecting and serving the totality of human nature, material and spiritual.

This understanding is rooted in Christian anthropology, which sees beauty not as a superfluous addition to an object’s utility, but as an integral part of its purpose. When an object is truly beautiful, its beauty is seen as a sign that its purpose is in accord with God’s governance of the world—a reflection of divine inspiration or the beauty of Creation itself.

Take, for example, something as mundane as a toothbrush. While its primary purpose is the practical one of cleaning teeth and promoting bodily health, a well-designed toothbrush incorporates elements of beauty that speak to a broader understanding of human well-being. Its harmonious design serves its practical function and invites the user to consider the more profound implications of oral hygiene for overall health and spiritual vitality. While few will consciously contemplate such things when brushing their teeth (least of all first thing in the morning or last thing at night!), most of us, even with something as simple as a toothbrush, would not choose an ugly one in preference to a beautiful one. This means that we are accepting the invitation of beauty at some level.

This principle is even more evident and more important in works of art with a direct spiritual or liturgical purpose, such as sacred art or architecture. In these cases, beauty plays a crucial role in elevating the human spirit and facilitating the contemplation of the divine. For instance, the beauty of a cathedral is not merely an aesthetic embellishment, but a vital component of its purpose as a house of worship, drawing the hearts and minds of the faithful towards heaven.

The Christian perspective recognises that individuals possess free will and can respond positively or negatively to the call of beauty. While beauty can inspire a deepening desire for virtue and a closer relationship with God, it can also be rejected or dismissed as mere sentimentality.

Ultimately, the traditional Christian view sees art and beauty not as ends in themselves, but as means of elevating the human person and facilitating a deeper engagement with the spiritual realm. Beauty is not a superficial adornment but a reflection of the divine order – a sign that an object or work of art fulfils its intended purpose in harmony with God’s design.

In this understanding, the apprehension of beauty is not merely an emotional response but a profound experience that can engage the intellect, will, and emotions in a multifaceted way. It is a call to contemplate the divine, to pursue virtue, and to recognise the unity of the material and spiritual dimensions of human existence.

By integrating these perspectives, the traditional Christian view offers a nuanced and holistic approach to the purpose of art and the role of beauty – one that recognises their intrinsic value while situating them within a broader framework of human flourishing and spiritual growth.

One presumes that even Our Lady cleaned her teeth, and even this humble activity would have been done gracefully and beautifully.

The Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in Cologne, Germany

For the feast of Ss Simon and Jude, we continue our series on the twelve Romanesque basilicas of Cologne, Germany, with the church of the Twelve Apostles. (All images from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.)

This photograph of the year 1899 gives a good sense of the proportion of the church’s various towers/ (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

A small monastery was founded on this site by at least the tenth century, possibly earlier, and rebuilt on a larger scale in the early decades of the 11th. Large parts of the outer walls are retained from this first rebuilding as the core of the walls of the current structure. Starting around 1150, a new choir was built on the church’s west side (remodeled out of existence in 1633-44), while the crypt of the previous church was filled to provide support for a new tower, which rises to about 220 feet. After a fire in 1192, a new choir with three apses was built on the east side, starting around the year 1200, and modeled another of the Cologne basilica, Great St Martin, which had been completed a few years before. Like most of the churches of Cologne, the building was severely damages during World War Two; the post-war restorations have further damaged the church with an almost featureless sanctuary and some atrocious paintings in the apse and crossing.

The eastern side with the apse of the main choir, and the two smaller lateral apses.

by Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas; CC BY-SA 3.0

The western side with the main tower.

by Raimond Spekking

These old photographs give a good sense of the interior space; the first two were taken around the same time as the first one, at the very end of the 19th century.

As noted previously in this series, only one of the twelve churches, St Mary ‘in Lyskirche’, preserves any of the original decoration in the ceiling. By 1925, when this photo was taken, the empty spaces in the crossing of Twelve Apostles had been filled with Byzantine-style mosaics and frescoes. The German Wikipedia article about the church is a little vague on this point, but seems to say that these were removed in the post-war restorations not because they damaged during the war, but because they were out of fashion.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

From the Complete Psalter to the Easier Psalter: An Insight into the Dynamics of Liturgical Reform in the 20th Century (Part 1)

We are grateful to Polish philosopher Paweł Milcarek, founder and editor-in-chief of the important Polish journal Christianitas, for submitting this article to NLM for publication. It will appear in two parts. – PAK

The Psalms are an indispensable part of the prayer of the Church and the basic substance of everyday non-Eucharistic liturgical prayer, the core of the Hours of the Divine Office. They constitute the oldest layer of the liturgy – also because only in their case we can state with certainty that they were part of Jesus’ personal prayer in His earthly life. Their composition in the Book of Psalms is a reminder of the order of liturgy of the First Covenant – which in precisely this respect was treated as own heritage by the first Christians and the ancient Church.

From very early times, the Church regarded the Psalms as privileged and irreplaceable way of fulfilling the command to “pray ceaselessly”, obeyed either almost literally e.g. by the Desert Fathers, or at least through appointment of fixed, recurring times of day and night prayer. For many centuries the Psalms – ordered in the books of the Divine Service and recited in times that determined the daily rhythm of the whole Christian world – constituted the main point of reference for prayer of all the faithful, both the clergy and the laymen. In the popular piety, however, they were obscured in the course of time by the “equivalents” of saying the Ave Maria and Pater Noster, or substituted with a variety of private devotions and spiritual exercises, remaining – as the breviary – the daily bread only of clergy and monks.

Hence in the modern age, the breviary became “the priests’ prayer” and the picture of a clergyman saying his breviary – in Latin, of course, but more and more often privately, somewhere in the outside, e.g. in the garden – entered the collective imagination of Christian societies as one of the attributes of this specific vocation. Moreover, though the laymen were rather reluctant to make use of the breviary, they were nevertheless aware of the fact that in a way it provided the clergymen with spiritual vigour.  No wonder that the misbehaving priests were mockingly described as those “who deny themselves neither the cognac, nor the breviary”. Hence, the breviary was regarded both as the clergymen’s privilege and as their duty.

If we are to trace out here the modern reforms of the Roman Breviary – or, strictly speaking, of its core, that is the Psalter – let us begin by posing the question: what kind of breviary was used by the Catholic priests of the Roman rite at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries? This question is easy to answer: it must have been the Roman Breviary, codified in 1568 by St. Pius V, compatible with the last typical edition issued in 1631 by Urban VIII and renewed by Leo XIII. [i]

In fact, this “Tridentine” breviary was much older than this general description seems to suggest. For as in the case of the Roman Missal of 1570, the post-Tridentine reform extended on the whole Roman Rite the rules of the prayer that for centuries had been established within the local Church of the papal Rome. The backbone of the breviary of St. Pius V – that is, its psalmody – was hardly any different from the oldest forms of the Roman Office we know from the 5th and the 6th centuries.
 

In accordance with a long tradition, having no alternative within the Roman rite, the Psalter was distributed over one week, though some Psalms recurred daily. St. Pius V wished this basic scheme of the weekly psalmody to constitute the main content of the Divine Service, therefore reduced the number of higher ranked feasts of the saints, which impeded most of the daily Psalter.

The priest reciting the Roman Breviary in the end of the 19th or in the very beginning of the 20th century used precisely such a “Tridentine” liturgical book, based on the Psalter of two saint popes: Gregory the Great and Pius V. However, paradoxically, it is not so easy to determine how his breviary prayer actually looked like. For in the course of the centuries that elapsed from 1568 to the end of the belle époque a number of factors appeared which made the practice of saying the breviary highly complicated.

In the first place, these was the considerable increase in the number of feasts of saints on the liturgical calendar, which impeded most of the Office of the various seasons. For the psalmody, this meant substituting the complete Psalter with much narrower choice of festive Psalms.

By the end of the 19th century, this uncontrolled domination of the Sanctoral cycle – related to the constant accumulation of new feasts – was accompanied by yet another move which deeply changed the very logic of the Office. To avoid overburdening the clergy with the recitation of breviary prayer, in 1883  Leo XIII granted a general indult, according to which throughout the whole liturgical year, it was allowed to substitute the Office of almost any feria or feast of the lowest rank with votive offices appointed to the various ferias (Monday: of the Holy Angels, Tuesday: of the Holy Apostles, Wednesday: of St. Joseph, Thursday: of the Blessed Sacrament, Friday: of the Lord’s Passion, Saturday: of the Immaculate Conception) [ii].

Taking into consideration the complexity of the system of feasts of that time, it is understandable that the possibility of saying throughout the week simply subsequent votive offices, characterized by clear devotional “motives”, was a tempting solution due to its simplicity or rememberable ordering. But in the same time both these factors (i.e. domination of the Sanctorale and substitution of the current office with the votive offices) led to continuous repetition of the Sunday psalmody in Lauds and to very frequent repetition of various Sunday Psalms in Vespers. Hence, only a little portion of the Psalter was actually used and, most of the Psalms appeared very rarely.

And yet the breviary Psalter as such had not been so far narrowed down – in theory it still comprised 150 Psalms, distributed over the course of one week.

Most unusual reorganization: “a new arrangement of the Psalter” of 1911

Such were the challenges faced by St. Pius X, who became pope in 1903. Convinced of the necessity to arouse and shape piety through the liturgy of the Church, he attempted to bring out basic structures of the liturgical heritage, sometimes completely obscured by later additions. Two motives were closely intertwined in this work: a desire to restore the primacy of the liturgical seasons and Sundays within the liturgical year, and and to restore the practice of saying the complete Psalter within a week. Here we will discuss this second issue.

In the apostolic constitution Divino afflatu [iii] of 1st November 1911, St. Pius X remind us of the ancient law that obliges the clergy to recite the whole Psalter within a week. The pope states that it is his intention to restore this practice in such a way that, on the one hand, the change would not cause any diminution of the cultus of saints, and on the other hand, would make the burden of the Office not more oppressive, but actually lighter for the clergy. Having both these issues in mind, the pope had appointed the commission consisting “of learned and active men”, who prepared “a new arrangement of the Psalter”.

As a consequence, the Holy Father decided to “abolish the order of the Psalter as it is at present in the Roman Breviary” and to “absolutely forbid the use of it” after 1st January 1913. Commanding the use the “new arrangement of the Psalter” from now on, the Pope proclaims that those who disobey this order will be punished. He concludes:

all such are to know that they will not be satisfying this grave duty [of reciting the canonical hours everyday] unless they use this our disposition of the psalmody.

In practice the severity of this regulation was eased by the indults, which allowed to use “the old arrangement of the Psalter” in private recitation.

Obviously, this “new arrangement of the Psalter” radically broke off with the ordering of the psalmody as it had been within the Roman Breviary of St. Pius V. Although continuity was preserved, for example, in case of Sunday Vespers, the order of this breviary Psalter was actually new. Moreover, it was a novelty also in comparison to the older, pre-Tridentine offices of the Roman rite. Nowhere in the history of the Roman psalmody – even reaching to its oldest versions we know, coming from the 5th and the 6th centuries – can we find the basis and the antecedents for the Psalter of 1911; in the same time, there exists a clear continuity between those ancient forms and the Breviary of 1568.

Hence we are safe to say that the number of Psalms in Matins of Sundays or ferial days had never been lower than 12; that usually the morning office had comprised 8 Psalms, including three Laudate Psalms [iv] and Psalm 50 (the latter from the 6th century had been recited almost daily); that parts of Psalm 118 had dominated Prime and other Minor Hours throughout the whole week; that from the very beginning Compline had included three defined Psalms (4, 90 and 133), used throughout the whole week. All these points have been truly modified by the Psalter of 1911 – the solutions it proposed more or less radically abandoned own tradition of the Roman office.

This fairly controversial move was made because the clergy of that time felt  somewhat “overburdened” by the Office. The attempt was therefore made to reduce this burden by proposing a well-balanced Psalter, based on the principle that each Psalm should be recited no more than once a week. [v] Hence, the reform of the breviary introduced by St. Pius X can be regarded as an adjustment of the Office to the longing for change, a result of the struggle with the weariness.

It is worth to recall the words by a distinguished expert in history of the Divine Service, Fr. Robert Taft S.J., who summarized these changes in a following way: “For anyone with a sense of the history of the Office, this was a shocking departure from almost universal Christian Tradition.” [vi]

Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed

The Psalter of the professors: “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” of 1945

Over thirty years after the introduction of “a new arrangement of the Psalter” by St. Pius X, another pope, Pius XII, introduced a new Latin translation of Psalms into liturgical usage.

In his motu proprio In cotidianis precibus of 25th March 1945 [vii], the pope firstly speaks (rather guardedly) of inaccuracies and deficiencies in the Vulgate translations of the Psalms. Reading between the lines of the document, we may say that the pope considers them increasingly annoying, especially when compared to the new translations which are based on original texts, and take advantage of progress in the knowledge of ancient languages, as well as of modern methods of textual criticism. The pope is aware that the Vulgate Psalter is deeply rooted within Christian tradition and that it had affected the way the Holy Fathers and Doctors had commented the Psalms. Nevertheless, expectations of the priests (“a good many” of them), as well as demands of the learned men, bishops and cardinals convinced the Holy Father to give an order that “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” is prepared. On the one hand, it was to follow the original text precisely and faithfully; on the other, as far as it was possible, it had to take into account “the venerable Vulgate”, as well as other ancient translations, referring to “sound critical norms” whenever there would be differences between them.

The document then states that the new version has already been completed “with the diligence befitting such a task” by the professors of the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Hence the pope offers it “to all who have the obligation to recite the canonical Hours daily” and permits them “to use it, should they wish to do so, in either private or public recitation”.

As it is indicated a few times in the document, the main aim of the whole undertaking was to enable those praying with the new Psalter to grasp more fully what is said in the Holy Book. The pope emphasizes that he is driven by pastoral concerns: he wishes the Psalms to be recited “not only with sincere devotion but with fuller understanding as well”.

Still, in the document itself there is a supposition that “there are times when, even after every help that text criticism and a knowledge of languages can offer has been exhausted, the meaning of the words is still not perfectly clear”. In such cases “their more definite clarification will have to be left to future study.”

This papal regulation led to an unheard-of situation: from now on, the translation recommended by Pius XII was to coexist in the liturgy of the Church together with the Vulgate version – unless everybody “should wish to” accept this new translation.
 

Thus, pursuant to the pope’s decision, the daily prayer of the Church comprised henceforth the monuments of two very much different mentalities: firstly, Psalterium Gallicanum, a witness to the patristic tradition and an object of centuries-old reflection; secondly, a suddenly developed product of academic research, evaluated only on the basis of its fidelity to the Hebrew original and its classicism of style. Regardless of the impracticality of such a dualism, this solution created an impression – for the second time within a few decades – that the true reform is not about revision, but about creation.

For the question arises whether it was really impossible to correct the Vulgate version instead of creating a brand new translation. Since the times of St. Pius X, the Benedictines from the Roman abbey of St. Jerome had been preparing a revision of Vulgate. Despite this, Pius XII decided to promote for liturgical usage a new translation, prepared at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

However, the Jesuits from this Institute did not restrict themselves to capturing correctly “the Hebrew truth”; in preparing this new version, they shaped its language after a distinctly classical style, distancing themselves from the specific qualities of Christian Latin. Their Psalter sounded like the works by Cicero, whose Latin was certainly more classical than that of St. Jerome. Moreover, their translation did not take into account the requirements of singing the Psalms in choir and in accordance with the principles of Gregorian chant. [viii]

Immediately after the release of In cotidianis precibus and in later Church publications ,there appeared, of course, loud voices of gratitude to the pope for his approval of the new version of the Psalter, deemed as “the sovereign gesture” made “when supreme good of Christian life demands it”. However, it is hard to prove that prior to this reform a conviction that the Vulgate posed a major threat to Christian life had really been widespread. [ix]

Regardless of the opinion one may have in the debate whether the version prepared at the Biblical Institute was indeed such a progress in translation, there is also another problematic issue: in the light of the principle of the organic development, the will to improve some aspect of the liturgy is not a sufficient reason to question the existing tradition – what is needed is the moral certainty that such an undertaking is indispensable for the benefit of spiritual life.  

Part 2 will continue with “The Psalter according to the Second Vatican Council.”

The author

NOTES 

[i] Breviarium Romanum ex decreti S.sancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, s. Pii V P.M. iussu editum, Clementis VIII, Urbani VIII et Leonis XIII auctoritate recognitum.

[ii] See ASS 16 (1883-1884), pp. 47-48 (for the decree) and pp. 145-180 (for the texts of the offices).

[iii] Hereinafter cited as in: AAS 3 (1911), pp. 633-650.

[iv] Anton Baumstark remarked: “Down to the year 1911 there was nothing in the Christian Liturgy of such absolute universality as this practice in the morning office [i.e. daily recitation of Laudate Psalms], and no doubt its universality was inherited from the worship of the Synagogue... Hence to the reformers of the Psalterium Romanum belongs the distinction of having brought to an end the universal observance of a liturgical practice which was followed, one can say, by the Divine Redeemer Himself during His life on earth” (as cited in: Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, San Francisco 2005, pp. 75n; hereinafter referred to as: Reid, 2005).

[v] In practice it was often considered necessary to divide particular Psalms – hence, instead of a few Psalms, subsequent “parts” of even one and the same Psalm were to be recited within one office.

[vi] As cited in Reid, 2005, p. 76

[vii] AAS 37 (1945), pp. 65-67.

[viii] Cf. Carlo Braga, La Liturgia delle Ore al Vaticano II, Rome 2008, p. 38; hereinafter referred to as: Braga, 2008.

[ix] Cf. Reid, 2005, p. 157.

The Feast of Christ the King 2024

He hath on his garment, and on his thigh written: King of kings, and Lord of lords. To him be glory and empire for ever and ever. (The antiphon at the Magnificat for 2nd Vespers of Christ the King.)

The Rider on the White Horse and the Army of Heaven (Apocalypse 19); from an illustrated manuscript of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liebana, made by a scribe called Facundus for King Ferdinand I of Castille and Leon, 1047 AD, now in the National Library of Madrid. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Aña Habet in vestimento et in fémore suo scriptum: Rex regum, et Dóminus dominantium. Ipsi gloria et imperium, in sáecula saeculórum.

“God, Who Art Glorified in the Assembly of the Saints” - A Sermon of St Gaudentius of Brescia

Today, the northern Italian city of Brescia (about 55 miles east of Milan) celebrates the feast of one of its early bishops, St Gaudentius, who died ca. 410 AD after holding the see for about 23 years. In that era of the Church, it was not unusual for devout and holy men to be drafted into the clergy more or less by force, as happened to three of his famous contemporaries, Ss John Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine. Gaudentius was held in such high regard that he went on a long trip to the Holy Land, partly for the sake of pilgrimage, but also hoping to be forgotten in his native city. But while he was abroad, the bishop of Brescia, Philastrius (also a Saint), died, and the clergy and people not only elected Gaudentius to replace him in absentia, but bound themselves by an oath to accept none other as their new bishop. He still had to be forced to accept the office under threat of excommunication by a council of bishops in the East; on returning home, he was consecrated by St Ambrose in person, ca. 387.

St Gaudentius, anonymous artist, ca. 1390-1400; image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

During his travels, Gaudentius acquired several relics of Saints; soon after his election as bishop, built a church in their collective honor, naming it “Concilium Sanctorum – the Assembly of the Saints.” Among them were some of the Forty Martyrs, a group of soldiers who were killed at Sebaste in Armenia in 320, whose relics he received from the nieces of St Basil the Great while passing through Cappadocia. The sermon which he preached for the church’s dedication is one of his twenty-one which survive, and is an important witness not only to the early Church’s veneration of relics, but also to the emergence of devotion to Saints who were not martyrs, since he refers to St Basil once as “the blessed confessor”, and again as “the confessor of blessed memory.”

Most of this sermon is taken up with his account of the careers of the Saints who relics were to be laid in the church, so here we will simply highlight the beginning and end.

The relic altar of the church of St John the Evangelist in Brescia, which now occupies the site of the original Concilium Sanctorum built by St Gaudentius.

“Dearest brothers, our weakness is not equal to the task of worthily giving thanks for the gifts of God and the blessings of heaven. For our God has granted that we should have the venerable relics of the Saints, and it is by His own generosity that we were able to found this basilica unto their honor, and today he has accorded that, in the presence of the bishops, we are made worthy to celebrate its dedication. For the holy bishops and Apostolic men have come together to show their service of due devotion to the most blessed fathers and to their teachers, so that we might be enriched by the greatest fullness of spiritual blessings…

Therefore, we have gathered these Saints from various parts of the world and for this reason, we decree that this basilica dedicated to their merits should be called ‘the Assembly of the Saints.’ For it is worthy, since we about to come forth to venerate the relics of such great martyrs, we should confess that we go forth to the assembly of the Saints. And thus, since we shall be helped by the patronage of so many just men, let us hasten forth with all faith and all desire in their footsteps, beseeching their intercession, that we may be able to obtain all things that we ask for, while magnifying Christ the Lord, the giver of so great a gift, to whom be all honor, virtue, and glory, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, before all things, both now and forever, and unto all the ages of ages. Amen.”

Credo in Unum Deum

Lost in Translation #109

Because of its wealth of meaning, it is tempting to provide a detailed commentary on the Creed. We resist this temptation for two reasons: first, the Lost in Translation series limits itself to questions of, well, translation; and second, it would be difficult to top Msgr. Ronald Knox’s The Creed in Slow Motion.

But we will say three things about the Creed and its place in the Mass before moving on to linguistic issues.

First, by being recited after the readings, the Creed “forms the answer and the echo to the voice of God, who has spoken to us by His prophets and apostles, yea, by His own Son.” [1] In other words, the Creed distills the grand biblical narrative—a portion of which we have just heard in the Epistle and Gospel—into a core of essential beliefs (the “echo”), which we go on to affirm personally in the opening line: “I believe” (the “answer”).

Second, by being recited before the Offertory, which is only for fully initiated Catholics, the Creed is our key into the Mass of the Faithful. In the early centuries, the non-baptized could only attend the so-called Mass of the Catechumens, from the beginning of the Mass until the homily. When the Mass of the Faithful began at the Offertory Rite, they were dismissed from the congregation. As a tie-in to our baptism, the Creed reminds us of the sacrament that enables us to participate in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

And the metaphor of a key is not random. Commenting on Christianity’s unique preoccupation with the truth, Chesterton writes:

This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key. [2]

Even the appearance of the Creed on a page resembles a key: assuming that it is left-justified, it is like a key that is smooth on one side and jagged on the other. The Creed is our key into the mysteries of truth and the mysteries of the altar.

Third, the Creed may be a distillation of the biblical narrative, but it is still a narrative. It has a Trinitarian structure, proceeding from Father to Son to Holy Spirit; it begins with the beginning of time, the creation of Heaven and earth, and ends with an anticipation of the Resurrection of the Dead at the end of time; and it contains a brief biography of the life of Jesus Christ. The various truths of the Creed are called “articles.” In Latin, an articulus is a joint or the portion of a limb or finger that is in between two joints. Either way, the Creed is a narrative skeleton which the other parts of the body (virtues, gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, etc.) fill out to make a complete and living person.

The first line of the Creed, which is the only article about God the Father, is: 

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factórem cæli et terræ, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. 

Which the 2011 ICEL edition of the (new) Roman Missal and many others translate as: 

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. [3]

The translation is a significant improvement over the earlier ICEL translation, which has two flaws with respect to this article:

We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. [4]

First, it is true that the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of A.D. 381 begins with “we believe” rather than “I believe”, because it is a statement issued by the assembly of Council Fathers on behalf of the entire Church. But in the Rite of Baptism, the opening is changed to “I believe,” for when a person is baptized, his personal belief is crucial to receiving the sacrament. This is true even in the case of an infant, whose godparents recite (in the old rite) the Creed on his behalf, for they are acting as surrogates of the child’s intellect and will until they reach a proper state of development. By using “I believe” in the Creed at Mass, we are being reminded of our baptism and the importance of our personal affirmation of the truths proclaimed by the Catholic Church.

Second, the early ICEL translation failed when it translated visibilium omnium et invisibilium as “of all that is seen and unseen.” There is an important difference between an object that is unseen and an object that is invisible. An unseen object has the potential to be seen even though it is not being seen right now, while an invisible object is incapable of ever being seen. Rocks buried below the earth’s surface are unseen; Angels are invisible. The Nicene Creed clearly affirms that God made not only material objects, but spiritual subjects as well—that is, celestial beings and immortal human souls. The early ICEL translation, on the other hand, leaves the door open for a materialist world view, the ideology that denies a spiritual realm.

Pietro Perugino, God the Creator and Angels, 1507-8

Finally, both ICEL translations were correct in translating factorem as “maker.” Curiously, the Nicene Creed calls God the Father this word rather than the Apostles’ Creed’s “Creator.” The Greek poiētḗs, which the Latin translates as factor, does indeed mean “maker,” but its obvious relation to our word “poet” tempts us to call God the Father “the Poet of Heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” For is not the entire cosmos one vast and exquisite epic?

Notes

[1] Gihr, 483.

[2] Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Ignatius Press, 2005), 89.

[3] 2011 Roman Missal, 10.

[4] 1985 Sacramentary, 368.

[5] We will leave it to another day to discuss how this statement is true even though Angels appeared to many in the Bible and even wrestled with them.