A Liturgical Oddity of Holy Monday

In the Missal of St Pius V, there is a very small number of days on which two Scriptural lessons are read before the Gospel: the Wednesdays of the Embertides, of the fourth week of Lent and Holy Week, and Good Friday. As I have described elsewhere, these readings are actually part of a block which is inserted into the Mass between the Kyrie and the collect, consisting of three elements: 1. a collect, introduced by “Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate.”; 2. a Scriptural reading; 3. a gradual (but at some Masses, a tract. On the Ember Saturdays, the same block is inserted into the order of Mass five times.) Some changes are made to this order for specific days: on Good Friday, the collect is omitted, and on the Pentecost Ember days, there are no genuflections, since they are part of Eastertide. This is an extremely ancient tradition of the Roman Rite, attested very consistently in the oldest lectionaries.

There also exists a different version of this custom which is not in the Missal of St Pius V or its medieval antecedents, but which is likewise very ancient, and survived in many Uses of the Roman up to time of the Tridentine reform. This consists of just an extra reading, without a prayer before it or a chant after it. The Dominican Missal has maintained this custom for Christmas Eve and all three Masses of Christmas day; it can also be found in various medieval Uses on the Saturdays after Laetare and Passion Sunday, and on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week.

The first page of the Mass of Holy Monday in a Missal according to the Use of Augsburg, Germany, printed in 1510, with the second reading from Zachariah immediately after the reading of Isaiah 50.

The extra lesson for Holy Monday is particularly interesting because it is one of the rare examples in the Roman Rite of a reading which is not a continuous Biblical passage, but a selection of verses, in this case, taken from chapters 11 to 13 of the prophet Zachariah. Of course, this is not a matter of censoring the Scriptures, lest its content offend the delicate sensibilities of Modern Man™, but rather, of choosing verses which are appropriate to the liturgical context. Some verses are incomplete, so I have italicized the omitted parts.

Thus sayeth the Lord: chapter 11, 12 If it be good in your eyes, bring hither my wages: and if not, be quiet. And they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the Lord said to me: Cast it to the statuary, a handsome price, that I was prized at by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and I cast them into the house of the Lord to the statuary. 14 And I cut off my second rod that was called a Cord, that I might break the brotherhood between Juda and Israel. 15 And the Lord said to me: Take to thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd. chapter 12, 2 Behold I will make Jerusalem a lintel of surfeiting to all the people round about: and Juda also shall be in the siege against Jerusalem, 6 In that day I will make the governors of Juda like a furnace of fire amongst wood, and as a firebrand amongst hay: and they shall devour all the people round about, to the right hand, and to the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place in Jerusalem. 7 And the Lord shall save the tabernacles of Juda, as in the beginning. that the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, may not boast and magnify themselves against Juda. 9 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem, 10 And I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace, and of prayers: and they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son, and they shall grieve over him, as the manner is to grieve for the death of the firstborn. *** 11 In that day there shall be a great lamentation in Jerusalem [like the lamentation of Adadremmon in the plain of Mageddon.] chapter 13, 6-9 And they shall say to him: What are these wounds in the midst of thy hands? And he shall say: With these I was wounded in the house of them that loved me. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that cleaveth to me, saith the Lord of hosts: strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn my hand to the little ones. And there shall be in all the earth, saith the Lord, two parts in it shall be scattered, and shall perish: but the third part shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined: and I will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say: Thou art my people: and they shall say: The Lord is my God.

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

Even though this reading is not in the Missal, two of the antiphons for the psalms of Lauds on Holy Monday, the second and third, are taken from this same set of verses, which is probably not a coincidence. At the Friday votive Mass of the Passion of the Lord, which was promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the Epistle is the last part of this, beginning with the red *** stars, and minus [the words in brackets], a selection which was evidently copied from this older tradition.  

Lessons of this kind, made of selected verses rather than continuous passages, are found much more frequently in other liturgical traditions. The Byzantine Rite contains many such lessons from the Old Testament for Vespers on major feasts, and it is fairly common for the verses to be not just selected, but reordered. There are also a few which are “centonized”, which is to say, compiled from more than one Biblical book; for example, at the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Thursday, and again at Vespers of Good Friday, the Gospel readings from St Matthew have passages from Luke and John interpolated into them. Likewise, at the synaxis of readings which is done at the end of Holy Saturday Matins, the Epistle is 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8 and Galatians 3, 13-14, done as a single reading, and titled to the former.

The beginning of a centonized Passion reading in the Mozarabic Rite, described below, with the title, “The Passion of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ according to the flesh”; n.b., not according to one of the evangelists, since the reading is compiled from all four of them. (BnF NAL 2171).

The Holy Week champion in this regard, however, is the Mozarabic Rite. In an eleventh-century Mozarabic lectionary from the abbey of San Domingo de Silos (edited by Dom German Morin OSB in 1893), we find the following centonized lessons: the first reading of Palm Sunday, from Exodus 19, and seven different chapters of Deuteronomy; on Spy Wednesday, a composite Gospel from Matthew 26 and Mark 14; at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the first reading, a selection of verses from chapters 2, 3, 11 and 13 of Zachariah, and the Gospel, a composite of John 13 and Matthew 26; on Good Friday, the Epistle is centonized from 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Hebrews and 1 Peter, while the Passion is mixed from all four Gospels.

Palm Sunday 2025

Thou didst incline the heavens, and come down to the earth as one merciful. Thou didst not leave the throne of the Cherubim, Thou sat upon a colt for our sake, o Savior of the world! And the children of the Hebrews came to meet Thee, and taking palms in their hands, they blessed Thee: “Blessed art Thou who hast come to the Passion of Thy own will to deliver us; Glory to Thee!” (Processional antiphon for Palm Sunday from the Ambrosian Rite.)

The Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, by Giotto, from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. 1304-06

Inclinasti caelos et descendisti ad terram, ut misericors. Thronum Cherubim non dereliquisti; pullum propter nos sedisti, Salvator mundi. Et pueri Hebraeorum occurrerunt tibi, et sumentes palmas in manibus, benedixerunt te: Benedictus qui venisti ad passionem voluntarie ad liberandum nos, gloria tibi!

Superb Recordings of the Hymns of Passiontide

As we are about to enter Holy Week, here are two genuinely outstanding recordings of the hymns for Passiontide Vexilla Regis and Pange lingua. These come from an album released by the choir of Westminster Cathedral in October of 2023, titled Vexilla Regis: A sequence of music from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday; the 21 tracks are also available on a YouTube playlist. Both of these hymns were were written by St Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers in France, in the later sixth century, to celebrate the arrival there of a relic of the True Cross which was given by the Byzantine Emperor Justin II to Venantius’ dear friend St Radegund, Queen of the Franks. In the Divine Office, Pange lingua is divided into two parts, the first of which (five stanzas plus a doxology) is sung at Matins, and the second (five more stanzas plus the same doxology) at Lauds, while Vexilla Regis is sung at Vespers. They are also both used at the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, the former during the adoration of the Cross, and the later while the Blessed Sacrament is brought back from the altar of repose to the main altar.

What I particularly like about both of these recordings is how they alternate the stanzas between the boys’ and men’s choirs, which then merge at the last stanza to powerful effect, while the organ accompaniment remains very light.

Pange lingua

Vexilla Regis

The Mass of Passion Thursday - Continued

In yesterday’s article, I described the Roman station church of Passion Thursday as a place of exile for Eastern iconodule monks whom the persecution of the iconoclast Byzantine emperors had driven into Italy. This basilica is dedicated to St Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna, who is traditionally said to have been a disciple of St Peter, sent there by him to evangelize the northern Italian region of the Romagna.

Episodes of the life of St Apollinaris, depicted in a stained-glass window in the cathedral of Chartres, 1205-15. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Rolf Kranz, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Byzantine emperors had lost control of Italy, and hence of Rome itself, the place where their empire began, in the later fifth century, but regained it over the course of the sixth through a series of extremely costly wars. Once this was achieved, the official who governed it on their behalf both civilly and militarily, called the exarch, kept his capital at Ravenna. The exarchate was never a very strong power; it slowly lost one territory after another, especially to the Lombards, then began to collapse much more rapidly in the mid-8th century, just as Byzantium itself was embracing iconoclasm, until it was completely overrun, and Ravenna itself conquered in 751.

However, the Lombards were in turn soon driven out of the region by the Franks under Pepin the Short in 756, at which point, the Pope, already the ruler of Rome and environs, laid claim to the former territories of the exarchate. This claim was granted by Pepin, and confirmed by his son Charlemagne in 774. Thus, the see of St Apollinaris, Ravenna, became a subject of orthodox Rome, rather than of heterodox, iconoclast Byzantium.

In the Epistle of Passion Thursday, Azariah says that the exiled Israelites “are diminished more than any nation, and are brought low in all the earth this day for our sins.” Given the historical context described above, when this was read in the church that represents the former seat of Byzantine power in Italy, it must surely have been taken to signify also the destruction of that power so soon after it had turned to heresy, and as a punishment for doing so.

The episode of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, depicted by Franz Joseph Hermann (1738-1806) in the parish church of St Pancratius in Wiggensbach, Germany.

The prayers of this Mass do not refer to any of this, since indeed, they are all much older than it. The Collect, Secret and Post-Communion are all attested in the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, but each at a different Mass: the first on the vigil of Pentecost, the second at one of the Ember days of September (which one is not specified), and the third at the twentieth of thirty-one Masses in a section labeled “orationes et praeces diurnae – daily orations and prayers.” (This Mass also includes the worst preface ever written.) In the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, the first surviving example of its genre for the Roman Rite (ca. 750 AD), they are put together in a single Mass, that of the third Saturday of Lent, with the addition of an alternative Collect and a prayer “over the people.” In the Gregorian Sacramentary, the alternative Collect is removed, and the Mass transferred to Passion Thursday.

Collecta Praesta, quáesumus, omnípotens Deus: ut dígnitas condiciónis humánae, per immoderantiam sauciáta, medicinális parsimoniae studio reformétur.

Collect Grant, we beseech You, almighty God, that the dignity of human nature, wounded through self-indulgence, may be restored by the zealous practice of healing self-denial.

Secreta Dómine, Deus noster, qui in his potius creatúris, quas ad fragilitátis nostrae subsidium condidisti, tuo quoque nómini múnera jussisti dicanda constítui: tríbue, quáesumus; ut et vitae nobis praesentis auxilium et aeternitátis efficiant sacramentum.

Secret O Lord, our God, Who hast commanded that especially from these created things, which Thou didst fashion for the support of our weakness, offerings also be dedicated to Thy Name, grant we beseech Thee, that they may provide for us both help in the present life, and the sacrament of eternity.

Postcommunio Quod ore súmpsimus, Dómine, pura mente capiámus: et de munere temporáli, fiat nobis remedium sempiternum.

Post-communion May we receive with pure mind, O Lord, what we have taken by mouth, and as a gift in time, may it become for us an everlasting remedy.

Super populum Esto, quáesumus, Dómine, propitius plebi tuae: ut, quae tibi non placent, respuentes, tuórum potius repleantur delectatiónibus mandatórum.

Over the people Be merciful to Thy people, we beseech You, o Lord, that as they reject whatever pleaseth Thee not, they may be filled all the more with the delights of Thy commandments.

Folios 35v and 36r of the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 A.D., with the Masses of Thursday (from the middle of the Secret), Friday and Saturday of the third week of Lent, and most of that of Laetare Sunday. In the Mass of Saturday, which was later moved to Passion Thursday, the prayers given above are all the same as those given above, except for the Post-communion. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

Despite their extreme antiquity, and continual use since at least the mid-6th century, the Collect and Secret of this Mass were ejected from the post-Conciliar rite. Ideas such as “the dignity of human nature, wounded through self-indulgence”, “self-denial”, and “our weakness” cannot be presented to that most improbably chimeric of creatures, Modern Man™, simultaneously a mature adult who no longer needs to be coddled by his Holy Mother the Church, but too fragile to be confronted with “negative” thoughts, especially about himself. The Post-communion had long become part of the Ordo Missae, and is retained as such in the post-Conciliar rite, but not in its original role as a Post-communion, since Modern Man™, despite his assiduous attendance at the Lenten ferial Masses, will also immediately abandon the practice of the Faith if he hears the same prayer twice in a single day.

The prayer over the people appears in the Leonine and Gelasian Sacramentaries as a feature of many Masses (but not all), whereas in the Gregorian Sacramentary, the ancestor of the Missal of St Pius V, it is limited to the ferias of Lent. Flatly rejecting Sacrosanctum Concilium’s wish that “other elements which have suffered injury through accidents of history are now to be restored to the vigor which they had in the days of the holy Fathers”, the first creators of the post-Conciliar Missal simply suppressed it outright. Having realized the foolishness of this pointless impoverishment, the creators of the 2002 edition restored it ad libitum, and this specific example returned to its traditional place, though not without some typically cack-handed and unnecessary rewriting.

The Gospel, Luke 7, 36-50, tells of the anointing of Christ’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee by an unnamed woman, who later came to be identified as St Mary Magdalene, in part because she is mentioned immediately after this passage, in verse 8, 2. As noted yesterday, the antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat are not taken from the day’s Gospel, as they are on almost every other day of Lent. Instead, the former is taken from Matthew 26, 18, “The master saith, ‘My time is near at hand, with thee I keep the Pasch with my disciples.’ ”, and the latter from Luke 22, 15, “With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer.” This choice is not accidental. Both antiphons contain the word, “Pasch”, and cite words spoken by Christ Himself right before the Last Supper, one week before the day on which the Church commemorates it.

The Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1480-88, by a Spanish painter known as Maestro Bartolomé. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

St Luke is the only one of the four Evangelists who does not record an anointing of the Lord’s feet by a woman right before His Passion; this episode occurs much earlier in his Gospel, when Jesus and His disciples are still in Galilee. (The versions of Matthew and Mark are included in their Passions, that of St John is read on Holy Monday.) The pairing of this Gospel with these antiphons brings into the context of the Passion Luke’s account, the only version in which Christ speaks to the woman herself, saying, “Thy sins are forgiven thee. … Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace.” In the Passion itself, the same is said to all of mankind.

The historical events and cultural factors that originally determined the choice and arrangement of these texts have long since faded from common memory, but their final result still serves a beautiful purpose as Lent draws to a close. The Mass is permeated with the thought of the sinfulness of fallen Man, and his hope for redemption: in the Introit, “…we have sinned unto Thee… but… deal with us according to Thy great mercy”; in the Collect, “let the dignity of the human condition… be restored”; in the Epistle, “Confound us not, but deal with us according to Thy mildness”; in the Gospel, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” In the Offertory, the Babylonian exile becomes a symbol of the worse exile of Man from Paradise, to which he longs to return; in the Communion, “…Thy word… in which Thou hast given me hope… hath consoled me in my low estate.”

Having made this last confession of sin, and profession of repentance and the hope for redemption, the Church turns its gaze to the Passion, in which the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world.

The Offertory Incensation, Part II

Cardinal Hayes incensing the altar at the opening Mass for the 7th National Eucharistic Congress at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, 1935

Lost in Translation #123

When the priest incenses the altar, he recites Psalm 140, 2-4:

Dirigátur, Dómine, oratio mea, sicut incensum in conspectu tuo: Elevatio manuum meárum sacrificium vespertínum. Pone, Dómine, custodiam ori meo, et ostium circumstantiae labiis meis: Ut non declínet cor meum in verba malitiae, ad excusandas excusatiónes in peccátis.

Which the Douay Rheims translates as:

Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed as incense in Thy sight: the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door round about my lips. May my heart not incline to evil words, to make excuses in sins.

The choice of Ps. 140,2a is obvious: one of the few explicit allegorical readings in the Bible of a liturgical act is the interpretation of incense as the prayers of the faithful. (see Rev. 8, 3-4) Moreover, the pairing of uplifted hands with the evening sacrifice in 104, 2b typologically points to the Crucifixion, when Christ dies with outstretched arms at 3 p.m., the time of the Levitical sacrifice of lambs. And it is that Sacrifice of the Cross that is re-presenced during this Sacrifice of the Mass.

   

What is less obvious is why the prayer also includes Ps 140, 3 and 4, a petition for clean words and thoughts. I consider this inclusion to be another example of the liturgical stutter. Here, at this point of the Mass, it is being prompted by an awareness of heightened numinosity. The priest is about to enter into the Sancta Sanctorum of sacrifice, and he knows it.

When the priest returns the thurible to the deacon (at a Solemn High Mass) or the thurifer (at a Missa cantata), he says:

Accendat in nobis Dóminus ignem sui amóris, et flammam aeternae caritátis. Amen.

Which I and others translate as:

May the Lord kindle within us the fire of His love and the flame of everlasting charity. Amen.

The prayer adds more details to the phenomenology of liturgical incense. Before, we learned that incense is like prayer and its fragrance is like God’s approval of our prayer. Here, we envision the fire that burns the incense as God’s love and charity. We are again reminded that whatever we give to God (in this case, our prayers) He has already given to us (the ability and inspiration to pray). Further, if the thurible is what holds the fire, we may conclude that the thurible represents the human heart, where love resides. Hence the prayer by St. Augustine: “Let the hymn of praise and the weeping rise up together in Your sight from Your censers which are the hearts of my brethren” (Conf. 10.4.5).

Cardinal Hayes, again

But perhaps the most curious feature of this prayer is that it is included at all. When the Accendat first appeared in Mass ordines in the eleventh century, it was uttered by each individual who was incensed. (This practice might not be a bad idea as a private devotion today.) The location of the prayer in the 1570 Missal, on the other hand, gives it a somewhat different purpose and even a different “feel.” Originally, the Accendat functioned as a sort of elaborate “Amen” by a person has just been incensed. By repeating the words of the prayer, he acknowledges that incensation is a blessing and he petitions that this exterior action have an interior effect upon his soul. There is a certain logic and fittingness to this arrangement.

In the Tridentine Missal, on the other hand, the Accendat appears almost unexpectedly and out of the blue. When the priest blesses the deacon before the Gospel, it is in response to the deacon’s petition and an important component in preparing for the Gospel’s proclamation. But here, the priest addresses the deacon with this prayer unprovokedly after the priest has finished the most elaborate incensation of the Mass with the help of the deacon. The unexpectedness of the address gives it a spontaneous feel, as when a hero has accomplished a difficult task and then offhandedly says something to his subordinate that ends up being profound or revelatory. The prayer in this context also suggests a closeness between the priest and the deacon, who together have been collaborating in the important work of the offertory.

We conclude by noting what and who are incensed: the bread and wine; the cross, relics, and altar; and the priest and everyone else, including the lay congregation. We may see in this a symbol of the unity of Christ in His Church both as offered and offering. The altar and cross are symbols of Christ, the High Priest who offers and also the Victim who is offered. The bread and wine are symbols of the Christ who is to be offered, and which are about to become more than symbols. And the ministers and the faithful, along with the Saints whose relics are present, are members of the mystical Body of Christ; they too (clergy and laity) are about to be offered, united in the sacrifice. The laity should be especially grateful for being included in this rite: besides being a sign that they are one of the oblations being offered, it is also a sign that they are one of the offerers. For in their own way and by virtue of their royal priesthood in baptism, the lay faithful are agents in the offertory: expendable agents to be sure (Mass can be said without them), but agents nonetheless. Finally, the incensation is a visual fulfillment of the priest’s prayer for mercy to descend upon us all, both in and out of the sanctuary.

A Choirmaster’s Reflections on the Twelve Passion Gospels: Guest Article by Fr. Herman Majkrzak

One of the most powerful services of the extremely rich Byzantine Holy Week is Matins of Great and Holy Friday, known as the Matins of the Twelve Gospels. This consists of the (mostly) regular order of Matins as it is celebrated in Lent, into which Twelve Gospel readings of the Lord’s Passion are added at various points. I am very grateful to my friend Fr. Herman Majkrzak for agreeing to share with NLM this beautiful reflection which he wrote about it a few days ago. I believe that our readers will find much of what it written here very useful as a consideration of what we experience in the days of the Lord’s Passion, even if they are not familiar with this service per se. Fr Herman is a priest in the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, currently serving in the Archeparchy of Philadelphia as well as in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Raised in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he spent many years in the Orthodox Church before coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. He writes on liturgy and the spiritual life at sonsofsirach.substack.com. The complete text of service may be read at this link: https://st-sergius.org/services/triod/75.pdf.

A Choirmaster’s Reflections on the Twelve Passion Gospels

The Office of the Twelve Passion Gospels is a high point of Holy Week in the Byzantine liturgical tradition. Many love it, but some do not. I love it deeply, and the (I think) eight times I’ve directed the choir for it are among my most cherished memories of service in the Church thus far. The service is a masterpiece of liturgical genius.

The Matins of the Twelve Gospels at the church of St Elias in Brampton, Ontario, in 2023.

The Triodion and Typicon direct that the service is to begin at 8 PM on Holy Thursday evening. (In practice, it may begin an hour or two earlier.) It should be sung in a darkened church, with minimal illumination beyond candlelight and oil lamps. Even though it employs the framework of daily Matins, it’s not a morning service and should not be celebrated on Friday morning—that time slot is for Royal Hours instead. It is rather a vigil in character, as Matins in the Byzantine Rite often is.

That is to say, the point of the service is not prayers upon waking, for the start of a new day, but keeping watch with the Lord as he progresses through all the events that take him to Golgotha and death. Thus (after the usual Six Psalms and Great Litany) the service opens with the troparion of Maundy Thursday (“When the glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of the feet…”) and the first, very long Gospel reading (John 13, 31 – 18, 1), which takes place at the Last Supper. Much of the earlier part of the service is taken up with events that happened throughout that night: the agony in the garden, the betrayal, the trial before the Sanhedrin, Peter’s denial. But like many of the rites of Holy Week, this is a transitional service: in the span of three hours or so, it carries you from Thursday evening all the way through to Friday evening. Later, on the afternoon of Holy Friday, we reread the Passion narrative (in composite form), much closer to the actual time of those later events. But this service begins instead at the time of these earlier events.

(Many Greek Catholic communities over recent decades have been influenced, I reckon, by Pope Pius XII’s 1955 Roman Rite Holy Week reform in adjusting the traditional times for services so that Matins is always in the morning and Vespers in the evening. I believe that this adjustment makes some sense for the Roman Rite [e.g., with its Easter vigil beginning with the new fire and lucernarium] but less sense for the Byzantine Rite. I may write more about that some other time.)

The twelve selections from the passion narratives of the four Gospels’ overlap and repeat different episodes in the Savior’s advance towards death. Thus the way each Gospel reading interacts with the previous and succeeding readings, and also with the hymnography sung in between them is very much two-steps-forward-one-step-back: a solemn, ceremonial dance. And this is key. Because this is how we work through grief. Our minds, hearts, and bodies must revisit, reinterpret, and reintegrate the traumatic and fatal events of those twenty-four hours, and we are part of those events, even if not the central figure. They affect us. Deeply.

A recording of the complete service, also from St Elias in Brampton, 2013.

Many are troubled and disturbed by the eruption of anger and finger-pointing that characterizes the hymnography in the first part of the service, throughout many of the fifteen antiphons and sessional hymns. Judas, Caiaphas and the Jews, even the sleeping disciples in Gethsemane: the atmosphere in this earlier part of the service is one of agitation and frenzy. Everything is falling apart, all my hopes are crumbling, and THIS IS SOMEONE’S FAULT. One of the early stages of grief (in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous schema) is anger. And Peter himself gives voice to the first stage of grief—denial: “This shall never happen to thee, Lord.” It is necessary for us to experience and go through this anxious, confused, pot-stirring, boiling-over terror and rage. We don’t like it—we may find the rhetoric unfair, unjust—and yet, this is the reality of grief. And in the modality of poetry and lyric we can say things that we ought not say in prose.

Interspersed among these verses of outrage, each of the fifteen antiphons concludes with a theotokion, a brief hymn to the Theotokos, the Mother of God. Notice: they are theotokia, not (as we might expect) staurotheotokia (except for the 15th). That is, they do not focus on the Passion, on our Lady’s suffering beside the Cross. Rather, with these short hymns, we periodically turn to our Lady, not to console her, but for her to console us. We see her not in the midst of all this panic and turmoil, but as already having passed beyond death and resurrection—both her Son’s and her own—and already reigning with Him in heaven. We run to her and bury our face in her lap as our emotions overwhelm us. And she consoles us. These theotokia are small oases. They must never be omitted, and the choir or chanters should try to sing them in a calmer and more serene manner than the surrounding hymns. (The staurotheotokion at the end of the 15th antiphon is sometimes forgotten inadvertently. This too must not happen. It is the first Stavrotheotokion of the service. Several more will follow. Our Lady has come to join us in this moment.)

At the famous fifteenth antiphon, “Today, he who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross…” our finger-pointing ceases. For in the next Gospel reading, we see the Lord finally lifted up upon the Cross. It cannot be prevented now. It’s too late. And we are stunned. A certain kind of acceptance briefly comes over us—acceptance being the last stage of grief in Kubler-Ross’s schema. (The stages of grief are perhaps better thought of as elements of grief: they, like these Gospel narratives, overlap with each other.) We look at the majesty of the Cross now set up in the midst of the church, and we weep.

The fifteen antiphons concluded, our next bit of hymnography is a set of troparia interspersed with the Beatitudes. We see that the Crucified Lord of Glory is perfectly fulfilling the Beatitudes he preached at the beginning of his ministry. Intercalated with these verses are troparia in which we make our own the prayer of the wise thief: “Remember me, O Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom.” We have stopped blaming others and begin to look inward. It now occurs to me that I am to blame, and that this Crucifixion is in fact necessary to restore me to my place in the Father’s kingdom.

With the three-ode canon by St. Cosmas (the final three-ode canon of the season), we return to an earlier stage of the events, focusing again on the washing of the feet, the garden, and Peter’s denial. We revisit these events with new eyes, eyes now filled not with the fear and foreboding but with the tears of sorrow.

In the midst of the canon, we come to St. Romanus’ kontakion, the staurotheotokion par excellence, where we see our Lady watching her Lamb bear his Cross towards Calvary and asking him where he’s rushing off to. Is there another wedding in Cana? Is he going again to turn water into wine? No matter: he remains her Son and her God! The hirmos and catabasia of the ninth ode complements this kontakion. It is the theotokion par excellence: “More honorable than the cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim!” Here there is no hint of sorrow and incomprehension in the Mother of God, only her unsurpassable glory. This catabasia should be sung with stately, confident majesty. Our Lady, in her unconquerable faith, intercedes for us.

After the canon, we revisit the theme of the wise thief that was introduced in the Beatitudes before the canon. This famous Exapostilarion is, for many Slavs, the high-point of the service:

The wise thief didst thou make worthy of Paradise

in a single moment, O Lord.

By the wood of the Cross, illumine me as well,

and save me.

I now realize that my only hope is this Cross and the One hanging on it, this Cross the threat of which had earlier thrown me into frenzy and panic.

As we come to the stichera on the Praises (Psalms 148, 149 and 150) and the aposticha stichera, especially when sung to Kastalsky’s very poignant Holy Week harmonizations of Kyivan Chant, our grief arrives at the stage of deep, deep sorrow. Earlier our focus had shifted from blaming others to awareness of our own sins. Now our focus finally settles on Christ himself. We gaze on each of the members of his Body: each has suffered in its own way. And our awareness of Christ leads us to become more aware of how others too are grieving. All creation, the sun, the moon, the earth, shudders as it beholds its Creator hanging naked on the tree. Our Lady is now weeping and tearing out her hair with agony. Even the angels shudder in bafflement: “O incomprehensible Lord, glory be to thee!”

Yet in the midst of this deep sorrow, anger flares out once more, when we remember how those soldiers dared to mock their Savior and their King:

They stripped me of my garments

and clothed me in a scarlet robe;

they set a crown of thorns upon my head

and placed a reed in my right hand,

THAT I MIGHT DASH THEM IN PIECES LIKE A POTTER’S VESSEL.

(The choir director must lean into this for all its dramatic contrast from the surrounding text.) We put this hot wave of apparent vengefulness into the mouth of Christ himself, quoting Psalm 2. (Again, poetry is not prose.) And yet, a moment later we think further of the matter and arrive at a deeper awareness of the truth, still in the voice of Christ:

I gave my back to scourging;

I did not turn away my face from spitting;

I stood before the judgement-seat of Pilate,

and endured the Cross—

for the salvation of the world.

These last words must be sung with great emphasis, but pianissimo. They reinterpret the previous sticheron. If Christ must dash a vessel to pieces, it is in order that he can refashion it again according to his likeness.

And, so, after the twelfth (and shortest) of the Passion Gospels—which recounts Pilate setting a guard at the tomb so that no one could fake a resurrection—we sing one final, short hymn. And it is a hymn of gratitude.

By thy precious Blood,

thou hast redeemed us from the curse of the Law.

By being nailed to the Cross and pierced with the spear,

thou hast poured immortality upon men.

O our Savior, glory be to thee!

Like Psalm 21, the quintessential Passion Psalm, our long vigil concludes in triumph. We recognize that the suffering, crucified Servant is indeed the Lord of Glory. In some traditions, this hymn is preceded by a short, festal peal on all the bells. This peal marks the conclusion of the final Gospel reading, but also prepares our hearts for a brief and quiet “Thank you, Jesus,” which we express through this concluding tone four troparion.

I have said little about the Gospels themselves. They speak for themselves more readily than do the hymns, it seems to me. I have also said little about what I called above the “framework” of this vigil: daily Matins. All the ordinary bits, the psalms, the litanies, etc., which those in, say, monastic communities hear and pray every day. These parts are important as well, because they help provide contour—highs and lows—to this service. We cannot be revved up to 100% of emotion all the time. We need ordinary, humdrum things in our lives while grieving: getting a drink of water, preparing a meal, taking out the trash. We need down-time. This is why this service can go from something as heart-wrenching as the “Wise Thief” exapostilarion to something as quotidian as a Little Litany or a set of Trisagion Prayers.

Glory to thy long-suffering, O Lord!

A photograph of the church of St Anthony the Abbot, the Russian Greek-Catholic Church in Rome, after the Twelve Gospels service ended, 2015.

The Anti-Iconoclast Mass of Passion Thursday

Today’s Divine Office contains an unusual feature: the antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat are not taken from the Gospel of the Mass (Luke 7, 36-50), as they are on nearly every other day of Lent. Instead, the former is taken from the Passion of St Matthew (26, 18), “The master saith, ‘My time is near at hand, with thee I keep the Pasch with my disciples.’ ”, and the latter from the Passion of St Luke (22, 15), “With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer.”

A page of the winter volume of the Codex Hartker, written at the monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland at the end of the 10th century, with the antiphons ‘Magister dicit’ and ‘Desiderio desideravi’ assigned to Passion Thursday at the bottom. (Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 390, p. 169 – Antiphonarium officii, https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0390; CC BY-NC 4.0)

The only two other days on which this happens are the Saturdays after Ash Wednesday and Passion Sunday, both of which were originally aliturgical days in the Roman Rite, on which no Mass was celebrated. This was also originally the custom on the Thursdays of Lent, which was changed by Pope St Gregory II (715-31), for reasons I have explained elsewhere. This is why in the Missal of St Pius V, the Masses of these Thursdays have no proper chant parts, borrowing their introits, graduals, offertories and communions from other Masses; the respect for the tradition codified by St Gregory the Great was such that it was deemed better not to add new pieces to the established repertoire. The two formerly aliturgical Saturdays, on the other hand, simply repeat the Gregorian propers from the previous day, indicating that their Masses were added by a different Pope.

The Mass of Passion Thursday, however, does have its own proper gradual, while the introit, offertory and communion all come from the same Mass, that of the 20th Sunday after Pentecost. This anomaly, coupled with the anomalous choice of antiphons noted above, suggests that the Mass of Passion Thursday was also added by a different Pope than Gregory II.

A further proof of this may be the choice of station for this day, at the church of St Apollinaris, close to the modern Piazza Navona. The first mention of this church is in the Liber Pontificalis’ account of the reign of Pope St Hadrian I (772-95), and several authorities believe that he was the one who built it, although the Liber Pontificalis does not say so explicitly; nor is there any indication that there was ever any other station for this day. If this is in fact the case, obviously, it cannot have been Gregory II who instituted the station.

The high altar and choir of the church of St Apollinaris in Rome; the church was completely rebuilt by the architect Fernando Fuga at the behest of Pope Benedict XIV, who consecrated it on April 21, 1748. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Pufui PcPifpef (no, I did not make that up), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Some of the same authorities (most important among them Mariano Armellini [1]) also claim that Pope Hadrian either built the church for a community of Eastern monks who had fled to Italy to escape the persecution of the iconoclast emperors of Byzantium, or installed such a community in the church shortly after building it. If this is also the case, it might well explain why the propers for the Mass were taken from the 20th Sunday after Pentecost.

The Introit is a broad but unmistakable citation from the long deuterocanonical section of Daniel 3 known as the Prayer of Azariah, which he delivers as the leader of the three Israelite boys thrown into the furnace by the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to worship his statue.

“Omnia, quae fecisti nobis, Dómine, in vero judicio fecisti: quia peccávimus tibi, et mandátis tuis non oboedívimus: sed da gloriam nómini tuo, et fac nobiscum secundum multitúdinem misericordiae tuae.

All that Thou hast done to us, o Lord, thou hast done in true judgment; because we have sinned against Thee, and have not obeyed Thy commandments: but give glory to Thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of Thy mercy.”

This episode takes place during the exile of the Jews in Babylon, which is mentioned also in the Offertory, Ps 136, 1.

“Super flúmina Babylónis illic sédimus et flévimus, dum recordarémur tui, Sion.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered thee, o Zion.”

A very nice polyphonic setting by Palestrina.

The choice of these texts may well reflect the exile of the iconodule Eastern monks who served in the church, as also the Epistle, which continues from the same Prayer of Azariah (vss. 34-45).

“In those days: Azariah prayed to the Lord, saying: ‘O Lord, our God, deliver us not up for ever, we beseech thee, for thy name’s sake, and abolish not thy covenant. And take not away thy mercy from us for the sake of Abraham thy beloved, and Isaac thy servant, and Israel thy holy one, to whom thou hast spoken, promising that thou wouldst multiply their seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is on the seashore. For we, O Lord, are diminished more than any nation, and are brought low in all the earth this day for our sins. ... And now we follow thee with all our heart, and we fear thee, and seek thy face. Put us not to confusion, but deal with us according to thy meekness, and according to the multitude of thy mercies. And deliver us according to thy wonderful works, and give glory to thy name, O Lord: and let all them be confounded that show evils to thy servants, let them be confounded in all thy might, and let their strength be broken. And let them know that thou art the Lord, the only God, and glorious over all the world, o Lord, our God.’ ”

In such a context, the words “we… are diminished more than any nation” may refer to the vast territorial losses suffered by the Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Arabs while it was promoting its previous major official heresy, Monothelitism, when the ancient patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem all fell under Muslim dominion. The words “And now we... seek thy face” would refer to the theology of the iconodules, much of which turned around the question of whether the humanity of Christ could be depicted in art, and “let all them be confounded that show evils to thy servants” to the persecution which they underwent for opposing the then-current official heresy, during which the empire was continually besieged and suffered further, though less dramatic, losses. This heresy was officially condemned during the reign of Pope Hadrian at the Second Council of Nicea in 787, but not fully defeated; it was restored in the reigns of four emperors, beginning in 814, and only repudiated definitively in 847.

A further indication of this may also be found in the Gospel, Luke 7, 36-50, the famous episode in the house of Simon the Pharisee, in which the sinful woman, later traditionally identified as St Mary Magdalene, anoints Christ’s feet. When the Lord reproves Simon for thinking that if He were indeed a prophet, He would not allow the woman to touch Him, He says, “Osculum mihi non dedisti – Thou gavest me no kiss.” [2] The Greek word “proskuneo” and the Latin “adorare” both derive from words meaning “to kiss,” and much of the debate over iconoclasm centered on the contention that it was not right to offer “proskunesis – adoration” to the holy images. Therefore, Simon the Pharisee represents the iconoclasts who did not give the Lord proper adoration.

The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1570, by Paolo Veronese; originally painted for the refectory of the Servite church in Venice, gifted by the Venetian Republic to King Louis XIV of France in 1664, and since then, kept in the Chateau of Versailles. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)

This is confirmed by some early lectionaries that have a different Epistle on this day, Jeremiah 7, 1-7, which in the Missal of St Pius V is read on Thursday of the third week of Lent.

“In those days: The word of the Lord came to me, saying: Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and proclaim there this word, and say, ‘Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye men of Juda, that enter in at these gates, to adore the Lord. … Trust not in lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord.’ … If you … shed not innocent blood in this place, … I will dwell with you in this place, in the land, which I gave to your fathers from the beginning and for evermore.”

The very first public episode of iconoclasm in Constantinople was the attempted removal of an image of Christ from above the gate of the imperial palace. The iconoclasts also came to reject the intercession of the Saints and the veneration of their relics; in this context, the “lying” words “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord” would therefore refer to the contention that these ancient practices detracted from the adoration due to God alone, and to the iconoclast habit of decorating their churches with plain crosses as the only acceptable religious symbol, a symbol “of the Lord.” “The temple of the Lord” becomes a “lying word” because the iconoclasts take it to mean “of the Lord, but NOT of the Saints.” “The shedding of innocent blood” would then here mean the many episodes of persecution by the iconoclast emperors, particularly Constantine V (741-75) [3], the emperor when St Hadrian was elected, whose reign rivals those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England for shame and horror.

A mosaic with a bare cross, a motif admitted by the first iconoclasts, in the church of Holy Peace (Hagia Irene) in Constantinople, ca. 750. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Nina Aldin Thune, CC BY-SA 3.0)

[1] Le Chiese di Roma, ed. 1891, p. 345

[2] In the Gospel, the word St Luke uses for “kiss” is “philēma”, which comes from a completely different root, but this distinction may well not have been though relevant to the context.

[3] He is traditionally given the epithet “Copronymus – dung-named” in Greek, in reference to a diaper accident that occurred at his baptism; this was taken by those who honored the sacred images as a presage of his impiety.

A Comprehensive Guide to the Theology and Practice of Veiling

The latest release from Os Justi Press is a revised and expanded new edition of Anna Elissa’s Mantilla: The Veil of the Bride of Christ, this time in full color. (It first came out 9 years ago in Indonesia and quickly become a favorite of many readers until it sold out; it was time for a superior presentation, with better distribution channels. You can find NLM’s original review of the black-and-white first edition here, posted on August 31, 2016.)

Mantilla: The Veil of the Bride of Christ is the most thorough, insightful, and serene guide to veiling ever written—one that will equip you with answers to your own questions as well as the never-lacking questions of friends, relatives, and strangers.

Resting her account on Scripture and Tradition as interpreted by the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and papal, liturgical, and canon law texts, Anna Elissa—a wife, mother, psychiatrist, and lay Dominican—offers arguments of fittingness on behalf of veiling, responds to common objections against it, offers practical advice for choosing, wearing, and even designing mantillas, and shows how the veil contributes to a Eucharistic way of life that treats femininity as a gift, a treasure, and a mystery.

To illustrate and verify her points, Elissa presents a substantial collection of testimonials from women of all ages about their experience adopting and wearing the veil—and from men, too, including clergy, about why they value the practice and its return.

Appropriately for a work about the language of signs and beauty, “Mantilla” is also graced with exquisite artworks in color.

In his foreword, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Guido Filipazzi describes the book as a “beautiful surprise.” Whether you are a long-time veiler, a skeptic of veiling, or simply curious to learn more, this is the book for you!

Paperback, 5” x 8”, 152 pp. $16.95. (Hardcover and ebook also available.) Available from Os Justi Press or any Amazon outlet.

Byzantine Holy Week Schedule in Rome

If you are planning on being in Rome for Holy Week during this Jubilee year, you should certainly make an effort to attend services in the Byzantine Rite at the church of St Anthony the Abbot on the Esquiline Hill, the Russian Greek-Catholic church in urbe. The quality of the music there is always very high, but for Holy Week and Easter, the choir is joined by a group from Switzerland, the “Romanos der Melode Chor”, and the music is among the finest to be heard not just in the Eternal City, but I dare say, in the world. Here is the full schedule from Lazarus Saturday (April 12) to St Thomas Sunday (April 27); the church is located at via Carlo Cattaneo 2A, less than a minute’s walk from Santa Maria Maggiore.

April 12, Lazarus Saturday

– Matins, 8:00 am
– Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am

– All-night Vigil of Palm Sunday, 6:00 pm

April 13, Palm Sunday

– Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am
– Great Vespers, 6:00 pm

April 14, 15 & 16 Great and Holy Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday

– Bridegroom Matins, 8:00 am
– Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, 6:00 pm

April 17, Great and Holy Thursday

– Matins, 8:00 am

– Vespers and Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am
– Matins of the Twelve Passion Gospels, 8:00 pm

April 18, Great and Holy Friday

– Royal Hours, 10:00 am
– Vespers 3:00 pm
– Matins of Holy Saturday (Jerusalem Matins) 8:00 pm

April 19, Great and Holy Saturday

– Vespers and Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am
– Readings of the Acts of the Apostles and the Midnight Office 9:00 pm
– Procession, Paschal Matins and Paschal Hour, Divine Liturgy, beginning at 10:00 pm (The Divine Liturgy starts around 12:30am.)

April 20, Easter Sunday

– Divine Liturgy, 12:30am (see above)
– Paschal Vespers, 6:00 pm

April 21, Easter Monday
– Matins, 8:00 am
– Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am

April 26 (Saturday)

Great Vespers of St Thomas Sunday, 6:00 pm

April 27, Sunday of St Thomas

Divine Liturgy, 10:00 am

Daniel and Habacuc in Passiontide: Postwar Casualties

The Epistle at the traditional Latin Mass for the Tuesday of Passion week is the wonderful scene of Daniel thrown into the lion’s den by his enemies and expected to be scarfed down like cat food, but liberated after a quiet week inside the zoo, and a nourishing meal courtesy of his co-prophet Habakkuk (with rapid-flight angelic service long anticipating the current craze for home delivery).

In those days, the Babylonians went to the king and demanded: Hand over to us Daniel, who has destroyed Bel and killed the dragon, or we will kill you and your family. When he saw himself threatened with violence, the king was forced to hand Daniel over to them.
       They threw Daniel into a lions’ den, where he remained six days. In the den were seven lions, and two carcasses and two sheep had been given to them daily. But now they were given nothing, so that they would devour Daniel.
       In Judea there was a prophet, Habacuc; he mixed some bread in a bowl with the stew he had boiled, and was going to bring it to the reapers in the field, when an Angel of the Lord told him, Take the lunch you have to Daniel in the lions’ den at Babylon. But Habacuc answered, Babylon, sir, I have never seen, and I do not know the den! The Angel of the Lord seized him by the crown of his head and carried him by the hair; with the speed of the wind, he set him down in Babylon above the den. Daniel, servant of God, cried Habacuc, take the lunch God has sent you. You have remembered me, O God, said Daniel; You have not forsaken those who love You. While Daniel began to eat, the Angel of the Lord at once brought Habacuc back to his own place.
       On the seventh day the king came to mourn for Daniel. As he came to the den and looked in, there was Daniel, sitting in the midst of the lions! The king cried aloud, You are great, O Lord, thou God of Daniel! Daniel he took out of the lions’ den, but those who had tried to destroy him he threw into the den, and they were devoured in a moment before his eyes. Then the king said: Let all the inhabitants of the whole earth fear the God of Daniel; for He is the Saviour, working signs and wonders in the earth, Who has delivered Daniel out of the lions’ den.

Daniel in the lion’s den—the chapter 14 version of it (a different telling is found in chapter 6) [*Note]—has been read in Passiontide since the earliest times, for Daniel is a type of Christ, thrown to His enemies and expected to be destroyed; in His agony He was visited by an angel, and after three days in the cave, He was raised up to glorious life.

So ancient is this association of Daniel in the lion’s den with Christ in the Passion that we find it in some of the earliest Christian art we still possess, like this fresco of the 3rd century in the Catacomb of Ss Peter and Marcellinus:

Why am I somehow not surprised that this passage from Daniel 14 was REMOVED from Passiontide in the fat new lectionary? And why might they have stricken this age-old Passiontide reading? Let's think of some possible reasons.

1. They did not believe that the book of Daniel is “relevant” to modern people, especially at this most solemn season. Its content (violence, aggression, Rated-R stuff) might be puzzling, uncomfortable, or prejudicial to ecumenical, interreligious, interractial, and international relations.

2. They had a great discomfort with miracles and tried to minimize their presence whenever possible. And when it comes to angels—the strategy is containment and minimization, like when they reduced the three archangelic feasts to one.

3. The old commentaries and the old liturgy see the enemies of Daniel as types of the pagans who opposed the early Christians (scenes from the book of Daniel are frequently found in Paleochristian liturgy and art). After the Council, however, it is not polite to talk about enemies of Christ or of the Cross, in spite of the prominence of that theme in the New Testament.

So, the next time you hear anyone try to defend the liturgical reform as “returning to the way the early Christians prayed,” tell them... — well, you must be polite. Rattle off ten truly ancient aspects of Christian worship that the liturgical reform abolished or curtailed:

1. the ancient cycle of readings
2. the use of all 150 psalms in their integrity
3. the use of the Roman Canon for all Western rites
4. days of fasting and abstinence throughout the year
5. Ember Days and Rogation Days
6. the octave and season of Pentecost
7. proper vigil Masses before all great feasts.
8. the use of an elevated linguistic register
9. the focus on sacrifice, altar, and the East
10. all-male liturgical ministry divided into many orders, major and minor

It would be pretty easy to go on with the list, but the point is this: the classical Roman rite is thoroughly and consistently ancient (and more besides), while the Novus Ordo is a modern potpourri of inconsistently selected bits and pieces of tradition mixed with novelties, like a badly decorated house.

May the story of Daniel, the servant of the living God, and his miraculous rescue from his enemies plunge us deeper into the mysteries of the Triduum — and may the Lord someday deliver the captive Roman liturgy from its modern oppressors.

*NOTE: There are two tellings of the Daniel and the Lion’s Den in the book of Daniel: one in chapter 6, the other in chapter 14. The chapter 14 one is read in the TLM on Tuesday of Passion Week; the chapter 6 one is read in the Novus Ordo on Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time. It’s interesting to compare the two versions; the miracle of the angel-driven delivery of food is not found in the former.

Mary in the Old and New Testaments: The Overshadowed and Unhewn Mountain

Hail, O Theotokos, Maiden of many names: Tabernacle, Vessel of Manna, Table, Lampstand that bears the Light, burning Bush, overshadowed Mountain of God! (from Orthros - Morning Prayer - of the Melkite (Byzantine) Liturgy in the first week of Lent.)

This is one of what I plan as an occasional series of posts in which I highlight types of the Virgin Theotokos from the Scriptures which appear in traditional sacred art. 

In the icon below, Mary is shown in person and as the unhewn mountain, which refers to the biblical prophecy in Daniel: “You saw until a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands, and it smote the image upon its feet of iron and earthenware and utterly reduced them to powder.” (Daniel 2, 34) 

“Whereas you saw that a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands, and it beat to pieces the earthenware, the iron, the brass, the silver, the gold; the great God has made known to the king what must happen hereafter: and the dream is true, and the interpretation thereof sure” (Daniel 2, 45).

This image is interpreted as prefiguring Christ (the stone) being born of Mary (the mountain) without human intervention so that she remains a Virgin. It is “overshadowed” because at the Annunciation, in Luke 1, 35, the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

This divine overshadowing enabled the virgin birth, or put another way, it enabled the stone to be removed although ‘unhewn’. The cave, therefore, also becomes the womb that is ‘more spacious than the heavens’, as it can contain God as another hymn to the Virgin Mary states, the Akathist. 

The image below is my illumination of the Nativity. In this rendition, the mountain in this scene is overshadowed by the Glory of God, the light in the sky that guides the wise men. 

Passion Sunday 2025

The Vespers hymn for Passiontide Vexilla Regis, in alternating Gregorian chant, according to a different melody than the classic Roman one, and polyphony by Tomás Luis de Victoria.

The Feast of Saint Mary of Egypt

The feast of St Mary of Egypt has never been on the General Calendar, but it is often found in the supplements of the Missal and Breviary “for certain places.” April 2 is the most common date, but in several places it was kept on April 9, and in the Byzantine Rite it is on April 1.

The Golden Legend and the Roman Martyrology note that she is also called “the Sinner”; according to her legend, she was a prostitute or actress (in the Roman world, often more or less the same thing,) so given to the indulgence of the flesh that she often did not bother to charge her clients. After many years of a gravely and publicly sinful life, she went to Jerusalem by ship, with a crowd of pilgrims going to the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross; not, as yet, a pilgrim herself, but in pursuit of new transgressions among the sailors. In the city, she tried to enter the Holy Sepulcher, but was mysteriously prevented from doing so by some unseen power; this opened her eyes to the true nature of the life she was leading, the beginning of a complete conversion. Before an icon of the Virgin Mary, she vowed herself to a new life of penance, and was then able to enter the church. Coming outside, she went to offer thanks before the icon, and heard a voice saying to her “If you cross the Jordan, you will be saved.” She therefore crossed the Jordan into the desert, where she remained in complete solitude for nearly half a century.

Shortly before her death, she was discovered by a monk named Zosimas, to whom she recounted the story of her early sins, conversion, and many years of penance in the desert; at first, he could not even tell that she was a woman, so emaciated was she by her fasting. She is often depicted with long wild hair, from the story that what Zosimas at first took for a garment of camel-hair like that of St John the Baptist was actually her own hair. One year after discovering her, Zosimas returned on Holy Thursday to bring her Communion, which she had received only one other time, right before going into the desert. On returning the year after that, he discovered her dead; she had written in the dirt near the place where her body lay that she had died on the day of the Lord’s Passion, just after receiving Holy Communion, and asking Zosimus to bury her. (Pictured right: Zosimas, realizing that Mary is covered only in her hair, offers her a cloak; note that he is dressed as a Cistercian. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The popularity of St Mary of Egypt was very great in the Middle Ages, especially in the Low Countries, France and the Iberian peninsula, less so in Italy and among the religious orders; stained glass windows depicting her are still seen at Chartres, Bourges and Auxerre. In Central Europe, devotion to her seems to have flourished especially in Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, that is to say, among those with neighbors using the Byzantine Rite, in which she is a very prominent figure. In addition to her feast on April 1, she is also commemorated on the Fifth Sunday of the Byzantine Great Lent. Furthermore, on the Thursday of the fifth week of Lent, her life by St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (530 ca. - 638), is read at Orthros before the chanting of the Great Penitential Canon of St Andrew of Crete.

A seventeenth-century icon of Mary of Egypt, with stories of her life in the border. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

It is interesting to note the sequence of special commemorations on these five Sundays. The first is often called the Feast of Orthodoxy, celebrating the triumph of the orthodox faith over iconoclasm; the third is dedicated to the veneration of the Holy Cross, the second and fourth to great spiritual teachers of the Byzantine tradition, Ss Gregory Palamas and John Climacus respectively. As Lent draws closer to the days of Christ’s Passion and Death, however, its last Sunday is devoted to a Saint who lived in total obscurity and severe penance for most of her life, a woman who could not read, but was taught the mysteries of the Christian faith by God Himself through her humility and asceticism. The liturgy therefore calls her a “teacher” as it does also Gregory Palamas and John Climacus:

In thee, O Mother, was carefully preserved what is according to the Image. For having taken up the Cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by so doing, didst teach us to disregard the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul as an immortal thing. Therefore, Holy Mary, thy spirit rejoiceth with the Angels. (The troparion of her feast.)

In Rome, Mary of Egypt was formerly honored by a very small church near the Tiber (now deconsecrated), a temple of the harbor-god Portunus converted into a church by Greek monks in 872, very close to the principal Greek-rite church of the city. At Aquileia, the patriarchal see of the Veneto, her feast was kept on April 9, probably also under Greek influence, which is very prominent in that region both religiously and artistically.

Perhaps the most famous representation of her in Italian art is in Venice itself, a city where Byzantine influence is also very notable. At the Scuola di San Rocco, the seat of a charitable confraternity which is often described as the Sistine Chapel of Venice, Saints Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt (pictured right) are shown opposite each other; these and the other paintings in the hall are by Tintoretto, who had worked in various parts of the Scuola over 23 years, and was almost seventy when he did these on the ground-floor hall between 1583 and 1587. Both appear as luminous figures in a dark, chaotic landscape, the image of the sinful world, and both have books in their hands, symbolizing both contemplation and wisdom. In their pose and dress they are also very similar, so much so that were it not for the presence of the river Jordan, isolating Mary of Egypt from the houses in the background, we should hardly be able to tell them apart.

Tintoretto is not the only artist to represent the two penitent saints in a similar manner. The Florentine sculptor Donatello in his famous statue of Mary Magdalene shows her with the long flowing hair covering her entire body like a garment, an iconography borrowed from that of Mary of Egypt; in the next generation, the painter Antonio del Pollaiuolo follows suit. Indeed, the belief that the sins of Mary Magdalene were particularly of a sexual nature seems to arise from this artistic and iconographic conflation of the two saints.

The Penitent Magdalene, by Donatello, ca. 1455

The Assumption of Mary Magdalene by Antonio Pollaiuolo, ca. 1460.

Following the tradition that Mary Magdalene is also the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, both are celebrated in the Western tradition as models of repentance during the season of Lent; Mary of Egypt’s feast usually falls within Lent, while “the Apostle of the Apostles” appears in the Gospel at Mass twice in Passion week (today and Saturday), six times in Holy Week, and three times in Easter Week.