Matters Liturgical: February 2007 Archives

I am so impressed by Father Ray Blake's reflections on celebrating Holy Mass ad orientem that instead of sending my readers over to his excellent blog I decided to post what he wrote here. The titles and italics are my own.

The Image of the Crucified

The great beauty of celebrating ad orientem is that it is the image of the Crucified that dominates the celebration not the face of the priest, the Pope talks about that in Spirit of the Liturgy. For the priest then the Mass becomes an action through Christ.

The Priest, A Revealer of the Divine

What becomes clear in celebrating Mass "with" the people is that the priest is doing something for them but what I have realised doing it with a growing congregation (normally it has been a side altar in an Italian Church, perhaps with a server, is that the Mass is an Epiphany, in the sense that apart from the elevations ( a late addition to combat heresy), the first time the people see the host is at the Ecce Agnus Dei (Behold the Lamb of God). I can understand that doing it everyday gave a very different theology of priesthood, the priest becomes the "revealer" of the divine. Someone who is called to show forth Christ not just at the Liturgy but in his life.

John, the Friend of the Bridegroom

There is a parallel with John the Baptist who in the Old Rite had a much more prominent part in the Eucharist, as he does in the Eastern Rites. On the iconostasis, in the Deesis, he was always a complimentary figure to Our Lady. Now that is an interesting subject for a doctoral thesis, "John the Baptist Model of Priesthood", Dr Uwe Michael Lang suggests that the image of Our Lady and the image of the Baptist might have designated the women's and men's aisles of a Church, which gives an interesting spin on the model of the relationship of men and women in the pre-modern Church.

Looking toward Holy Pascha

Although the Bugnini reform sought to suppress it, today was — and still is — Septuagesima Sunday. In three weeks our heads will be marked with the ashes of penitence. A special time of preparation for Lent emerged in the liturgy of the 6th and 7th centuries. The three Sundays preceding Ash Wednesday were called Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, meaning respectively, the seventieth, sixtieth, and fiftieth days before Pascha. The First Sunday of Lent is, of course, Quadragesima, the beginning of the Lenten fast of forty days.

Evil Limited by Divine Mercy

The seventy-day period that begins with Septuagesima recalls the seventy-year exile of the children of Israel in Babylon. Seventy is the perfect number, signifying that God has fixed for us a delay of mercy to pass from the anguish of sinful Babylon to the beatitude of Jerusalem. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps 136:4). We do well to recall Pope John Paul II’s assertion that, “the power that imposes a limit on evil is Divine Mercy.” The seventy days before Pascha signify this, and so become a season of hope for all who sit and weep by the waters of Babylon (cf. Ps 136:1).

Seven: A Mystical Number

At the same time, the history of the world is divided into seven ages. The first is from the creation of the world to the flood; the second, from the renewal after the flood to the call of Abraham; the third from the covenant with Abraham to the call of Moses; the fourth from Moses to King David; the fifth from the reign of David to the Babylonian exile; and the sixth from return from captivity to the birth of Christ. With the birth of Our Lord comes the seventh age: the appearance of the Sun of Justice who rises over the world “with healing in his wings” (Mal 4:2). This seventh age of “these last days” (Heb 1:2) stretches until Christ’s second coming as Judge of the living and the dead. The seven weeks before Pascha are a review of salvation history.

The Pastoral Wisdom of Septuagesima

In the traditional Roman Rite Septuagesima Sunday is marked by putting away the Alleluia; the Gloria is omitted and, already, violet vestments are used in preparation for Lent. Sound psychology and practical pastoral wisdom indicate the need for a kind of countdown before Ash Wednesday. Otherwise Lent arrives all of a sudden, finding us flustered and frightfully ill prepared.