Now that the dust is settling, we might look afresh at the issue. To be sure, Ms Harrington’s article, being from someone in an official ecclesiastical position, was unfortunate to say the least, and largely unhelpful to the cause she was championing. It was a reactive article, prompted by her clear displeasure at an online petition started by two Victorian priests, which asks the Holy Father to abolish Communion in the hand, and restore Communion on the tongue as the sole proper means for receiving the Host. The heat of outrage rarely produces the best, clearest or most coherent arguments, as she proves with her article.

Ms Harrington’s case for Communion on the hand

Early in her article she quotes the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM, to wit, #161), that the choice of how to receive the Host is the communicant’s alone, and that “(n)o minister may dictate whether communicants receive in the hand or on the tongue”.

Two problems arise immediately. First, in the very next sentence she declares that

Receiving Communion on the tongue when the majority receive in the hand disrupts the unity that uniformity of posture and practice at Communion symbolises and builds.

This rather stunningly contradicts her previous approving reference to GIRM by effectively dictating that communicants ought not to receive on the tongue when others are receiving in the hand. But apart from this logical flaw, there is another problem, less obvious if one does not read the paragraph in GIRM she refers to, namely #161. If you do read it you will see that it makes no assertive declarations about a minister having no right to dictate how a communicant receives. It does say that a communicant should receive the Host “either on the tongue or, where this is allowed and if the communicant so chooses, in the hand”. The tone of this section is not as Ms Harrington would make it out to be. Yes, it does allow a communicant to decide to receive in the hand, but there is a caveat of sorts – “where this is allowed”. Here is a clue to something we will return to in the next blog entry: Communion in the hand is a concession, an exception to the general and centuries-old rule that the Host is received normally on the tongue, and it is an exception granted rather unwillingly by Pope Paul VI to bishops’ conferences which requested it. Ms Harrington would seemingly wish to make this exception the rule.

As the article goes on, things do not improve. She asserts that Communion on the tongue is “unhygenic”, because it is difficult for ministers to avoid passing on to communicants others’ saliva. Rorate Caeli took exception to this un-substantiated assertion, and quoted a response made by the American Society of St Pius X. They make the valid point that in the pre-conciliar liturgy there were clear and specific rubrics on how to receive the Host on the tongue, which if followed would ensure no physical contact between the priest’s hand and the communicant’s mouth. Indeed, they point out, there is more physical contact in the process of giving the Host in the hand. We have seen the priest purify his fingers; but has the extraordinary minister of the Eucharist (if there is one) done so? they ask (and in some places, they do, deo gratias). Moreover, if saliva is the issue, then surely (they state with good reason) the shared chalice provides far more opportunity for the faithful to share in each other’s saliva; this is especially so if the chalice is not purified adequately after each communicant.

If she makes an argument for anything, Ms Harrington is providing one for restricting the use of Extraordinary Minsters of the Eucharist (“Extraordinary” clearly implying they are meant to be an exception allowed in time of pressing, extraordinary, need, another exception that has become a rule in too many places). If they are not trained to distribute Communion properly, then they should not be allowed to do so. One woman has decided now that if she is forced to receive from an extraordinary minister, she will receive on the hand given the obvious confusion of the ministers at her parish when faced with administering the Host in the tongue.

And if communicants do not know how to receive the Host on the tongue properly, then they should be instructed how to do so. It is not hard. Even Ms Harrington makes the same point. Perhaps those who make a meal of it (no pun intended) have been made nervous by the palpable opprobrium of those around them, who (like Ms Harrington) feel they are “disrupt(ing) the unity that uniformity of posture and practice at Communion symbolises and builds”. Which begs the question, is the unity of the congregation really built just on uniformity of posture and practice; or is the paramount constituent of unity not rather faith in Christ into whose death we are baptized and whose Body and Blood we receive and so continue more and more to become?

Real Presence(s)!

If faith is the prime building block of a congregation’s unity, a baptismal faith communally proclaimed and renewed in the Creed, then we cannot ignore faith in the real presence of Christ in the sacred species of the Host and the Chalice. Ms Harrington has thought of this point and has sought to muddy the issue by asserting that

Christ is present in several special ways at Mass apart from in the consecrated elements, for example in the assembly which gathers. We “touch” Christ in these other manifestations, so it would be inconsistent not to be able to take Christ under the form of bread in our hands. The bread which becomes the body of Christ is described in the liturgical texts as “work of human hands”. There is nothing unworthy about our hands. After all, we use them to do Christ’s work. As St Teresa said, “Christ has no other hands but yours”.

This is an old chestnut, and one really that is so dis-credited it is embarrassing to see it employed yet again. The four modes of the presence of Christ in the Mass (the priest, the people, the scriptural Word and the sacred species) are here simplistically, and erroneously, equated. In enumerating this four-fold presence of Christ the Second Vatican Council stated clearly though briefly (considering it to be so well-established in the the Church’s understanding that it needed no elaboration) that Christ is present “especially under the Eucharistic species” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, #7 – emphasis mine). To clear up any doubt about the primacy of the Real Presence, the Catechism of the Catholic Church does elaborate:

The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.” In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.”

Could it be clearer? The presence of Christ in the scriptural Word, the priest and the congregation is a spiritual and intangible presence. In the Host and Chalice it is a real presence in the proper sense of the word – it is a substantial presence, a physical presence. The sacred species are Christ “himself wholly and entirely present”.

So the issue is not, as Ms Harrington alleges, the supposed unworthiness of our hands. We are all ultimately unworthy of the Mystery, even the priest. If we were already worthy then there would be no need for the Eucharist in the first place. St Paul was clear about the righteousness that comes only from God to those who have faith in him:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

The Eucharist is a crucial part of the process by which the Christ, through his Church and its sacraments, is making us worthy of him, of allowing us to obtain the righteousness that only he can give. This is grace, and we can do or merit nothing without it.

Rather, at the heart of this issue is faith. If we truly believe that Christ is wholly, entirely and substantially present in the Host and the Chalice, then surely that faith must find expression in our behaviour. As human persons our bodies must express what our minds hold to be true and important; our interior conviction must be mirrored in our exterior disposition. Otherwise our faith is lacking integrity.

Ms Harrington blithely, and distressingly, asserts that “(i)t was only later that over-emphasis on Christ’s divinity and on human sinfulness led to a ban on people receiving Communion in the hand”. The only possible “over-emphasis on Christ’s divinity” would be to deny his humanity. But there would be no Eucharist without his humanity; it is only because he first took a human body that he can make that body sacramentally and substantially present in the Eucharist. Faith in Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist is itself faith in his humanity. It is more likely that the Host came to be received kneeling and on the tongue out of a strengthened faith in the real presence of Christ in the Host, a result of the development of our understanding of the mystery. Moreover, the practice of the early Church is hardly ipso facto a template for practice now. If so, the light penances of modern confession would have to yield to the years-long public penances of the early Church, and the solemn and public rituals of reconciliation she employed.

The practice of the early Church

So indeed Communion was administered into the hands of the faithful in the early Church. But earlier than is often claimed today, the practice of Communion on the tongue was introduced. Pope St Leo the Great (in his commentary on John’s gospel) and Pope St Gregory the Great (in his Dialogues), popes of the 5^th and 6^th centuries, give clear indications that they administered Communion on the tongue. But given that Communion was for a time given on the hand, do we take it that the modern practice reflects that of the early Church? A little research makes it all too obvious that, on the whole, it does not reflect the early Church’s practice when receiving Communion on the hand.

One of the more distressing sights at Mass now is to see people coming up and receiving the Host as if it were a corn chip (and grasping and swilling from the Chalice as if it were a beer after work). What sort of faith does that sort of body language betray? Yet in the early Church it was not like this. Bishop Athanasius Schneider in his book, Dominus Est!, provides some telling examples. St Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386 AD) exhorted his flock to

take care not to lose part of It [the Body of the Lord]. Such a loss would be a mutilation of your own body. Why, if you had been given gold-dust, would you not take the utmost care to hold it fast, not letting a grain slip through your fingers, lest you be so much the poorer? How much more carefully, then, will you guard against losing so much as a crumb of that which is more precious than gold or precious stones?

His point is clear. If you have faith that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ, the Church’s most precious possession, then surely you should treat it as such. He goes on to cite examples of an equally strong concern for the least particle of the Host in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, and St Jerome. Moreover he quotes a particularly eastern Father, St Ephrem the Syrian (306-373 AD), who wrote

That which I have now given you, says Jesus, do not consider bread, do not trample underfoot even the fragments. The smallest fragment of this Bread can sanctify millions of men and is enough to give life to all who eat It.

In the same vein Schneider quotes the rubrics of the Coptic Liturgy, which evince a zeal for protecting the sacred species from falling to the ground and profanation.

Indeed this clear concern of the Fathers of the Church for the protection of the sacred species down to the least fragment, lest it be trod underfoot (a common specific fear), rather suggests that this, in fact, was an occurrence that was more common than was desirable. Thus the need for exhortations and reminders to be careful with the Lord’s Body. Could this have been a major factor in the transition to Communion on the tongue in both the eastern and western branches of the Church? Perhaps receiving in the hand was soon seen as more dangerous for the sacred species, and more conducive to a laxity in faith.

This is all the more worrying for us today when it is remembered that these early Christians did not simply stand in line as in a bread queue, receive the Host and head back to their places. Schneider gives clear evidence that the faithful washed their hands both before and after receiving Communion, and bowed in adoration before receiving it. Theodore of Mopsuestia even exhorts his flock to kiss the Host before consuming it. St John Damascene in his De Fide Orthodoxa, instructed Christians to compose their hands in the form of a cross to receive “the body of the Crucified One”.

A Happy Compromise?

In the next blog entry we will briefly look at the process by which Communion in the hand came to pass in so many countries (though not all). For now, perhaps we might adopt a compromise that would allow those who are committed to receiving in the hand to do so peacefully and without risking scandal to those who have found the practice disturbing thus far.

Ms Harrington herself gives the clue to the compromise when she refers approvingly to St Cyril of Jerusalem’s instruction to his catechumens:

When you come forward for Communion, do not draw near with your hands wide open or with fingers spread apart; instead, with you left hand make a throne for the right hand, which will receive the King. Receive the body of Christ in the hollow of your hand and give the response: Amen.

The unwary miss it the first time reading this passage. St Cyril tells his flock to make a “throne” with their hands. It is clearly a deliberate and careful posture, meant to show great reverence. But there is more. Schneider (p.38) quotes the ancient canons of the Chaldean Church which, strikingly, forbade the priest from using his fingers to put the Host in his mouth. He was directed to consume it straight from his palm, to signify clearly that the Host was not ordinary but “heavenly food”.

That this unusual and striking canon was included clearly implies that in the early Church the laity did not use their fingers to place the Host in their mouths: they consumed it straight form the palm. Many Anglican converts still receive this way, and it is most edifying. Usually they will also lick or gently suck on their palms to ensure that no fragment of the Host is left behind.

So might it not be a good and charitable thing to do for Christians who are committed for whatever reason to receiving Communion on the hand:

1. To bow or genuflect before approaching the priest or deacon distributing Communion (when I was at my Jesuit school in the late 1970s/early 80s, we were taught to genuflect when we reached number three in line);
2. To place the left hand over the right in the form of a cross, cupping them slightly to make a throne, or for the Christmas-hearted, a crib;
3. To bring the Host on the palm straight up to one’s mouth, licking or gently sucking on the palm to ensure no fragment is left;
4. Before walking off, to make a sign of reverence for the holy food just received, the sign of the cross being the obvious one. Any appearance of rushing at Communion time is to be avoided at all costs. We can spare the Lord a few more minutes, surely.

If all who did not receive on the tongue were to do this then perhaps we might find that faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist might be the stronger, and the more obvious. Such a witness could only benefit us all. I suspect it is only when we pay due reverence to his Real Presence in the Eucharist that we might be able to pay the proper reverence to Christ’s spiritual presence in our neighbour.

As mentioned above, next time we will look at the introduction of the modern concession for reception of Communion on the hand.

And do not forget to read the Catechism each day!

However, why don’t we read it, cover to cover? Some clever boys have decided to help us do that. They have started a website from which you can download each day a podcast/audio file (or just use it online) which will cover a number of paragraphs of the Catechism each day. All you have to do is grab your copy of the Catechism and follow along as it is read out to you. If you do not have a copy they even provide a link to read it online, for free (or use the one above). Each broadcast will be not more than 10 minutes usually, so it is no great drain on your day, and would make an excellent spiritual and intellectual discipline. You could listen on your iPod while commuting, for example.

Lent is as good a time to start as any, and indeed the broadcasts only started yesterday so there is little catching up to do. So get out your Catechism, and work your way through it from start to finish. Any questions, just ask here if you want. So head on over now to Read the Cat. Your growth in knowledge of the Faith will enrich the whole Church, not just you.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

(Matthew 16:24-25 ESV)

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Strip me of all
but the mark,

thumb crossing
on forehead,

that I might
let mingle

my spiraling soot
with His blessing

ashed. The burned
arm of palm

once so green
now tendered

free
of want

joins as one
the wind-tunneled trail

from which I came
and the long road

down which I travel
invoking darkness

seeking light:
I'm listening.

(A Prayer for Ash Wednesday, by Maureen Doallas)

Eva and Zsa Zsa taking a load off...

You can see more pictures from today, if that takes your fancy, at the Tumblr page.

Her biography can be found easily enough online. What is of interest is one chapter in her life: the disintegration of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the late 1960s. The secular media paints the story in terms of a “showdown” with the authorities of the Catholic Church, in particular her local Ordinary, Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles. In such presentations the sisters are said to have been attempting to answer the call of Vatican II for religious congregations to “modernize”. The “conservative” Cardinal laid down some constraints on their reforms which the sisters were unwilling to accept. Having been barred from teaching in the Los Angeles diocese, and with Rome having “squelched” their modernization process, up to 400 sisters left the congregation after a chapter meeting in December 1969, forming a non-canonical organisation (ie not recognised by the Church), the Immaculate Heart Community. Another 130 or so left any form of religious life altogether; 50 or so remained and agreed to the Cardinal’s instructions. The story made headlines in the major secular media, not least Newsweek and Time.

It was an episode that was grist for the propaganda mill. It was quickly painted in terms of feminism, patriarchy, the “spirit of Vatican II”, justice, obedience (and disobedience), to list but some. Thus Sr Dorothy Vidulich, in the wake of Caspary’s death, spoke of the sisters as having rejected “a life pattern that had to conform to canons issued by male clerics of another culture”. Caspary herself held that the departing sisters had grasped the “freedom to be self-determining and to make moral choices on the basis of conscience without leaning on the authority of others.” She said this is “the same struggle for feminist values that continues for women in all walks of life today, especially for women in the church(sic).” Sr Joan Chittester speaks of the breakaway sisters’ “fidelity”, not to the Church, but to the “spiritual ideals of the IHM tradition”.

The loud voices of propaganda have a tendency to hinder a better appreciation of the reality. This is not just in the matter of facts. We know that the Council did not so much call for the religious congregations to “modernize” as to reassess their life in light of the original charism of their institutes. And far from “squelching” the IHM sisters’ reforms, the Vatican in fact declined to act in their dispute with the Cardinal. At a deeper level, though, it was certainly a traumatic time for these women, and for the Church in the United States. Sandra Schneiders, a former religious sister herself, paints things in more muted hues: “It’s not like the Immaculate Heart women were doing anything outlandish. … All these changes were taking place without incident in the majority of dioceses around the country. Cardinal McIntyre simply was saying, ‘Not in my diocese.’ ” The “dictates” that the Cardinal was apparently imposing on the sisters to repress their renewal are apparently not so extreme either. Sr Joan herself lists them: (1) “adopt a uniform habit,” (2) “attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass together every day,” (3) “keep in mind their commitment to education”, (4) “collaborate with the Local Ordinary in the works of the apostolate”. Nothing outlandish in themselves, but they conflicted with the desire of many religious women, not least many of the IHM sisters, to abandon the habit, to explore new ways of living in community, and to undertake new, often experimental, works.

What has not been mentioned by the propagandists nor by the obituarists is the role played by psychology and psychologists in the demise of IHM sisters. They signed up en masse in 1967 as guinea pigs, in effect, for the new phenomenon in psychology of “encounter groups” pioneered by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Essential to the meetings of these groups was the un-fettered airing of feelings, desires, opinions and judgments by members. The aim was to promote honesty about self and to break down individual and social inhibitions. The psychologists who ran these meetings did so by not running them (an approach known as non-directive), and allowing things to develop unhindered. Far from liberating the individual, more often than it subjected the individual to the pressure of the group’s judgment. In trying to break free from the perceived bonds of Church and traditional institutional religious life, individual sisters found themselves submitting themselves to the judgments and opinions of the encounter group. Moreover, feelings and emotive judgments were not challenged or discussed, but effectively affirmed and encouraged. There were no good or bad feelings. Your experience was valid however you might interpret it. Often the groups gave vent to repressed sexual urges, and the sexual feelings of one member for another. As the sisters expressed more and more freely their “true” selves, the majority decided they did not want to submit to any institutional authority except “the authority of their imperial inner selves”. More can be read about the destructive effect of this psychological intervention here. William Coulson, one of the pyschologists involved with the sisters’ encounter groups, has come to regret his involvement and now works to help the victims of the encounter sessions. You can read more from him here and here.

So, at the very least there is more than meets the eye to this tragic chapter in the history of the Church in America. There was more to it than the just a collective rebel yell of liberated feminist sisters. Psychology, in one of its more fertile and experimental periods, was accepted uncritically as a tool, when in fact its agenda in this particular case was totally at odds with a Catholic approach to personhood and spiritual growth. That all the members of a congregation could willingly submit themselves to be guinea pigs for a new and unproven school of psychology is quite breathtaking. It was not the only time that psychology, uncritically employed, has been a destructive factor in the Church over the last 50 years.

What remains? The breakaway sisters’ non-canonical, lay foundation still exists, the Immaculate Heart Community. Considering that it began with over 300 ex-sisters, and its open recruitment policy has permitted receiving men and non-Catholics, its current total of 160 members reveals a clear decline. Given the age profile of the community the decline appears to be terminal. But they had a solid foundation in material terms from the outset for, before she renounced her religious vows, Caspary transferred ownership of the congregation’s college, hospital, high school and retreat house to secular companies owned by the new breakaway community. The sisters who remained in the congregation and faithful to their vows were left without the congregation’s assets. So they made a new start, and relocated to Wichita, Kansas. Judging by their website, the sisters wear the habit, and have a spirituality and mission that is integrated into the life of the Church, centring mainly on education and retreat work. They are planning to expand their motherhouse. I cannot find any estimate of numbers for them but if their website is any guide, they seem to be doing quite well. Thankfully these sisters, who remained faithful to the Church through the most difficult times, seem now to be prospering in work that is clearly at the service of the Church.

Sweeping judgments on this sad affair are easily made, but we should remember that it is was a very difficult period in the history of religious life: destructive forces came from within the religious life as much as from without, and were too often unrecognised as such. Yet Anita Caspary herself gives a clue to the profound error underlying the actions of so many religious women (and men) in the 1960s and after. In her memoirs she wrote, ”In many ways, we foreshadowed the contemporary (and vibrant) feminist movement within the Catholic Church.” It seems in retrospect that the dominant imperative in the reformation, and disintegration, of so many congregations was not one of authentic renewal within the heart of the Church, but rather of secular ideology. Radical feminism and women’s liberation spoke a language that was at odds with a Catholic Christian understanding of the individual and of society. Its agenda was in no way Christian, but essentially secular, employing a variation of Marxist class-warfare: gender conflict. By the mid 1970s, we find religious sisters openly espousing Wicca, among other pagan ideologies, with its talk of priestesses and goddesses within. One need only read Ungodly Rage by Donna Steichen to find abundant documentation.

Sadly many ordinary, well-intentioned religious women were caught up in a maelstrom of self-destruction unleashed by a minority of articulate, radicalised and misguided sisters. The pieces are still being gathered up today. For all that, we can only pray for Anita Caspary, that she might find mercy with God, and rest in peace.

A couple more pictures here.

Lambs are doing fine and some birds yet to be identified (I am no ornithologist) supplanted the finches and the tits at the feeder for a while.

Again, a few more pictures here.

Mother busied herself for a long time indeed giving the little girls a makeover.

This ewe lost both her twins last year when they emerged together. This confused her and she only managed to get one free of its birth sac, and then only belatedly. The encased one died before I arrived, and the second never recovered from the trauma and died not much later. This year, things worked to plan. I arrived shortly after Eva was born, and she was already clear of the sac, on her feet, and feeding. Having dashed back in for lunch, I returned to find Zsa Zsa had been born, and was also on her feet though having some trouble finding the teat. About Compline time it began to snow and I had fears for the lambs on this chilly first night for them.

So I was relieved to find this sight when I went out this morning…

Zsa Zsa still has some trouble getting to the milk in timely fashion…

In all the lambs seem to be in good form. In fact, they are rather enjoying the attention from the paparazzo.

**********

Last night we had enough snow to blanket the earth in a soothing veil of white, fitting on this feast of St Scholastica, Virgin and Nun. There are two “photo essays” of scenes around the monastery this morning. You can see them on the Tumblr page (which is much better suited to pictures).

Don’t forget to come take a Tumblr with me. If you want, just click the pic.

So rather than offer my own commentary on Fr Rowe and the practice by some priests of constantly tampering with the liturgical rites, it seemed better to remind us of some of Lewis’ observations. They were first made in the early 1960s but are as relevant today as then. In light of what was soon to follow, they verge on prophetic. That these are the observations of a layman give them an added force.

It looks as if they [ie clergymen] believed people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favour of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain – many give up churchgoing altogether – merely endure.

Is this simply because the majority are hidebound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don’t go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best – if you like, it ‘works’ best – when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not dancing but only learning to dance. A good show is a shoe you do not notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. …

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, ‘What on earth is he up to now?’ will intrude. It lays one’s devotion waste. … Thus my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. …

It may well be that some variations which seem to me merely matters of taste really involve grave doctrinal differences. … I think it would have been best, if it were possible, that necessary change should have occured gradually and (to most people) imperceptibly; here a little and there a little. … Yet we all want to be tinkering. …

Lewis makes some profound and fundamental points about liturgical worship and the role of ritual. The liturgy should focus our attention on God, not ourselves, and certainly not on the celebrant. Even his homily should be revealing more about God than about himself (oh those stories about his travels, encounters, friends and childhood – occasionally illuminating, but all too often self-indulgent). None of us, celebrant included, comes to church to do something with the liturgy, but to let the liturgy do something with us.

Lewis moves on to personal prayer, but his observations about the use of “ready-made” prayers in our private devotions has a relevance to public, liturgical devotion, especially in light of Fr Rowe’s fondness for ad-libbing liturgical prayers and texts. On the use of these “set-texts” in prayer (and so in worship) Lewis maintains that,

[f]irst, it keeps me in touch with ‘sound doctrine’. Left to oneself, once could easily slide away from ‘the faith once given’ into a phantom called ‘my religion’.

Secondly, it reminds me ‘what things I ought to ask’ (perhaps especially when I am praying for other people). The crisi of the present moment, like the nearest telegraph post, will always loom largest. Isn’t there a danger that out great, permanent, objective necessities – often more important – may get crowded out? By the way, that’s another thing to be avoided in a revised Prayer Book. ‘Contemporary problems’ may claim an undue share. And the more ‘up to date’ the Book is, the sooner it will be dated.

This insight could be usefully applied to the common practice of in-house composition by individuals of intercessions for the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass. Often many ramble on, offering virtual party-political statements at times, addressed more to the congregation than to God, and very often seeking to be ‘relevant’. When done well, bidding prayers can be very enriching; when done poorly they were best not done at all!

Lastly, going back earlier, Lewis’ point about innovation as a means to “luring” people to church deserves some reflection. In seeking to make liturgy ‘relevant’ to those who do not come, we can end up marginalising those who do come. The sad truth is that, for this reason but indeed for other reasons as well, these (illicit) innovations have not crowded our churches. A pathetic percentage of Catholics actually attends Mass. The reason is less to do with an inaccessible liturgy than with a more general crisis in faith. Our worship is the fruit of our faith; if our faith is lacking, then so too will our desire to worship. If the quality of our faith is lacking, so too will the quality of our worship. By attempting to lure the unready into church with the baubles of novelty, all we do is draw an audience united in the desire for diversion or entertainment, not a congregation united in faith and drawn for worship. If the Church’s liturgy means so little to some Catholics, then the remedy is not to make changes to the liturgy, but to seek change within those Catholics so that they can appreciate their need to worship God, and do so at one with the Church. No doubt this is one of the tasks set for the Pope’s New Evangelization.

Literally the word septuagesima means seventieth, though that is not necessarily much help in understanding its liturgical use. Septuagesima Sunday is neither 70 days after anything in particular, nor is it 70 days before anything, though it is dated according to Easter. It is the ninth Sunday before Easter and the third before Lent. Why it is called the seventieth is not exactly clear. While Quinquagesima is, in fact, 50 days before Easter by one way of counting, and Quadragesima is in fact 40 days before Easter by another way of counting, neither Septuagesima nor Sexagesima have a corresponding accuracy. Perhaps it is a form of rounding off to the nearest -gesima?

What is somewhat clearer is that in the earliest days of the Church many pious Christians, not least the clergy (yes, pious clergy), began to fast 70 days before Easter. At various times and places other Christians began to fast 60 days before Easter, some 50, and some 40. The term Septuagesima is first found in liturgical books (that survive, at least) with the Gelasian Sacramentary, which seems to date from the 8th century in the manuscripts we still have, but is linked by ancient tradition to Pope St Gelasius I (d. 496). It was Pope Gregory who fixed the pre-Easter period of preparatory penance, Lent, at 40 days so as to bring about some consistency in Christendom.

However, Septuagesima continued to have signficance liturgically. For from this Sunday the Alleluia would cease to be sung or said until Easter (and not from Ash Wednesday, as in the modern calendar). Likewise the Gloria was not sung until Easter. While there was no fasting yet, the colour purple was used from this Sunday. It was almost-Lent, a fore-Lent. Or, as the people’s hand missals used to explain so well, it was a season of its own to prepare for Lent.

Indeed, it would not hurt to see what a few of these missals taught about the seemingly obscure season of the -Gesimas. The St Joseph Daily Missal (NY, 1959) explains that the three -Gesima Sundays marked the beginning of the second part of the ecclesiastical year, a mini-season of three weeks which “form a transition from the joy of Christmastide to the austerity of the Penitential Season of Lent”.

The Layman’s Missal (London, 1961) offers a very full set of notes. It also observes that this season moves us from Christmastide towards Easter, in part by recalling the 70 years Israel spent in captivity in Babylon. Then the notes go on to explain the more direful and dolorous tone of the prayers and chants of the season of the -Gesimas in this context of transition:

Since Christmas and Epiphany we have learned to know our Saviour and our King. It was our great joy to “see the heavens opened”, to “receive the Lord our God come in person” in order to establish at last his kingdom of justice and of peace.

God united himself with us by means of the Incarnation; and yet our state of misery is still with us:”The surging tide of death has engulfed me: the meshes of hell have entangled me”. That is because only the first page of the history of our redemption has been written. It is now our task to accept our Saviour and unite ourselves to him, in order that he may bring us out of our wretchedness and lead us all on the way to God.

… we have to aqccepot the conditions of our redemption: “Lord teach me your law”. The promise has not yet developed into victory. It is necessry fort to “bear the day’s burden” like the labourers in the vineyard…

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The gospel for Septuagesima Sunday: the parable of the labourers in the vineyard

The Bible Missal (Bruges, 1962) offers a somewhat different history of the development of the -Gesimas, itself a reminder that much of the early origins of our liturgy are clouded by the passing of the centuries, leaving much for liturgists to argue about. It brings in that school of thought that emphasises the formal erection in the seventh century of Septuagesima, with its tone of being surrounded and engulfed by the tides of evil and death, as being a response to the violent onward press of the barbarians into the Roman world at that time. This missal even adds a “Theme”, namely the Sacraments. It highlights that the Sacraments are more than rituals but are intended to “change our lives”. Since sacraments are encounters with the living Christ, they should then, in this season especially, be seen as the means of our entering “completely into the Covenant between God and ourselves” established eternally in Christ, learning from the failure of Israel to embrace their now-superseded covenant.

Lastly, moving beyond the hand missals, the great popular liturgical expositor Pius Parsch (d. 1954), in his The Breviary Explained (London, 1952) described the season of the -Gesimas as a transition, but more, as a preparation for Lent, “the antechamber of the Lenten Season”, and noted that

[t]he Liturgy for these three Sundays is particularly beautiful and artistic in structure. This is true of the Mass liturgy especially.

In light of that assessment particularly, it is no surprise that many are lamenting the loss of this season of the -Gesimas. Kate at Australia Incognita feels that the season’s emphasis on perseverance amidst a sea of troubles speaks as much to us now as it did to the Church in the seventh century. Moreover, she holds that this pre-Lent season helps us better to prepare for Lent itself, to take it more seriously, than we find when Lent springs upon so suddenly on Ash Wednesday.

Fr Hunwicke’s Liturgical Notes, referenced by Kate, point to the Second Vatican Council’s explicit mandate in Sacrosanctum Concilium that “[t]he liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons can be preserved or restored to meet the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained”. He ruefully wonders why the season of the -Gesimas was not protected by the Council’s express desire.

There is much to recommend the restoration of the season of the -Gesimas, when one thinks about it. Certainly there are many of us who find that Lent is upon us before we have given serious thought as to how we might fruitfully participate in that sacred season, what to read and what more-than-cursory penance we might offer – in short, how to make Lent a time for true re-conversion.

At a deeper level it reminds us of one the least satisfactory aspects of the new liturgical calendar: Ordinary Time. Before the post-conciliar reform of the Calendar the Church had no concept at all of any time being ordinary. Of course, the reformers did not intend the more banal meaning of the word to apply, but for the common Catholic it does, more often than not. All time, including that we call ordinary or “throughout the year”, is salvation time. “Now is the acceptable time” says St Paul (2 Cor 6:2), “this is the day of salvation”. In the old calendar all time was labelled in reference to one of the great moments in salvation history: Advent, the season preparing for Christmas and also for the Second Coming; Christmas; Epiphany and the days counted after Epiphany; the season of the -Gesimas, easing us out of Christmastide and preparing for…; Lent, the season of re-conversion in preparation for…; Easter and the days counted after Easter; Pentecost, the feast of the establishment of the Church as the enduring and saving presence of the Body of Christ in the world, and the days counted after Pentecost.

Every day was thus anchored to salvation history. No day was ordinary, none humdrum. Every day was a call to experience more fully an aspect of our redemption, and the mystery of God’s love for us revealed in that chapter of salvation history. While the reform of the Lectionary is a far richer gift to the Church, expounding in greater detail the biblical aspects of salvation history throughout the liturgical year, nevertheless we consciously mark the time by its liturgical title, not firstly by the readings of a particular day. So, hearing a Sunday called the fifth in “Ordinary Time”, with no explicit anchorage in salvation history, will usually lead the unwary into considering that day to be, indeed, ordinary, humdrum, of no great consequence.

Could that, perhaps, be part of the reason why ours has become a Church of Christmas-Easter-wedding-and-funeral churchgoers? At least those times sound special. It is a question worth pondering.