Good Friday in the Older Rite at S. Magnus

The ministers enter the Sanctuary, genuflect and prostrate. Two Acolytes spread an altar cloth on the bare altar and place the missal at the Epistle corner. In the photo above, the Celebrant looks over the reading that is being read by a lector.

After a collect, the Subdeacon chants a reading from Exodus as an Epistle.

The Celebrant sings Christus during the Passion

After the Passion and Gospel, the ministers go to the Altar for the Litanical, or bidding prayers. The intention is introduced by the Celebrant, and the Deacon sings "Let us bend the knee".

After a time kneeling, the Subdeacon sings "Arise" and the Celebrant sings the Collect.

During the Collect for the Conversion of the Jews, an acolyte spreads the carpet and cushion in preparation for the Worship of the Cross.

The Deacon goes to collect the veiled cross from the Altar and brings it to the Celebrant at the Epistle corner.

The Celebrant reveals the right arm of the crufied, and sings "Behold the wood of the cross, whereon the world's salvation was hung", all reply "O come let us worship" and kneel in adoration.

The Celebrant climbs a step, and repeats the above revealing the title board. Finally, he removes the veil entirely before the High Altar. He then places the Cross on a purple cushion (to symbolise Christ's regality) topped with a white veil (to represent His innocence, and His burial shroud) to venerate It.

After this, the Subdeacon and Deacon venerate the cross.

The other ministers come thereafter to venerate, making three double genuflections with prostration as they go. This is what our ancestors in England called "creeping to the Cross".

A relic of the True Cross is prepared also for public veneration.

The relic is venerated by the faithful.

The choir sing the reproaches, recited quietly at the bench.

The Deacon places the Cross on the High Altar

A procession is made to the Altar of Repose, and the Celebrant assumes a white humeral veil.

The procession of the Sacrament back from the altar is the first part of the Mass of the Pre-sanctified.

Here, the celebrant is seen censing the Elements. He has prepared a chalice of unconsecrated wine which also stands on the corporal. The Eucharist is censed, as is the altar but the Celebrant is not. He then says the Pray Brethren, not turning all the way, sings the Libera nos, performs the fraction and with some Communion devotions, receives the Host consecrated at Yesterday's Mass.

In deference to Local Custom, the faithful also receive Communion from a number of Hosts reserved with the Priest's Host.

There being no other ceremonies, the ministers stand to sing "When I survey the wondrous Cross" before retiring to the Sacristy.

The ministers in the Sanctuary after the Liturgy

The Language of the Liturgy : Candlemas

The often disregarded reforms in the Roman liturgy which took place before the Second Vatican Council and the new Missal of Paul VI were largely kind to the Feast of the Purification, but the changes which were introduced were not insignificant in their ramifications. Regional variations of the Roman rite are often referred to as “dialects” of the same “language”, and in my own view, one fruitful way in which to approach the Liturgy is by analogy to language. Like any spoken language, the Roman rite employs a rich vocabulary, some of which will have “cognates” in other rites, some of which will be unique. The beauty of the eloquent use of a natural language is often associated with its ability to evoke other speech acts, words or expression over time and between places, the inter-dependence of different instances of language from which it derives its complexity and its refinement. The same is true of the liturgy.

The reforms of the Roman liturgy during the 20th century, then, can be seen as a sort of editing process. The kindest, most elegant type of liturgical reform throughout history has been termed “organic”, just like the “organic” development of languages. This type of reform isn’t really reform at all, but more properly the “form” of something that is by definition able to adapt and change from within, without need of poking or pruning from outside. The reforms of the 20th century have largely been of of a much more severe type; an extreme editing process that disrupts the meaning of something and alters it almost beyond recognition. A useful analogy would be to imagine the process of editing Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech. Imagine if the editor decided that the repetition of the phrase “I have a dream” was unnecessary and probably bored the people listening to it. With keenness, he preserves the phrase “the sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent” but dispenses with all phrases that start with “I have a dream” or else takes parts of them and moves them to the beginning of the speech. Imagine if this new, edited form of the speech became the official version to be taught in school and reproduced in encyclopaedias, such that the old form only existed in original recordings closely guarded by collectors. What remains is still wonderful oratory, but is it the same, full-blooded speech which planted itself in the hearts of a nation, and set them on fire with a yearning for justice?

The ceremony of the Blessing of Candles and Procession before Mass on the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary is for many one of the highlights of the liturgical year. The Nunc Dimittis with its antiphon “A light to lighten the Gentiles…” forms the liturgical backbone of this rite, and the theme of Simeon’s acclamation in the temple on seeing the Christ child runs through all the collects which traditionally accompany the blessing of the candles. The distribution of candles to the faithful has a symbolism which is both obvious and powerful, readily understood but replete with meanings which unfold in the prayerful heart of the believer. The form of ceremony that survived into the late fifties also possessed certain meanings, explicit and implicit, which were lost in the reformed rite. A brief comparison follows :

For a High Mass of the Feast of the Purification, the colour of the blessing and procession is violet and the Mass is sung in white. The meanings of the colour violet in the Roman rite are many and varied, but include such things as “not-yet-redeemed” or “awaiting the Messiah” (Advent and Lent, or indeed the Votive Mass pro pace). The colour takes us back to the time before the work of Calvary is complete, and the alternation between violet and white in the liturgical year reflects the gradual revelation of Christ to the world, the story of which is told in the Gospels from Advent to Easter. Before the ceremonies begin, the Altar is veiled in violet and unornamented. The pieces of liturgical furniture, the credence, the Mass vestments on the sedilia and even the candles to be blessed are all hidden under violet veilings. The sacred ministers enter, the celebrant in cope and the deacon and subdeacon in their violet folded chasubles. The origin of the folded chasuble, as has been discussed elsewhere, is obscure, but evidence points to the custom of deacons and subdeacons adopting the chasuble (and folding it up) for penitential processions, which is why they continue to be worn on ember days of Lent and Advent, and for the procession on Candlemas. The Celebrant kisses the Altar (but the other ministers don’t genuflect when he does so) and then the three line up at the Epistle Side for the blessing of the candles. The five prayers of the blessing speak of the light of Christ and the petition of Simeon, but mention also the work of bees and the pure oil burnt in the tabernacle. The candles are censed and lustrated, while the celebrant says the antiphon Asperges Me (without the psalm). The content of the prayers moves from an emphasis on Christ as light to the collective and the external (Israel, Gentiles, people, arms of Simeom) to the light and purification of the individual and his soul (“may not be wanting to our souls”, “purge me”). The Candles are distributed while the Nunc Dimittis is sung. There is a final collect which underlines the work of Christ on the soul through outward devotion (a good précis of the five blessing prayers), before which (if it be not a Sunday and after Septuagesima) the Deacon and Subdeacon sing Flectamus genua and Levate respectively. These instructions from the sacred ministers to kneel in prayer and arise before the collect is sung also feature in the liturgy of Good Friday and on the Ember Days. The procession is then made, with the Subdeacon as cross-bearer and the Antiphon “Adorna thalamum tuum, Sion” by S. John of Damascus is sung, incidentally one of the few borrowings of text and music by the Roman Church from the Greeks. At the entrance to the church, or return to the sanctuary if the procession has not left the church, a responsary is sung V. They offered for him unto the Lord a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. As it is written in the law of the Lord R. When the days of Mary’s purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord. As the Catholic encyclopaedia notes :

“The solemn procession represents the entry of Christ, who is the Light of the World, into the Temple of Jerusalem. It forms an essential part of the liturgical services of the day, and must be held in every parochial church where the required ministers can be had. The procession is always kept on 2 February even when the office and Mass of the feast is transferred to 3 February.”

Indeed, owing to the presence of the processional cross as a symbol of Christ, this act of entrance is the ritual re-enactment of the presentation itself, and as such forms the climax of this ceremony. During the procession, the Altar has been unveiled to reveal a white frontal, ready to greet the Lord. Without further ceremony, the Mass proceeds. The ministers assume white Mass vestments (the tunicle and dalmatic underlining the move into new light and joy) and the prayers at the foot of the altar are said. The Candles of the faithful are to be lit to greet Christ in the Gospel and From the Te Igitur to after the Communion.

As I mentioned, the Missal of 1962 has been largely kind to this ancient rite, preserving much of the form. However, there are some important changes which disturb and deform the original rite. Firstly the entire ceremony of blessing is said in the White Mass vestments. The entire “before redemption” meaning of the colour violet, which is (inconsistently) maintained in Advent and Lent to the present day, despite the suppression of the folded chasuble, is lost. Related to this, the instructions Flectamus genua and Levate are gone. These instructions particular to the Deacon and Subdeacon were also part of the Solemn prayers of pre-1955 Good Friday, but for no apparent reason, the Subdeacon was divested of his Levate, which was given to the Deacon.

Secondly, and consistent with a general move to suppress these prayers where another rite precedes Mass (viz. the 1955 Palm Sunday [though previous to this reform, the psalm was omitted as per Sundays in Passiontide]), the prayers at the foot of the altar are not said. While much could be said about the disregard shown in this reform for the liturgical coherence of the Mass, and the importance of the words “Introibo ad altare Dei” in the worship of the Church, I only have time here to share these words again from the Catholic Encyclopaedia :

"That the Mass, around which such complicated rules have grown, is the central feature of the Catholic religion hardly needs to be said, During the Reformation and always the Mass has been the test. The word of the Reformers: "It is the Mass that matters", was true. The Cornish insurgents in 1549 rose against the new religion, and expressed their whole cause in their demand to have the Prayer-book Communion Service taken away and the old Mass restored. The long persecution of Catholics in England took the practical form of laws chiefly against saying Mass; for centuries the occupant of the English throne was obliged to manifest his Protestantism, not by a general denial of the whole system of Catholic dogma but by a formal repudiation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and of the Mass."

To my mind, the decision to remove in one stroke, a part of what is and has been for centuries, words that have become ingrained in the mind of every Catholic, is a serious assault on tradition, and, by extention, what that tradition seeks to protect, and this assault must be interrogated. The notion that a part of the ancient practice of the Church’s regular worship can be edited out, simply for the sake of convenience, is above all patronising to the very people for whom this service exists: the plebs sancta Dei. The assumption that the lay man or woman in the nave of the church has suffered, Sunday by Sunday, from a lack of comprehension, an inability to engage with the rite of Mass because of its convoluted ceremonial or its long-dead Latin is the great fallacy of the movement for reform, and a damaging lie. The simplification and reduction of the liturgy is, in my view, the very reason why church attendance has dropped so severely since the period of reform began. As one friend put it, when a churched Christian reaches adulthood and is still expected to engage with a dumbed-down liturgy that was altered to be accessible even to small children, then what really is there to keep them from leaving? An examination of the unreformed rites of Candlemas, as with any ancient ceremony of the Church, clearly exhibit a language in vibrant use, a language which can be heard readily by anyone who opens themselves to it. The particular language is the Roman rite, but the message is redemption. Dumbing down the Mass, the Liturgy, the traditions of the Church, can only indicate that much of the Church as a whole has stopped believing in Herself, and that what She has offered to Her children for centuries is no longer worth very much at all.

Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts

For almost 55 years, the Western Church has been largely bereft of a Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified gifts, a service which our brethren in the East celebrate during weekdays of Great Lent, and which in the Latin Church has long been restricted to Good Friday. Instead of the Celebration of Mass, a service in which Communion is received from a Host consecrated at a previous Mass still forms part of the Liturgy of Good Friday, but the reformed rites of Holy Week introduced by Pope Pius XII altered the Liturgy so radically as to make it something else entirely, and not a genuine Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, but rather similar to an order for Holy Communion outside of Mass.

In the pre-1955 rite, the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified begins after the adoration of the Cross, when the Blessed Sacrament is taken in procession from the Altar of Repose to the main altar carried by the Priest, and is censed by two acolytes. Although the origins are of course different, this procession mirrors the Byzantine Great Entrance procession, and it is worth noting that in the Eastern Pre-Sanctified services, on this occasion the priest, rather than the deacon carries the diskos holding the lamb. When the procession arrives at the altar, the deacon arranges the chalice. In the pre-1955 rite, a large second Host consecrated at the previous night’s liturgy is placed in a chalice, and covered by a pall, upturned paten and finally a soft, white veil, which is tied at the node of the chalice. The deacon leaves the chalice covered and arranges the veil over the chalice as at Mass. Indeed, the whole rite of the Pre-Sanctifies points to the celebration of a genuine Mass in structure and symbolism, whilst also quite clearly being something other than the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The priest at this stage censes the Sanctissimum.

The priest then slides the Host from the chalice, onto the paten which is held by the Deacon, and is then placed, with the chalice onto the corporal. The Deacon then fills the chalice with wine, and a drop of water is added by the Subdeacon, and it is placed on the corporal and covered with the pall, all as at Mass, except that all of the gestures and prayers of the Offertory are omitted. The Gifts are then censed as at Mass, as the cross and altar. However, nothing else, including the celebrant is censed. The presence of this chalice of unconsecrated wine is one of the most obvious analogies to the Byzantine rite, where a chalice is also prepared, veiled and censed at the prothesis, and at Communion, the Consecrated Lamb is placed in the unconsecrated wine in the chalice.

The priest says the prayer “In spiritu humilitatis”, then kisses the altar and says the “Orate frates”. The response “suscipiat” is, however, not said and the priest does not make a full turn at the altar as at Mass. This prayer makes the same plea for acceptance that marks the end of the Offertory at Mass, but without its response, the rite is altered markedly: the people do not pray for acceptance from "thy hands", seen as no Mass is being celebrated, and the references to "praise and glory" are absent. The central parts of the Sacrifice, the secret, preface, sanctus and canon are not said and the priest passes directly to “Oremus. Praeceptis salutaribus” and the Lord’s prayer, sung in the ferial tone. With the Sanctus go the words "pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua", on the very day when God divested himself of glory. The embolism is sung out loud and its accompanying gestures are omitted. This mimicry of the structure of Mass is not perculiar to Good Friday, but also appears in the Blessing of the Palms on Palm Sunday, which has a "Liturgy of the Word" and a "Canon" of blessings over the palms so laid on the altar. In both cases, these ancient rites were divested of this unique identity and made to represent the rites of blessings and communion respectively from ceremonies outside of Holy Week. The reference to the Paschal Mystery, the very pivot of these observances, is lost.

Then comes the elevation, and the Deacon and Subdeacon, who kneel on either side of the priest but slightly back, lift his chasuble. In place of the bell, the crepitaculum or clapper is used. The ministers rise, the chalice is uncovered and the fraction is performed, saying nothing and not making the sign of the cross. Then bowing, he says “Perceptio corporis tua” following the normal rite of his Communion at Mass and then communicates himself. He then consumes the unconsecrated chalice, but without the usual prayers or rites, as this is not the Blood of Christ. After his communion, the Priest makes the normal ablutions of the chalice and his hands and the Deacon re-builds the chalice as at Mass. It has been a long custom of the Roman Church for only the Priest to receive communion on this day, but in the Eastern Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified, the people would also receive Holy Communion. The Church building itself is now empty of the Blessed Sacrament (Hosts for Viaticum being reserved in the Sacristy or another Altar or Building) which emphasises the sense of mourning at the Death of the Saviour on this day.

In the reformed rite of 1955, the Sacrament, in the form of a Ciborium of small Hosts, is brought to the Altar in Violet Mass vestments, by the Deacon (loosing the parallel with the Eastern Great Entrance), and incense is not used. The preparation of the Host on the corporal and the preparation of the chalice, incensation and washing of hands, as well as the prayers from the offertory are not performed. The introduction to the Lord’s prayer is said immediately, not sung as before, the Libera Nos is said by the Priest and then Perceptio is said silently. The priest communicates with a Small Host, and then Communion is given to all with the usual ceremonies of Mass. After Communion the priest makes his ablutions with vessels which were placed on the Altar for this purpose before the procession.

The simplification of the Communion rite of Good Friday eliminates both the parallels with the rite of Mass, and the analogies with the Byzantine Liturgy, both of which are integral to the identity of this rite. The reformed Holy Week makes the Communion no different from the distribution of Communion outside of Mass, such as would be given at a Wedding or for some other cause. With the reformed rite of 1955, the Western Church loses its one true Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified. I wonder if the Communion rite was deliberately “rationalised” to bring it into line with other forms for Distribution of Communion, or whether it was simply intended to be shortened to make room for the prayers which follow afterwards. I wonder also if we will ever see aspects of the older rite re-emerge with the reform of the reform. Let’s wait and see.