Category Archives: Sacred Liturgy

Sacred Liturgy

Pentecost

Pentecost with apostles

Today is the glorious solemnity of the Pentecost. Benedict XVI preached that with Pentecost we “reached the 50th day, it marks the fulfilment of the event of the passover, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus through the gift of the Spirit of the Risen One. In the past few days the Church has prepared us for Pentecost with her prayer, with her repeated and intense invocation to God to obtain a fresh outpouring upon us of the Holy Spirit. The Church has thus relived all that happened at her origins, when the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room of Jerusalem ‘with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren’ (Acts 1:14).”

Today we celebrate the birth of the Church with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Blessed 12, the Blessed Mother Mary, the many disciples, indeed, the whole Church.

What is meant by the Holy Spirit? The Pontiff said, “The Holy Spirit is Creator, he is at the same time the Spirit of Jesus Christ, but in such a way that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God.”

How does the Spirit personally affect me? The Pontiff said: “The breath of God is life. Now, the Lord breathes into our soul the new breath of life, the Holy Spirit, his most intimate essence, and in this way welcomes us into God’s family. With Baptism and Confirmation this gift was given to us specifically, and with the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance it is continuously repeated: the Lord breathes a breath of life into our soul. All the sacraments, each in its own way, communicate divine life to human beings, thanks to the Holy Spirit who works within them.”

Our prayer today, then, is to beg the Holy Spirit to bestow upon us the Seven-fold gifts and the Twelve-fold fruits for our sanctification and for the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

Veni sancta Spiritus. Veni per Mariam.

Perhaps this poem by Geoffrey Hill speaks to the feeling of this solemn feast day:

. . . Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree,
set with coagulate magnified flowers of may,
blooms in a haze of light; old chalk-pits brim
with seminal verdue from the roots of time.

Landscape is like revelation; it is both
singular crystal and the remotest things.
Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth,
odourless myrrh bourne by the wandering kings . . .

Sacred Liturgy

A Sermon for Ascension

Ascension da ModenaThe Church celebrates this week the glorious feast of the Ascension of our Lord. The feast was celebrated on Thursday and today, so that as many people can participate as possible, we celebrate what is called the External Solemnity of the feast. It is important however not to loose sight of the fact that Our Lord, in fact, ascended on a Thursday, because it isn’t simply a random detail. On the one hand, it would seem that this feast marks the end of our Lord’s ministry, coming as it does at the end of his earthly life. (This is the symbolism of the Paschal Candle, which since Easter has burned as a sign of Christ’s teaching presence after the Resurrection among his disciples during the 40 days of Easter, which we rather dramatically extinguish after the Gospel) However, at the Ascension our Lord’s ministry actually reaches its culmination rather than its conclusion; Christ ascends on a Thursday, because it was on Thursday, at the Last Supper, that he instituted both the new priesthood and the new sacrifice: the Holy Eucharist; On Ascension Thursday, we see most clearly that Christ, a priest according to the Order of Melchizedec, now serves as mankind’s high priest before the Father in heaven. The Epistle to the Hebrews goes so far as to say that Christ “now lives to make intercession for us” (Heb. 7:25). The very way that Jesus ascended into heaven speaks to this mystery.

In St Luke’s account of the Ascension we read: “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them, he parted with them, and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24. 52). Blessing was something familiar to every first century Jew. Each day at morning and evening, as commanded in the Law of Moses, the Jewish priests celebrated the tamid, or “perpetual offering” that we read about in the Book of Exodus (Ex. 29:38-41). One group of priests placed a lamb, bread, and wine on the altar as another group of priests led the people in reciting the Ten Commandments and the Shema, followed by the singing of the psalm designated for that day of the week. The tamid concluded with the priests gathering on the steps of the Holy Place, extending their arms out toward the people and invoking the blessing the Lord entrusted to Moses and Aaron: “The LORD bless you and keep you: The LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” (Num. 6:24-26). (This is why during the time of Divine Service, no woman or layman is permitted in the sanctuary. Boys are the exception as they, like the prophet Samuel before them, are allowed to serve the priests at their duty at the altar).

When the apostles and other disciples saw Jesus begin to ascend into heaven, in the very act of blessing them, they understood that he was “climbing the steps” of the true Holy Place. Only one Jewish priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies at the time of the tamid, to burn incense before God’s earthly throne room, the Holy of Holies. And the only person who could enter the Holy of Holies was the high priest, and he did so only once a year on the Feast of Yom Kippur. When the apostles saw Jesus disappear into a “cloud,” an Old Testament symbol of God’s presence (Acts 1:9; Ex. 13:31-32, 24:16-18; Num. 9:15-23), they understood that Jesus had entered into the true Holy of Holies, the reality to which the Temple and the earthly Holy of Holies were but a symbol and a pre-figurement (Ex. 25:9, 40; Heb. 8:5).

The worship of the Old Covenant — the Temple and its many sacrifices — find their fulfillment in Christ’s priesthood: his Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (Heb. 10:1-7). Jesus continues to offer himself to the Father, in his humanity, just as he has from all eternity in his divinity. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation show Jesus, the Lamb of God, making the true perpetual offering to the Father — himself, through the five glorious wounds of his Passion (Heb. 7:25, 9:24; Rev. 5:6-14). Jesus draws all of heaven, the angels and saints, and indeed us as well, into this great heavenly liturgy, causing them to offer themselves through, with, and in him (Rev. 4:6-5:14).

This is the same liturgy that breaks through to earth, upon our altars, in the Holy Mass, where the sacrifice of Calvary is renewed through the ministry of priests. Moreover, through the sacrament of Holy Orders, Christ presides, in persona Christi, in the person of his priests. As the fulfillment of Israel’s tamid, the bread and wine we offer are indeed trans-substantiated into the very Lamb, himself, body, soul and divinity. We receive Christ himself in Holy Communion, the same Christ who bodily entered into the glory of the Father. Our lives are thus com-penetrated by his and every part united to his sacrifice to the Father (1 Cor. 10:16-18; Rom. 12:1). And when our priests pronounce the blessing over us before sending us forth, (which is why the blessing at the traditional Mass is given at the altar steps by the way) it is Christ who blesses — the same Christ who blessed the apostles before sending them out to convert the world.

We now prepare to celebrate the great gift of the Holy Spirit to us, which Christ promised at his Ascension, the Spirit of Truth who leads us into all truth, so that we too may take our part in converting the world. To fully receive that blessing — the Pentecostal grace Christ poured out upon the infant Church — we should dispose ourselves in the same way they did — faithful prayer and meditation upon Scripture, in the company of the Blessed Mother (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:14-15). These are very holy days, and indeed busy ones, but we should strive to recall the greater mysteries and then to live them as fully as possible. In Christ even something as unimportant as a Thursday takes on new meaning in our lives.

R. Dom Bede Price, monk of St Louis Abbey
Sermon for the Ascension 2016
Rector, Oratory of Ss. Gregory and Augustine

Sacred Liturgy

Solemnity of the Ascension

AscensionLow Mass will be offered today at 5:30 p.m. at St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven.

Consider a reflection on the Ascension of the Lord from St. Augustine:

“Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: ‘If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth.’ For just as he remained with us even after his Ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.”

Sacred Liturgy

Maundy Thursday

Last Supper“The lamb that was slain has delivered us from death and given us life”

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover: that mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the land of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead, and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute lamb, the slain lamb, the lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock, dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay. He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised man from the depths of the tomb.

From an Easter homily by Saint Melito of Sardis (2nd century), bishop (Nn. 65071: SC 123, 95-101)