What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

Here is some of my article for the paper:

What Does the Prayer Really Say?   Dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran (1962 Missale Romanum)

This last week I had the privilege of attending the consecration of Old St. Patrick Church in Kansas City, Missouri.  The church was entrusted to the Institute of Christ the King by the bishop there His Excellency Most Reverend Robert Finn, who also performed the consecration of the church with the traditional Pontificale Romanum and then celebrated Pontifical Mass.

Never had I experienced such a rite.  The power of the rites of consecration, with its deep symbolism and appeal to all the senses was overwhelming.  I have been to consecrations of churches in the newer, post-Conciliar rites.   They are anemic in comparison.  There was for me an epiphany moment during the mysterious five-hour rite. As I watched the incense burn directly on the surface of the newly anointed altar at the five crosses symbolizing Christ’s saving wounds, the fragrant smoke curled upward and spread into a haze, as if the angel of the Apocalypse was present. The smell of the sacred chrism grew stronger with each breath and the schola began to sing “Veni Sancte Spiritus… Come Holy Spirit”.  Then there was silence until the last of the incense burned away. The flames died, growing smaller and smaller, as if sinking into the altar’s mensa.  Bishop Finn prayed:

“Almighty God, in whose honor and that of St. Patrick we do consecrate this altar, graciously and mercifully give ear to our humble prayers… that at all times, Thou mayest be moved to relieve the anxieties of Thy people who shall call on Thee in this place, to hear their prayers, to accept their vows, to strengthen their good purposes, to grant whatsoever they ask…”

I asked myself: “What have we done?”

As we saw last week, with the older, traditional Roman calendar, during this time of year we are using the texts from Sundays remaining un-prayed between Epiphany and Septuagesima, in order to complete the liturgical year.  This week we would be turning our attention to the Collect for this 26th Sunday after Pentecost, the texts for which are revived from the 5th Sunday remaining after Epiphany.  However, that Sunday is displaced by the Feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, which is the Cathedral of Rome, commonly called St. John Lateran.  The texts for today’s Mass are taken from the Common for the Dedication of Church. 

This is the day the Cathedral of Rome was solemnly consecrated. 

The full name of the Lateran Basilica is the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, St. John Baptist and St. John the Evangelist at the Lateran. Its titular feast is celebrated on the Transfiguration of the Lord.   But the Church also provides for the solemn celebration of the day the church was dedicated or consecrated.  Since the Lateran Basilica is “omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput… the Mother and Head of all the Churches of the City and the World”, its dedication is a feast everywhere, not just in Rome. 

This basilica is one of the most important churches in Christendom.  The original basilica was constructed by the Emperor Constantine.  It is the ancient place of baptism for the Church of Rome.  The Bishop of Rome’s cathedra is there.  Since the earliest times it is the station church for many important moments in the Roman calendar.  The Pope celebrates the Holy Thursday Masses here.

As mentioned, Holy Church celebrates solemnly the day when a church is “born”.  Just as every person has a “name day” and a “birthday”, so too a church. When a church is dedicated or consecrated, the bishop anoints the walls with sacred chrism – used also at ordinations and certain other consecrations – dedicating it to God and a saint or mystery of the Faith.  The celebration of the dedication recalls the sanctity of the place, which as a consecrated building has been removed from the temporal order and given entirely to God, as well as the symbolism of its material elements.  Church buildings should be rich in sacred symbols, which includes a sanctuary with its altar, the sacred space within the sacred space, mirroring the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem.  In fact, the prayers for the solemn consecration of a church, especially in the older, traditional Roman Rite, connect the earthly church building to the heavenly Jerusalem of the life to come, beautifully described in Scriptures, especially in the Book of Revelations.

The rite of consecration and the annual feast of its dedication reflect that the church building is a house of prayer and the place of sacrifice.   It is a foreshadowing of the heavenly Jerusalem.  It is the microcosm of the Church Universal, the nuptial chamber of the Spouse and the Bride, the way to Calvary, the Garden of the Tomb.  Very often on over the doors of old churches you find the phrase “House of God and Gate of Heaven”. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob awakes from his vision of the angels ascending and descending the ladder betwixt heaven and earth, “And trembling he said: How terrible is this place! this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven.”  Terribilis est locus iste!”  This is the opening chant for the Mass of Dedication of a Church. 

A church must reflect its awesome purpose.  It is a place where the soul peers through the cleft in the rock at God’s back as He passes by (Exodus 33), searches for the beloved in the palace (Song of Songs), or gazes through the dark mirror (1 Cor 13).  This is where the soul simultaneously expands in worship while shrinking back in awe at mystery.  When Pope Sylvester dedicated the Basilica in 324, he called it the “House of God”.  Though it has been destroyed several times in fires and earthquakes, and rebuilt, it remains always the Domus Dei and this is its day.

The rite of consecration and texts of the dedication feast recall that, not just the building, but the Christian’s soul belongs to God and is to be holy.  The consecration of the church building is much like a baptism.  There is an exorcism with specially blessed water, called “Gregorian Water”, a mixture of ash, salt, water, wine used only is special purifications of churches and altars.  There is a clothing of the altar with its baptismal robes.  There is the anointing with chrism, as in a confirmation, which in the ancient world was connected to the baptism ceremony. There is the lighting of candles and solemn placement at the points where the walls are anointed with chrism.  At the beginning of the traditional rite of baptism, the one to be baptized is interrogated, “What do you seek?” He responds, “Faith” (not “Baptism” as in the post-Conciliar ritual).  Then, “What will Faith give you?” “Eternal life”, he says.  A church must reflect in every way not only the splendor of the faith which is God’s gift, enabling us to embrace what is mysterious, but also the goal of faith: eternal life.  A church which reflects something other than the purpose of this earthly life, salvation in the heavenly kingdom, a church which does not reflect the splendors of our Catholic Faith has essentially failed in its purpose.

COLLECT (1962MR):
Deus qui nobis per singulos annos
huius sancti templi tui consecrationis reparas diem,
et sacris semper mysteriis repraesentas incolumes:
exaudi preces populi tui, et praesta;
ut, quisquis hoc templum beneficia petiturus ingreditur,
cuncta se impetrasse laetetur.

Today’s prayer is found in the ancient Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ordine excarpsus as well as in the 8th century Liber sacramentorum Engolismensis. The first part of this Collect survived the redactors of the Novus Ordo to live on in the Church’s prayer life in the Mass for the Dedication of a Church.  But those tailors of the Consilium stitched together the rest of it. 

Our fabulous Lewis & Short Dictionary lets us know that reparo means “to get, acquire, or procure again; to recover, retrieve; to restore, repair, renew”.  Incolumis is “unimpaired, uninjured, unharmed, safe, sound, entire, whole”.  “Impetrasse” is one of those shortened or “syncopated” forms, an abbreviation of impetravisse, the perfect infinitive of impetro, “to accomplish, effect, bring to pass; to get, obtain, procure, esp. by exertion, request, entreaty”.  One the other hand “petiturus” is the future participle of peto, “to beg, beseech, ask, request, desire, entreat” or “to endeavor to obtain or pursue, to seek, strive after any thing”.  Although peto and impetro look from that –pet- to be related etymologically, impetro is from the root patro, an ancient term in Roman ritual texts, related to pater, “father”.  Repraesento is “to bring before one, to bring back; to show, exhibit, display, manifest, represent”.  A beneficium is “a benefaction, kindness, favor, benefit, service”.  In this context we might want to translate a beneficium as “a grace”, because our divine benefactor freely gives them to us without merits of our own.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
O God, who each year renew for us
the day of the consecration of this Your holy temple,
and return us unharmed to it again by means of always sacred mysteries:
graciously hear the prayers of Your people, and grant;
that, whosoever enters this temple seeking graces,
will enjoy all the things he sought.

Trying to figure out the function of incolumes gives us the key to how to interpret representas.  I take incolumes as referring to a nos which isn’t there, thus making it the object of representas.  Pairing it with annos doesn’t make sense to me.  Thus, in the first part God is renew a historic day present to us (nobis) but then He returns us, “safe” ([nos] incolumes),  to it.

This prayer gives us the impression of time in a sacramental or liturgical sense. 

In the material world time is the measure of change.  Our perception of it shifts.  Time flows along inexorably, one second, minute, day, year after another, now slower now faster.  In sacramental terms, however, time is mysterious.  The sacred mysteries make events far away, long ago in historical terms, truly present here and now.  Sacramental expressions of saving mysteries make us present to them, though they happened long ago, and them to us, though we are here and not where they occurred. 

Ironically, this coming Sunday as I write is in the USA the date arbitrarily set for us to our turn clocks back an hour, move from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time.  This doesn’t jar us at all these days, unless we forget and wind up at church at the wrong hour on Sunday.  But in the prayer today, the priest is acknowledging that something tremendous, in the sense of awesome and frightening, is just at perception’s edge.  The priest acknowledges that we (a nos which isn’t there) are incolumes: “safe and sound” as the French dictionary of liturgical Latin Blaise/Dumas puts it.  In science fiction shows we often watch the protagonist prevent the villain, sometimes a nameless force, from doing naughty things to the flow of time, or tear the universe apart.  Characters who go back in time avoid wiping everything they know out of existence because they pick the wrong flower or influence a person who would change history, or the future as the case may be.

Today’s prayer describes how God makes the past and the present merge.  But our mysterious prayer also describes how, even now, we are present to the realities awaiting us at the end of time.  The historic dedication day of a particular church is made present, as if we in this sacred place have been transported back to it or it has been moved up to us, but we also taste the fruits of the heavenly Jerusalem to come.

No wonder the priest marvels in the prayer that we are “safe” even though we are in the midst of this mysterious tornado of time and space called Holy Mass in the consecrated Holy of Holies, one of God’s churches.

Anyone who enters this sacramental time bender, this sacred space called a church, may pray with terrified confidence that his petitions, foreseen by God from before the creation of the cosmos, will in the hereafter be granted because the fruits once won for us by Christ, the true Actor in the liturgy, which will be brought to fruition only at the end of time. 

Does walking into your church give you a sense of the sacred?  Does it bring you closer to an encounter with the author of time and space?

From a well-known priest reader:

Dear Father,

I have posted on my website some photographs of a Sunday Mass celebrated Ad Deum. I thought you mind find these photos of interest, since they show the practical consequences of our re-orientation. You can find them at www.jayscottnewman.net by going to the page called "Photos" and clicking on the photo album labeled "Exaltation of the Holy Cross."

May the LORD bless the work of your hands.

Shall we have a look at a few of the photos? 

There are from 14 September 2008 which was, of course, the anniversary of Summorum Pontificum going into effect.

This is Novus Ordo.





 

I probably don’t need to remind long time readers of WDTPRS that Fr. Newman took some time to inform his parish about the history and advantages of ad orientem worship along with the news that that was what would happen.  He used the bulletin for the Sundays during Lent to present the whole picture.

Folks… it can.. and should… be done.

I am “in town” and therefore doing important things such as getting a haircut from one of the better barbers here, still inexpensive and blessedly fast while being very good. “Mike” does a good job. Many seminarians and priests have come here for years, and a few archbishops.

Then it was off to the excellent religious and church goods store Leaflet Missal. This store has it all and you can find it online.

They have been very good to seminarians over the years and friendly to clergy. On a wall near the door there us a bit of a gallery of men to whom they perhaps gave summer jobs or who were associated with better things before the tide began to turn.

I wish they had a wish list. The fellow who runs the church goods area has good taste and is quite involved with the TLM at St. Augustine’s in S. St. Paul. Here are a couple things which would grace the Sabine Chapel. The angels (below) would also be wonderful.

I found that they have reliquaries in silver in the same style as the gold ones in the chapel. Nice. You would not make a mistake to check them out.

A kind reader sent the following:

Father, if you go to Sacramento Bee newspaper for Nov. 7, there is a video called "Chants of a Lifetime." The paper did an article on the schola, choir, choristers at St. Stephen’s in Sacramento. The video has interviews, music and part of the All Souls’ Day Solemn High Requiem Mass. Bishop Soto (briefly seen) attended. Our priests are in beautiful black vestments with purple embroidered embellishment. Fr. Novokowsky also conducted the blessings and incensings of the "bier," draped in black, which was surrounded by six lighted candles.   Gloria Thiele, Grass Valley, CA

Chants of a lifetime
An age-old form of vocal worship enhances the liturgy at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church
By Carlos Alcala
calcala@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Nov. 07, 2008 | Page 2H

Gregorian chant holds a place in popular imagination as the province of hooded monks intoning monotonous melodies along dim stone corridors.

It’s not like that.

At St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Sacramento, the ancient musical form is sung by children and young men and women, a multiethnic choir of multicolored voices.

Teens sing wearing Vans or boots poking out from beneath cassocks. They sing at Masses where toddlers babble and babies wail and adults walk in and out during services.  [In other words, it’s normal.]

Rehearsal is in a classroom furnished with old pews, the ceiling covered in dull acoustic tiles.

The setting is mundane, but the music is ethereal. It’s ear- pleasing and eye-opening, but difficult to describe.

It resonates when the men’s deeper voices are breathing the Latin phrases.

When the higher voices come in, the music undulates; it flows out like unrhythmic acoustic heat: radiant music.  [I agree that chant by women is ethereal.  I am not much for mixing the voices, however.]

A rarity in modern church

St. Stephen the First Martyr Church – off Fruitridge Road in unincorporated Sacramento – is one of the few parishes in Northern California to incorporate traditional Gregorian chant into Mass.

To hear some tell it, that is very odd. To them, chant and Mass are nearly synonymous.

Gregorian chant ebbed in the decades after the Roman Catholic Mass was opened to vernacular – non-Latin – languages, even though chant was still officially supported.  [not just "supported"]

"Gregorian chant should have the first place in musical liturgy," said William Mahrt, a professor at Stanford and president of the Church Music Association of America.

"(It’s) the fundamental music," Mahrt said, "the basic music."

In the fourth century, it was how people learned the psalms, said Peter Jeffery, Scheide Professor of Music History at Princeton. [This reporter did some homework!]

Much as popular songs are memorized today, the music of chant conveyed religious precepts to largely illiterate societies.

"The chant is the servant of the text," [YES!]  said Jeffrey Morse, St. Stephen’s choir leader for six years.

Chant is fundamental to more than the church.

A link to modern music

"There wouldn’t have been Elvis Presley if there hadn’t been Gregorian chant," Morse said.

That may be an exaggeration, but musical notation itself was created by monks in the 800s specifically to record chant melodies.

It’s essentially the same notation – the system for writing music – that is used for chant today, though not for other music.

What Morse’s choir sings during St. Stephen’s Masses is largely prescribed by centuries of tradition.

"Choristers were singing the exact same text to the exact same melody in 800 on the same Sunday," Morse said. "It grounds you in history."

Few parishes are grounded like St. Stephen’s.

The parish was set up by Bishop William K. Wiegand to conduct a traditional Latin Mass. The priest who hired Morse recognized the place of chant and Morse’s wealth of knowledge and experience.  [Excellent priest.]

When asked about the name "Gregorian," he readily recites the dates and nature of Gregory the Great’s papacy . Gregory’s name was appended to the chants that existed before he was made pope in 590.

The music was practically dead in the United States in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Morse had to go to England to study Gregorian music. "No one wanted it, basically," he said.

Things are changing, though.

There’s something of a self-help movement, experts like Mahrt and Jeffery say.

A summer chant gathering four years ago had 40 participants – mostly refugees from failing choirs. This year it had 260 – some from growing choirs, some who seek to seed new ones.

In some cases, politics is behind the growth of chant.  [Watch how the reporter now ruins the article.]

Many Catholics associate Latin Mass and traditional music with conservative politics, said Princeton’s Jeffery.

Indeed, at St. Stephen’s during a recent Mass, political stickers on cars in the parking lot were all in support of the McCain-Palin ticket or initiatives aligned with a conservative social agenda.  [grrrr]

Embracing tradition

Many may seek tradition, but few have the experience of Morse and his choir. Even some teens in his group have been in it for six years – six times around the prescribed cycle of the liturgy.

They know the chants. They know the music. Though it’s in Latin, "We definitely try to understand what we’re singing," said Ellen Presley, 20, a music major at California State University, Sacramento.

When the choir takes a break in August, Presley said, "everyone complains about us not being here. The music adds a lot."

In fact, it is choir participation that draws 21-year-old Jonathan Crane to drive two hours from Corning to St. Stephen’s. "It was the sound" that thrilled him, he said.

Crane and Presley are also impressed by the voices of the 8- and 9-year-old choristers who sing with them.  [Of course!  It’s chant, not brain surgery.]

The music is a major part of the service, but not everything. During Mass, the chant’s beauty competes with the rustle of life in the congregation.

It is not like a visit to the symphony, where every cough is frowned upon and babies are unwelcome.

The choir is not the focus. In fact, they sing from a loft, heard but not seen.  [Contrast that with how many parishes put their "pop group" up front.]

Chant’s most ardent supporters seem to like it that way.

Background, not a concert

"I think that’s very much what music in a sacred context should be," Morse said. "It shouldn’t be a concert at all."  [Back to that point.  You can tell what caught the reporter’s attention.   This was a foreign experience.]

"The object of one’s attention," said Mahrt, "is worship."  [Which perhaps the reporter hadn’t experienced too often.]

Still, the music augments the worship, said Father Robert Novokowsky, the parish’s pastor.  [I think this needs to be adjusted.  Music such as chant isn’t really an "add on". It is the liturgical prayer.]

"During the liturgy, the chant is meditative," he said. It’s one thing to have a short psalm read. It’s quite another to experience it sung.

"It takes four minutes to sing that one line," Novokowsky said.

"It’s a way of experiencing the mystery of God."   [Well said.   If music (and everything else in church) doesn’t bring you to an experience of mystery, then the liturgical "experience" has failed.   Listening to chant well sung is like peering through the cleft in the rock with Moses (Exodus 33).]

Call The Bee’s Carlos Alcalá, (916) 321-1987.

 

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