Sacred vessels are important. They are consecrated (like the hands of priests) to touch the Body and Blood of the Lord.
I had this in my email:
I am trying to locate the rite (prayers and rubrics) for the consecration for a Chalice / Paten and Vestments. There is a local bishop who is willing to do this for the gifts that I will receive when I will be ordained a priest this summer. Can you help me find the resources that I need. I have the Roman Ritual (1962) but it seems that I also need the Roman Pontifical for more of the prayers and instructions. Can all of this be done within a mass that the Bishop celebrates (e.g. after the homily?).
First, I am delighted that the bishop will do that! Second, I hope he knows you mean the older rite! Do all in your power to keep the bishop, and all Christians, away from the horrific De benedictionibus. (Ad flammas!)
Can you do this during Mass? If it is in the Novus Ordo…. [crickets]… sure! Why not! You can do anything in the Novus Ordo at homily time, it seems. No?
If a bishop can impose a video, which is actually forbidden by the Church’s liturgical law, then, yes, he can consecrate a chalice. There can be the administration of sacraments after sermons (e.g., baptism, matrimony, etc.). There can be videos about fund raising. Why not the consecration of a chalice, which is sort of in between?
In the older form of Mass… wellllllllll…… maybe. But it really isn’t “foreseen”.
I, because of course bishops ask me stuff all the time, would say to a bishop, “Should Your Excellency desire to consecrate this stuff over here in this box, a great teaching mo, would Your Excellency announce it and teach about it during the sermon, and invite the people to remain to watch Your Excellency do it after Mass?”
In the meantime, for vestments in the older form, you can find those blessings in the back of the Missale Romanum. You might find chalices and patens there also.
For the chalices and patens, (I have written about that HERE) you could use the Pontificale Romanum. Look for it online. For example, HERE, where you can find the whole Pontificale.
VERY COOL prayers.
Also, in the rite, the bishop refers to “fratres carissimi”. Therefore, I think it would be great to have a big audience!
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Dear Father Z.,
if I recall correct my reading of books about liturgy long ago, I have read that the homily is not part of the mass, but a interruption of the mass in terms of the usus antiquor. The celebrating priest, if he is the one who gives the homily, removes the casula, enters the pulpit dressed with alba, stola, manipulum and biretta. After the homily he revests the casula and continues the mass. According to both exemplars of my Schott “Römisches Meßbuch” of the archabbey of Beuron publishing house Herder (Imprimatur 1958 and an unchanged reprint of the imprimatur 1962) the homily is named an “old custom/habit”. To my understanding it would be very strange to describe a regular part of the mass this way. In the red notes of the Schott above the Gloria and the Credo is a line that says something that I would translate as “If the day requests it…”.
So if I am right, the consecration of the chalice and the paten within or after the homily would be “not during the mass” but within the interruption, until the bishop continues the mass with the Credo or the Dominus vobiscum and the offertory, depending of the issue if Credo is due or not.
I know, I sound like a Jesuit who barters with his superior if praying the breviary is allowed while smoking cigars instead of asking if smoking cigars is allowed while praying the breviary, but it would open a slight chance, that the consecration is possibly at or after the homily.
Yours
Marcus, der mit dem C
In the newer form, I have seen chalices blessed (not consecrated) at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, before the wine is poured. The appropriate prayers are in the back of the Roman Missal.
FYI re: your link for downloading the ‘Pontificale Romanum’, at the end of the downloaded file is a rather nasty notice that downloading it from any link other then the originating laudatedominium.net site is forbidden but rather it can be legally downloaded directly from their site. I don’t really see what their problem is because you end up with the same file either way.
Fr. Robert: It may be a question of having limited bandwidth.
After we got a new set of communion chalices, and the main chalice was re-gilded, at our cathedral, the bishop blessed them directly after the greeting (Peace be with you), and it was followed by the gloria.
This was a Novus Ordo celebration, btw.
The day before an ordination I assisted at, the same bishop blessed the priest-to-be’s chalice and vestments, I believe he used an older form of consecration for them, with an english translation with on the facing page (I held the book). He used the english translation, but everyone certainly perked up when he began. Lots of “vouchsafe”s and “didst”s. It was really quite nice. I’m looking forward to it again at the next ordination.
I think it was something like this(scroll down a couple lines to get to the chalice consecration).
There is an interesting piece from St. Joseph Seminary, Dunwoodie, NY
http://communio.stblogs.org/2010/05/consecration-of-a-paten-and-a.html
Shows a bishop consecrating chalices and patens outside of Mass