Pentecost Saturday: We Are Our Rites.

Pentecost Saturday

Today the Season of Easter comes to an end.  The cycle that started with pre-Lent Sunday’s is over.

Being an Ember Saturday, there would be a vigil in the night in preparation for ordinations to the priesthood at St. Peter’s.

Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, is the ecclesial-liturgical, if not secular-calendrical, anniversary of my ordination at St. Peter’s, Trinity Sunday.

There are five readings before the Gospel in the Mass today, in the forma longior, the longer form. There is an option for a shorter Mass with two readings, but still with all the Pentecost Octave features, such as the Sequence and proper Communicantes and Hanc igitur. It is peculiar that at the end of the Sequence there is no Alleluia before the Gospel reading. There are various Alleluia verses amongst the lessons.  I think what happened is that when the more penitential Mass formulary for the Ember Day was fused into that of the Pentecost feria of Saturday, a bit of the festive Alleluiatic was lost.

The progression of the Collects and lessons is overwhelming if read in light of the moment (Octave of Pentecost) and ordinations.

I very much like the reading from Joel 2:

Thus says the Lord God: I will pour out My Spirit upon all mankind. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; even upon the servants and the handmaids, in those days, I will pour out My Spirit. And I will work wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke; the sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, at the coming of the Day of the Lord, the great and terrible day. Then everyone shall be rescued who calls on the name of the Lord.

Then the Collect.

May the Holy Spirit, we beseech You, O Lord, inflame us with that fire which our Lord Jesus Christ cast upon the earth and desired that it be fanned into flame.

I’m not going to go through all of them, but I’ll suggest the themes.

The account in Leviticus is about Shavuot and the wave-offering of the first fruits.

The account in Deuteronomy is about the first-fruits of the land of milk and honey.

The description in Daniel is of the stoking of the furnace and the 49 cubits high flames that burned the enemy but not the stokers as they sang in praise of God.

Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus rebuked and casts out an afflicting fever demon from Peter’s mother-in-law and then healed and exorcised, commanding the demons to be silent.  Originally, before the fusing of the Ember Day with the Pentecost feria, the Gospel was the Matthew 20 account of the healing of blind men.

The work of the Gospel is the work of the priest against the enemy, the prince of this world.

How shocking it is to me that even bishops can be embarrassed by such things today.

How I long to see bishops to set examples of solemn worship.  I long to see them perform manifestly, blatantly, even ostentatiously priestly actions in public: processions, exorcisms, lying prostrate on the steps of their cathedrals in reparation for the sinful votes of Catholic politicians.

How I long to see them bishops be unabashedly, unapologetically Catholic, with every possible visual, material aid at their disposal, including glorious vestments, banners and big gaudy rings.

But, no. They talk talk talk in their bourgeois black suits and their slim apologetic chains connected to the Cross … that they’ve hidden in their pockets.  It’s like they are all laid out prostrate from the heat of the fever of this world’s fever swamp.  They must be raised from their fever!

It’s time to get medieval. What’s going on now sure isn’t working. Big hats, raised voices, and interdicts.

The SSPX recently built and consecrated a huge and unapologetically Catholic church in the middle of Nowheresville, USA.  They proved they could it.   They did it because people trusted that they would do it.  Now they have the proof not only that it was doable, but that they will do more.  They demonstrated during COVID Theatre that they were not going to abandon people by locking up their churches.

Let our bishops and priest smash their way out of their chains and then be openly, clearly, freshly, traditionally, unmistakably CATHOLIC .   I know that people will BACK THEM UP when they take hits for being Catholic.  Lay people will stand in front of them when they are attacked!

Enough of this, “I’m with you, win or tie!” rubbish.

The Postcommunion today:

Praebeant nobis, Dómine, divínum tua sancta fervórem: quo eórum páriter et actu delectémur et fructu.

May your Holy Sacraments supply use with divine raging passion: by which we may exalt in both their celebration and in their results.

Everything starts with proper worship, the fulfillment of the virtue of Religion. As a Church we’ve lost a great deal of the sense of who we are because of the loss of the riches of worship.

If we don’t know who we are, can we tell someone else?

Why should anyone pay attention to us if we don’t know ourselves?

Everything we do much start in worship and then be brought back to worship.

This is the staring point for renewal and the goal in an dynamic that will end in earthly terms at the Parousia described by Joel and will continue in heaven in eternity.

We Are Our Rites.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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3 Comments

  1. Sue in soCal says:

    God bless you on the anniversary of your ordination, Fr. Z.

  2. palestrinadei says:

    Ember days are difficult and their mitigation of Pentecost joy is a particular mystery to me, even more so than their intensification of Advent and Lenten penance. I did not know until your commentary this week that they had come and gone through Church history, and can understand how continuing to enforce their observance under pain of mortal sin would have seemed draconian to the Council fathers, as it might have to those who suppressed them further in the past. However, I can also see their spiritual profit, so it might have made sense to keep them on the calendar as an official non-binding devotion offered to the laity, much like those to particular saints or apparitions, while requiring them of seminarians about to be ordained. God willing, someday the clergy as a whole might promote wider awareness of them.

  3. Robert says:

    I was able to attend the late Mass at Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, where we (of course) got all the lessons. But, I also stumbled into the middle of the consecration of the restored organ followed by a brief concert. I sat behind your pew, and of course said a prayer for you as it requests.

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