In the Novus Ordo calendar the observance of Epiphany (12 days after Christmas – the reason it is called “Twelfth Night”) is in some places moved to the Sunday, this year tomorrow. Some say that moving it to Sunday allows more people will celebrate the important feast. Other says that bishops don’t think people can bear the burden of going to Mass more than once a week… if they are doing even that..
I say that moving Epiphany means
1) our obligations according to the virtue of Religion aren’t that important,
2) the liturgical year isn’t that important, and
3) parishes lose a collection.
That last part is not unimportant, by the way.
In the ancient Western Church and in the East, Epiphany was more important than the relative latecomer Christmas. Epiphany is from the Greek word for a divine “manifestation” or “revelation”. There are many “epiphanies” of God in the Scripture. Think, for example, of the burning bush encountered by Moses.
The Latin Church’s antiphons for Vespers reflect the tradition that Epiphany was thought to be not only the day the Magi came to adore Christ, but also the same day years later when He was baptized by St. John in the Jordan and also when He changed water into wine at Cana. In each mysterious event, Jesus was revealed to be more than a mere man: He is man and God.
The Epiphany Collect was in the 1962 Missale Romanum and in ancient sacramentaries.
Deus, qui hodierna die Unigenitum tuum stella duce revelasti, concede propitius, ut qui iam te ex fide cognovimus, usque ad contemplandam speciem tuae celsitudinis perducamur.
Stella duce is an ablative absolute not the name of a movie star or pop tart.
The adjective hodiernus means “of this day, today’s”. In older Latin, celsitudo is “lofty carriage of the body”. In later Latin it is used like the title “Highness”. In our liturgical context it is a divine attribute, God’s transcendent grandeur, glory.
SUPER LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who on this very day revealed your Only-begotten, a star as the guide, graciously grant, that we, who have already come to know You by faith, may be led all the way unto the beauty of Your glory to be contemplated.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, you revealed your Son to the nations by the guidance of a star. Lead us to your glory in heaven by the light of faith.
Imagine the cumulative damage to our Catholic identity over the decades that obsolete translation was in force.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
O God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star, grant in your mercy, that we, who know you already by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory.
In Latin prayers species (three syllables) often means “beauty”. It is also a technical, philosophical term about the way the human intellect apprehends things.
Species has to do with the relationship between the thing known and our knowing power. A species transforms the mind of the one perceiving a thing. The object we consider acts upon our power of knowing. Simultaneously, the knowing power acts upon the object known. Our knowing power’s active and passive aspects meet in the species and the object of our consideration is known directly, without intermediaries.
Easy. Right?
This is what we are praying for, hoping for, living our earthly lives for: to see God face to face, directly and immediately (without intermediaries).
In this life we know God only indirectly, by faith, our reason aided by the authority of revelation and by grace. This is St. Paul’s “dark glass” (1 Cor 13:12) through which we peer toward Him in longing.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He is the Father’s Beauty.
He is Truth and Beauty and Glory itself.
St. Hilary of Poitiers (+367) conceived God’s divine attribute of glory as a transforming power which divinizes us by our contact with it. After Moses talked with God in the tent of the Ark, he wore a veil over his face, which became too bright to look at.
We pray today, literally, to be brought “all the way to the beauty of glory (species celsitudinis)” of God “which is to be contemplated”.
His beauty will act on us, increase our knowledge of Him and, therefore, our love for Him … for all eternity. We will be, all the more, the images He intended though this “divinization”.
Think of Christ as the species celsitudinis of this prayer. Contemplate His truth and beauty. Christ, the incarnate eternal Word, is the true Speaker and spoken Truth of every prayer of every Mass.
If eternal Beauty transforms us, divinizes us, then beauty in this life can change us too.
Our liturgical worship of the Most High God must lead us to encounter beauty, truth, transcendent mystery.
Could a fostering of beauty in our churches help us reach people today in a way that arguments or other appeals may not?
Maybe fostering real beauty that looks to the transcendent could motivated people so that they want to go to church, perhaps even more than once in a while. Perhaps it could work better than synodality (“walking together”) or campaigns about reverence for the Eucharist. Perhaps it could help people to seek the Truth such that they don’t lean on excuses to maintain sinful behavior and move pastors of souls not to enable them with falsehood.
Holy Mass requires the finest architecture, vestments, music – everything – we can summon from human genius, love and labor. What we sing and say and do in church, and the church itself, ought to presage the liturgy of heaven, where the Church Triumphant enjoys already the Beatific Vision.
Liturgy should be “epiphany”, wherein we encounter transforming mystery.
We read today from Leo the Great in the Office of Matins:
Honorétur ítaque a nobis sacratíssimus dies, in quo salútis nostræ Auctor appáruit: et quem Magi infántem veneráti sunt in cunábulis, nos omnipoténtem adorémus in cælis. Ac sicut illi de thesáuris suis mýsticas Dómino múnerum spécies obtulérunt, ita et nos de córdibus nostris, quæ Deo sunt digna, promámus.
Let all observance, then, be paid to this most sacred day, whereon the Author of our salvation was made manifest, and as the wise men fell down and worshiped Him in the manger, so let us fall down and worship Him enthroned Almighty in heaven. As they also opened their treasures and presented unto Him mystic and symbolic gifts, so let us strive to open our hearts to Him, and offer Him from thence some worthy offering.
Let us celebrate every Mass in such a way that we become shoeless Moses before the burning bush which is never consumed.
Let Mass make us Magi with sight and mind fixed in longing upon the beautiful, true and yet speechless Word, in whom transcendent glory was both hidden and revealed.
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Truth, beauty and Glory Himself!
I was was (somewhat) recently reading Augustino Steucho, one of the fathers at the Council of Trent. In his ‘De Philosophia Perennis’ he says:
In dictis igitur Magorum, a Zoroastre descendentium (etsi, quod fieri solet, ad superstitiones, vanissimumque daemonum, et elementorum cultum nonnumquam deflexerint) haec ad alia habentur: “panta exentelese pater, kai no paredoke deutero, hon proton kleizetai pan genos anthropon.” Hoc est: “Omnia perficit Pater, ac Menti tradidit secundae, quam vocat primam omne hominum genus.” Sic ait Theologia Magorum.
In the sayings if the Magi, therefore, (although, as was want to happen, they sometimes stooped off to superstitions, the vanity of demons, and worship of the elements) this is stated in another place: [the Greek and Latin are the same] The Father perfected all, and to Mind, being second, he gave that which he called first of all the race of men. Thus states the Theology of the Magi.
A densely packed statement. Augustino, like many others, believed that God had given to our first parents knowledge of the Logos and the coming incarnation, and that this knowledge had been preserved in a dark and aenigmatic manner by many of the gentile nations. And chiefly among the Persian Magi.
To worship with the Magi, who doubtless knew the significance of who they came to worship, is to go to Mass “ad contemplandam speciem [suae] celsitudinis” very much in the philosophical sense, to worship the “Mind” (Nous) to whom all things have been given by the Father.
Funny thing about true beauty— you never tire of it. As I was leaving out our lovely parish this morning a parishioner I regularly see at Mass turned to me and said, “I’m going to my car to get my phone. I gotta take a picture. It’s so beautiful inside.”
One thing that has struck me as I kneel at the communion rail waiting for the priest to move to me is that I am so close to the altar. For a brief moment I’m close & have full view of it. It’s beauty never fails to impress me. And I think to myself Heaven is even more beautiful.
Contrast that with shuffling forward in single file staring at the back of someone’s head.
Cavalier H: your reading is indeed recondite! And thanks for the translation – it’s difficult Latin. I think – and this is not to criticise, merely to elucidate – you may have forgotten this small piece, which nevertheless is historically interesting: ” … a Zoroastre descendentium…” . They were Zoroastrians, fire-worshippers, which seems to put them in the Persian (and that covered multitudes) tradition. As far as I know, ancient Zorastrians venerated Truth and hated
the Lie.
Which is quite appropriate, really.
What is beauty? I remember a post on your blog about silence … two men from Dante’s Inferno eating each other as I recall … one because he locked a man and his children in a tower, and the other because when his children were starving he refused to comfort them. I have been haunted by that post … **sigh** A little compassion … that would be beautiful to me, and that is something you almost never find in Catholic churches these days. They don’t have time for it.
I recall 1944/5 when I was six rather resenting having to go to Mass 6 times in 15 days. Sunday, Christmas, Sunday, Circumcision, Epiphany, Sunday all then of obligation in England. But rather than transferring the feasts it would make more sense to suppress the obligation when it falls on a Saturday or Monday and permit an “External Solemnity” on the Sunday.
Father your post makes me think of my experience last night. Visiting family in Rhode Island with a storm approaching we elected to go to a nearby church for the Saturday Night Novus Ordo. This particular church is beautiful inside and furthermore offers mass Ad Orientem and still remains its communion rail where communion is offered in the traditional manner. Propers sung in Latin and use of the Roman Canon. If every NO church offered mass in this manner that would go more towards promoting reverence for the Eucharist than any amount of haranguing people would.
The gifts of the Magi – gold for His kingship, frankincense for His divinity, and myrrh for his death to take away our sins – that should be reflected in our offerings also in that we recognize Jesus kingship, divinity, and saving grace ( from our homily)
I really struggled to read this entry – especially since it’s already a week old. But I never regret it when I read your meditations, so I soldered on. It was worth it:
I caught my breath reading those last two sentences. Powerful insights! This will change the way I approach Mass from now on, I’m sure! Thank you, Father!