PRAYERCAzT: Singing the 2024 Christmas Proclamation or Kalendas in Latin (audio), – and a hard ASK FATHER question

First, the Kalendas.

For years I’ve posted about this.  It was/is a custom for centuries before Mass begins to sing the Kalendas, the solemn announcement of the birth of the Savior at Prime.

Since Prime isn’t being sung in many places, and since we need to have these good customs in far greater use, sing it before Midnight Mass in the Vetus Ordo. The Novus Ordo too. Why not?

In the proclamation, the birth of Christ follows a list of important events, set points in history, which therefore puts the birth of Christ into the context of the history of salvation, beginning with the Creation of the world and culminating in the Nativity.

In the ancient world there was no standard calendar. One way to pinpoint events was to say what else was going on at the time according to other reckonings of time. The overlap of the dates would then give you the desired result, like a chronological Venn Diagram. The overlapping of the dates of the events cited in the Proclamation results in an accurate dating of the Nativity, that is 3/2 BC. There is good scholarship that reinforces 3/2 BC and cleans up a dating error for the year of Herod’s death.

The older Roman Martyrology has the notation for the Modus Ordinarius. It is rather like the “prophecy tone” and you raise the pitch at certain places.

There is a fancier rendering which is provided by Cappella Gregoriana Sanctæ Cæciliæ olim Xicatunensis. HERE

Here’s what the Kalendas sounds like more or less, if you can stand my singing.

The eighth Kalends of January. The 24th Moon. In the 5199th year from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; In the 2957th year from the flood; In the 2015th year from the birth of Abraham; In the 1510th year from the exodus of the people of Israel out of Egypt under Moses; In the 1032nd year from the anointing of David as King; In the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel; In the 194th Olympiad; In the 752nd year from the foundation of the city of Rome; In the 42nd year of the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus; In the 6th age of the world; While the whole earth was at peace, Jesus Christ, Eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father, desiring to hallow the world by His most merciful coming, having been conceived of the Holy Ghost, and once nine months passed after His conception, was born of the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem of Judah, made Man. The Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Keep in mind there is also on Epiphany the singing of the announcement of the moveable feasts for 2023, the Noveritis, “Let y’all know”, which does change quite a bit from year to year for obvious reasons.

And now the other part.

From a priest reader…

QUAERITUR:

Dear Fr. Z,

Happy Ember Day. I suppose you are about to post the Kalendas for Christmas. I have a related question that perhaps you would like to address.

Do you know how the date for the creation of the world was derived? It is quite a bit shorter than the patriarchal timeline of the Biblical genealogy based on the Masoretic/Vulgate. And far shorter than the SP/LXX/Byzantine.

I am interested for a number of reasons. The Jews seem to have had prophecies, such as in the Talmud, that the Messiah would come after 4000 years. And also that the world would end after 6000, with prophecies of the Messiah as well. Some early Christians accepted this.

I have been very much enjoying reading the complete Ignatius Study Bible. But their notes for Genesis dismiss all the lifespans of the patriarchs. I don’t see why. Fr. Ripperger has aligned himself in the past with the Kolbe Center, which teaches young earth creationism. He seems to think it is possible anyway.

I just don’t understand how the Kalendas date could be about 600 years off. Why wouldn’t they just add up the dates from the Vulgate?

I question the motivation of the following organization, but I found this essay quite fascinating:
https://armstronginstitute.org/853-the-chronological-debate-from-adam-to-abraham-in-defense-of-the-masoretic-text

In Domino,… Fr. NA

So…

I just don’t understand how the Kalendas date could be about 600 years off. Why wouldn’t they just add up the dates from the Vulgate?

Okay.  I’m going to hand this off to the readership.  I suspect there is a Smarticus Pantsicus out there who will know something about this.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, PRAYERCAzT: What Does The (Latin) Prayer Really Sound L, SESSIUNCULA and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

5 Comments

  1. Patrick-K says:

    I’m not sure about the date differences, but if anyone thinks that science has disproven young earth creationism, keep in mind that since it is an event in the past, it is necessarily speculation based on interpolation. It cannot be proven in the way that say Newton’s laws can, since those can be observed directly. The “old earth” theories take as an a priori axiom that the Flood narrative is false, that there was never any cataclysmic event, and that the slow-moving processes we observe today (like rivers flowing) must be responsible for geological features. (So, in that view, the Earth must be very old.) THEN they interpret geology using that framework. The “no Flood” framework is NOT based on evidence but is the lens through which they view the evidence. There is a lot of evidence for a Flood if you don’t preemptively disallow it. Also, the reason they are so touchy about young Earth theories is that they align with the Biblical narrative and make Darwinian evolution impossible. Not because there is no evidence.

  2. JR says:

    According to the calendar of the (perfidious) Jews, we are in the year 5,785, which perhaps accounts for the c. 600 year discrepancy.

    So,… Roughly, one may ruminate that the Second Coming is a further 215 years away. 6 (six) is the number of man: if represented in, say, dots, it looks a bit like a 7 (seven), the number of God, though has no middle or ballast and is divisible.

    I doubt very much that our divine Lord veiled Himself in humanity in 3/2 B.C., given the (holy) significance of ’33’ (and one-third; Easter is c. one third of the way through the year and He was born a week prior to annual commencement).

    One must remember that Scripture is ‘Creative’ writing; viz., it is the ‘Writing’ of the Creator and these sort of details are important.

    Our Lord first shed His Blood on the Octave of His Nativity, in accord with Jewish Law (circumcision) and, so as new year’s day is the Octave of Christ’s Mass, so is this day of salience in the commencement of the New Covenant.

    Numbers are important. The great penitential psalm, Miserere, is the 50th chapter of the Psalter; thus, one can draw a line to Jubilee years, the 50th year.

    Similarly, perhaps – my personal ruminations only – the ‘Angel Psalm’ is No. 90: there are 9 choirs.

    Perhaps from this, in a sense, comes the number of the Beast: the dragon swept 1/3 out of heaven, a third of 9 is 3 and a fallen 9 resembles a ‘6’. Though keeping their inherent angelic ‘nature’ or ‘wiring’, they fell into sin, joining, in a sense, man after his fall into original sin.

  3. smithUK says:

    Quite right, Patrick-K.

    It is also linked with a misunderstanding of what is meant by ‘science’. In modern times, science is purely equated with ‘natural science’, thus excluding philosophy and theology as sciences, too (ie. subjects with a systematic method for exploring and testing knowledge and ideas). Questions such as the age and origin of the world are very much theological and philosophical questions; natural science has a contribution to make too, but they are not the be all and end all.

    Rock dating methods used to age the earth’s strata, when applied to the newly formed rock from Mt St Helen’s 1980 eruption, lead to the conclusion that the rocks are 40 million years old. The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field, and its rate of decay in strength, suggest it was formed about 6000 years ago. If the solar system were really billions of years old, why does it have asteroids and comets still present in it? The rate of mutation of the human genome, as judged by mitocondrial DNA, extrapolated backwards suggests that humans are only a few thousand years old. I have probably explained these points not very well here – see the excellent resources on the Kolbe centre website for a more accurate rendering. And sure, you can dismiss all these points with various naturalistic assumptions and ad hoc add-ons, but if these are motivated by the force of one’s prior philosophical view (that the straight forward account of origins believed for millennia by the Church is wrong) why should we believe you?

  4. JR says:

    This concise post by Fr. David Nix should answer all questions, and then some:

    https://padreperegrino.org/2024/12/xeverommartyr/

  5. EAW says:

    Sadly no Kalendas preceding the otherwise beautiful and edifying Midnight Mass (TLM, Solemn High Mass) I attended. I’m grateful that I can.

Comments are closed.