Pentecost Friday
At NLM there is a great explanation of the Pentecost Roman Stations.
I find these historical details interesting because we find traces of ancient things in the traditional rites even today.
In any event, if I am to be believed, the Pentecost Friday Roman Station is Dodici Apostoli, Twelve Apostles, because that’s where Friday Ember Day Stations are. Believe me.
The texts of the Mass today are rather calming, as befits summery pursuits. Crops are planted. Early harvest of first fruits and grains are in. Other plantings and fruits are maturing. The days are long, warm, languid. There is always something to be done, but there is daylight for leisure.
The reading from Joel is about the harvest, and grain and wine and the gifts of God. The Antiphons and Gradual are all pretty joyful.
The Gospel is about the man whose friends lower him through the roof to get him to Jesus, who heals him. It’s a great moment in the Gospels.
Today in our Collect we have a return of the theme of “the enemy”.
Grant to Your Church, we beseech You, almighty God, that, united by the Holy Spirit, she may in no way be harmed by any assault of the enemy.
But for the most part, the overwhelming attitude of the Mass is joyful contentment with the abundant gifts of God.
Perhaps the idea of the enemy in the Collect, making a disturbance of the peace, is offset by the images of the paralytic man’s friends making a disturbance. Making a mess, but in a good sense.
Enemies tear houses apart. The man’s friends tore a hole in the roof. Both make disturbances, but with different scopes in mind and different outcomes.
The Postcommunion seems to echo what happened in the Gospel, thus tying our minds in the moment of Communion to the healing, strengthening effects of the Eucharist:
“We who have received the gift of Your Blessed Sacrament, O Lord, humbly pray that what You have taught us to do in commemoration of You, may profit and help us in our weakness.”
As I write, I have a thought of all your priests being the friends who tear a hole in the roof to get you to the Lord. The friends lowered the man. The priests bring the Lord down to you. The fabric of the roof is torn open.
The division of heaven from earth is ripped asunder and Christ is called down, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
But we have to turn this sock inside out. Even as this image takes form under my tapping fingers, it is really you lay people who are the ones who get that roof apart and get us priests to the Lord.
You do the heavy… lowering. We would be lost without you, frozen, unable to move.
Thank you for being our stretcher bearers.
And…
(1/2) Further on the suppression of the Octave of Pentecost in the Novus Ordo, here is a diagram of where the unique collects, secrets and postcommunions in the 1962 ended up in the 1970/2008 Missal, and how many orations were edited—note that one-third of them were deleted! https://t.co/wjMLHnVWg8 pic.twitter.com/eb2IgChKQR
— Matthew Hazell (@M_P_Hazell) May 24, 2024
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“The friends lowered the man. The priests bring the Lord down to you. The fabric of the roof is torn open”.
That’s a beautiful reflection, Father. Thank you. It’s particularly pertinent in the afterglow of the (20,000-strong) Chartres Pilgrimage, when our (mostly) young Priests walked with us, shared the gruelling hardships and brought us the Lord’s healing mercy in confession en route with copious spiritual guidance and unfailing cheerful fellowship.
As regards Matthew Hazell’s post quoting Abp. Bugnini: “… [it] is the octave Sunday after Easter. An octave of an octave is illogical.”
An “octave Sunday”??? Oh wow, talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for spurious justification. Not that they needed justification, they were going ahead with the bulldozers anyway – as had been long planned.
The ascerbic fellow reformer Fr. Bouyer said it all in regard to the former Nuncio to Tehran: ” [a] mealy-mouthed scoundrel… a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty…”
Et requiescant in pace, both he and Fr. B.
De mortuis…