Pentecost Saturday: We Are Our Rites – Wherein Fr. Z rants

Today, Pentecost Saturday, 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 have been 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 anniversary of my ordination at St. Peter’s, Trinity Sunday in 1991.

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 Alleluiatic festivity 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.

Sounds like an eclipse.

The Person of our Lord is often blanked out and blackened by the unworthy men who are His priestly mediators.  When you look on them, and see their faults, try to remember who is directly on the other side in blazing glory, making possible what we do in our liturgical rites.

And when a priest gets anything right… non nobis, Domine, non nobis.

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. Start with “heat”.

The account in Leviticus is about Shavuot and the wave-offering of the oven-baked first fruits, loaves of bread.

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 cast 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 that even bishops can be embarrassed by such things today.  Bishops are the true and chief exorcist in the diocese and all others are delegates.  Bishops should set the example in exorcising left, right and center!  Why do they let the prince of this world run unchecked?

How I long to see bishops to set examples of solemn worship.

What’s going on now sure isn’t working.

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 and actions of Catholic politicians and clergy.

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.

Turn up the heat, for the love of God and all that is holy!

But, no. They talk talk talk in their bourgeois black suits and their slim apologetic neck chains connected to the Cross which they hide in their pockets.  It’s as if they are laid out prostrate from the heat of this world’s fever swamp and they can’t get up.

No, wait.. some of them do get up, long enough to smash down some tradition-loving Catholics who just want to be left alone.  But I digress.

We must PRAY for our bishops!

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

Am I wrong?

The Postcommunion today:

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

May your Holy Sacraments supply us 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.