Fr. Z's Blog

In the post-Conciliar calendar this is the “Second Sunday of Easter.”  It is sometimes called “Thomas Sunday” because of the Gospel reading about the doubting Apostle.  It is called “Quasimodo Sunday” for the first word of the opening chant, the Introit (cf. 1 Peter 2:2-3). 

Now it is often called “Mercy Sunday” because of the emphasis on the merciful dimension of God’s redemptive act celebrated at Easter. 

The new Collect for this Sunday (based on a prayer in the Missale Gothicum) for the 1970 and subsequent editions of the Roman Missal begins by calling God merciful.  The newest, third edition of the Missale Romanum of 2002 specifically labels this Sunday: Dominica II Paschae seu de divina Misericordia. 

Since ancient times this Sunday is called “Dominica in albis” or also “in albis depositis”… the Sunday of the “white robes having been taken off.”  1 Peter 2:2-3 says: “Like (Sicut modo – Vulgate) newborn babes (infantes), long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” Quasimodo and Sicut modo are interchangeable.  Quasimodo reflects a Latin Scripture version predating what became the Vulgate.  So, today’s Mass begins by exhorting the newly baptized. 

In the ancient Church the newly baptized were called infantes.  They wore their white baptismal robes for “octave” period after Easter during which they received special instruction from the bishop about the sacred mysteries and Christian life to which they were not admitted before the Vigil rites.  On this Sunday they removed their robes, which were deposited in the cathedral treasury as a perpetual witness to their vows.  They were then “out of the nest” of the bishop, as it were, on their own in living their Catholic lives daily.  St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) using the imagery of spring compares the newly baptized to little birds trying to fly from the nest while the parent birds flap around them and chirp noisily to encourage them (s. 376a).    

COLLECT – LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Deus misericordiae sempiternae,
qui in ipso paschalis festi recursu
fidem sacratae tibi plebis accendis,
auge gratiam quam dedisti,
ut digna omnes intellegentia comprehendant,
quo lavacro abluti, quo spiritu regenerati,
quo sanguine sunt redempti.

The use of those clauses starting with quo, having no conjunctions (a trope called asyndeton) gives this prayer a very forceful feeling.  I very much like that sole sunt (that goes with abluti…regenerati…redempti) imbedded elegantly in the last phrase.

WDTPRS is not complete without a look at the actual words which are the building blocks of the Collect.  Recursus is “a running back, return, a returning path.”  In reference to sight it is something that has power to bring back an image.  Recursus harks to the cyclical, “recurring” nature of the Paschal observance. 

We have the opportunity to experience the Paschal mysteries each year.  This is more than a memorial or re-enactment.  By baptism we participate in mysterious events completed once and for all time, but for us in the liturgical year they sacramentally take place again. 

According to the hardly mysterious Lewis & Short Dictionary, accendo means “to kindle anything above so that it burns downward” (the opposite of succendo or sub-cendo – to kindle from “below”, like the English “burn up” and “burn down”).  You kindle a candle from above.  Accendo is also “to set on fire, to kindle, light to light up, illuminate, to inflame a person or thing, to incite, to round up.”  This word delivers the fiery liturgical imagery of the Vigil: when Christians are baptized the Holy Spirit (depicted as fire) comes to dwell in them.  Intellegentia is “the power of discerning or understanding, discernment.” The vast verb comprehendo is too complex to treat comprehensively.  Literally it involves, “to lay hold of something on all sides.”  Think of … well… “comprehensive”.  Comprehendo also means, “take hold, grasp, seize” or negatively “attack, arrest.”  It is also “to perceive with the senses, observe.”  Especially it is to grasp with the mind, but in a thorough way (on all sides).  In the Collect we want to “grasp with a worthy power of understanding.”  This is a profoundly interiorized “grasping” in the sense of true possession.  

A lavacrum is a bath.  In Titus 3:5 we have, “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy (misericordiam), by the washing of regeneration (lavacrum regenerationis) and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us rightly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life (vv. 5-7, RSV).”  This refers to both the process and effects of baptism, worked in us by the mercy of God.

In our Collect is abluo, “to wash off, wash away, cleanse, purify.”  In classical Latin, abluo is used by Cicero (+43 BC) to describe a calming of the passions coming from a religious rite of washing away of sin (Tusc 4, 28, 60) and even by the poet philosopher Lucretius (+ AD 55) in De rerum natura to describe the removal of darkness by the bringing in of light (4, 378).  Early Latin speaking Christians lacked vocabulary to express their faith.  Abluo was ready made to be adapted to describe the effects of baptism.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
God of mercy,
you wash away our sins in water,
you give us new birth in the Spirit,
and redeem us in the blood of Christ.
As we celebrate Christ’s resurrection
increase our awareness of these blessings,
and renew your gift of life within us.

Do you want to know what the Latin prayer really says?

A LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God of eternal mercy,
who on this recurrence of the paschal feast
do kindle the faith of a people sanctified for Yourself,
increase the grace which You have given,
so that all may comprehend with worthy understanding
by what laver they were washed,
by what Spirit they were regenerated,
by what Blood they were redeemed.

In today’s Collect we pray that by the recurring sacred mysteries we veteran Christians and neophytes together as a People will be continually renewed and that our grasp of how we have been redeemed and the effects of that redemption will continually deepen.  We who were once set on fire with the indwelling of the Spirit, should want each day for God to rekindle us, burn us up again from above.  We want an increase of grace, faith that seeks to grasp, comprehend, understand ever more fully who He is, who we have become in Him.  Grace and faith come first, of course.  As the ancient adage goes: Nisi credideritis non intellegetis… Unless you will have first believed, you will not understand.  We can only go so far on our own.  Faith then brings to completion what reason begins to explore.

In a sermon addressed to the catechumens before their baptism at the Easter Vigil, St. Augustine used the imagery of light to help them understand who they were to become (cf. s. 223 and s. 260c):

“Keep the night Vigil humbly.  Pray humbly with devoted faith, solid hope, brightly burning charity, pondering what kind of day our splendor will be if our humility can turn night into day.  Thus, may God who ordered the light to blaze out of the dark make our hearts blaze brightly, that we may do on the inside something akin to what we have done with the lamps kindled within this house of prayer.  Let us furnish the true dwelling place of God, our consciences, with lamps of justice”.

Augustine (and our Church) wants Christians truly to “possess” these mysteries in a way that made a concrete difference.  The newly baptized infantes eventually put off their white robes and get to the business of living as Catholics. 

We who have done this already, perhaps long ago, must continue to wear them in our hearts.