Fr. Z's Blog

In ancient times, fewer prayers and rites surrounded the reception of the Eucharist. By the time of St. Augustine of Hippo (+430), the recitation of the Pater Noster or Lord’s Prayer was a regular feature of Mass.  He often mentions reciting the Our Father.   In ancient times, everyone would have said the Our Father aloud.  In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, however, and for many centuries the priest alone would sing or recite the Our Father, though in the 20th century some permissions were given also for the congregation to say or sing it.

The present location of the Our Father – in some liturgies it comes at a different moment – goes back to St. Gregory the Great (+604).  By having the Our Father recited after the Canon, Gregory was accused of introducing a Greek practice.  Before, it seems that the Our Father was recited immediately before Communion rather than immediately after the Canon.  Gregory explained himself in a letter to a certain Bishop John of Syracuse in Sicily (cf. Bk. 9, ep. 26).  The Apostles, according to Gregory, simply consecrated the Eucharist and everything else was an addition.  Gregory reasoned that if some other prayer was going to be said then the Lord’s Prayer had to have precedence.  (We’ve learned a few things since G’s day.) So, the priest recited the prayer while standing over the Eucharistic elements on the altar in much the same manner as he recited the Canon itself.  This certain gave stress to the importance of the prayer.

As the liturgical scholar Joseph Jungmann explains in his Mass of the Roman Rite, the Lord’s Prayer was even seen as being a summation of the Canon:

“The sanctificetur is a synopsis of the triple Sanctus; the adveniat regnum tuum is a kind of epitome of the two epiklesis prayers: Quam oblationem and Supplices; and the fiat voluntas tua sets forth the basic idea regarding obedience from which all sacrifice must proceed.  The spirit and disposition in which our Lord Himself had offered up His sacrifice hand which we must draw from our co-performance of it, could hardly have been expressed more cogently.”

It is by the instruction of the Lord Himself that we pray the Our Father.  He taught us this prayer.  Nevertheless, it is truly audacious to ask for those things we petition when we recite it.

St. Augustine speaks about why we say the Our Father at Mass.  He says it is like washing one’s face before going to the altar to communicate (… ut his verbis lota facie ad altare accedamus, ut his verbis lota facie corpora Christi et sanguini communicemus – s. 17,5).  The Doctor of Grace explains:

“Why is it spoken before the reception of Christ’s Body and Blood?  For the following reason: If perchance, in consequence of human frailty, our thought seized on something indecent, if our tongue spoke something unjust, if our eye was turned to something unseemly, if our ear listened complacently to something unnecessary… it is blotted out by the Lord’s Prayer in the passage ‘forgive us our trespasses’, so that we may approach in peace and so that we may not eat or drink what we receive unto judgment.” (s. 229,3)

When Ash Wednesday comes we will reaffirm that we are dust.

Yet here we stand, in the presence of Christ on the altar, and raise these petitions.

It was the practice of Augustine’s flock to strike their breasts at the words “forgive us our sins”, so much so that it made a great noise in the Church.

Saying the Our Father during Mass, in the preparatory rites for receiving Communion, is just “the next thing we have to do during Mass”.

Let’s have a look at the introduction or invitation the priest speaks for the recitation of the Our Father.

It is perhaps symptomatic of the attitude of those of assemble, and approved, the Sacramentary with the lame-duck ICEL version still in use that several optional formulae were given in addition to the actual text in the Missale Romanum.  Those were the days when both tinkeritis and optionitis reigned supreme, so much so that priests and people alike got the sense that we could do or saying anything we wanted.

Instead, the Latin text gives one text to be said or sung:

LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Praeceptis salutaribus moniti, et divina institutione formati, audemus dicere:…

I found this at CMR:

You know there’s a looooooong history to a story like this. But here’s the upshot as it’s being reported. A priest had a mother and her daughter ticketed by police for tresspasing after it was reported that the woman’s daughter spit out the host in the parking lot after a previous Mass.

The DestinLog reports:

Navarre resident Jackie Trebesh said she was flabbergasted and irritated when a Catholic priest denied her and her daughter Holy Communion, and then had a Santa Rosa County deputy pull her over.

She said she was so surprised by the actions of The Rev. John Kelly at St. Sylvester’s Catholic Church in Gulf Breeze she thought at first she was being “pranked.”

“He’s not God. He can’t do that to people,” she said.

Trebesh said she and her 19-year-old daughter Rachel attended a Friday morning service and were turned away when they approached the priest to take Holy Communion.

Trebesh said Kelly told them, as he denied them communion, that he would explain his actions after the mass had ended.

She said she decided not to wait around for the end of the service and had left the church parking lot when a deputy pulled her over.

Trebesh said the deputy informed her that Kelly had requested the traffic stop. She and her daughter were issued trespass warnings.

The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office and the Catholic Church confirmed much of her story, but said there were justifiable reasons for their actions.

According to Trebesh, she learned the reason she was denied communion was because someone at the church had seen the daughter dispose of the host, as it is called, improperly in the church parking lot.

The Catholic Church believes the wafer provided during Holy Communion to have been transformed during the mass to the actual body of Christ.

“The matter of disposing of the Eucharist in an inappropriate way is a serious matter to us,” Peggy Dekeyser, the communications officer for the diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee said in confirming Trebesh’s theory.

Trebesh said the only thing she could think of that Kelly or anyone else might have seen her daughter do was “spit out a piece of gum in the parking lot.”

Asked if the substance of the item Rachel Trebesh was seen disposing of had been verified, Dekeyser declined comment.

Sgt. Scott Haines with the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office verified the fact Trebesh was pulled over as she left St. Sylvester’s Church. He said the church had requested Trebesh be given a trespass warning.

“We issued the trespass warning on behalf of the church,” Haines said. “They were banned from being on the property.”

The diocese’s spokesperson said they’d be willing to speak further to the woman and her daughter concerning the issue.

You know this sadly won’t be the end of this story.

All I can think is that I wish we could have this priest transferred over to Nancy Pelosi’s parish.

This isn’t going to be pretty.

Z-CAM is ON.  Click HERE to view it and go to the chat room.

I recommend using the CHAT tab, rather than the SOCIAL STREAM tab.

I think for CHAT you have to sign in to Ustream. I won’t be around in the chatroom very much.

And I cannot control the stupid ads in the video stream.

And there is this. I cannot control the stupid advertisements, which are imposed by Ustream unless I pay foolish quantities of money. My adblocker obliterates them when I am using Firefox. I still see them in Chrome… gotta find another ad blocker, I guess.

Free live streaming by Ustream