at our retreat yesterday we discussed the "tension" of Palm Sunday celebration mixed with dread and sadness.. joy, passion and immense loss. A paradoxical day.
I often wonder why the passion gospel is read on Palm Sunday.
Maybe it is because in the Latin Rite, Good Friday is not an obligatory mass so this way more people will hear the story before Easter.
there is the reading of the Gospel about the entrance into Jerusalem. The blessing of the palms, a procession into church. then everything after that is not about the day he came to town but rather, what happens at the end of the week.
I know it all is supposed to work together - be held in tension as T stated - but I sometimes wonder if maybe it gets the short end of the stick. I mean, it is called Palm Sunday right? Then again, I have heard it called Passion Sunday. hmmmm
It's read on Passion Sunday (called more affectionately Palm Sunday because of the palms to commemorate Jesus' return to Nazareth) as the beginning of a week-long meditation - followed by a week of the Way of the Cross, special masses for Holy Thursday and Good Friday to highlight the Passion, and ending in the joy of Easter mass. Though Catholics see Good Friday as the significant day (i.e., Jesus died for our sins), yet Reformist Christians view Easter as the significant day (Jesus rose from the dead and conquered death to redeem us). Ascension Thursday (40 days after Easter = 40 (a number likening to the end of a hard testing time - e.g., the desert, Moses, Noah, etc.)) is when Jesus ascended into Haven leaving the apostles in fear and confusion. To complete the cycle, Penticost Sunday (technically 50 days after Easter = 5 (Protection) x 10 (Perfection) in numerology) where the Church historically began with the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, then this years' Palms are burned to ashes to use on Ash Wednesday of next year. Also, pre Vatican II, the Benediction (Magnificat) on First Friday was more common, a year long extension of The Passion, one of the last rites of the Catholic Church left from prior to the Vatican II reform - though Latin Masses in pre-Vatican II style are still valid and performed in some places.
Hmm, I guess 20 years of religious school DID pay off :-)
There is not now nor has there ever been an official prohibition of using latin in mass. the use of the local language was encouraged to enhance participation in areas where latin was no longer being taught which had the effect of making the mass a performance of arcane rituals. What was mandated regardless of language was Novus Ordo or the new order of the mass as compared to the Tridentine form. A lot of objections to the loss of latin are often confusions to the change to the N.O. Furthermore, those that are hung up on Tridentine don't realize how much that had changed over hundreds of years but used the same name.
There is no mass on Good Friday.
The last mass of the week is on Holy Thursday celebrated as the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus as he celebrated the paschal meal with his disciples. It is also the mass where the oils and chrism that was blessed by the Bishop or Archbishop the week before are presented to the priests and deacons who start the mass by prostrating themselves on the floor before the altar and renew their vows. It is also considered the institution of the priesthood. The oils will be used throughout the coming year for blessings and rituals most likely starting with the initiation of the elect during the Easter Vigil Mass.
The next mass celebrated is Easter starting with the Vigil Mass which highlights salvation history culminating in the Resurrection. It is performed after vespers time making it part of Easter Sunday (I use the reference to vespers because the sun doesn't always set early enough in some parts of the world to have the mass early enough for the parish population)
As Pope JPII often proclaimed during his long papacy - we are an EASTER people.
The palms are collected next year in the days and weeks preceding Ash Wednesday to be burned and used in the blessing. Ash Wednesday itself is also not a holy day of obligation.
T- one year when the company we buy palms from messed up the order, we cut spruce boughs from the pines on the church property and blessed and used them.
The Latin mass said today is different than the one pre Vatican II - the priest faces the people - the pre Vatican mass had the priest face the tabernacle for the entire ceremony - not just for the blessing of the Eucharist. It was more in line with the High Priest sacrifice of the Jewish tradition prior to the fall of the Second Temple. I was referring to that version of the mass - not that it was prohibited but is now considered to be archaic. The Benediction is of that old tradition as well - priest facing the tabernacle.
T - the pussy willows tradition is interesting - Вы говорите ро-украинский? Я изучил русского но я говорю очень бедно. :-)
the prayers that were said were those of the Tridentine mass. True, the priest faced the tabernacle but then the altar was on the wall right below the tabernacle. This was the east wall also drawing from Jewish tradition. the change to face the congregation, while allowing the inclusion of the gathered suddenly turned a lot priests facing west. Our priest faces east so if we were to move the altar to the back of the sanctuary, he would then face west. True enough for most modern churches.
An unfavorable aspect of new church designs is the placement of the tabernacle. Often times it is not set into the wall of the sanctuary but in a special chapel off to the side of the main worship space. While this has benefits in landmark churches that get a lot of tourists wandering through them, it has what most consider a detrimental effect on other parishes. It turns the main worship space into a large room without the Blessed Sacrament. It could be a gymnasium or the worship space of those protestant variations that do not believe in True Presence and unfortunately the reverence and respect that came with being in the presence of the Lord has gone with the tabernacle. Now people chat and laugh and joke which disturbs those that remain after mass to pray.
The Tridentine mass is considered archaic and requires special permission to pray. There are very few churches in full communion with the vatican that pray it on a regular basis.
There is movement a foot to bring back some of the changes. Using latin in the prayers is going to be a big mistake in my humble but totally accurate opinion. There issue is that some of the translations into the local vernacular have diluted some of the meanings of the words. I think that it will further alienate the parish the vast majority of who make as much sense of being dropped into a mosque in Iraq as to participating in a latin mass. Latin is a dead language for a reason.
It depends what you want and get out of prayer - some need to know the words and others need to know the intent. The latter sometimes feel spiritually closer to the prayer when they use the original language/words as it brings with it a vast tradition spanning generations - pretty awesome if you ask me. Reform and Conservative Judaism have struggled with this concept for about 300 years...
And Latin is not dead, it's just mostly dead - that is, it's not spoken - it's used by the Roman Catholic Church for official documents - they've even modernized it to include words for 20th century items like television etc. In fact, the version of Latin used by the church, Ecclesiastical Latin of the middle ages is not what was spoken at the time - Ceasar spoke Vulgar Latin, an older form, which has basically retained it's pronunciations most closely in modern day Portuguese. The rules of grammar are generally the same (except for Ceasar's crappy idiomatic exceptions to rules) as is the spelling, but the spoken dialect is very different.
I am going to have to agree with Fr K ( previous pastor at my church) If I can't speak the language or think it fluently how can I pray with all my being?
very interesting discussion - fascinating stuff Same with eastern - it was in old Slavonic until V2 - and even at that the language is not quite contemporary in the liturgies and services. I don't speak Russian - I under stood most of what was written up there - by the Anonymous One... but my Ukrainian has no Russian in it at all - the immigrant Ukrainian spoken in the early 1900s and the vocabulary is quite different. t
14 comments:
at our retreat yesterday we discussed the "tension" of Palm Sunday celebration mixed with dread and sadness.. joy, passion and immense loss. A paradoxical day.
But Lent is over and the passion begins.
T
I often wonder why the passion gospel is read on Palm Sunday.
Maybe it is because in the Latin Rite, Good Friday is not an obligatory mass so this way more people will hear the story before Easter.
there is the reading of the Gospel about the entrance into Jerusalem. The blessing of the palms, a procession into church. then everything after that is not about the day he came to town but rather, what happens at the end of the week.
I know it all is supposed to work together - be held in tension as T stated - but I sometimes wonder if maybe it gets the short end of the stick. I mean, it is called Palm Sunday right? Then again, I have heard it called Passion Sunday. hmmmm
~R
It's read on Passion Sunday (called more affectionately Palm Sunday because of the palms to commemorate Jesus' return to Nazareth) as the beginning of a week-long meditation - followed by a week of the Way of the Cross, special masses for Holy Thursday and Good Friday to highlight the Passion, and ending in the joy of Easter mass. Though Catholics see Good Friday as the significant day (i.e., Jesus died for our sins), yet Reformist Christians view Easter as the significant day (Jesus rose from the dead and conquered death to redeem us). Ascension Thursday (40 days after Easter = 40 (a number likening to the end of a hard testing time - e.g., the desert, Moses, Noah, etc.)) is when Jesus ascended into Haven leaving the apostles in fear and confusion. To complete the cycle, Penticost Sunday (technically 50 days after Easter = 5 (Protection) x 10 (Perfection) in numerology) where the Church historically began with the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, then this years' Palms are burned to ashes to use on Ash Wednesday of next year. Also, pre Vatican II, the Benediction (Magnificat) on First Friday was more common, a year long extension of The Passion, one of the last rites of the Catholic Church left from prior to the Vatican II reform - though Latin Masses in pre-Vatican II style are still valid and performed in some places.
Hmm, I guess 20 years of religious school DID pay off :-)
very informative. I find the numerology aspect interesting. Never new this.
We get pussy willows rather than palms... no palms in Ukraine so he willow tradition carried over with immigrants to North America.
t
knew even... roll eyes... you'd think I'd no better.
t
There is not now nor has there ever been an official prohibition of using latin in mass. the use of the local language was encouraged to enhance participation in areas where latin was no longer being taught which had the effect of making the mass a performance of arcane rituals. What was mandated regardless of language was Novus Ordo or the new order of the mass as compared to the Tridentine form. A lot of objections to the loss of latin are often confusions to the change to the N.O. Furthermore, those that are hung up on Tridentine don't realize how much that had changed over hundreds of years but used the same name.
There is no mass on Good Friday.
The last mass of the week is on Holy Thursday celebrated as the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus as he celebrated the paschal meal with his disciples. It is also the mass where the oils and chrism that was blessed by the Bishop or Archbishop the week before are presented to the priests and deacons who start the mass by prostrating themselves on the floor before the altar and renew their vows. It is also considered the institution of the priesthood. The oils will be used throughout the coming year for blessings and rituals most likely starting with the initiation of the elect during the Easter Vigil Mass.
The next mass celebrated is Easter starting with the Vigil Mass which highlights salvation history culminating in the Resurrection. It is performed after vespers time making it part of Easter Sunday (I use the reference to vespers because the sun doesn't always set early enough in some parts of the world to have the mass early enough for the parish population)
As Pope JPII often proclaimed during his long papacy - we are an EASTER people.
The palms are collected next year in the days and weeks preceding Ash Wednesday to be burned and used in the blessing. Ash Wednesday itself is also not a holy day of obligation.
T- one year when the company we buy palms from messed up the order, we cut spruce boughs from the pines on the church property and blessed and used them.
~R
The Latin mass said today is different than the one pre Vatican II - the priest faces the people - the pre Vatican mass had the priest face the tabernacle for the entire ceremony - not just for the blessing of the Eucharist. It was more in line with the High Priest sacrifice of the Jewish tradition prior to the fall of the Second Temple. I was referring to that version of the mass - not that it was prohibited but is now considered to be archaic. The Benediction is of that old tradition as well - priest facing the tabernacle.
T - the pussy willows tradition is interesting - Вы говорите ро-украинский? Я изучил русского но я говорю очень бедно. :-)
Can you translate that last for the rest of the class? Thanks
the prayers that were said were those of the Tridentine mass. True, the priest faced the tabernacle but then the altar was on the wall right below the tabernacle. This was the east wall also drawing from Jewish tradition. the change to face the congregation, while allowing the inclusion of the gathered suddenly turned a lot priests facing west. Our priest faces east so if we were to move the altar to the back of the sanctuary, he would then face west. True enough for most modern churches.
An unfavorable aspect of new church designs is the placement of the tabernacle. Often times it is not set into the wall of the sanctuary but in a special chapel off to the side of the main worship space. While this has benefits in landmark churches that get a lot of tourists wandering through them, it has what most consider a detrimental effect on other parishes. It turns the main worship space into a large room without the Blessed Sacrament. It could be a gymnasium or the worship space of those protestant variations that do not believe in True Presence and unfortunately the reverence and respect that came with being in the presence of the Lord has gone with the tabernacle. Now people chat and laugh and joke which disturbs those that remain after mass to pray.
The Tridentine mass is considered archaic and requires special permission to pray. There are very few churches in full communion with the vatican that pray it on a regular basis.
There is movement a foot to bring back some of the changes. Using latin in the prayers is going to be a big mistake in my humble but totally accurate opinion. There issue is that some of the translations into the local vernacular have diluted some of the meanings of the words. I think that it will further alienate the parish the vast majority of who make as much sense of being dropped into a mosque in Iraq as to participating in a latin mass. Latin is a dead language for a reason.
~R
I asked if T spoke Ukranian and told her I speak rotten Russian :-)
It depends what you want and get out of prayer - some need to know the words and others need to know the intent. The latter sometimes feel spiritually closer to the prayer when they use the original language/words as it brings with it a vast tradition spanning generations - pretty awesome if you ask me. Reform and Conservative Judaism have struggled with this concept for about 300 years...
And Latin is not dead, it's just mostly dead - that is, it's not spoken - it's used by the Roman Catholic Church for official documents - they've even modernized it to include words for 20th century items like television etc. In fact, the version of Latin used by the church, Ecclesiastical Latin of the middle ages is not what was spoken at the time - Ceasar spoke Vulgar Latin, an older form, which has basically retained it's pronunciations most closely in modern day Portuguese. The rules of grammar are generally the same (except for Ceasar's crappy idiomatic exceptions to rules) as is the spelling, but the spoken dialect is very different.
I am going to have to agree with Fr K ( previous pastor at my church)
If I can't speak the language or think it fluently how can I pray with all my being?
~R
Since Latin is no longer learned as a native language by a speech community - it is a dead, not extinct, language.
very interesting discussion - fascinating stuff
Same with eastern - it was in old Slavonic until V2 - and even at that the language is not quite contemporary in the liturgies and services.
I don't speak Russian - I under stood most of what was written up there - by the Anonymous One... but my Ukrainian has no Russian in it at all - the immigrant Ukrainian spoken in the early 1900s and the vocabulary is quite different.
t
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