April 2024 Newsletter & Readings
Surrexit Christus, Alleluia, Alleluia!
Greetings,
I hope this newsletter finds you enjoying a blessed Easter season!
In February, I noted that one of the Lenten monastic traditions I’ve become attached to is the “Burying of the Alleluia,” when the word “Alleluia” is written out on parchment or paper and buried on Septuagesima Sunday. Of course, this symbolizes the fact that throughout Lent the liturgy essentially banishes the word entirely. Indeed, one way I’ve come to look upon Holy Saturday is as an opportunity to reflect upon what the world would might be like if the last two millennia had never been shaped by the promise and fact of the Lord’s Resurrection, and, as a result, if we had no reason to sing “Alleluia” at all.
Well, now comes the payoff, as beginning with the Easter Vigil and continuing throughout the Easter season the liturgy allows us to more than make up for the silence of the preceding weeks. If, as St. Augustine famously observed, “to sing once is to pray twice,” then the number of Alleluias that flow through the liturgy during these weeks make Easter a season of practically endless prayer and praise.
This month, in addition to noting some of the saints whose feast days we’ll be celebrating, I’ve selected a passage from a recent book by Abbé Claude Barthe, a French traditionalist priest and a professor at the international seminary of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. As the title suggest, Abbé Barthe focuses on the symbolism of the TLM as well as its historical development. The passage below briefly describes how the early “clerical composers” aimed to develop a style of Latin that, more than simply communicating the intentions of the liturgical prayers, also utilized “rhetorical rhythms and registers” that rose to the level of poetic praise.
A blessed and happy Easter to you all!
In Domino,
Jeff Rowe
Readings
Excerpt: A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning
Abbé Claude Barthe, p. 78
On the development of “Liturgical Prose”:
“From the stylistic point of view, the priestly prayers (apart of course from the Pater noster) are the best example of the liturgical language that the Church of Rome created when Latin was first used in worship. They are typical of the Late Antique rhetoric in which their clerical composers of the fourth century, and above all, of the fifth and sixth centuries, were trained, adapted to the particular artistic prose of the liturgy, with a rhythm, a vocabulary, and a taste that is sober and solemn. The style found in the great liturgical prayers (the orations, the Preface, the Canon) is that of the elogium, the panegyric style (the celebratio), intended to produce a speech thanking God in the way that one might thank an emperor or a magistrate, or conversely to thank the magistrate and emperor in the way that one might thank God. The Prefaces in their diverse and very numerous forms (those of the Mass; those for the consecration of an object, such as the Paschal candle; of the church; of a person, such as an ordinand, a Father Abbot, a consecrated virgin, the king, etc.) are the incontestable evidence.
For this purpose liturgical prose makes use of different Roman rhetorical registers—the petition, the supplication, the celebration—and of stylistic devices highly valued by the very literate, including antitheses (earthly goods vis-à-vis heavenly goods, for example), parallelism and balance, asyndeton (between nouns or adjectives, for example), assonance (repetition of a sound), hyperbaton (separation of a subject from its verb, of a noun from its qualifier), chiasmus, and wordplay with similar-sounding words, paronomasia, etc. The literary success of this renewal of Latin solemnity and of the Roman gravitas is the achievement of a Christian Rome that was determined to surpass the ancients in the honor of Christ. The best examples of this style are the Collects, with their rhythm, their concision, their balanced antitheses, their oratorical flow; as also are the Prefaces; and, with its tone at once solemn and well constructed, the unsurpassable masterpiece of Christian Latinity, a sublime piece of poetry in prose: the Roman Canon. This liturgical Latin of Late Antiquity became a mold imparting its shape to a greater or lesser extent to all the subsequent compositions; much as the basilican plan, reinterpreted by Christian worship, remained visible in all the subsequent architectural variations.”
Excerpt:The Liturgical Year
Very Rev. Dom Prosper Guéranger Abbot of Solesmes, 1833-1875
April 11 –Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
One of the grandest Saints in the Church’s Calendar is brought before us today. Leo, the Pontiff and Doctor, rises on the Paschal horizon, and calls for our admiration and love. As his name implies, he is the Lion of holy Church; thus representing, in his own person, one of the most glorious of our Lord’s titles. There have been twelve Popes who have had this name, and five of the number are enrolled in the catalogue of Saints; but not one of them has so honored the name as he whose feast we keep today: hence, he is called “Leo the Great.”
He deserved the appellation by what he did for maintaining the faith regarding the sublime mystery of the Incarnation. The Church had triumphed over the heresies that had attacked the dogma of the Trinity, when the gates of hell sought to prevail against the dogma of God having been made Man. Nestorius, a Bishop of Constantinople, impiously taught that there were two distinct Persons in Christ—the Person of the Divine Word, and the Person of Man. The Council of Ephesus condemned this doctrine, which, by denying the unity of Person in Christ, destroyed the true notion of the Redemption. A new heresy, the very opposite of that of Nestorianism, but equally subversive of Christianity, soon followed. The monk Eutyches maintained that, in the Incarnation, the Human Nature was absorbed by the Divine. The error was propagated with frightful rapidity. There was needed a clear and authoritative exposition of the great dogma, which is the foundation of all our hopes. Leo arose, and, from the Apostolic Chair, on which the Holy Ghost had placed him, proclaimed with matchless eloquence and precision the formula of the ancient faith—ancient, indeed, and ever the same, yet ever acquiring greater and fresher brightness. A cry of admiration was raised at the General Council of Chalcedon, which had been convened for the purpose of condemning the errors of Eutyches. “Peter,” exclaimed the Fathers, “Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo!”
April 21 – Saint Anselm, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
A monk, a Bishop, a Doctor of the Church—such was the Saint whose feast comes to gladden us on this twenty-first day of April. He was a martyr, also, at least in desire, and we may add, in merit too—for he did enough to earn the glorious palm. When we think of Anselm, we picture to ourselves a man in whom are combined the humility and meekness of the cloister with the zeal and courage of the episcopal dignity; a man who was both a sage and a saint; a man whom it was impossible not to love and respect.
He left his native country of Piedmont for the Monastery of Bec in France, where he became a Benedictine monk. Being elected Superior, he realized in himself the type of an Abbot, as drawn by St. Benedict in his Rule: “He that is made Abbot,” says the holy Patriarch, “should study to give help rather than to give commands.” (The Holy Rule, ch. 64) We read that the love entertained for Anselm by his brethren was beyond description. His whole time was devoted to them, either in giving them spiritual direction, or in communicating to them his own sublime knowledge of the sacred sciences. After governing them for several years, he was taken from them, and compelled to accept the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury.
April 25 – Saint Mark, Evangelist
The Cycle of holy mother Church brings before us today, the Lion, who, together with the Man, the Ox and the Eagle, stands before the Throne of God. (Ezechiel 1:10) It was on this day, that Mark ascended from earth to heaven, radiant with his triple aureole of Evangelist, Apostle, and Martyr.
As the preaching made to Israel had its four great representatives, — Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and Daniel; so, likewise, would God have the New Covenant to be embodied in the four Gospels, which were to make known to the world the Life and teachings of his divine Son. The Holy Fathers tell us, that the Gospels are like the four streams which watered the Garden of pleasure, (Genesis 2:10) and that this Garden was a figure of the future Church. The first of the Evangelists, — the first to register the actions and words of our Redeemer, — is Matthew, whose star will rise in September; the second is Mark, whose brightness gladdens us today; the third is Luke, whose rays will shine upon us in October; the fourth is John, whom we have already seen in Bethlehem, at the Crib of our Emmanuel.
Mark was the beloved disciple of Peter; he was the brilliant satellite of the Sun of the Church. He wrote his Gospel at Rome, under the eyes of the Prince of the Apostles. The Church was already in possession of the history given by Matthew; but the Faithful of Rome wished their own Apostle to narrate what he had witnessed. Peter refused to write it himself, but he bade his disciple take up his pen, and the Holy Ghost guided the hand of the new Evangelist. Mark follows the account given by Matthew; he abridges it, and yet he occasionally adds a word, or an incident, which plainly prove to us that Peter, who had seen and heard all, was his living and venerated authority. One would have almost expected, that the new Evangelist would pass over in silence the history of his master’s fall, or,, at least, have said as little as possible about it but no, — the Gospel written by Mark is more detailed on Peter’s denial than is that of Matthew; and as we read it, we cannot help feeling, that the tears, elicited by Jesus’ look, when in the house of Caiphas, were flowing down the Apostle’s cheeks, as he described the sad event. Mark’s work being finished, Peter examined it and gave it his sanction the several Churches joyfully received this second account of the mysteries of the world’s redemption, and the name of Mark was made known throughout the whole earth.