LITURGY

We offer this year for our series of articles on liturgy an exploration of different aspects of liturgical time. The days, the weeks, the seasons – the variety of ways in which the temporality of liturgical life is expressed here at Portsmouth.

The ordo of the EBC lies open in the sacristy chapel

The Candles and the Colors.  This article was prompted by a curious consideration of candles. The weekly visitor to the church will notice that there are six candles on the altar, with all being lit each Sunday for Mass. But at daily Mass, one may find at times two lit, or four. An occasional weekday may even turn out to be, as an anonymous faculty member once said, a “Six-Candle Special.” The careful observer may also detect that the color of the vestments typically will change when additional candles are lit. A yet more astute eye will notice days when the principal celebrant’s chasuble and the priests’ stoles are of one color, while the tabernacle cloth does not match. Did someone forget to change the tabernacle covering? Well, it has happened. But there is more often an intentional strategy at work here, running through the two-candle green of an Ordinary feria to the most elaborate of “Six-Candle Specials.” So why the candles and the colors? This question may sound a bit persnickety, but inquiring minds like to know. 

 

 

In fact, the message sent from the simple flicker of candles on the altar contains a great deal of information. It is a statement of value, of meaning, of memory. The liturgical cues of candle and color provide for us a context for each liturgy and connect us to the entire history of faith handed down over generations. And they link us in our local community, here at Portsmouth, to its unique tradition, announcing our own special relationship to the saint of the day, or to the feast of the universal church in which we participate. One could speak of our ordo, our calendar of liturgical practice, as a confluence of various streams of tradition. Or perhaps we should speak of one single unbroken stream of apostolic tradition, joined and strengthened by additional streams that merge with it and widen it along its journey. This Apostolic Stream flows from the universal faith of the Church, whose mission of evangelization has now extended across continents and centuries, and been taken up in the diverse lives of saints and saintly communities. This ever-widening stream passes by our own front door, “by the wayside”, a stream of sanctity informing our liturgical life. It is expressed in the colors we choose and the candles we illuminate.

A Community of the Universal Church. Perhaps a question more fundamental than why two or six candles are lit is to ask why there should be any candle lit at all. The Catholic Encyclopedia guides us here in our understanding of all of our liturgical celebrations: “The starting-point of the Christian system of feasts was of course the commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ on Easter day.” This is, in effect, the “gold standard” of feasts, and here at Portsmouth, as throughout the universal church, any memorial or feast must defer to the precedence of this Blessed Commemoration. The weekly precedence of Sunday, “the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7), is echoed in the annual primacy of the Christian Passover in the Holy Triduum. Years, centuries, and millennia, rippling out from their baptismal beginnings, have resonated with and expanded this resurrection feast, expressing it in new ways, “making up what is lacking” in its celebration, if we may boldly inverse Paul’s statement in Colossians (1:24). The most significant feasts are in fact not those that commemorate saints, but are comprised of the canon of major feasts of the Lord throughout the year, which all take up this resurrection faith, retracing the earthly mission leading to this great mystery. The Nativity, the Annunciation, the promised gift of the Spirit, the special feasts echoing the celebration of Easter (Divine Mercy, Most Holy Trinity, Sacred Heart), as well as all of the additional Feasts of the Lord – The Annunciation, The Presentation, The Transfiguration, The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, as well as The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (dedicated to him under the title of the Most Holy Saviour). These set the six-candle standard, celebrated with the white of Christmas and Easter. 

 

 

Two binders for vespers: The feasts and the ferias

Flowing from this most fundamental Christian faith, we find liturgical practice has, over its millennia, become as diverse and complex as the array of saints in its communion. The Second Vatican Council included in its manifold and comprehensive topics the complex arrangement of feasts, with an eye towards simplification. One key byproduct of the Council was to distinguish four levels of special celebration beyond the “Feria”: Solemnities, Feasts, Memorials, and Optional Memorials. Solemnities and Feasts are the quintessential Six-Candle celebrations. Typically, you can expect these Masses to have a Gloria, with some also including the Creed, and the liturgical color will be specific to the feast. The Divine Office will incorporate this awareness in liturgies throughout the day. Mass will include six candles for all feasts, Sundays, Opening and Commencement for the School, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, and requiems. A Memorial (as well as octave days, Advent feria from December 17, and feria in the last two weeks of Lent) is recognized by the four candles lit on the altar, with its color appropriate to the saint: white for doctors, red for martyrs, and so forth. The Optional Memorial, like a feria (an unadorned simple weekday), is celebrated with one candle, and one may also notice that while the liturgical vestments of the Mass reflect the saint (red for a martyr, for example), the tabernacle covering maintains the color of the season (green for Ordinary Time, for example). Vespers for optional memorials is typically maintained as a seasonal feria.

 

 

Command Central: The Sacristy Bulletin Board

Ferias, or regular weekdays, can themselves be more complicated than on first glance. First, the word itself is odd, as in its origin it derives from the same word as festival or feast, but now has come to mean a weekday without a special feast. And even now, some ferias are more important than others: Ash Wednesday and the days of Holy Week, and the Advent days of the O Antiphons (from December 17) come to mind. Even seasonal weekdays in Lent carry more weight than a memorial. The “Code of Rubrics” introduced under Pope Saint John XXIII distinguished four classes of ferias, and while the Second Vatican Council officially abrogated the classes, such distinctions still shape our liturgical experience.

A Monastery in America.  Within the universal framework provided in the Roman Rite, the American bishops annually publish the liturgical calendar reflecting the distinctive celebrations of this country. The USCCB website explains: “Each year the Secretariat of Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes the Liturgical Calendar for the Dioceses of the United States of America.. This calendar lists each day's celebration, rank, liturgical color, citations for the Lectionary for Mass, and Psalter cycle for the Liturgy of the Hours. It is primarily used by authors of ordines and other liturgical aids published to foster the celebration of the liturgy in our country, but may also be used by anyone who purchases or downloads a copy.” Near the beginning of the publication is included a handy table of the dates for the “Principal Celebrations” for the current liturgical year. It also provides a “Proper Calendar” for dioceses of the United States, which lists those feasts distinctive to this country. Some of these remain optional, but have come to be commemorated more recently at Portsmouth, such as Kateri Tekakwitha, Junipero Serra, and Rose Philippine Duchesne. The most important of the American celebrations is the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, as Mary is under this title the patroness of the country, adding to sense of solemnity in the feast here at Portsmouth. The American ordo also expresses the universal practice of assigning Saturdays to Mary: “On Saturdays in Ordinary Time when no Obligatory Memorial occurs, an Optional Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary may be celebrated” (Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, no. 15). While it also notes that “the readings and prayers may be selected from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Votive Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Roman Missal, or the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” it allows for the use of the standard readings of the day, which is the typical practice at Portsmouth, where we regularly commemorate Mary on unassigned Saturdays. 

 

 

Ordo of the English Benedictine Congregation

A House of English Benedictines. Our monastery, as a house of the English Benedictine Congregation (EBC), also draws on the saints most directly impacting that congregation’s “stream of sanctity.” As “Benedictine”, we give a high importance to the many saints of that order: Benedict, Scholastica, Gregory the Great, Gertrude the Great, and so on. As “English”, we hold a special place for Augustine of Canterbury, for Beckett, More, Fisher, the martyrs of England. Thus, while Benedict may be a memorial elsewhere, for us he merits a feast. While More and Fisher’s optional memorial may not be maintained elsewhere, it is commemorated here. The EBC does not require strict uniformity across its various monasteries, and its ordo incorporates various local celebrations within its now global collection of houses. Its own ordo, published at Buckfast Abbey, lists the variations throughout the congregation. Yet more locally, we can add, it has been typical practice at Portsmouth that a priest of the house will be the principal celebrant at Mass on his own patronal feast. A brother will be warmly wished a “Happy Feast Day” on the day of his patron. Portsmouth also has held important in its own history, for example, the names of Leonard, Hugh, and Aelred, monastic names of important leaders of the monastery and patrons of three of our School’s dormitories.

Whether in the Mass and its candles and colors, or in antiphons and special prayers of the Divine Office, each liturgical day is saturated, in sight and sound, with reminders of these interwoven heritages of grace. The universal and the particular, the temporal and the eternal: these are witnessed in simple expressions in liturgy – some additional words, an extra candle, a different color. These material signs are designed to draw us, across miles and across millennia, into the Spirit’s singular tether.

 

 

A Solemnity of Our Lady