CNA—Pope Francis released a new encyclical Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us”) on October 24, calling for a renewed understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart in the modern era and its many pressing challenges.
In the document, the pope argues that the spirituality of the Sacred Heart offers a vital response to what he calls a “liquid society” dominated by technology and consumerism.
Pope Francis writes: “Living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart.”
Subtitled “Letter on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ,” the document is the first papal encyclical dedicated entirely to the Sacred Heart since Pope Pius XII’s Haurietis Aquas in 1956.
Throughout the document, Francis weaves together traditional elements of Sacred Heart devotion with contemporary concerns, presenting Christ’s heart as the principle unifying reality in a fragmented world.
The document’s release fulfills an announcement made by the pope in June, when he noted that meditating
Adoremus Bulletin
Trent and Its Liturgical Reform (Part I): The Western Church at the Threshold of the Early Modern Period
By Father Uwe Michael Lang
Editor’s note: Adoremus is pleased to feature another insightful series by our regular contributor Father Uwe Michael Lang. Many know (or think they know) the history of the most recent ecumenical council, Vatican II. But how does it compare to other ecumenical councils? In this first of his six-part series, Father Lang gives us a peek at what preceded the Council of Trent, a look back that will ultimately examine Trent itself and the liturgical books it produced and that were in use (with few changes) until the Second Vatican Council.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) continues to have a profound effect on Catholic life and thought today. The liturgical reform it inaugurated has shaped the experience most Catholics—and non-Catholics—have of the Church. What came before, what happened during, and what followed after the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church remains the subject of research, debate, and controversy. Are there any other major ecclesial assemblies in history that can be compared to it? The Council of Trent (1545–1563) may come closest in its reforming impetus and worldwide reach. In particular, the liturgical reform initiated by the 19th Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church is often compared to that of Vatican II. In a series of six articles, I will present the historical backdrop to Trent, familiarize the reader with the discussions on liturgy and related topics at the council, and consider the actual reform of the Church’s divine worship that followed. This will prove to be a long trajectory that takes us well into the 19th century, when the Roman liturgical books were fully introduced in France and elsewhere.
A Period of Transition
If we want to understand the epoch-making significance of the Council of Trent, we need to be aware of its historical context. Scholars see in the late 15th and early 16th century a period of transition from the late Middle Ages to early modernity. Around 1500, European societies experienced profound changes that also affected Christian belief and practice. The Jesuit historian Robert Bireley names five principal elements of transformation during this period.1 First, in continuity with certain strands of medieval thought, there was the rise of the territorial state, which can be defined as “the consolidation and centralization of political authority over a particular geographical area, or the establishment of sovereignty.”2 At the same time, the sense of belonging to a Christian commonwealth that surpasses regional or national allegiances, with the pope as its head, declined among European elites. The increased confidence of territorial princes and rulers exacerbated the (mostly juridical and financial) conflicts between the Church and civil governments, which were already common in the later Middle Ages. Second, many
Trenchant
Comparison
areas of Europe enjoyed social and economic growth: the population rebounded after the devastation of the bubonic plague pandemic (“Black Death,” 1347–1350); this recovery brought a new dynamic in production and trade, with increasing prosperity in cities and a flourishing of urban middle classes. Third, the colonial expansion of European powers, beginning with Portugal and the then-recently unified Spain, opened vast new horizons for evangelization and made the Catholic Church a truly global community. Fourth, the Renaissance changed the intellectual and artistic landscape in Europe. While its connections with the medieval world should not be overlooked,3 the Renaissance encouraged a new outlook on the world, a recovery of Greek and Latin antiquity, including Christian antiquity, and an optimistic attitude towards human nature and achievement. The invention of the printing press with moveable letters in Germany initiated a “media revolution” that allowed for a much faster and wider dissemination of ideas. Fifth, the Protestant Reformation shook Western Christianity to its very foundations.
Religious Practice and Liturgical Life
Modern historians often presented the later Middle Ages as a period marked by social decline and cultural exhaustion, as reflected in Johan Huizinga’s classic work, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (Herfstij der Middeleeuwen), first published in 1919.4 The decaying religious culture of the age was interpret-
The Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council are nearly half a millennium apart, but, as Father Uwe Michael Lang points out, the liturgical focus of both highlights the importance of each… 1
Back by Popular Devotion
John Grondelski cheers the Church’s increased interest in popular devotions but, he argues, much remains to be done to help secular souls see the transcendent in today’s flat world 3
Beauduin for the Win
For Father Thomas Kocik, among liturgical scholars influencing the Second Vatican Council, Liturgical Movement pioneer Dom Lambert Beauduin ranks as the source and summit 5
The Ins and Outs of Prayer
In this reprint from Liturgy,
Church, Dom Lambert Beauduin explains why prayer led by the Church's hierarchy will always trump the private prayers of individuals
Open Door Policy
In the humble job of opening doors and greeting folks, says Benedictine Brother Stanley Rother Wagner, the porter serves as a vital hinge in the Church’s mission to spread the Gospel 8
Heavenly Supermodels
In reviewing Msgr. Francis Mannion’s Models of Heaven: Interpreting Life Everlasting, Daria Spezzano shows how Msgr.’s paradisal paradigms serve as signposts for us lost earthlings
The Council of Trent (1545–1563) may come closest to Vatican II in its reforming impetus and worldwide reach. In particular, the liturgical reform initiated by the 19th Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church is often compared to that of Vatican II.
on the Lord’s love can “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal and say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”
The approximately 30,000-word encyclical draws extensively from Scripture and tradition, featuring insights from St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Charles de Foucauld.
Released as the Synod on Synodality is concluding its monthlong deliberations in Rome, the document emphasizes both personal spirituality and communal missionary commitment.
“In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live,” Pope Francis writes.
The pope emphasizes that devotion to the Sacred Heart is not merely a private spiritual practice but has profound implications for social life and human relationships.
“The world can change, beginning with the heart,” he writes, connecting individual transformation with broader social renewal.
The encyclical builds on centuries of Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart while offering fresh insights for modern challenges. Pope Francis cites extensively from previous papal teachings, particularly from St. John Paul II.
“Devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it developed in Europe two centuries ago, under the impulse of the mystical experiences of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, was a response to Jansenist rigor, which ended up disregarding God’s infinite mercy,” the late pope writes.
“The men and women of the third millennium need the heart of Christ in order to know God and to know themselves; they need it to build the civilization of love.”
In a significant theological and philosophical development, the encyclical engages deeply with modern thought, particularly through its discussion of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s understanding of human emotion and understanding.
The pope cites Heidegger’s insight that “philosophy does not begin with a pure concept or certainty but with a shock,” as “without deep emotion, thought cannot begin. The first mental image would thus be goosebumps.”
For Pope Francis, this is where the heart comes in as it “listens in a non-metaphoric way to ‘the silent voice’ of being, allowing itself to be tempered and determined by it.”
“The heart is also capable of unifying and harmonizing our personal history, which may seem hopelessly fragmented,” the pope writes, “yet is the place where everything can make sense.”
“The Gospel tells us this in speaking of Our Lady, who saw things with the heart.”
The document calls for a renewal of traditional Sacred Heart practices on this understanding while emphasizing their contemporary relevance.
Hanna Brockhaus contributed to this report. The original story has been edited for length.
Christendom College to Launch Institute for Liturgical Formation
Christendom’s Graduate School of Theology announced in October that it will launch an Institute for Liturgical Formation (ILF), set to begin in the summer of 2025. The purpose of the ILF will be to soundly educate and train those responsible for liturgical preparation and execution so that they can more effectively serve the Church’s mission to worship God.
Christopher Carstens, Director of the Office of Sacred Worship in the Diocese of La Crosse, WI, editor of Adoremus, and co-founder of the ILF, believes that this new venture will help lead priests, liturgical leaders, and all the baptized deeper into the beauty of the Mass.
“Our goal for the Institute,” Carstens said, “is to assist priests and liturgical leaders in celebrating the liturgy beautifully and reverently after the mind of the Church and to help lead all the baptized deeper into the mystery of Christ present in the Mass, sacraments, and other liturgies.”
When asked what inspired the launch of the Institute, R.J. Matava, dean of the Graduate School, highlighted Christendom’s desire to build up and strengthen the life of the Church.
“We see the Church’s primary mission as to evangelize and catechize people and to worship God,” Matava said. “Our graduate school was founded to support the first of these, and the second is integrally related to it. While it falls primarily to bishops and priests to improve the liturgical life of the Church from a ministerial standpoint, a lot of this effort depends on proper liturgical catechesis—not only for the ordained but for the laity as well.”
NEWS & VIEWS
“Our institution’s motto is Instaurare Omnia in Christo (Restore All Things in Christ),” Matava added. “The renewal of the liturgy is at the heart of Christ’s cosmic work of renewing the created order, and so it is central to our institutional mission.”
Beginning in 2025, the Institute will offer four summer courses focusing on the liturgy. Participation in the Institute will also provide students with further opportunities for liturgical preparation and participation, fostering a rich communal life on campus for attendants. The Institute will significantly benefit those with diocesan and parish-level jobs in liturgical preparation and execution, as well as priests, religious, and lay people interested in pursuing a deeper understanding of the Church’s liturgy.
“Pope Benedict once claimed that it was sacred art and sacred persons—saints—that were the most moving arguments for the faith,” Carstens said. “Likewise, we want the Institute for Liturgical Formation to promote beauty and sanctity, unto the glory of God.”
To learn more about the ILF and to apply today, visit christendom.edu/liturgy.
Pope Francis Announces Ordinary
Jubilee Year: December 24, 2024 –January 6, 2026
From the May 2024 Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship Newsletter
On May 9, 2024, Pope Francis released the Bull of Indiction Spes non confundit (“Hope does not disappoint”) announcing the Ordinary Jubilee Year of 2025. The Jubilee will begin in Rome on the Vigil of the Lord’s Nativity, December 24, 2024, and in local dioceses on Holy Family Sunday, December 29. It will conclude in local dioceses the following Holy Family Sunday, December 28, 2025, and in Rome on the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, January 6, 2026.
Structure and Theme of Jubilee Celebrations
A Jubilee Year is a significant moment in the life of the Church in which she celebrates the year of messianic favor inaugurated by Christ through his Incarnation and Paschal Mystery (cf. Luke 4:19; John Paul II, Tertio millennio adveniente, nos. 11-16). Proclaimed every 25 years since the 13th century, the celebration of jubilee years typically includes pilgrimages, processions, celebrations of Mass, and an invitation to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These liturgical celebrations are opportunities to receive the Lord’s mercy, especially through the practice of the Jubilee indulgence, and lead to the performance of works of mercy. The theme for this Jubilee is Pilgrims of Hope, and the Bull suggests several ways to bring Christ and his message of hope to the world, for example, by working for peace and an end to conflicts, promoting human life, showing amnesty to prisoners, upholding the dignity of migrants, healing the sick, and accompanying the elderly—or even through the forgiveness of debts, a custom of jubilee years in the Old Testament. Those planning diocesan liturgies will need to take into account the Bull’s indications regarding the Opening Mass to be held in each diocese (cf. no. 6) as well as the Jubilee Celebration Calendar found at USCCB.org/resources/Jubilee Celebration Calendar.pdf.
Throughout the Jubilee Year, there will be celebrations for different groups, for example, workers, youth, artists, persons with disabilities, catechists, etc., and resources from the USCCB for these celebrations will become available this fall.
Several aspects of the Bull touch more directly upon the liturgy, and a summary of those points is presented below: baptismal fonts, Holy Doors and indulgences, the common date of Easter, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Missionaries of Mercy.
Baptismal Fonts
Christian hope is rooted in the saving work of Christ and
Adoremus Bulletin
Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy
PHONE: 608.521.0385 WEBSITE: www.adoremus.org
MEMBERSHIP REQUESTS & CHANGE OF ADDRESS: info@adoremus.org
INQUIRIES TO THE EDITOR P.O. Box 385 | La Crosse, WI 54602-0385 editor@adoremus.org
our participation in that work through the sacrament of Baptism: “The death and resurrection of Jesus is the heart of our faith and the basis of our hope” (no. 20). In this light, the Jubilee Year is an opportunity for the Christian faithful to appreciate the gift of Baptism more deeply, and the Holy Father proposes the baptismal font as an object for further reflection. In particular, the ancient custom of building eight-sided fonts manifests the Sacrament of Baptism as a work of creation and resurrection. In the words of the Holy Father, “Baptism is the dawn of the ‘eighth day,’ the day of the resurrection, a day that transcends the normal, weekly passage of time, opening it to the dimension of eternity and to life everlasting: the goal to which we tend on our earthly pilgrimage” (no. 20).
Holy Doors and Indulgences
The Lord Jesus is the door of our salvation (cf. no. 1), a fact which is symbolized through the spiritual practice of passing through specially designated doors of various churches. The Ordinary Jubilee will begin with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica on December 24, and the Holy Father will then open Holy Doors at the other major Roman Basilicas: St. John Lateran on December 29, St. Mary Major on January 1, and St. Paul Outside the Walls on January 5. Additionally, the Holy Father hopes to open a Holy Door in a prison, since the year of the Lord’s favor is a year when liberty and release are proclaimed to captives and prisoners (cf. Luke 4:18). The opening of the Holy Door at St. John Lateran on December 29 will coincide with the diocesan opening of the Jubilee Year, when diocesan bishops or their delegates are to celebrate Mass in every cathedral and co-cathedral. Ritual indications for these diocesan celebrations are forthcoming.
While the Bull of Indiction inaugurating the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy (2015-2016), Misericordiæ vultus, explicitly noted the opening of Holy Doors in cathedrals, co-cathedrals, churches, and other places of pilgrimage, a similar note is not present in the Bull inaugurating the Jubilee Year of 2025. Thus, unless other indications are given, it does not appear that the Diocesan Bishop may open holy doors during this Jubilee. Nevertheless, according to section I of the Decree on the Granting of the Indulgence, the Jubilee indulgence may be obtained by visiting cathedral churches or other churches or sacred places designated by the local Ordinary.
Common Date of Easter
This year marks the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, which, among other things, discussed the method for calculating the date of Easter. Providentially, the dates for the celebration of Easter on the Julian and Gregorian calendars will coincide in 2025; East and West will celebrate the Lord’s resurrection together. This concurrence is an appeal for all Christians to take a step toward unity on this most important feast. May our celebration witness to our unity in Christ, heal divisions, and be a sign of communion.
Reconciliation and Missionaries of Mercy
The liturgical year is marked by moments of greater intensity such as the season of Lent, and Jubilee years are a similar time in the life of the Church. In Jubilee celebrations throughout the Church, “the power of God’s forgiveness can support and accompany communities and individuals on their pilgrim way” (no. 5). The sacrament of forgiveness, in particular, fosters hope, heals present woes, frees the soul, and opens the way to eternal life. According to Pope Francis, “The sacrament of Reconciliation is not only a magnificent spiritual gift, but also a decisive, essential and fundamental step on our journey of faith. There, we allow the Lord to erase our sins, to heal our hearts, to raise us up, to embrace us and to reveal to us his tender and compassionate countenance” (no. 23).
For this purpose, the Holy Father established Missionaries of Mercy during the Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis encourages these specially designated priests to continue their mission and emphasizes the importance of their work in places where hope is tested, for example, “[in] prisons, hospitals, and places where people’s dignity is violated, poverty abounds and social decay is prevalent” (no. 23).
EDITOR - PUBLISHER: Christopher Carstens
MANAGING EDITOR: Joseph O’Brien
CONTENT MANAGER: Jeremy Priest
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Danelle Bjornson
OFFICE MANAGER: Elizabeth Gallagher
MARKETING AND FUNDRAISING: Eugene Diamond
TECHNOLOGY: Zach Tudahl
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
The Rev. Jerry Pokorsky = Helen Hull Hitchcock The Rev. Joseph Fessio, SJ
Adoremus and the Liturgy: Then and Now, as if People Mattered
By Christopher Carstens, Editor
The first time I met Helen Hull Hitchcock was when we appeared together on EWTN’s Theology Roundtable program in 2011. Along with host Colin Donovan and my friend Father Douglas Martis, we discussed the potential of the newly promulgated Roman Missal. Helen had worked intensely for years on making the Roman Missal translation a reality. She had attended and reported upon US bishops’ meetings, debated in print and inperson why fidelity to the Tradition and the Council was necessary, and formed and informed the faithful about the translation’s treasures. For my part, I was just the recipient of the hard work of Helen, Adoremus, and many others. I got to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Little did I know, when Helen would die on October 20, 2014, that I would eventually succeed her as the editor of Adoremus in the spring of 2015. While much has remained the same in the Church, in the liturgy, and at Adoremus, her tenure and mine also have marked differences.
In many ways, Helen, Susan Benofy, and the St. Louis staff continued, corrected, and completed a phase of the liturgical movement that had begun in the early 1950s. At that time, Pope Pius XII had allowed as an experiment, and only in some places, the possibility of celebrating a revised Easter Vigil, one that would be a true evening or nighttime celebration that would watch for the passing over of the Lord (unlike the customary celebrations of the Vigil that would begin early Holy Saturday morning). The year 1955 would see the mandatory use of the entire Holy Week. Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, Pope John XXIII was elected on October 28—and less than three months later the new pope announced on January 25, 1959, his intention to call the Second Vatican Council.
The Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, called for “the reform and promotion of the liturgy” (1) and laid down principles and norms for reform. Postconciliar instructions— from Inter Oecuminici in September 1964 to Liturgiam Authenticam in March 2001—guided the proper implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium. Their fruits—whether you think them sweet or sour—were the liturgical books themselves, particularly the Roman Missal in its current form, and even this year’s revised editions of Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery Outside Mass and the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.
In short: the past 75 long years have seen a remarkable focus on ritual reform, change, and implementation. It was a phase of the liturgical movement whose centerpiece was moving rites. And we are grateful to Helen, her staff, and the Adoremus Bulletin for helping to steer it in the “rite” direction.
But by 2024, the liturgical movement is seeking something even more radical and traditional: a return to the early days of this modern apostolate when the end game was not primarily about moving or changing rites and books but was rooted in the desire to move people further into the mystery of the liturgy.
During those early days, hand Missals were an original aid to help the faithful follow with and enter into the sacrifice of the Mass. Liturgical Weeks of study and learning began in Belgium in the first decade of the 1900s and in the United States in 1940. And earlier liturgical journals and publications—such as Orate Fratres, published in Collegeville, MN—began
in 1926. Each initiative exemplifies the overall focus on leading the faithful into the heart of the liturgy with intelligence and devotion.
Today’s liturgical movement finds itself in much the same situation as in those years prior to the 1950s. Insofar as the liturgy invites a culture into its celebrations—that is, a liturgical rite is meant to draw a particular people to meet Christ in its signs and symbols—it is never static, never a once-and-for-all product. Still, the books at hand today are unlikely to see the same revisions as the Church experienced over the last century. Translations of the reformed Latin typical editions are all but complete. Pope John Paul II signaled this shift even during his own pontificate when he said: “One cannot therefore continue to speak of a change as it was spoken of at the time of the Constitution’s publication; rather one has to speak of an ever deeper grasp of the Liturgy of the Church, celebrated according to the current books and lived above all as a reality in the spiritual order” (Vicesimus Quintus Annus, 14).
But as Helen, her staff, and Adoremus Bulletin supported the liturgical apostolate as its rites coalesced, so will your current editor, staff, and Bulletin carry on the work of moving God’s people to encounter the great treasure of the liturgy.
To that end, allow me to share a few of the initiatives that Adoremus is preparing to continue in carrying on this mission—initiatives that are extending Adoremus’s reach far beyond its Bulletin, website, and social media—beyond the new audio readings of Bulletin stories, beyond the new “Becoming God” podcast, and beyond the publications in book form of many of our article series.
First, Adoremus will collaborate with the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation by offering four online courses in liturgical-sacramental basics: 1) Introduction to the Sacred Liturgy, 2) Introduction to the Sacraments, 3) Exploring the Source and Summit (the Eucharist), and 4) Sacramentals, The Liturgy of the Hours, and Devotions. Each course is six-weeks in duration for 90 minutes in the evening, and taught by
Adoremus staff and Adoremus authors.
Second, Adoremus has joined with the Josephinum Diaconate Institute in Columbus, OH, to create short courses in the sacred liturgy. These courses are meant to assist permanent deacons in formation for ordination and provide post-ordination ongoing education. The permanent diaconate, restored by the Second Vatican Council, plays an increasingly important role in the parish and its liturgies, and Adoremus is grateful for this chance to promote the liturgical apostolate in this way.
Third, Adoremus will support Christendom College in its new Institute for Liturgical Formation. This Master of Arts in Theology program features a 12-course concentration on liturgy and sacraments. Held in-person at Christendom College’s Front Royal, VA, campus over four weeks in the summer, the Institute for Liturgical Formation will offer a rites- and sacramental-based formation that will assist priests and other parish and diocesan liturgical leaders to celebrate the sacred liturgy beautifully, reverently, and authentically according to the revised rites of the Latin Church.
If in its first two decades Adoremus (like Pius XII before it) worked to reform the liturgy so that it conveyed more clearly the divine things it signified, today Adoremus (like Benedict XVI in our own time) works to implement that official liturgy faithfully and to move members of the Church ever deeper into its saving mystery.
When Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio announced the birth of Adoremus on behalf of the board in 1995, he said, “We wish we could promise you that this will be a short term project. The task of educating ourselves and supplying aid to bishops and the Holy See will probably take years. But the service we will render will be one that will affect generations of Catholics here and elsewhere.” I hope that he, Helen—and you, our readers and supporters—will be pleased with the course that Adoremus has taken over the years and share our optimism for the next 30 years to kingdom come.
Popular Devotion, the Liturgical Year, and “Flattened Time”
By John M. Grondelski
That there has been a tension in the past half century about the place of popular devotions in the Church cannot be denied. One of my common illustrations of that tension has been the demise of the novena. That popular devotion, under various patronages (e.g., the Miraculous Medal, St. Jude, Our Lady of Perpetual Help) was going strong in many parishes in the 1960s. By the 1980s, it had largely disappeared, in no small measure, I would assert, because pastors—with some strange reading of
“Vatican II”—decided they did not fit. One might say a similar thing about parish Holy Hours which, happily, have seen a renaissance.
But this essay is not intended to relitigate history. I’ve decided to write about this topic rather because I think there is a larger problem in the background: what I would call the “flattening of time.” Our civil life has grown so isolated, so “autonomous,” so bereft of shared common understandings of our history, and so technical that communal historico-cultural celebrations and contact with nature grows ever rarer. Consider, for example, the nine federal holidays legally
observed in the United States. How many still have some element of communal celebration? Fourth of July fireworks? Maybe a Memorial or Veterans’ Day parade? What do we do as a people to celebrate Washington’s Birthday (which is its legal name, even though it’s been rechristened “Presidents’ Day”)? One—the C-word on December 25—doesn’t even speak its name loudly for fear some of the community might be offended. Likewise, while our society has grown increasingly technical and automated, its contact with the flow of
The face of the current radical and traditional liturgical movement: a return to the early days of this modern apostolate when the end game was not primarily about moving or changing rites and books but was rooted in the desire to move people further into the mystery of the liturgy.
ed as leading almost inevitably to the new beginning of the Protestant Reformation. However, revisionist historians in the last few decades have questioned long-held positions about the alleged decadence of the late medieval Church.5 While there is some truth to Huizinga’s thesis, insofar as 15th-century Europe did experience a general sense of crisis, and partly for religious reasons, the Church was remarkably successful in the care of souls that has always been her primary pastoral role, and the sacramental system was deeply embedded in the people’s cycle of life.
Religious practice in this period shows diverse, if not contrary, tendencies. On the one hand, movements such as the devotio moderna and the flowering of mysticism emphasized man’s interior relationship to God and privileged personal forms of devotion. Such religiosity came to fruition in early modernity, through both Protestant and Catholic reform movements.6 On the other hand, religious practice was characterised by a strong emphasis on external works and their number, as well as a focus on supernatural phenomena associated with material objects, including images, relics, and Eucharistic miracles.7 These divergent tendencies cannot be neatly organized with the categories of elite and popular piety. Rather, they are found across the social spectrum, as evident, for instance, in the tangible devotion to the holy face of Christ, which was shared equally among the illiterate populace, well-educated nuns, and rulers such as the powerful Duke of Burgundy.8
Liturgical life in the late medieval Church does not offer a homogeneous picture either.9 Spearheaded by the rapidly expanding Franciscan Order, there was a movement towards unifying liturgical books after the model of the missal and breviary of the Roman Rite in the form used by the papal curia. Many dioceses and religious communities adopted the “Order of Mass according to the custom of the Roman curia” (Ordo missalis secundum consuetudinem Romane curie). The period also witnessed an increasing codification of ritual, which found its most influential expression in the Ordo Missae of the papal master of ceremonies Johann Burchard (d. 1506). The work’s second edition of 1502, which offered intricate and extensive instructions to priests on how to say Mass, became the foundation for the rubrics of the Missale Romanum of 1570. At the same time, however, we can observe a movement towards diversification with the introduction of new saints’ feasts, the composition of prefaces, tropes, and sequences (of varying quality), and the proliferation of votive Masses that were inspired by popular devotions. The new, dynamic, and unregulated printing industry initially contributed to an ever-greater liturgical diversity. Most diocesan bishops did not have effective control over the production of liturgical books in their territories.
Lay Experience of the Liturgy
The laity’s experience of the Church’s worship was clearly separate from that of the officiating clergy, not least because of the use of Latin as a sacred language. The penitential rite after the sermon and the prayers
Fifteenth-century religious practice often appears to have diverse and even opposite tendencies: even while a kind of mysticism characterizes private prayer, a focus on the material was also present. These tendencies are also found across the social spectrum, as evident, for instance, in the tangible devotion to the holy face of Christ, which was shared equally among the illiterate populace, welleducated nuns, and rulers such as the powerful Duke of Burgundy.
of the faithful introduced vernacular elements into the parish Mass, but most of the rite was conducted in a language that required a considerable level of education to be understood fully. However, popular participation was not limited to comprehension of texts. The rich non-verbal symbolism of the Mass spoke powerfully even to people who were not able to follow
“By the early 16th century, there was a wide consensus that the Church needed some reforms, especially regarding the entanglement between the spiritual and the temporal spheres.”
every word of the rite. The faithful’s participation was not regulated by the official liturgical books that gave increasingly detailed ritual instructions to the clergy. Hence, the people engaged with the Mass in a variety of ways that are not easy for us to grasp precisely because they were not scripted. Paul Barnwell speaks of “the meditative and affective nature of much lay devotion in the period.”10 The sensory dimensions of the late medieval liturgy offered important stimuli for such meditation: the images on the rood screen and on the walls of the church visualized the communion of the saints, while funeral monuments were an incentive to pray for the dead. The faithful who attended Mass weekly (and many of them daily) would be familiar with the stable chants of the ordinary and have a basic understanding of their meaning.
The social anthropologist Mary Douglas has spoken of “non-verbal symbols,” which “are capable of creating a structure of meanings in which individuals can
relate to one another and realize their own ultimate purposes.”11 To quote an influential essay by the historian John Bossy, the Mass was a “social institution”12 and created a bond that was not only expressed verbally through praying for one another, but became tangible in particular rites, such as exchanging the kiss of peace by means of the pax (also known as paxbrede or pacificale), a tablet made of glass, wood, or metal and often adorned with an image of the crucifixion or the Lamb of God. The pax was passed from the clergy to the laity and was kissed in turn. By the early 16th century, there was a wide consensus that the Church needed some reforms, especially regarding the entanglement between the spiritual and the temporal spheres. At the time there was no separation between Church and state. Where ecclesiastical institutions acted as political and economic players, for instance, as landowners, they were vulnerable to criticism, even in societies that were deeply rooted in
Lay liturgical participation became tangible in particular rites, such as exchanging the kiss of peace by means of the pax (also known as pax-brede or pacificale), a tablet made of glass, wood, or metal and often adorned with an image of the crucifixion or the Lamb of God. The pax was passed from the clergy to the laity and was kissed in turn.
Christian faith and practice. The liturgy in particular was not in a general state of decay and decadence, as liturgical handbooks still tend to suggest,13 but there were certainly aspects of it in need of correction— there are in every age. The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517)—counted as the 18th Ecumenical Council—embraced a program of practical renewal. The conciliar decrees were never effectively implemented, but they served as reference points for the discussion at Trent. The need for reform (reformatio in ecclesiastical Latin) was felt by many, but no one could have anticipated the singular upheaval and rupture that began with the publication of Martin Luther’s NinetyFive Theses at a provincial German university on October 31, 1517.
The second installment of this series will consider the political and religious difficulties that surrounded the convocation of the Council of Trent. In particular, I will discuss why it took the papacy so long to respond effectively to the Protestant challenge and why the council sessions were extended over a period of 18 years.
Watch for future installments of Trent and its Liturgical Reform in AB Insight, our monthly electronic newsletter.
Liturgical life in the late medieval Church does not offer a homogeneous picture. Spearheaded by the rapidly expanding Franciscan Order, there was a movement towards unifying liturgical books after the model of the missal and breviary of the Roman Rite in the form used by the papal curia. The period also witnessed an increasing codification of ritual, which found its most influential expression in the Ordo Missae of the papal master of ceremonies, Johann Burchard, which offered intricate and extensive instructions to priests on how to say Mass and later became the foundation for the rubrics of the Missale Romanum of 1570.
AB/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. THE HOLY FACE , BY JAMES TISSOT (1835-1902)
AB/WIKIPEDIA
Dom Lambert Beauduin: The Moses of the 20th-century Liturgical Movement
By Father Thomas Kocik
For a long time after gaining independence from the Dutch in 1830, Belgium was one of the world’s most ardently Catholic countries, producing such luminaries as St. Damien of Molokai (184089), the missionary priest who died ministering to lepers, and Father Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), the priest and physicist who proposed the Big Bang theory. This article concerns another illustrious Belgian—Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960), the Benedictine monk who is widely regarded as the father of the 20th-century Liturgical Movement. Not only did he launch an important movement to place the liturgy once more at the center of Catholic life, but his ideas about liturgical renewal, ecumenism, and ecclesiology make him one of the great precursors of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). What follows is a general introduction to Dom Lambert’s life and thought.1
Born on August 5, 1873, near Liège in the east of Belgium, Octave Beauduin was the fifth of nine children born to Jean-Joseph and wife Lucie Lavigne. Like all good Catholic parents, Jean-Joseph and Lucie did their best to instill Christian virtues in their children and to pass on the Catholic Faith. The family prayed the Rosary together every evening, and often the boys play-acted the Mass. Whether or not Octave’s decision to enter the minor seminary of Saint-Trond was expected, it seems to have been accepted without question.
In 1891 Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) published the encyclical Rerum Novarum as the Church’s response to the conditions created by the Industrial Revolution. It was a charter for contemporary Catholic social teaching, especially regarding issues of labor and the right to a just wage, and its message struck a chord with Beauduin. After his ordination as a priest of the Diocese of Liège in 1897, Abbé Beauduin took a teaching position at Saint-Trond. Two years later, he joined the diocesan Society of Labor Chaplains, a young congregation of priests founded to minister to the de-Christianized masses of the working class. For reasons that are not entirely clear, he left the Labor Chaplains in 1906 and entered the Benedictine monastery of Mont-César in Louvain (Dutch: Leuven), Belgium, where he was given the name of Liège’s patron saint, Lambert.
A Different Octave
Although Dom Lambert was a formed priest with experience and ideas of his own, he was not impervious to the influence of others. Mont-César’s Irish prior at the time, Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923), also a former diocesan priest, brought about a profound shift in Dom Lambert’s spiritual outlook. So, too, did the writings of Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805-75), the late abbot of Solesmes in France.2 So, what changed? In a 1913 journal article, Beauduin frankly admits that before coming to Mont-César nothing in his spirituality was liturgically oriented: “The liturgical acts properly speaking were for me a formality of worship that had no appreciable influence on the direction of my piety.”3 But he was not long a monk before the splendor of the liturgy captivated his heart.
Dom Lambert saw in monasticism, precisely on account of its rich liturgical life, a potentially powerful agent of (re-)evangelization. After all, it was the monasteries that birthed and shaped the fusion of Christian faith and culture known as Christendom. “We [monks] are aristocrats of the liturgy,” he lamented; “everyone should be able to nourish himself from it, even the simplest people: we must democratize the liturgy.”4 The notion that the treasures of the liturgy needed to be
Continued from TRENT, page 4
Father Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Nuremberg, Germany, is a priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London. He holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford, and is a Senior Lecturer in Liturgy and Church History at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. He is a Corresponding Member of the Neuer Schülerkreis Joseph Ratzinger / Papst Benedikt XVI, a Member of the Council of the Henry Bradshaw Society, a Board Member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, and Editor of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal.
1. See Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 8-15.
2. Robert Birely, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700: A Reassessment of
Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960) was a Benedictine monk who is widely regarded as the father of the 20thcentury Liturgical Movement. Not only did he launch an important movement to place the liturgy once more at the center of Catholic life, but his ideas about liturgical renewal, ecumenism, and ecclesiology make him one of the great precursors of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
opened up to the faithful bred another insight: the liturgy is “the piety of the Church, the very dynamo of ecclesial vitality.”5 Catholics, therefore, should be able to find in their parish church and its liturgical celebrations the epicenter of the Christian life itself.
For Beauduin, the key to understanding the liturgy was ecclesiology—the branch of theology concerning the nature and mission of the Church. Since the Church is
essentially a communion of members, hierarchically ordered with Christ as its head—the Mystical Body of Christ—the liturgy too must be both hierarchical and communal.6 “The Christian does not walk alone on the path of his pilgrimage,” Beauduin wrote. “The Catholic is […] a member of a visible organism.”7 Liturgical worship is all about communion; for when we unite ourselves to the priestly action of Christ in the liturgy, we share more fully in Christ’s life and are more deeply bonded to his Mystical Body, and this communion with the whole Christ is what makes possible our life within the eternal communion of the Holy Trinity.8
From Monastery to Movement Beauduin would have an opportunity to garner support for his ideas at the National Congress of Catholic Works held at Malines (Dutch: Mechelen), Belgium, in September 1909. There, he presented a groundbreaking paper on the liturgy, La vraie prière de l’Église (“The true prayer of the Church”), expounding what Pope St. Pius X (1903-14) meant by active participation in the liturgy being “the primary and indispensable source” of “the true Christian spirit.”9 At the close of the Congress, proposals Beauduin had made for making Catholic piety more liturgical were incorporated into resolutions and enthusiastically passed.10 It was resolved (among other things) to popularize the Latin texts of each Sunday’s Mass and Vespers by translating them into the vernacular in hand missals; to highlight the importance of the parochial sung Mass on Sunday; to work for a wider use of Gregorian chant, so as to displace the theatrical style of music that was turning all too many churches into opera halls; to orient all devotions toward the liturgy; and to encourage annual retreats for church choirs at centers of liturgical life such as the monasteries at Mont-César and Maredsous.
Thus began the modern Liturgical Movement,11 which burgeoned and spread over Europe and across the Atlantic. The movement promoted people’s editions of the Missal and other liturgical books,
the Counter Reformation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 9.
3. See Erwin Panofsky, “Renaissance and Renascences,” in The Kenyon Review 6 (1944), 201-236, at 202.
4. See now the translation of the second Dutch edition of 1921: Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
5. See for instance, Robert N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215 – c. 1515, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 342: “Does that mean that ‘the Reformation’ was unforeseeable in 1515? Probably. Does it mean that pre-Reformation religion was in fact vital and progressing (whatever progress is) rather than decadent and ready to fall? Almost certainly.”
6. See Christopher Dawson, The Dividing of Christendom (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009; originally published in 1965), 33.
7. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011).
8. See The European Fortune of the Roman Veronica in the Middle Ages, ed. Amanda Murphy, Herbert L. Kessler, Marco Petoletti, Eamon Duffy, and Guido Milanese, Convivium Supplementum 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017).
published liturgical periodicals, organized “liturgical weeks,” established schools of sacred music and institutes of academic liturgical study. Beauduin believed that the education and formation of the clergy was the necessary first step toward renewing liturgical piety, and so it was toward the clergy that he directed most of his educational efforts. In 1911 Mont-César inaugurated the journal Questions liturgiques (later Questions liturgiques et paroissiales), with Beauduin as editor. Its articles sought to form parish priests liturgically and keep them abreast of developments in the field. Many were of an historical nature, tracing the development and significance of different rites and customs, both in the Western and the Eastern Churches.
In response to critics of the Liturgical Movement, Beauduin published in 1914 his only monograph, La Piété de l’Église (translated into English in 1926 as Liturgy, the Life of the Church).12 In it, he set forth his theological vision of the liturgy and specified his goals for liturgical renewal: popular participation in the Mass and sacramental rites; emphasis on sung Mass, with liturgical singing by the people; parish celebrations of Sunday Vespers and Compline; and restoration of the Liturgy of the Dead to a place of honor.
Mont-César’s Irish prior Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923), also a former diocesan priest, brought about a profound shift in Dom Lambert’s spiritual outlook. So, what changed? In a 1913 journal article, Beauduin frankly admits that before coming to Mont-César nothing in his spirituality was liturgically oriented: “The liturgical acts properly speaking were for me a formality of worship that had no appreciable influence on the direction of my piety.” But he was not long a monk before the splendor of the liturgy captivated his heart.
Ecumenical Expeditions
During the German occupation of Belgium in World War I, Beauduin was active in the resistance under the alias “Oscar Fraipont,” a wine merchant, until he was forced to flee to England. There, he established friendships with members of the “Anglo-Catholic” party within the Church of England, including some leading Anglican ecumenists. After the war he returned to Mont-César in 1919. From 1921 to 1925, he taught theology at Sant’Anselmo College (Benedictine) in Rome. These years saw the development of his interest in the Christian East.13
To foster the healing of the schism between Rome and the Orthodox Churches, Pope Pius XI (1922-39) encouraged the Benedictines to establish monasteries
Please see BEAUDUIN on page 6
9. For a fuller treatment, see Uwe Michael Lang, The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 307-342.
10. Paul S. Barnwell, “How to Do Without Rubrics: Experiments in Reconstructing Medieval Lay Experience,” in Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted: The Experience of Worship in Cathedral and Parish Church, ed. Sally Harper, Paul S. Barnwell and Magnus Williamson (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 235-254, at 238.
11. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 53. While describing this system of symbols as a language with grammatical rules and a specific vocabulary, it is not necessary to commit oneself to a structuralist model. On the usefulness and limits of “linguistic” approaches to the liturgy, see Victor Turner, “Ritual, Tribal and Catholic,” in Worship 50 (1976), 504-526, at 510.
12. John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200-1700,” in Past & Present no. 100 (August 1983), 29-61; see also Thompson, Cities of God, 235-271 (“The City Worships”), and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1570 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 91-130 (“The Mass”).
13. See, e.g., Anscar J. Chupungco, “History of the Roman Liturgy until the Fifteenth Century,” in Handbook for Liturgical Studies, Vol. I: Introduction to the Liturgy, ed. Anscar J. Chupungco (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 131-152, at 150.
AB/WIKIPEDIA
especially dedicated to Christian unity.14 In response, Dom Lambert founded, in 1925, the priory of the “Monks of Unity” at Amay-sur-Meuse (since 1939 at Chevetogne) in Belgium. The monastery was unique in that it was divided into two choirs, one of the Latin Rite, the other of the Byzantine Rite.15 Although the monks of both choirs were Catholic, it was hoped that the common monastic life (work, studies, meals, etc.) would help the Latins and Byzantines to better understand and appreciate each other’s tradition; this would in turn strengthen ties with the Orthodox. Since 1926 the community has published Irénikon, a French-language journal that focuses on matters of ecumenical interest.
Beauduin’s contacts with Anglicans extended his vision of Church unity westward as well. From 1921 to 1926, a series of unofficial “dialogues” or “conversations” between Catholic and Anglican scholars took place in Malines under the patronage of Cardinal Mercier.16 At the fourth of these Malines Conversations (May 1925), Mercier presented a paper by Beauduin (but without revealing the author’s identity17) which aroused strong disapproval in both English Catholic and Roman circles. Dom Lambert argued that corporate union rather than individual conversions was the best solution to the problem of Christian disunity. Moreover, he proposed that any reunion between the Sees of Rome and Canterbury should preserve certain Anglican traditions even as it restored the large measure of autonomy that characterized the Church of England before the Reformation. In effect, the Anglican Church would be united to but not absorbed by Rome, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its patriarch.18
Ecumenist in Exile
Pius XI’s prohibition, in 1928, of further Catholic participation in ecumenical encounters19 precipitated Beauduin’s resignation as Amay’s prior.20 Over the next two years he visited Eastern Europe, Egypt, the Holy Land, and the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece. When the identity of the real author of the “united not absorbed” proposal was revealed in 1930, the criticism that was initially directed toward the late Cardinal Mercier (d. 1926) and the Malines Conversations turned against Beauduin and his work at Amay.
Opposition to Beauduin’s ecumenical methods (from both Roman authorities and Benedictine superiors) resulted in the monk’s eventual “exile” from Belgium. In January 1931 he was subjected to an ecclesiastical hearing in Rome, and in March 1932 ordered to live for two years at En-Calcat Abbey in the south of France.21 Having made the best of his time there, Dom Lambert was then dealt another blow: he was prohibited from returning to Belgium. His new exile, this time in Paris, would last 17 years. As it unfolds, we find him serving as chaplain to two convents, receiving many guests, mixing with Orthodox and Protestant scholars, writing many liturgical and ecumenical articles,22 and traveling widely to preach retreats.
In 1943 Beauduin presided over the foundation of the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique (CPL) in Paris, for the pastoral and liturgical formation of the clergy.23 Initially the reform promoted by the Liturgical Movement “was of people’s manner of approaching, and the clergy’s celebration of, the liturgical rites.”24 By the middle decades of the 20th century, however, there was increasing agitation to reform the rites themselves, whether for reasons of pastoral expediency or antiquarian enthusiasms. In the inaugural issue (January 1945) of the CPL’s periodical, La Maison-Dieu, Beauduin cautions against (in Dom Alcuin Reid’s words) “zealous liturgists who, operating on the assumption that the current Liturgy of the Church is an impoverishment and a deformation of Christian worship which has long since lost its ancient evangelical dynamism, can become audacious reformers.”25 He was greatly encouraged when Pope Pius XII (193958) issued the encyclical Mediator Dei in 1947, for it gave official underpinning to the Liturgical Movement while explicitly rejecting liturgical “archeologism”—that is, a preference for more ancient rites and practices simply because they are more ancient.26
Vatican II Visionary
Beauduin’s years in France made possible a blossoming of his friendship with a man he had first met two
In his 1914 book, Liturgy, the Life of the Church, Beauduin set forth his theological vision of the liturgy and specified his goals for liturgical renewal: popular participation in the Mass and sacramental rites; emphasis on sung Mass, with liturgical singing by the people; parish celebrations of Sunday Vespers and Compline; and restoration of the Liturgy of the Dead to a place of honor.
“By the middle decades of the 20th century, there was increasing agitation to reform the rites themselves, whether for reasons of pastoral expediency or antiquarian enthusiasms.”
decades earlier: Msgr. Angelo Roncalli (later John XXIII, 1958-63), who came to Paris as papal nuncio at the end of 1944.27 Beauduin was finally permitted to return to Belgium in 1951. Now at the age of 78, he retired to the community at Chevetogne and lived there until his death on January 11, 1960. How gratified he must have felt when, a few years earlier, Roncalli (then Patriarch of Venice) publicly opined that the best method of working for the reunion of the churches was that of Dom Lambert Beauduin.
At this point we can better appreciate Beauduin’s influence on Vatican Council II. His true legacy, which he did not live to see, is the endorsement and sponsorship of the Liturgical Movement by an ecumenical council of the Church. More than a few French bishops at the council were impacted by Beauduin’s liturgical retreats and his work with the CPL, and several council periti (theologians who consulted the bishops) had been his friends or admirers. To facilitate people’s participation in the liturgy, the council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) called for the liturgical formation of both clergy and laity. Half a century earlier, Beauduin understood that formation in the spirit of the liturgy is the necessary precondition for realizing St. Pius X’s call for more active participation.28
Beauduin saw an important link between the nascent liturgical and ecumenical movements. At the heart of the liturgy is the unity in faith and charity of the Mystical Body, effected and intensified through Eucharistic communion.29 In his day the Catholic Church viewed Christians outside her fold only as individuals. At Vatican II she came to grips with the collective reality, in theological terms, of Christian communities separated from the Church of Rome. The conciliar Decree on Ecumenism (1964) recognizes these communities as ecclesial realities, even while it assesses them as more or less defective in view of all that Christ has entrusted to his Church.30 Consequently the door was opened for official discussions, on an equal footing, between the Catholic Church and other Christian bodies. Had he lived just a few more years, Beauduin would have delighted to see theologians from different Christian traditions place age-old controversies in a new light as they explore paths to reconciliation.31
Assessments and Achievements
Some remarks are in order concerning the chief
cause of Beauduin’s ecclesiastical troubles: his approach to ecumenism. What is problematic about Beauduin’s vision of reconciliation was not his contention that reunion need not demand absorption. We need only point to (as he himself did) the Eastern Churches that are in full communion with the Church of Rome but do not belong to it; that is to say, they are distinguished from the Latin Church, or the Roman patriarchate, by their different liturgical rites (Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, etc.), traditions, disciplines, laws, and hierarchies. The real problem, it seems, is that Beauduin turned a blind eye to the Protestant elements in Anglicanism.32 While reintegration does not mean an absolute suppression of all that might apparently be distinctive of Anglicanism (or, for that matter, Eastern Orthodoxy), it does mean the purification of that which is a mixture of truth and error, for the greater glory of God and his Church.
Like most intellectual and spiritual movements in the history of the Church, the Liturgical Movement was subject to excesses and aberrations. Dom Lambert remained open to the possibility of changes in the liturgy, but he did not equate renewal with reform, either by advocating the restoration of ancient rites (real or imagined) or by unauthorized experimentation. He based his liturgical work on the principle that the liturgy belongs to the Church, and so “he took it as she offered it and urged that it be known, understood, and carried out as it was—that is, as it was meant to be.”33 Thus, to his credit, the Liturgical Movement in Belgium “never gave into romantic antiquarianism or wild innovationism.”34
Although Dom Lambert Beauduin died before Vatican II opened in 1962, he knew what lay on the ecclesiastical horizon. In January 1959, one year before the monk’s death, Beauduin’s old friend, Papa Roncalli, announced his intention to convoke an ecumenical council to renew the life of the Church. Whatever Beauduin might have made of that council and its aftermath, he was like a Moses who saw the Promised Land from afar but could not enter it.
Father Thomas Kocik is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, MA. He has served as a parish priest, hospital chaplain, theology instructor, and most recently as chaplain to the Latin Mass Apostolate of Cape Cod. He is a member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and former editor of its journal, Antiphon. Among his many published works are The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate (Ignatius Press, 2003) and Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement (Chorabooks, 2019). A complete bibliography is available at https://thomaskocik.academia.edu
1. My principal source is the biography by Sonya A. Quitslund, Beauduin: A Prophet Vindicated (New York: Newman Press, 1973).
2. Like Beauduin and Marmion, Guéranger was a secular priest before becoming a Benedictine monk. After the destruction wrought by the French Revolution, he restored Benedictine life at Solesmes in 1833. Guéranger’s historical research on the liturgy, together with the abbey’s liturgical practice (which included a renewal of Gregorian chant), prepared the ground for the Liturgical Movement. His multivolume work on the liturgical year, L’Année liturgique (published between 1841 and 1901), has been frequently reprinted and translated.
3. Quitslund, Beauduin, 11. To elaborate, Beauduin says (ibid., 10-11) that his Eucharistic piety was related more to the Real Presence than to the sacrificial action of the Mass itself, since “the missal was for me a closed and sealed book.” While he rightly valued such practices as visits to our Lord in the tabernacle, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar, and Benediction, he gave little thought to the idea of offering oneself in union with Christ’s sacrifice sacramentally represented on the altar. As for the Divine Office, “I have no memory of having recited my breviary with understanding and love; the psalms, the readings, the prayers were without resonance in my soul.” His library “contained neither missal, nor ritual, nor pontifical, nor ceremonial of bishops, nor martyrologies, nor commentaries on these; all these books in which circulates the traditional interior life of the Church were for me obscure books.”
4 Quitslund, Beauduin, 16.
5. Quitslund, Beauduin, 16; emphasis in original.
6. Implicit in this is what is termed “eucharistic ecclesiology,” which posits a foundational connection between the Church and the Eucharist. Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, is generated from his Eucharistic Body; thus, liturgical participation brings about a deeper participation in the life of Christ, above all through the worthy reception of Holy Communion, which in turn strengthens the unity of the Mystical Body. The recovery of eucharistic ecclesiology in the West is one of the good fruits borne of Catholic contact with Orthodox theologians who emigrated to Western Europe after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Beauduin traveled in these circles, first in Rome and later in Paris.
7. Lambert Beauduin, O.S.B., Liturgy, the Life of the Church, trans. Virgil Michel, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1926), 12; emphasis in original. The idea of the Church as Mystical Body fell out of favor in CounterReformation Catholicism and was recovered largely through Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838). It entered magisterial teaching in the pontificates of Leo XIII (Divinum Illud, 1897) and Pius XII (Mystici Corporis Christi, 1943), and strongly influenced the Liturgical Movement.
8. Beauduin, “Essai de manuel fondamental [II],” Questions Liturgiques 3 (191213): 271-79.
9. St. Pius X, Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (1903).
10. The proposals were actually given voice by the historian Godefroid Kurth, although “[t]here is no doubt as to the real author of Kurth’s moving words” (Quitslund, Beauduin, 24). Aware that Kurth’s past efforts to promote the liturgy were better known than his own, Beauduin secured the historian’s collaboration in advance of the Congress.
11.For a brief overview of the movement’s prehistory (which dates back to the 18th-century Enlightenment), see Aidan Nichols, O.P., Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of Its Contemporary Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 11–48.
12. The translator was Dom Virgil Michel (1890-1938) of Collegeville, Minnesota. Michel gave the Liturgical Movement great impetus in the United States and throughout the anglophone world through his journal Orate Fratres (later Worship) and other publications.
13. Owing in part to his friendship with another ecumenical pioneer, the
Please see remaining footnotes on page 7
AB/AMAZON
Liturgy the Life of the Church
By Dom Lambert Beauduin, OSB
Chapter I: The Fundamental Principle
The superabundant source of all supernatural life is the sacerdotal power of the High Priest of the New Covenant.
But this sanctifying power Jesus Christ does not exercise here below except through the ministry of a visible sacerdotal hierarchy
Hence close union with this hierarchy in the exercise of its priesthood is for every Christian and Catholic soul the authentic mode of union with the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and consequently the primary and indispensable source of supernatural life.
The truth expressed in the second statement above is the keystone of the arch of every Catholic edifice. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly. Universal Teacher and King of all times, Christ has transmitted all His power of teaching and of spiritual government to His visible hierarchy. Grand as this truth is, there is one still more sublime: The Eternal Priest has communicated to this hierarchy the very energies of His sanctifying power; through it he realizes the sanctification of the new humanity.
Hence there is in our midst, in the spiritual society of which we are members, a visible organism enriched by the priesthood of Jesus Christ, whose supernatural function it is to lead Christian souls to live superabundantly the life of God. Undoubtedly the immediate action of God upon souls is not restricted by this new dispensation. But the soul that is desirous of living under the sanctifying influence of Christ—and is not that the intense desire of every interior soul?—will have nothing so much at heart as the maintenance of an intimate and continuous contact with the priestly acts of the visible hierarchy.
What are these priestly and hierarchical acts, the primary and indispensable source of the Christian life?
From what has been said above, the answer should be readily found. It is the sanctifying mission of the Catholic hierarchy (munus ministerii—the mission of the ministry) to make of us living and holy oblations, offered daily unto the glory of the Father, in union with the unique sacrifice of Jesus Christ—a mission that is destined to extend all the divine energies of the eternal priesthood unto all generations.
Conscious of the primary importance of this mission, and solicitous of giving it full efficacy, the hierarchy has organized here below a sublime group of sacred functions in which the priesthood of Christ finds its full expression. This group of functions embraces every priestly act of the visible hierarchy. It is, in a word, the Liturgy. What a wonderful work when viewed in all its full import! Let us describe it briefly.
Central in it, dominating and unifying all the rest, is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, by virtue of which the faithful assembled in brotherly love daily assimilate to themselves the work of the Redemption. In this work the priestly power does not leave them to their own devices. A series of pious readings, of praises, of supplications, of rites and chants, inculcate the supreme importance of the great Mystery, and place it within the grasp of their souls. From the altar, the center of the supernatural life, radiate the other sacraments, which the priestly power dispenses to them by means of various acts of worship.
Centering around this hearth of divine life is the Divine Office, which establishes an uninterrupted exchange of praise and blessings between heaven and earth, associates the Christian people, through their priests, with the Liturgy of eternity, and diffuses the blessings of the morning sacrifice over all the hours of day and night.
Next to the sacraments, the mysteries of the life of our divine Savior are destined for the sanctification of men. Hence the priestly power of the Church, by means of the liturgical cycle, revives in our mind the great events of the Gospels, and at every liturgical season presents, so to speak, a new aspect of the life of the divine Savior.
In order to intensify this sanctifying action in souls, the sacred hierarchy groups the people of God in families, or parishes, and confides the care of these to co-operators in its priesthood. These families each have their own central hearth, “house of God and gate of heaven,” where everything, from vestibule to apse, from floor to roof, speaks of holy purifications and anointing. They all have their priest, who “offers, blesses, presides, instructs and baptizes;” their holy meetings, where all the brethren transform themselves into Christ through the action of the visible priesthood; their
Continued from, page 6
Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (1865-1944). Sheptytsky was a strong advocate for the rights and traditions of Eastern Christians (e.g., he opposed the Second Polish Republic’s policy of forced conversion of Byzantine-rite Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians to Latin-rite Catholicism) and worked tirelessly for improved relations with the Orthodox.
14. Pius XI, Apostolic Letter Equidem Verba (1924) to the Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order.
15. The Byzantine church was consecrated in 1957 and the Latin church in 1996. In 1990 the monastery was raised to an abbey.
16. Désiré-Joseph Cardinal Mercier (1851-1926), Archbishop of Malines and Primate of Belgium from 1906 until his death in 1926. The initial impetus for the conversations came from the “high church” Anglican layman Charles L. Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax (1839-1934), and the French Vincentian priest Fernand Portal (1855-1926). After the cardinal’s death in January 1926, the energy of the Malines Conversations greatly diminished.
17. Dom Lambert was never present at these meetings. He participated indirectly (through Cardinal Mercier) and discreetly. His paper, L’Église Anglicane Unie non Absorbée (“The Church of England United Not Absorbed”), was written in collaboration with Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and presented as the work of an anonymous canonist.
18. Before its separation from Rome in 1534, the English Church was in the Roman patriarchate, although the liturgy used throughout the British Isles was the Sarum Rite, a medieval recension of the Roman Rite with an admixture of other, principally northern French customs.
19. Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928). Apparently as a rebuke against the Malines Conversations (which at first he tacitly supported), the pope stated that Christian unity “can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it” (no. 10).
20. Without rejecting altogether the work for individual conversions, the Monks of Unity did not make active convert-seeking a part of their monastic life. From the start, Dom Lambert opposed proselytizing tactics, especially when aimed at Russian émigrés in the midst of the moral and physical sufferings of exile. The ecumenical method adopted at Amay was “psychological,” seeking first of all the creation of an atmosphere of understanding and mutual
i.e., their parish life, the soul of which is the Liturgy, the common source of supernatural and hierarchical life.
Finally, inferior in rank, but also of great importance, are the many sacramentals, by means of which the priestly powers communicate a sacred character to the very world in which the brothers of Christ dwell. Blessed by the hand of the minister of Christ, our natural life loses its profane character and is permeated by the supernatural. Places, times, individuals, dwellings, elements, years, days and hours—all, even our food and our sleep, are blessed and in some way share with us the supernatural economy. Being “new creatures,” the members of the risen Christ are placed by the creative priesthood of the Church into an anticipated springtime of eternal glory.
Such, viewed in its entirety, is the wonderful sanctifying activity of the visible priesthood of Jesus Christ, which everywhere and at all periods of time extends its supernatural influence over the whole Christian world. To designate it more exactly still, it is the totality of acts performed at the instance of the priests according to the fixed formulas of the liturgical books.
The traditional language of the Church expresses it by one word: the Liturgy.
esteem. However, the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church (as it was then called) intended Amay to be a lynchpin of Rome’s longterm plan for the conversion of Orthodox Russians to Eastern Catholicism.
21. On orders to leave Amay in 1930, Beauduin moved to the monastery of Tancrémont. In July 1931 he accepted exile from Belgium, and in November went to Strasbourg in the east of France. Just four months later, he was banished to En-Calcat, “a particularly strict monastery in an isolated setting suitable for receiving difficult cases” (Quitslund, Beauduin, 178).
22. Since restrictions on his writings had been imposed, some of the articles of an ecumenical nature were attributed to someone else or simply signed “XXX.”
23. Dom Alcuin Reid, in The Organic Development of the Liturgy: The Principles of Liturgical Reform and their Relation to the Twentieth Century Liturgical Movement Prior to the Second Vatican Council (Farnborough, UK: St Michael’s Abbey Press, 2004), 134, expresses the central idea of “pastoral liturgy” (and not simply “liturgy”) as being “wherever necessary the Liturgy is to be adapted in order to accommodate the perceived needs of the people.”
See also: Guido Rodheudt, “Pastoral Liturgy and the Church’s Mission in Parishes—The Dangerous Hermeneutic of a Concept,” in Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church, ed. Alcuin Reid (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 273-89; Alcuin Reid, “Pastoral Liturgy Revisited,” in T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy, ed. Alcuin Reid (London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 341-63.
24. Alcuin Reid, “The Twentieth-Century Liturgical Movement,” in T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy, 156.
25. Reid, Organic Development, 124
26. Pius XII describes liturgical archeologism (also called “antiquarianism”) as an agenda of reform that would “restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition” while denying the value of historical developments in the liturgy.
27. The two had first met at the Greek College in Rome in March 1925, soon after Roncalli’s appointment as apostolic delegate to Bulgaria. In 1930 Roncalli went to Amay to see Beauduin again and to visit the young monastery. Thus began a long friendship.
28. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), no.
14: “Yet it would be futile to entertain any hopes of realizing this [actuosa participatio] unless the pastors themselves, in the first place, become thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy, and undertake to give instruction about it.”
29. See Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1398.
30. This recognition is the basis for Catholic involvement in ecumenism. As per the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, the communities to which other Christians belong are called “churches” if they have retained the apostolic succession of bishops and so enjoy a full sacramental life; otherwise they are “ecclesial communities.”
31. For an overview of these bilateral and multilateral dialogues, see Frederick M. Bliss, S.M., Catholic and Ecumenical: History and Hope (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 1999).
32. Geoffrey Hull, in The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 267, alleges that Beauduin subscribed to the Anglican “branch theory” of the Church, which holds that the one Church of Christ is composed of three main branches or communions, all Catholic in essentials: Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox. Quitslund (whom Hull cites) does not explicitly support this claim; however, for all intents and purposes Beauduin did place the Anglican Communion on the same footing as the Orthodox Churches. Which means he would at least have had to consider the Protestant errors in Anglicanism as capable of a Catholic interpretation. Moreover, he could not have made the branch theory his own without dismissing Pope Leo XIII’s declaration (in the 1896 Bull Apostolicae Curae) that Anglican ordinations are “absolutely null and utterly void.” Whether he did or not, it is possible that Beauduin thought the question would soon be moot, for at the 1920 Lambeth Conference the Anglican bishops appeared willing to submit to conditional ordination so as to place beyond all doubt the validity of their ministry.
33. Quitslund, Beauduin, 20; emphasis in original. For corroboration, see Reid, Organic Development, 68-76.
34.
Romey P. Marshall and Michael J. Taylor, S.J., Liturgy and Christian Unity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 128. Cf. Quitslund, Beauduin 20.
patron saints, their feasts, their anniversaries of joy and sorrow!
On Porters and Doors: Toward a Missionizing Theology of Hospitality
By Brother Stanley Rother Wagner, OSB
In July 2023, the former guest master of our Archabbey Church, Benedictine Father Sean Hoppe, asked me to cover his duties for all of August because he was going to Tanzania. Part of the church guest master’s job at St. Meinrad Archabbey is to welcome guests, distribute worship aids, and, when necessary, remind guests to recite and sing softly when praying, so as not to disrupt the monastic community’s pace. When the guest master (also known as the porter) needs to remind guests of being aware of their volume and pace, it helps to make an announcement before Mass or the Divine Office. I adopted a direct though gentle (and catechetical) approach to this announcement:
“In your parishes, I know you’re used to singing boldly and responding quickly—no doubt because you receive Christ in Word and Sacrament, and you’re spurred on to go into the world to bring Christ to all whom you encounter. We [the monks], on the other hand, have nowhere to be—we take a vow of stability so that we’re able to worship God in a deliberate, prayerful manner. So, we invite you to immerse yourself in this prayerful atmosphere and find rest in the work of God.”
What is the significance of a community’s porter or guest master? How can porters inspire people to exit the church doors and “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord” in the world?
Much has been written regarding the Christian mission of going into the world and preaching Jesus Christ, and there is little benefit from restating here what other writers before have so eloquently written elsewhere.1 This could be construed as a problem for some communities, though, especially those that do not have an active charism outside the confines of their cloisters. Yet, the porter does have a mission—to be Christ to all who present themselves at the doors of a monastery. As an agent of hospitality, it is my mission to welcome guests and pilgrims, to invite them to enter into and share our liturgical prayer, that they may bring the Gospel into the world.
The mission of a religious community’s porter is vital to how the members of a community live the Christian life and serve as witnesses in the world. Church history is replete with women and men who have evangelized the world from their stations at the doors of their religious houses. Three porters in particular—St. Conrad of Parzham, St. André Bessette, and Bl. Solanus Casey—provide contemporary examples of how hospitality and mission intersect within the context of consecrated life, to offer guests another manner to encounter Christ. St. Conrad answered his community’s door and lived a life of prayer, centered on the Eucharist and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary; devotion to St. Joseph formed St. André to serve as a porter and seeing to menial tasks around his community; and Bl. Solanus welcomed Catholics and non-Catholics alike, encouraging them to pray with him, and to volunteer at the soup kitchen he established during the Great Depression. Conrad, André, and Solanus were ready to answer their doors when Christ came to knock (see Matthew 7:7). To comprehend the spiritual import of porters, doors, mission, and hospitality, it is first necessary to lay out what hospitality demands of porters and guests alike.
Benedictine Roots of Hospitality
St. Benedict is rightfully considered one of the fathers of Western civilization. His Rule became the basic framework through which most Western religious communities lived the Christian life more deliberately, and his insistence on educated monks laid the groundwork for the spread of culture and religion throughout Europe. Benedict, though, was not without empathy for those who did not belong to monasteries that followed his Rule. He wrote, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ” (The Rule of St. Benedict (RB) 53:1).2 Benedict was unabashedly insistent about welcoming guests when they presented themselves, not only because it is proper, but because Jesus demands it (see Matthew 25:35).
Benedict’s vision of the porter’s duties and offering hospitality were in many ways unique among monastic communities of his day. In The Rule of the
Master, an early fifth-century monastic rule—from which St. Benedict borrowed heavily—the author states that monks who are assigned to care for guests must also watch them lest they steal the community’s goods.3 The author of The Rule of the Master possessed a dim view of human nature, one that is suspicious, guarded, and paranoid. St. Benedict, on the other
“How can porters inspire people to exit the church doors and ‘Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord’
in the world?”
hand, approached offering hospitality to guests in a more optimistic manner: “Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received” (RB, 53:15). For Benedict, such a worldview was possible only because he insisted that paranoia and mistrust should have no place in the cloister. Elsewhere in his Rule, he expounded on the qualities of a potential abbot by outlining those qualities each monk should not possess: “Excitable, anxious,
In Catholicism, every material object can be a conduit for a sacramental encounter with the Risen Christ, and this is the case for church doors. When a priest is appointed the bishop of a diocese, part of the ritual the day before his installation is to knock on the door of his cathedral, where the people of his diocese—clerics and laity—welcome their new bishop. When a person is baptized in the Catholic Church, the priest and his assisting ministers go “to the entrance of the church [and the] celebrant greets all present….” When a Christian has completed the journey of her earthly life, family and friends carry the deceased’s body to the church doors, just as parents and godparents carried this person into the church to be baptized.
extreme, obstinate, jealous or oversuspicious he must not be. Such a man is never at rest” (RB, 64:16). Put another way, openness and trust must permeate each monk and his community for an authentic encounter with Christ to occur.
This spirit of openness is not merely for monks and the doors of their hearts, but also, more practically, for the doors of the monastery. “As soon as anyone knocks, or a poor man calls out, [the porter] replies, ‘Thanks be to God’ or ‘Your blessing, please’; then, with all the gentleness that comes from the fear of God, he provides a prompt answer with the warmth of love” (RB, 66:3-4). Welcoming guests at the door, being sure that someone is there to give a “prompt answer,” is a response to Christ’s commandment to “stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13). But the spirit of Christian hospitality did not stay confined to Benedictine monasteries, and new and subsequent European communities adopted this most Christian of practices, which spread to all parts of the world.
Holy Doorkeepers’ Holy Doors
St. Conrad of Parzham was born in 1818 in modernday Germany. He entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and professed vows as a lay brother when
he was 31 years old. After his profession, his superiors sent him to be the porter of the Friary of St. Anne in Altötting, Bavaria, which served the pilgrims who journeyed to the national shrine of Our Lady of Altötting. Since the shrine saw many visitors, their needs—both spiritual and material—kept Conrad busy. Pilgrims were always present, and many others brought their cares and worries to him—the poor, clerics, guests, and benefactors. Additionally, he had to get over his shyness, and he had to contend with envious confreres who thought such an important position should not have been given to a newer friar. Despite the hard work and almost constant stream of guests, he always had leftover food ready to distribute to anyone who was in need. Through grueling days that often lasted 12 hours or more, Conrad maintained his cheerful disposition and amiability, always ready to answer the door once a guest rang the bell, for the “sound of the bell was for him the voice of God.”4
Conrad’s mission was to recognize the various forms under which Christ appeared to him at the friary’s door. He was able to see Christ in the guest because he spent his free time (usually at night when the friars were asleep) in Eucharistic adoration. Conrad received his formation in hospitality learning at the feet of the Eucharistic Christ. As Christ welcomed him into his Eucharistic presence as he was, after laborious chores and amid exhaustion, so Conrad learned to welcome all who presented themselves to him at the friary’s door—he accepted them as they were, never judging them or attempting to determine who should be worthy of love, respect, and authentic charity. As Conrad welcomed an endless line of guests in
“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.”
—The Rule of St. Benedict
Germany, his Holy Cross counterpart was exercising hospitality across the Atlantic Ocean in Canada.
St. André Bessette was born in Mont-SaintGrégoire, Québec, in 1845. In 1874, after his solemn profession of vows as a lay brother of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, André’s superiors appointed him as porter of their community in Montreal.5 When he was not at his post, he could be seen walking around his neighborhood, fetching laundry, and making cinctures—he even became a self-taught barber for the young students at the College of Notre Dame. He charged five cents per haircut, which he kept in a secret fund that was used later for the construction of the Oratory of St. Joseph of Mount Royal. André’s mission, prayer, and work found their inspiration in the daily celebration of the Mass, Eucharistic adoration, and in his unwavering devotion to St. Joseph—he counseled the women and men who sought him out to ask for St. Joseph’s intercession and guidance.6 André’s was a simple life of obedience that left an impression on people from all walks of life.
On the wintry morning of Saturday, January 9, 1937, crowds in Montreal flocked to view André’s earthly remains. It was reported that the wind and ice became so perilous that the elements barred the faithful from accompanying Br. André’s body to his Requiem Mass at St. James Cathedral. If there were any concerns about low attendance during the funeral Mass, they were unwarranted—thousands more people were waiting behind the doors of the cathedral, not to mention the hundreds of faithful outside who put an abundance of trust in God and their winter coats.7 These “humble citizens” kept watch at the cathedral doors so they could pay their respects to a religious brother whose life was spent waiting at a door for Christ himself to appear. How did a simple religious brother elicit such an outpouring of grief from this great crowd of witnesses?
André manifested the presence of God in small ways that had an utterly profound impact on the people who presented themselves at the door of his religious house. His mission in life was to open doors and offer hospitality to any and all. His witness to holiness, kindness, and hospitality endeared him alike to superiors, confreres, students, guests, and pilgrims.
AB/RODNEY CAMPBELL ON FLICKR
and
to
His sanctity and rumors of miracles made people seek him out to beg for his prayers. He occupied his station near the community’s door, always ready to lend a helping hand or a listening ear to those who crossed the threshold into a lifechanging encounter. Fortified with God’s grace, these guests passed through the door and went into the world, always ready to share their experiences of André and, by extension, Christ.
While there is no evidence to suggest that André had a direct influence on Bl. Solanus Casey, it is logical to assume that Solanus would have heard about the Montreal miracle worker. Solanus was born in Oak Grove, WI, in 1870. After working various jobs—lumberjack, hospital orderly, prison guard, and streetcar operator8—he felt called to be a priest. Solanus, though, was not the best student. Priests at St. Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee counselled him to enter a religious community because of his limited education. He subsequently entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in 1897 and was ordained a simplex priest in 1904.9 Unlike Conrad and André, Solanus was not assigned to be a porter immediately after his profession—his superiors assigned him to this work when he was transferred to St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit in 1924, a job he held for over 20 years.10
Hospitality, Doors, and Mission
Ahead of the Jubilee Year of 2025, it is prudent to consider how holy doors imbue us with grace to preach the Gospel in the world according to our states in life. The open door symbolizes Jesus the gate, that “whoever enters through [him] will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture” (John 10:9). As Pope Francis reminded the world in Spes non confundit, the papal bull that established the Jubilee Year of 2025, “Pilgrimage is … a fundamental element of every Jubilee event. Setting out on a journey is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life. A pilgrimage on foot is a great aid for rediscovering the value of silence, effort and simplicity of life” (Spes non Confundit 5). In Catholicism, every material object can be a conduit for a sacramental encounter with the Risen Christ, and this is the case for church doors. When a priest is appointed the bishop of a diocese, part of the ritual the day before his installation is to knock on the door of his cathedral, where the people of his diocese—clerics and laity—welcome their new bishop.11 When a person is baptized in the Catholic Church, the priest and his assisting ministers go “to the entrance of the church [and the] celebrant greets all present….”12 When a Christian has completed the journey of earthly life, family and friends carry the deceased’s body to the church doors,13 just as parents and godparents carried this person into the
a life of prayer, centered on the Eucharist and devotion to the Blessed Virgin
encourag-
church to be baptized. Jesus bid the Apostles not to stay in Jerusalem but to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20a). Christ calls us not to remain in the church building but to venture into the world to be agents of the Kingdom of God.
One of the pious devotions that most enfleshes this concept of mission is chalking doorways with the current year and “CMB”—Christus Mansionem Benedicat (“May Christ bless this house”). The initials also refer to the Magi who went on a mission to worship the Infant Christ: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, representing the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, respectively.14 The Gospel of Matthew records, “on entering the house they saw the child
“Like these holy porters, we must be ready at the doors to extend the hand of friendship in humility for all who travel to seek a transformative encounter.”
with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way” (Matthew 2:11-12). The Magi journeyed to worship and offer gifts to Jesus, though they did not stay, and they left their encounter transformed.
Make a Door
The Christian life is a life of pilgrimage—we begin our lives at the doors of the church building when our parents and godparents carry us into a life enfleshed in the Risen Christ. As we enter and leave the threshold of a church edifice throughout our lives, the words we hear through our ears at the work of God resound in the “ear of our heart” (see RB, Prol.:1) from moment to moment; and the bread and wine we receive in communion edify each of us, making us conform ourselves to Christ so we also may be bread broken and wine poured out “for the life of the world” (John 6:51). This is who Christ is calling us to be: men and women of service to one another, who give of themselves freely and willingly, and who welcome all people—without exception—at the doors of their hearts as they would welcome Christ himself.
Hospitality, mission, and evangelization are so intimately intertwined in Catholic thought and theology, that to have one without the others is
unthinkable. To welcome the guest as Christ himself, though, each of us must stand at the doors of our hearts, always ready to expect the Bridegroom, who is simultaneously coming and here. Christ does not expect hospitality to be either grandiose or a venue for showboating. Rather, just as God manifested himself to Elijah in “a light silent sound” (1 Kings 19:12), and as Christ preached to give alms without ostentation (see Matthew 6:3), so too must we remain humble and authentic as we live the Christian life. All Christians can fulfill their mission to evangelize the world in the small, menial, and quotidian tasks that occupy each moment.
The three saintly and contemporary figures who embody this indivisible and integrated approach to living the Christian life—St. Conrad of Parzham, St. André Bessette, and Bl. Solanus Casey—show us how one does not need to perform grand gestures or “put on a show” when practicing hospitality. Like these holy porters, we must be ready at the doors to extend the hand of friendship in humility for all who travel to seek a transformative encounter—whether that be at the door of a church building, at a monastery’s door, or most especially at the door to our hearts.
Br. Stanley Rother Wagner, OSB, is a monk of Saint Meinrad Archabbey, where he currently serves as the archivist for both the Archabbey and the SwissAmerican Benedictine Congregation, as well as History Museum Curator and Subrefectorian. He professed simple vows in 2018, and his solemn vows in 2021. He has a BA in history from Quincy University, and MAs in liturgical studies, theology, and American history. Br. Stanley’s articles and essays have been published in the American Benedictine Review, Church Life Journal, PrayTellBlog, Lutheran Forum, and Adoremus Bulletin.
1. See Mark G. Boyer, A Spirituality of Mission: Reflections for Holy Week and Easter (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017); and Stuart Murray, Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World 2nd ed., (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018).
2. Benedict and Timothy Fry, The Rule of Benedict (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).
3. Hugh Feiss, “Cura in the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict,” American Benedictine Review 65:3 (September 2014): 338-339.
4. Georg Albrechtskirchinger, “St. Konrad of Parzham (Altötting),” Salve Maria Regina accessed September 24, 2024, https://www.salvemariaregina.info/Martyrologies/Konrad. html
5. C. Bernard Ruffin, The Life of Brother André: The Miracle Worker of St. Joseph (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1988), 29-30.
6. Patricia E. Jablonski, Saint André Bessette: Miracles in Montreal (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2019), chap. 5, Kindle.
7. “Humble Citizens Brave Weather for Bro. Andre,” The Montreal Daily Star, January 9, 1937, https://www.newspapers.com/image/740251933/?terms=andre%20bessette
8. Michael Crosby, Thank God Ahead of Time: The Life and Spirituality of Solanus Casey (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1985), 14-19.
9. Under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, a simplex priest could not preach or hear confessions but only celebrate Mass. Mike Stechschulte, “Pope Francis announces Fr. Solanus Casey to be declared ‘blessed,’” The Michigan Catholic [now Detroit Catholic], May 9, 2017, https://www. detroitcatholic.com/news/pope-francis-announces-fr-solanus-casey-to-be-declared-blessed
10. “Blessed Bernard Francis Casey,” CatholicSaints.Info, accessed September 25, 2024, https:// catholicsaints.info/blessed-bernard-francis-casey/
11. Liturgy Office of England and Wales, “Reception of the Bishop in His Cathedral Church (Installation of a Bishop),” accessed September 25, 2024, https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/ Resources/Rites/Reception-Bishop.pdf
12. St. Michael Parish—Bedford, MA, “Rite
Three porters—St. Conrad of Parzham, St. André Bessette, and Bl. Solanus Casey—provide contemporary examples of how hospitality and mission intersect within the context of consecrated life, to offer guests another manner to encounter Christ. St. Conrad answered his community’s door
lived
Mary; devotion to St. Joseph formed St. André to serve as a porter and seeing
menial tasks around his community; and Bl. Solanus welcomed Catholics and non-Catholics alike,
ing them to pray with him, and to volunteer at the soup kitchen he established during the Great Depression.
the seasons, i.e., the flow of time, has diminished. Fall, for example, once upon a time also kindled thoughts about the movement of human life inexorably towards an individual’s end: as the poet John Greenleaf Whittier observed, unlike the year, man’s seasons are linear, not cyclical.
The marginalization of Sunday and its substitution by the “weekend” is perhaps the greatest cause in the flattening of time. The distinctive character of Sunday has been largely lost, even in Christian circles, replaced in common culture by a bleached-out version of “down days” (Saturday and Sunday) distinguished not so much for what they are in themselves as in how they differ from “workdays.”
Finally, the hold of even long-held ecclesiastical traditions, e.g., associations of November with the holy souls, May and October with Mary, June with the Sacred Heart, grow more tenuous. How many parishes do much to observe November as a month of prayer for the Holy Souls as opposed, say, to the still commonplace “novena” in its first nine days? How many use the theme of November to address other issues of human mortality, such as making a will, planning one’s funeral, or providing for one’s own post-mortem spiritual welfare by, e.g., reserving the celebration of Gregorian Masses?
Flat-out Bored
I focus on this “flattening” of time because I claim it contributes to the psychological difficulties of our era. Bereft of traditions and with an increasingly attenuated communal engagement in celebration (and penance), moderns suffer from an ennui by which their experience of time is shorn of any meaning other than its passing, passing from one nondescript day to another.
French theologian Helen Bricourt calls on Catholics to celebrate the liturgical year as “another signification of time,” one that “introduces a porosity between the present life and eternal life, and teaches the baptized how to live.”
That’s important, because the contemporary flattened sense of time really does not grapple with the transcendent. Mark Bauerlein would further argue (correctly, I believe) that the screen-centric culture in which we have raised generations since the turn of the century has only reinforced that immersion in the immanent. Our times are not only immanently focused but almost impermeable to anything beyond the immanent. To the extent modern secular American life even acknowledges the transcendent, it relegates it agnostically to the sphere of the private, individual pursuit. It takes a village to inculcate the community’s values, but the lone individual is expected to answer the great existential questions all by his lonesome.
And make no mistake about it: those existential questions perdure because human beings constantly find themselves unsatisfied by the best the immanent has to offer. Recovering a sense of the liturgical year, therefore, is vital, especially since our liturgical year is sacramental and sacramentality engages the whole person, body and soul, in ways our gnostic, anticorporeal cultural ethos does not.
Complementarity of the Texts
But I started this essay with a discussion of popular devotions, not the liturgical year. I did that deliberately because I also believe recovery of popular devotions is vital to breaking the flattened sense of time through recovery of the notion of celebration. Yes, the liturgical year is celebratory and, yes, its annual cycle renews human awareness of the great events of salvation history. But the liturgical year is also, in one sense, artificial. It is a calendrical construct intended regularly to survey the flow of salvation history, one whose antiquity has “fixed” certain times of the year, e.g., December and Christmas.
But the liturgical year alone is, in my judgment, insufficient to address modern man’s time needs. That’s not to undervalue the liturgical year but to set it in perspective. Let me draw an analogy. Back in college, we were introduced to the Liturgy of the Hours and communally prayed Morning and Evening Prayer. But one of the wisest counsels I heard back then was from one of our faculty members, Msgr. Zdzisław Peszkowski, who warned us against allowing liturgical prayer to subsume the whole of our prayer lives. If we did not engage in our own prayer, both private (e.g., what was going on in our lives) and traditional (e.g.,
the Rosary), we ran the danger of a formalized but atrophied spiritual life. Liturgical and private/popular prayer go together and complement each other. So does the liturgical year and popular devotions.
Popular devotions introduce notes into our spirituality that are absent or underrepresented in the liturgical year. Examples: Marian devotions. The popular devotion of associating May and October with the Blessed Virgin Mary comes from the Church’s Tradition. It serves to reaccentuate the Marian tradition in Catholic spirituality. That tradition is not alien to Scripture or the liturgical year, but neither is it systematically expounded over an extended period of time. A monthlong praying of the Rosary at a separate church service or after Mass serves to reinforce that Marian character of our spiritual tradition—a tradition rooted in Christ’s own gift of his mother from the Cross—in ways that the liturgical year just does not do.
To say that the liturgical year alone should be the focus of our ecclesiastical celebrations, therefore, is to lose that focus and, arguably, one of the reasons we lost it in the post-Vatican II era. Let me give an example. Again, back in college, Wednesday nights were reserved for Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, which began around 6:45 (right after Evening Prayer)
“It takes a village to inculcate the community’s values, but the lone individual is expected to answer the great existential questions all by his lonesome.”
and continued until 10:00 (when evening classes ended). Back in October 1980, my class wanted to conclude the evening by praying the Rosary before the Blessed Sacrament starting at 9:30, which would have concluded by that time for Benediction when anybody who had just finished class could then join. But one of our professors reamed us out with the argument, “You’re confusing your Christological and your Mariological mysteries” as well as impermissibly mixing devotions, so he forbade us from continuing. Looking back, I can only say that was an example of the callow post-Vatican II “theology” that seemed incapable of holding two thoughts simultaneously. I mention it not just because of the prejudice it showed towards popular devotions but also because one hears a variant of this mindset today when some liturgists grouse about the resurgence of Eucharistic devotion outside Mass. “Jesus said ‘take and eat,’ not ‘take and look,’” another slogan the theological equivalent of being challenged to walk and chew gum at the same time.
November. A long tradition treats November as the month of the Holy Souls. That theme is not alien to the liturgy of the time: by the time we reach November, the lectionary has typically assumed a decidedly eschatological character. But neither is it specifically focused on the Catholic tradition of prayer for the dead, which has a long history in the Church although one that, in our modern times, seems to have gone into eclipse. Yes, we’re treated to a first reading from Maccabees about prayer for the dead on a November Sunday in one of the three years of the lectionary cycle, but is that enough to sustain consciousness of the Catholic tradition and doctrine of the “communion of the saints”? And does not the very “texture” of November in the natural year (remember, as Catholics we affirm “grace builds on nature”) cause us to reflect on the generally neglected question of our own mortality? Who am I and where am I going? What happens to me when I die? What has happened to all those whom I’ve known who have died? These are the kinds of questions that break the flatness of our immersion in the here and now. They cannot be left to the hope that somebody might infer them from the eschatological bent of some Sunday readings. Let’s even ask a basic question. Many parishes still announce before or during Mass, “This Mass is offered for the soul of….” Every Mass is an offering for the living and the dead, but our faith also has the doctrinal conviction and tradition of the efficacy of suffrages for the dead. That’s true of Masses even outside November. But apart from the “Holy Souls” focus of November and the popular piety associated with it, how does one reinforce and pass on that awareness that “it is a
holy and wholesome thought to pray [and offer Mass for] the dead?” If Pew surprised the bishops about the confusion of Eucharistic belief among Catholics, I challenge the liturgical purist to ask a sampling of average Catholics to explain why we “offer Mass for the soul of….” The answers (if you get them) may surprise you.
Traditions associated with the saints. Popular devotions that also become communal celebrations (and that is not a bad thing—faith should affect a culture) more often emerge from feasts of saints rather than the liturgical year. As a graduate student at Fordham University, New York City, which abutted Little Italy in the Bronx, I witnessed the annual festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in July. Sure, it had acquired questionable associations (e.g., gambling connected with the street festival), but its core remained religious, assembling a community and attracting others to it in ways few other activities do in our modern world. The feast was typically counted down to by the long-lost tradition of “novena,” not unlike, say, many parishes’ celebrations of the Feast of St. Anthony. These are good and healthy traditions but not parts of the liturgical year. Should those babies be thrown out with the liturgical bathwater?
On the other hand, reflecting on the nexus to liturgy, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether the various parish festivals or “carnivals” that proliferate particularly in the summertime and independently of patronal feasts need better to be connected to the liturgy. By the very fact it happens on church property, it seems a parish “carnival” should be more than just a fundraising event that happens to be at St. James. It would be good if, in imitation of parish festivals I see at various Orthodox churches, these events at least include a “visit” and “explanation” of the church building for those interested. Even better would be some kind of service—ideally a Mass—held during the festivities. After all, shouldn’t the Eucharist be the heart of celebration?
Tradition and Scripture
I make all these points in conjunction with the 2001 Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments’ “Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines.” The document made a welcomed appearance in helping to recover popular devotions after many years of their deliberate neglect, ostensibly in the name of the Second Vatican Council and its principles. It rightly calls for a renewal of those devotions and a cleansing of accretions to them that detract from them.
But I still sense the heavy hand of the “liturgical establishment” in the document, trying to wedge all popular piety into the Procrustean bed of the liturgy and especially the liturgical year. There no doubt needs to be a nexus between them. But I would argue the relationship might better be considered along the lines of how we understand Tradition and Scripture. Yes, there is one source of Revelation, not two: Tradition is not independent of Scripture—nor is Scripture independent of Tradition. Together they present God’s revelation to his people. Indeed, not only did Tradition formulate the authoritative canon of the Scripture but it also provides the working out of the insights of Scripture, even those sometimes only contained in germ in Scripture, through the dynamic living history of the Church led by the Holy Spirit. In that sense, Tradition does not add to Scripture but expostulates it. One might say the same thing about the relationship of popular piety and the liturgical year. As exposition of the Paschal Mystery, the liturgical year sets the foundation. But, in the living Church guided by the Holy Spirit and his grace, popular piety has expostulated aspects of the Paschal Mystery, seen in the Church’s doctrines, the lives of its saints, and the lived prayer experience of her faithful, over time in ways that should be concordant with the liturgical year.
These are not just word arguments. They recognize the richer texture that the nexus to the liturgical year can provide to popular devotion, one that a too-literal understanding fails to articulate to its fulness, to the loss not just of the Church but of modern man caught in what Jacques Maritain pejoratively called “the Minotaur of Immanence.”
John Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) was former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ.
Editor’s note: The month of November begins with a Mass for All Saints and is followed immediately by Masses for All of the Faithful Departed. The entire month consequently focuses on those souls who have passed before us, those enjoying the beatific vision, and those still waiting for final glory. This Bulletin’s Rite Questions offers a series of common questions and answers about liturgical celebrations for the saints and the deceased.
Q: What is meant by a “Votive Mass”?
A: Votive Masses are Masses of the mysteries of the Lord or in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary or of the Angels or of any given Saint or of all the Saints said in response to the devotion of the faithful; these Masses may only be said when the calendar allows. However, it is not permitted to celebrate as Votive Masses those days that refer to mysteries related to events in the life of the Lord (e.g., Christmas) or of the Blessed Virgin Mary (e.g., her nativity—although the Mass of the Immaculate Conception is an exception to this rule), since their celebration is an integral part of the course of the liturgical year.
Q: Are there special Votive Masses?
A: Traditionally, each day of the week has a Votive Mass assigned to it, such as Monday’s Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit or Tuesday’s Votive Mass of the Holy Angels. Over the years different Masses have been assigned to each day. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is traditionally celebrated on the First Friday of the month and the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the First Saturday. The only assigned Votive Mass particularly recommended by the liturgical books is the Saturday commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, because it is to the Mother of the Redeemer that in the Liturgy of the Church, first and before all the Saints, veneration is given (General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 378). On the Saturday commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, any of the Masses of the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or any of the three Votive Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or any Mass from the liturgical year that is not related to the events of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary may be chosen, as well as the Masses found in the collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary As noted above, other Masses may be offered in honor of a saint not listed in the section of Votive Masses in the Roman Missal. That is, a votive Mass may be offered in honor of St. Philip Neri (for example) at any time the calendar allows.
Q
: Are there Votive Offices in the Liturgy of the Hours?
occur on that day, or the Office of any saint inscribed in the Roman Martyrology for that day. Celebrations of saints from the Roman Martyrology are celebrated using appropriate texts from the Commons.
Q : What lectionary readings ought to be used on a saint’s memorial—weekday or proper?
A: The Introduction to the Lectionary (IL) and the GIRM explain which lectionary readings ought to be used. In the Lectionary for weekdays, readings are provided for each day of every week throughout the entire course of the year; hence, these readings will in general be used on the days to which they are assigned. The presider should not omit too often or without sufficient cause the readings assigned for each day in the weekday Lectionary. Should the continuous reading during the week be interrupted on account of some particular celebration, the priest is permitted, bearing in mind the scheme of readings for the entire week, either to combine parts omitted with other readings or to decide which readings are to be given preference over others (IL, 82; GIRM, 358).
For Memorials of Saints that have their own proper New Testament reading, that is to say, readings in which mention is made of the saint being celebrated, the proper reading(s) must be used. In certain cases, particularized readings are provided, that is to say, readings which highlight some particular aspect of the spiritual life or activity of the saint. The use of such readings is not to be insisted upon, unless a pastoral reason truly suggests it, as they are merely suggestions. Whenever the Commons are indicated as the source for the choice of readings, any other reading from the Commons referred may be selected, or from the Common of Holy Men and Women as well (IL, 83; GIRM, 357).
Q : Can “external solemnities” be celebrated in parishes? That is, can a feast or solemnity be moved to the nearest Sunday so as to celebrate with the parish community?
AA: A Votive Office may be celebrated in the Liturgy of the Hours either in whole or in part for a public or devotional reason: for example, at the time of a pilgrimage, on a local feast, or during the external solemnity of a saint, except on solemnities, Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide, Ash Wednesday, during Holy Week and during the octave of Easter, and on the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day). Like the Saturday commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours permits an optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary with its proper readings on Saturdays in Ordinary Time on which optional memorials are permitted (General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, 240).
Q
: On Weekdays in Ordinary Time, what Mass or Office may be celebrated?
A: On weekdays in Ordinary Time, there may be chosen either the Mass of the weekday, or the Mass of an Optional Memorial which happens to occur on that day, or the Mass of any saint inscribed in the Roman Martyrology for that day, or a Mass for Various Needs, or a Votive Mass. In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Office for the weekday is celebrated, or the Office of an Optional Memorial which happens to
: Yes, but only on Sundays in Ordinary Time. For the pastoral good of the faithful, it is permitted to observe on Sundays in Ordinary Time those celebrations that fall during the week and that are agreeable to the devotion of the faithful. It must be noted that these celebrations must rank above that Sunday in the Table of Liturgical Days, such as the solemnity of the dedication of the church or the solemnity of the title of the church. The Mass of such celebrations may be used at all the celebrations of Mass at which the people are present (General Calendar, 58).
Q
: How do a Funeral Mass, a Mass on an Anniversary of Death, and a Mass for the Dead differ?
A: The Church provides different Masses for the Dead, depending on the circumstances. Among the Masses for the Dead, the Funeral Mass holds first place. It may be celebrated on any day except for Solemnities that are Holydays of Obligation, Thursday of Holy Week (Holy Thursday), the Paschal Triduum, and the Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Easter (GIRM, 380). The Funeral Mass follows the rubrics of the Order of Christian Funerals and is ordinarily celebrated in the parish church.
Masses on the First Anniversary of death may be celebrated even on days within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord, and on days when an Obligatory Memorial occurs, and on weekdays, with the exception of Ash Wednesday and weekdays during Holy Week. On other anniversaries, such a Mass may be celebrated on weekdays in Ordinary Time even when an Optional Memorial occurs.
There are other Masses for the Dead, collectively termed “Various Commemorations.” These Masses
may be celebrated when the news of a death is first received or on the day of final burial, even on days within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord, on days when an Obligatory Memorial occurs, and on weekdays, with the exception of Ash Wednesday and weekdays during Holy Week.
While the Roman Missal provides complete Masses for the Dead, with their own antiphons and prayers for the sake of convenience, all the texts may be exchanged one for another, especially the prayers. The rubrics indicate that the presider should make changes according to circumstances, in gender and number. Similarly, if the prayers given in the Roman Missal for funerals and anniversaries are used in other circumstances, the phrasing that appears less suited should be omitted.
Q : What is a Daily Mass for the Dead?
A: A Daily Mass for the Dead is a special type of Various Commemoration of the Dead which uses Mass formularies from the Masses for the Dead, similar to a Votive Mass. This type of Mass may be celebrated on weekdays in Ordinary Time, even if an Optional Memorial occurs, provided such Masses are actually applied for the dead. These Masses should be chosen in moderation, for every Mass is offered for both the living and the dead, and there is a commemoration of the dead in the Eucharistic Prayer.
Q : How and when does one use the Office for the Dead in the Liturgy of the Hours?
A: The Office for the Dead is the proper Office on the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day). Outside of this commemoration, similar to Masses for the Dead, the Office for the Dead may be celebrated when the news of a death is first received, on the day of a funeral, on the day of final burial, or on the first or subsequent anniversaries. It could also be prayed as a Votive Office, similar to a Daily Mass for the Dead. While the rubrics do not list when the Office for the Dead may be used, it would be logical that it would follow the same rubrics for the various Masses for the Dead.
Q : Can selections from sacred scripture be used at a funeral that are not given in the lectionary?
A: The rubrics for funerals note that in the arranging and choosing of the variable parts of the Mass for the Dead, especially the Funeral Mass (for example, orations, readings, and the Universal Prayer), pastoral considerations bearing upon the deceased, the family, and those attending should be kept in mind. Furthermore, the GIRM states that in Masses for special groups, the priest shall be allowed to choose texts more suited to the particular celebration, provided they are taken from the texts of an approved Lectionary (GIRM, 358). Additionally, the Introduction to the Lectionary remarks that the first concern of a priest celebrating with a congregation is the spiritual benefit of the faithful. Therefore, it would seem that as long as the readings are taken from another place in the approved Lectionary for that locale, they are permitted; readings not found in another place in the Lectionary are not used.
—Answered by Father Alan Guanella Diocese of La Crosse
TO HONOR
Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, San Diego from Greg Cranham
IN THANKSGIVING
For all of Adoremus’s supporters, readers, and authors over the past 30 years
New Book Explores Heavenly Reality Through Earthly Examples
Models of Heaven: Interpreting Life Everlasting by M. Francis Mannion. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023. pp. 195. ISBN: 978-1-6667-1908-6. $28 Paperback. $38.38 Hardcover.
By Daria Spezzano
As Monsignor Francis Mannion observes in the opening line of his engaging new book, Models of Heaven: Interpreting Life Everlasting, “the topic of heaven continues to receive less than favorable reviews” (1). For many in today’s secularist culture, even for believers, the thought of heaven is somewhat uninspiring; the idea of “white-robed ghostly figures” wandering “aimlessly between clouds” and playing harps seems rather boring in the long (eternal) run (2). In his introduction, Mannion proposes to show that there is much more for us in the Christian tradition on heaven, and this book, theologically informed yet accessible to the layman, does not disappoint. He offers a rich series of reflections on heaven, each carefully researched and supported by abundant insights from scriptural, theological, literary, and especially liturgical sources.
One cannot describe a divine mystery in only one way. As in some of his earlier scholarly work on liturgical matters, Mannion employs a methodology of models very effectively to present this topic in a series of focused themes. Here, he offers for our reflection eight models of heaven well-supported in Christian tradition: resting in peace, contemplating divine beauty, participating in the Trinity, communing with the saints, singing with the angels, tending the new creation, dwelling in the holy city, and feasting in the Kingdom. Throughout the book runs a unifying thread: the Church’s liturgy on earth anticipates heaven in all these ways, revealing and bringing about the eschatological fulfillment of earthly life, and through the beauty and fidelity of its celebration, the liturgy should effectively reflect the glorious reality of the liturgy in heaven.
Peace Out
In Chapter One, Mannion reflects on heaven as a state of perfect peace and eternal rest, which “responds to the human experience of restlessness and anxiety” (10). As he does throughout the book, Mannion draws from a wide spectrum of literary, theological, and scriptural sources (here, W.H. Auden, Paul Tillich, and Hans Urs von Balthasar) to diagnose the causes of contemporary anxiety as well as its final redemption in the Kingdom of Heaven (e.g., Revelation 14:13). Yet this heavenly rest from the anxiety felt by so many today is not, as some imagine, a kind of motionlessness that would lead to boredom. On the contrary, heaven will be a state of “dynamic rest” and creativity that participates in the eternal activity of God (18, 25). It will be an experience of total engagement and “flow” anticipated in the “liturgical sense of time” found in the Church’s celebrations (20), and especially in the Christian Sunday, as the “eschatological day” (25).
Chapter Two offers an especially attractive perspective on heaven in its treatment of the contemplation of divine beauty in the beatific vision. Mannion interweaves liturgical themes throughout as he reflects on the divinization that begins in baptism and culminates in the vision of God in glory. With abundant selections from theological and liturgical texts, Mannion demonstrates that the liturgy is the “source and summit of the process of divinization” in this life, transforming us for ultimate “trinification” in heaven (35). Mannion argues that although the theology of beauty has been somewhat neglected in Western Christianity, more work is now being done to explore the mystery of God as “beauty itself, the heart of the process by which men and women are made beautiful and ennobled by the beatific vision” (40). The liturgy is the primary place where divine beauty is revealed in the world, giving the Christian a “foretaste of heaven” as “an endless celebration of all that is wondrous and beautiful…an unending ‘feast for the eyes’” (45, 46).
Chapters Three, Four, and Five continue, in a sense, the theme of participation in divine beauty with their reflections on sharing in the “dance” of Trinitarian life, in the communion of saints, and in the heavenly song of the angels. In Chapter Three, Mannion gives us a “perichoretic paradigm” of trinitarian theology, again drawing on a wide range of theological sources (from St. John Damascene to the contemporary theologian Richard Rohr), and scripture texts that speak of the mutual indwelling of the divine persons. The metaphor of a “dancing trinitarian God,” Mannion
argues, helps to “revitalize trinitarian theology from excessive abstraction and affective dryness” (50). It also underlines the way in which trinitarian life can be “a paradigm for human society” (57), but its fullest expression on earth is mediated through the Church’s liturgy, in its doxological worship of the Triune God. In Chapter Four, Mannion reflects on the communion of saints (on earth and in heaven), likewise emphasizes the trinitarian dynamic of Christian life as self-giving agapic love, uniting heaven and earth (723). The liturgy again gives us a clear expression of this communion in the Eucharistic Prayers, but Mannion also offers an encouraging picture of the communion we can imagine with family and friends in eternal life. Chapter Five explores how this communion in heaven will extend even to the company of angels, with whom we will join in the cosmic worship of heavenly song. Even now, the beauty of music, and especially of liturgical music, “raises the human being to heaven, where humanity and angels sing together” (83). One might say that “God is the original musician, the one from whom music radiates throughout the whole cosmos,” and “Christ is the Song Incarnate” (92). Mannion concludes this chapter with a list of eight essential characteristics of sacred (especially liturgical) music that exemplify much of what has preceded: it manifests God’s beauty; it is eschatological, cosmic, “evocative of the great space of the universe”; it is doxological, glorious, and expressive of the whole range of human reality, from tragedy to joy (98).
City Life
Chapters Six and Seven examine different aspects of the model of heaven as a city; first, as the “garden” of the New Creation, and then as the Holy City. Mannion develops the connection between heaven and creation as he reflects in a timely fashion on the ecological significance of human participation in the stewardship of creation as an anticipation of the heavenly fulfillment of all things in Christ. Drawing abundantly, as always, from scripture, Mannion argues for the “eschatological character of creation” in the New Testament, brought about by Christ’s incarnation transforming all of earthly reality (including a brief speculation on whether there will be animals in heaven—Mannion thinks there will). The chapter concludes with an extended reflection on “eschatological ecology” inspired particularly by Laudato Sí; Mannion argues that “a theology of creation must inevitably be an eschatological theology,” because “human stewardship of creation now is a preparation for the world to come” (119). In the “garden-city” of heaven, “God will once again look at his creation and find it ‘very good’” (119).
Chapter Seven’s examination of heaven as the Holy City provides a discussion of an ancient symbolic model of heaven as the perfect city. Biblical treatments of the city in the Old and New Testament present it as “the eschatological place to which all people will journey” (122), the new Jerusalem, “an eternity of all that is most noble, graceful, and beautiful in the human city” (127). In the liturgy of the Church, “the holy and
eternal city is given its central and fullest expression” (128), the liturgy “is the sacrament of the heavenly city conducted in the midst of the earthly city for the redemption of the latter” (129). An interesting reflection follows on the way in which the heavenly city in a sense counteracts and heals earthly distortions of what the city should be. In Babel, Raamses, and Philistia, we see three representations of “human deprivation in civic configuration: Babel, the city of confusion; Raamses, the city of injustice and oppression; and Philistia, the quasi-city of ugliness” (131). The Church’s “awesome responsibility” (134, 139, 141), especially through its liturgy, is to redeem the human city by drawing it forward into the eternal holy city, where “truth, justice, and beauty embrace in the heart of God, a city in which all men and women (whether they know it or not) have already set their hearts” (141-2).
Mannion’s final model of heaven examined in Chapter Eight is the sacred meal, which fittingly rounds out this book’s liturgical theme, with its focus on the Eucharist as the anticipation of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation. With a discussion of biblical meals in Old and New Testaments, Mannion underlines the way in which meals satisfy human desires, both physical and spiritual, not only for food, but also for communion with others. Mannion again draws on a range of scriptural and theological sources to bring out the eschatological aspect of biblical meals which finds its full expression in Jesus’ “meal ministry” (148) and especially his celebration of the Last Supper; indeed, Mannion argues, “Jesus’ eschatological ministry took place typically in the context of meals” (153).
The Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation plays a central role in revealing the way in which Eucharistic worship anticipates the joyful feast of heaven. The last sections of the chapter give an interesting analysis of why it seems that “the eschatological vision of the scriptures, of the modern liturgical movement, and of Vatican II, [has] not been realized” today (158). Both historical and cultural influences, as well as “reductionist christologies” and suspicion of traditional eschatology as “oppressive and escapist” have resulted in a decline, especially since Vatican II, of the “eschatological consciousness” so central to the Church’s tradition (161). Expressing what is perhaps the central concern of the book, Mannion calls for a restoration and renewal of this consciousness in liturgy, in order to “bring back into focus the heavenly liturgy as the model for the earthly,” recognizing that “the liturgy of heaven and earth are united as the former gathers up the latter”; this is a theme whose importance, Mannion argues, “cannot be overestimated” (162).
Destination: Heaven
Monsignor Mannion, in this thoroughly researched and spiritually rich volume, offers us a vision of the reality, joy, and beauty of heaven that will lift the hearts of many towards the “majestic and glorious” end of all their desires (165). The specialist will appreciate the extensive bibliography as a resource for further study, but any Christian who seeks a deeper entrance into meditation on the life of heaven will find plenty of nourishment here. Mannion successfully retrieves for us an eschatological spirituality that calls us “to live now with heaven in view,” not fearing death but longing for “the fullness of life in heaven” (167). As he demonstrates from beginning to end, we can begin to taste this life in all its many dimensions even now in the Church’s liturgy, where in the presence of the Triune God we sing with the angels their joyful song of praise.
Daria Spezzano is Associate Professor and Chair of Theology at Providence College in Providence, RI. She holds a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master’s in Liturgical Studies from the Liturgical Institute-St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL. Her book, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas, was published by Sapientia Press in 2015. She has published articles in The Thomist, Nova et Vetera, Cistercian Studies, Journal of Moral Theology, and Antiphon, and chapters in several edited volumes, including Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas (CUA Press, 2020), Thomas Aquinas, Biblical Theologian (Emmaus Academic, 2021), Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Sapientia Press, 2021), and Thomas Aquinas as Spiritual Teacher (Sapientia Press, 2023). She is currently co-editing a volume on Christ the Wisdom of God in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas.
