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The fiery tongues of the Holy Ghost have fallen. The ancient Ember Days are behind us. We lingered in the mystery during the octave for the sake of the transformation of our lives in the Holy Spirit. The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, feels like the opening of a new liturgical season, Tempus per annum… Time Through the Year, even though it technically began on Trinity Sunday, which substitutes for the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. The 1st Sunday has its own texts which are said on the following available weekdays. That said, after the Lent/Easter cycle, this new liturgical season calls us into the practical school of grace. The green vestments remind us that this is a season of growth. The roots planted at Pentecost must now bear fruit.
Dom Pius Parsch, of the 20th century Liturgical Movement, calls this Season after Pentecost a “Golden Bridge from Earth to Heaven”. These 24 Sundays during the Pentecostal cycle develop three great themes. Thus, Parsch:
The first is that of baptism and its graces. We are baptized and in the graces of baptism we are to anchor; every Sunday means baptism repeated, a small Easter feast. The second theme, preparation for the Second Advent of the Lord, is treated in detail on the final Sundays of the season. The remaining theme, the burden of the Sundays midway after Pentecost, may be summarized in the phrase: the conflict between the two camps. Though placed in the kingdom of God, we remain surrounded by the kingdom of the world; and our souls, laboring under Adam’s wretched legacy, waver continually to and fro between two allegiances. By these three great themes the liturgy covers rather adequately the whole range of Christian life.
By means of the traditional Missale Romanum of the Vetus Ordo, God through the Church gives us more than just a lectionary or a seasonal themes. He gives us theology and mystagogy in the form of prayer and chant. In this Sunday’s Mass we are invited, rather summoned, to the banquet of the King by the piercing beat of the Sacred Heart. We are summoned to action.
The Collect for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost survived the slash and burn expertise of the liturgists of the Consilium to live unscathed on the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo. It was already in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary on the Sunday after the Ascension. It is also prayed at the end of the Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. This is a marvelous prayer to sing in Latin! It is simultaneously stark and lavish. Its elements are carefully balanced. It is perfectly Roman.
Sancti nominis tui, Domine,
timorem pariter et amorem
fac nos habere perpetuum:
quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis,
quos in soliditate tuae dilectionis instituis.
Brilliant. See that hyperbaton in timorem … perpetuum? See that paronomasia in guberatione and dilectionis? See that homoioteleuton in destituis and institutis?
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Of Your Holy Name, O lord,
make us to have perpetual
fear no less than love;
for You never deprive of your steering,
those whom You solidly establish in Your love.
The concepts are balanced: timor/amor (fear and love) and instituo/destituo (establish and abandon). In instituo I hear a “setting down” in the sense of how God made us and by that making He takes us up to Himself. He will not abandon His role in our care and governance. God sets us down next to Himself, under His watchful eye, so that we don’t go wrong. He shelters us. Our humanity is “set down” now at the Father’s right hand in the person of Christ. In destituo, on the other hand, I hear a “setting down” in the sense of a setting aside, away, an abandonment of interest. In gubernatio God is our pilot, our steersman, keeping his hand on the wheel of our lives. We are solid and on a sure course because His loving hand is firm. Were He to abandon us, our ship would wreck. We would be “destitute”.
Nomen, “name”, can often simply stand for “person”. Amidst the vicissitudes of this world we depend in fear and love on His Holy Name, which we invoke in our neediest moments. Let us never invoke it in vain or frivolously!
There is a dense spiritual logic here. Timor et amor, fear and love, are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing. As St. Thomas says, “filial fear is not opposed to charity, but proceeds from it.” The “holy Name” here is not just the verbal signifier “God” or “Jesus,” but the divine presence and authority itself. It is tremendum et fascinans, awe-inspiring and yet alluring.
Fear of God is not servile fear but a loving reverence. The more one understands the majesty of God, the more one wants to serve Him with care, as a son anxious not to displease his father. We fear losing what we love. Hence, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10; Prov 9:10). It keeps us from presumption and drives us to trust the governance of Divine Providence. Timor Domini is never absent from those who remain in the “soliditate tuae dilectionis,” the firm foundation of divine love.
Bl. Ildefonso Schuster, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan reads the Collect as deeply Christological. God’s “gubernatio … governance, steering” is not abstract:
The economy of salvation is guided by Christ’s Kingship, and those who abide in charity are led by Him as by a shepherd. The Roman Collects never invoke grace as an isolated favor but as part of the divine plan of direction and governance through Christ.
We are not random creatures orbiting a distant deity. We are called, ruled, directed by Christ the King whose yoke is sweet and whose burden light.
The Epistle (1 John 3:13–18) is part of the Apostle’s sublime meditation on charity and its tangible expression:
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth (RSV).
This passage comes as a spiritual clarion. Love of God cannot remain ethereal. It is incarnational. It clothes the naked, visits the imprisoned, comforts the sorrowful.
The traditional liturgy, in all its solemnity and beauty, must shape us into lovers of truth which means, therefore, doers of the Word. Chanting the Creed or repeating “Domine non sum dignus” are not a substitute for feeding the poor. But neither is feeding the poor a substitute for chanting the Creed and beating our breasts before Communion. Holy Church bids us do both. They are two sides of the same coinage offered by Our Lord to the Father on the Cross for our salvation.
The Gospel from Luke 14:16–24 includes a sobering parable. Our Lord tells of a man who made a great supper and invited many. The call goes out, but those invited begin to make excuses:
“I have bought a farm… I have bought five yoke of oxen… I have married a wife…”
These are not inherently evil things, but they are placed above the call of the King. When created things, any created things including people in our lives… who are creatures, are placed on the throne of our hearts, minds and souls, they become idols.
Schuster remarks that this Gospel was originally part of the Lenten instruction of the catechumens, wisely repeated in this Sunday’s Mass. It is, “a warning against placing temporal concerns above the call to divine grace. The ‘excuses’ are not sins of commission but omissions—failures of love, of priority, of recognition.”
They are certainly lacking in fear of the Lord.
Here too we are in the realm of mystagogical instruction. Pentecost was the Feast of the Church’s birth. Now the Church begins to raise her children. And she warns them: the banquet is ready, the table is set, but you must come when called.
There is a Eucharistic dimension to this parable. The Church Fathers saw the “supper” as the eternal banquet, yes, but also the Holy Mass. The invitees are, first, the Jews and afterwards the Gentiles and marginalized. The highways and hedges represent the evangelization of the pagans and the succor of the needy. But at its core, it is about how we respond to grace.
Holy Mass is a great call to souls. It is the voice of the Good Shepherd calling through the Church to the world. All are offered a place at the altar, to be circumstantes. Alas, the global call has become muddled and confused, staticky and muted over the last few decades. It is hardly a surprise today when people place the temporal above the eternal, given the state of sacred liturgical worship. Worship is doctrine. We are our rites. Our liturgical rites themselves, when they are simply carried out with care and fidelity, are powerful invitations to souls. The rite, just… done right… is tremendum et fascinans. This is the track record of the Vetus Ordo of the Roman Rite.
Returning to the Gospel parable, bluntly, the refusal of the banquet is the refusal of the love of God. Eternal bliss is offered but, “I have something else to do” is the response?
The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost falls close after the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The parable of the banquet is not just about the Church’s outward call. It is the burning invitation from the Heart of Christ itself. The pierced Heart of Christ is the source of the banquet. It is from His side that the Church and the Sacraments flow. His Heart beats the summoning tattoo starting with the Introit:
He brought me forth into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
Christ invites us through His love lacerated Heart into the “broad space” of divine love, away from the narrow confines of our excuses and idolatries.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge.
As a good shepherd calls the sheep into the pasture for their safety and nourishment, the Heart of the Shepherd invites us from our creaturely distractions, perhaps our unconscious idols, into the sure place of deliverance, the heavenly banquet.
In this Mass, Holy Church firmly but gently asks us: Will you make excuses?
Our sacred liturgical rites are a refuge in a ravaging world. They are the sheepfold, the fortress, the broad place. For the priest, too, they are the mountain, the armor, the stability in whirlwind.
Our traditional liturgy is also a starting block: “ITE! … GO!”
Our sacred rites – we are our rites – send us back into the highways and hedges to… just sit around complacently and do whatever feels good. No, wait. That wasn’t it. We have vocations. We are sent out into the world to work. We return to church to be strengthened. We go back out to work. We come back in for healing. We leave to do more. We gather with petitions. We set off to our roles. We rush back with thanksgiving. “ITE!” We depart the church again to pour it on because again Christ poured it in.
Make a good examination of conscience. Go to confession. Frequent the sacraments. Go live as Catholics “in deed and in truth.”