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Pre-Lent is here. With the traditional calendar of the Roman Rite, in the Vetus Ordo, you cannot be surprised by Lent sneaking up on you. You have no excuse. Start thinking about your Lenten discipline now.
There are three Pre-Lent Sundays, Septuagesima Sunday, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima, which in Latin respectively mean “Seventieth, Sixtieth, Fiftieth”. These Sundays are so named from rough estimates about the number of days until the Triduum, which is technically not part of Lent, which in Latin is called Quadragesima. Septuagesima is the 63rd day before the Triduum. It therefore occurs in the 7th decade (10-day period) before Easter (i.e., the 61st to 70th days). Sexagesima is the 56th before, in the 6th decade (51st to 60th). Quinquagesima is the 49th day, the 5th decade (41st to 50th) days before the Triduum.
The reminders of onrushing Lent will be obvious to the Traditional Mass church-goer. On these Gesima Sundays the vestments are penitential purple. The Alleluia ceases to be sung from 1st Vespers onward until the Vigil of Easter. There is even a custom of having a little funeral and burying a scroll or image with “Alleluia” until its resurrection at Easter.
These Sundays, very important in the ancient Church for catechumens, have Roman Stations. The Station for Septuagesima is at St. Lawrence outside-the-walls. The horrific death of this greatly venerated deacon martyr, who died over the coals on an iron grate, looms over this Sunday, the beginning of the catechumenal journey toward membership in Christ’s Mystical Person, the Church. The Mass formulary itself, which dates at least to the time of St. Gregory the Great (+604), sets the tone for these pre-Lent, preparatory Sundays. For example, the Introit antiphon sings: “The terrors of death surged round me, the cords of the nether world enmeshed me.” So sings Lawrence upon his searing grate. So sings Christ Himself as His Passion is underway in earnest. So sing the catechumens, their first savory taste of what it is to commit to being a Christian, which means the Cross. Indeed, the Epistle from 1 Corinthians on this Sunday, going back to ancient times, is about the struggle for the unperishing crown, passing through the sea to the other side in death, rising to new life, eating the manna from heaven, drinking from the rock. The Tract, which replaces the Alleluia is the De profundis.
As the great liturgist and Cardinal of Milan, Bl. Ildefonso Schuster, remarks about the time of St. Gregory I the tone of the Gesimas,
they reflect the terror and grief that filled the minds of the Romans in those years during which war, pestilence, and earthquake threatened the utter destruction of the former mistress of the world.
Holy Church clearly wanted the catechumens to know what they were getting into. Holy Church wanted their full, conscious and actual active participation in the teaching, scrutinies, and conversion rites to come.
In a sense, this is what we all have gotten into and are in even now, though comforts can mask the serious issues of our earthly days and the spiritual war that rages perpetually around us.
St. Gregory the Great (+604) once preached to the catechumens in the very Basilica of St. Lawrence where we are, in spirit, this Sunday. He spoke of the mysterious ways that God gives grace and used, as examples, his own three aunts. They had all fervently consecrated themselves to God. Two of them persisted. The third did not and ended in misery. The point: we mustn’t presume on the mercy of God. We must ask for it constantly, for ourselves and others, and then apply ourselves to the work of living and loving God, self, and neighbor. Grace and elbow grease.
The Collect of the Mass is bracing. It has a different feel than many of our Sunday orations. Schuster observes, that this prayer “betrays the deep affliction which weighed on the soul of St. Gregory at the sight of the desolation of Rome and of all Italy during his pontificate.”
Gregory, son of a senator and at 30 years of age Prefect of Rome, was the first Pope from a monastic background. It was a time of upheaval, plague and famine. The plague of 542 wiped out a third of the population of Italy. Totila sacked Rome in 546, killing almost everyone. Franks invaded in 554. The Lombards were in Italy, nearly at Rome’s gates. The city was jammed with refugees. The formal seat of governance was in distant Constantinople. Gregory was just about the only man standing who could restore some kind of order and Make Rome Great Again. He simply got to work, finding income, replacing administrators, arranging shipment of food, establishing a corps of religious and lay who tended and fed the poor in the streets giving them shelter. He is known to have delayed eating until the indigent brought in for help had eaten and he cooked meals with his own hands and sent them to the homes of the poor.
Knowing something about the historical context when these Mass formularies were developed can help us hear the orations with different ears.
COLLECT:
Preces populi tui,
quaesumus, Domine, clementer exaudi:
ut, qui iuste pro peccatis nostris affligimur,
pro tui nominis gloria misericorditer liberemur.
The wonderful Lewis & Short Dictionary says exaudio means “listen to” in the sense of “harken, perceive clearly.” There is a greater urgency to exaudi (an imperative, or command form) than in the simple audi. Clementer is an adverb from clemens, meaning among other things “Mild in respect to the faults and failures of others, i.e. forbearing, indulgent, compassionate, merciful.” We are asking God the omnipotent Creator to listen to us little finite sinful creatures in a manner that is not only attentive but also patient and indulgent. The preposition pro can mean 15 different things. Here we have one of the lesser used meanings, “in proportion to”. If you ever visit the underground digs or “scavi” beneath the Vatican Basilica, near the entrance there is an inscription on the bridge that connects the separate sacristy from the church. It has this use of pro, indicating that the huge sacristy was built in proportion to the size of the basilica.
In the prayer’s prelude or protasis we ask God the omnipotent Creator to listen to us little finite sinful creatures in a manner that is not only attentive but also patient and indulgent. Note how the first word of the oration is preces, “prayers”. There is urgency in the very structure. In the petition, we are conceptually looped back to the first word preces. That imperative exaudi shows up three times in the Collects of the Vetus Ordo, also on Quinquagesima (and the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, which in some years could be close to Septuagesima). In each case exaudi is at the end of the segment of the sentence which is the colon (note also the punctuation colon, which also serves as an indication for how to sing the prayer, according to its structure). In each case exaudi is linked to clementer. In our orations, when we find an imperative directed at God it is generally softened with an adverb like propitius, “graciously”.
In the theme section or apodosis, linked to the protasis by ut, we get to the meat of it. Right away we find iuste, “justly, rightly” which goes with affligimur, from which it is separated by the trope called hyperbaton. Its unusual position at the beginning of this colon and the hyperbaton gives it emphasis. The repetition of pro is a trope called epanaphora. The two phrases “pro peccatis nostris” and “pro tui nominis gloria” are sharp conceptual contrasts and they form a chiasm (nostris, tui) which makes that tui strongly ring out: “YOUR Name” opposed to “our sins”.
The prepositioning of iuste rather destroyed the parallelism with misericorditer, but the end of the colon has a lovely cadence or clausula. Also, there is an antithesis, between the words with similar endings, a trope called homoioteleuton, in affligimur (“we are afflicted”) and liberemur (“may we be freed”). Getting back to that proportion or measure use of pro, our sins bring about the measure of our punishment and God’s glory provides the measure of His mercy. Another parallel is found in the construction “pro…. affligimur… pro… liberemur”. In fact, these are the last words of the two cola. The first word and the last word of the protasis (preces… exaudi) and the last word of the two cola of the apodosis (affligimur… liberemur) encapsulate the content of the collect.
SUPER CLUNKY STRUCTUAL VERSION:
The prayers of Your people, we beseech, O Lord
in clemency closely attend:
that we, justly, (who) for our sins are being punished,
may in proportion to the glory of Your Name mercifully be delivered.
RATHER LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We beseech You, O Lord, graciously to hark
to the prayers of Your people:
so that we who for our sins are justly afflicted,
may for the glory of Your Name mercifully be freed.
FINALLY:
O Lord, we beseech You, hear
the prayers of Your people:
so that we who are justly afflicted for our sins,
may be mercifully delivered for the glory of Your Name.
You may be asking what on earth I am trying to accomplish in tearing down this prayer into its constituent parts like a watchmaker examining a time piece.
My hope is that you will hark to the orations with even greater attention as they are spoken or sung. I hope that you might perhaps ponder them during the latter part of the week before Sunday Mass along with the readings. They are your prayers too, raised in your stead by the priest at the altar of Sacrifice. You raise them by your baptismal share in Christ’s priesthood through your attentive listening which is far from passive when you are truly engaged with them and the sound of the voice of the alter Christus, praying in persona Christi capitis. In the priest’s vocal praying and by your full, conscious and actual active participation in his praying, Christ the Head and Christ the Body come together into, as St. Augustine of Hippo might put it, Christus Totus, Christ Whole Entire. Through out Mass this dynamic is repeated on either side of the ultimate manifestation of Christus Totus, the physical meeting of the priest and the communicants at the rail, that liminal place of encounter with the transformative mystery who is both awesome and yet alluring. Every word of Holy Mass is Christ speaking to the Father. Every word of Holy Mass is yours because Christ makes yours what is His. In this respect, too, we are our rites.
It is Septuagesima Sunday. Start thinking about Lent now, not on the morning of Ash Wednesday. A good way to make a beginning is to GO TO CONFESSION.