Issue 27 - December 2019
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ARCHDIOCESE OF PORTLAND IN OREGON Divine Worship Newsletter The Nativity - Fra Angelico c. 1440 ISSUE 27 - DECEMBER 2019 Welcome to the twenty-seventh Monthly Newsletter of the Office of Divine Worship of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. We hope to provide news with regard to liturgical topics and events of interest to those in the Archdiocese who have a pastoral role that involves the Sacred Liturgy. The hope is that the priests of the Archdiocese will take a glance at this newsletter and share it with those in their parishes that are involved or interested in the Sacred Liturgy. This Newsletter is now available through Apple Books and always available in pdf format on the Archdiocesan website. It will also be included in the weekly priests’ mailing. If you would like to be emailed a copy of this newsletter as soon as it is published please send your email address to Anne Marie Van Dyke at [email protected]. Just put DWNL in the subject field and we will add you to the mailing list. All past issues of the DWNL are available on the Divine Worship Webpage and from Apple Books. An index of all the articles in past issues is also available on our webpage. The answer to last month’s competition was: Avila, Spain - the first correct answer was submitted by Irene Satterwhite of St. Mary’s Parish in Shaw, OR. If you have a topic that you would like to see explained or addressed in this newsletter please feel free to email this office and we will try to answer your questions and address topics that interest you and others who are concerned with Sacred Liturgy in the Archdiocese. Unless otherwise identified photos are by Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP. Contents Chapter 1 - Immaculate Conception - December 9 The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Chapter 2 - The Season of Advent Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Season of Advent Chapter 3 - The Rites of the Catholic Church An Overview of the Alexandrian (Coptic) Rite Chapter 4 - Sacred Treasure by Joseph Swain A Excellent Book on Sacred Music Chapter 5 - Musical Standards for Parish Masses An Article Regarding the Qualities of Sacred Music from the Pastoral Letter Sing to the Lord a New Song Chapter 6 - Orans Posture at the Our Father A Clarification Regarding the Posture of the Faithful During the Our Father Chapter 7 -Missale Romanum 1970 The 50th Anniversary of the Missal of Paul VI Chapter 8 - Office of Liturgy of the Holy Father Beauty and the Liturgical Rite [Part I] ii CHAPTER 1 The Immaculate Conception - 9 Dec This year as the 8 December falls on a Sunday in Advent the Feast is transferred to Monday 9th December and since Sundays in Advent take precedence over Solemnities of the Lord or the Blessed Virgin Mary. The obligation does not follow the transfer and thus this day is not a Holyday of Obligation. The Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception is the Patroness of the United States of America. This majestic image was part of a cycle of seven altarpieces commissioned in 1767 for the new royal church of San Pascual Bailón at Aranjuez, founded by Charles III in the same year. The altarpieces comprised the entire pictorial decoration of this Alcantarine Franciscan church, which was built in an austere classical style. The subjects of the altarpieces reflected some of the most important devotional practices of the Franciscan Order: devotion to the Eucharist, to the Christ Child and to the purity of the Virgin Mary. Giambattista Tiepolo’s The Immaculate Conception, 1767-69, was placed to the left of the High Altar, with his Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, 1767-69 (Museo del Prado) as its pendant on the right, and Saint Pascual Bailón adoring a vision of the Eucharist, 1767-69 (two fragments in the Museo del Prado), on the High Altar itself. The Immaculate Conception was a cult strongly promoted by the Franciscans. Representations of this abstract idea of the purity of the Virgin Mary were conventional and familiar by the time this work was created, and paintings by Guido Reni and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo were particularly influential. In Tiepolo’s oil sketch for the Aranjuez altarpiece the femininity and humanity of Mary are emphasized, and her delicate form is supported by angels on either side. In the final altarpiece, however, the proportions have changed so that the figure of the Virgin commands more space, and the torsion of her body is accentuated so as to endow her figure with greater energy. Mary’s qualities of splendor and gravitas are akin to those of the angel bearing the Eucharist in the Saint Pascual Bailón altarpiece, and this affinity is appropriate, if not deliberate, since the Immaculate Virgin was, in effect, the first tabernacle for Christ present in the Eucharist. The symbols in the altarpiece refer to the virtues and significance of the Virgin. She vindicates the original weakness of Eve by trampling on the serpent. The palm tree symbolizes her victory and exaltation and the mirror symbolizes her freedom from all stain. The crescent moon and twelve stars refer to the Apocalyptic Woman of Revelation 12:1-10, while the crescent itself is an ancient symbol of chastity. At the same time, the moon’s light derives from the sun, just as the special grace of Mary derives from the merits of Christ. The shimmering profile of an obelisk shape in the background is a further reference to traditional symbols associated with the Immaculate Conception, the Tower of David and the Tower of Ivory, with their The Immaculate Conception by Giovanni Batista Tiepolo c. 1767 evocations of impregnability, virginity and purity. Museo del Prado, Madrid CHAPTER 2 The Season of Advent This year’s Advent season starts on Sunday 1 December we print here a commentary on the Advent Season by the Liturgical Scholar Dom Proper Gueranger, OSB. The name Advent [From the Latin word Adventus, which signifies a coming] is applied, in the Latin Church, to that period of the year, during which the Church requires the faithful to prepare for the celebration of the feast of Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. The mystery of that great day had every right to the honor of being prepared for by prayer and works of penance; and, in fact, it is impossible to state, with any certainty, when this season of preparation (which had long been observed before receiving its present name of Advent) was first instituted. It would seem, however, that its observance first began in the west, since it is evident that Advent could not have been looked on as a preparation for the feast of Christmas, until that feast was definitively fixed to the twenty-fifth of December; which was done in the east only towards the close of the fourth century; whereas it is certain that the Church of Rome kept the feast on that day at a much earlier period. If, now that we have described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish We must look upon Advent in two different lights: first, as a time of preparation, it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound mystery which properly so called, for the birth of our Savior, by works of penance; and secondly, as a occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that this mystery of the series of ecclesiastical Offices drawn up for the same purpose. We find, as far back as coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple, for it is the the fifth century, the custom of giving exhortations to the people in order to prepare one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold, because He comes at three them for the feast of Christmas. We have two sermons of Saint Maximus of Turin on different times and in three different ways. ‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He this subject, not to speak of several others which were formerly attributed to St. comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in Ambrose and St. Augustine, but which were probably written by St. Cesarius of Aries. the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means If these documents do not tell us what was the duration and what the exercises of this whereby we pass from the first to the third.’ [Fifth sermon for Advent]. holy season, they at least show us how ancient was the practice of distinguishing the time of Advent by special sermons. Saint Ivo of Chartres, St. Bernard, and several This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to the explanation of this other doctors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have left us set sermons de threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third Sermon de Adventu: Adventu Domini, quite distinct from their Sunday homilies on the Gospels of that ‘There are three comings of our Lord; the first in the flesh, the second in the soul, the season. In the capitularia of Charles the Bald, in 846, the bishops admonish that third at the judgement. The first was at midnight, according to those words of the prince not to call them away from their Churches during Lent or Advent, under pretext Gospel: At midnight there was a cry made, Lo the Bridegroom cometh! But this first of affairs of the State or the necessities of war, seeing that they have special duties to coming is long since past, for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed fulfill, and particularly that of preaching during those sacred times.