St. Margaret Clitherow and Holy Week

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern and 6:45 a.m. Central (etc) to discuss St. Margaret Clitherow, who was crushed to death on March 25, 1586 at the age of 30. Brian Patrick and I will also discuss the liturgical celebration of Holy Week before and after the English Reformation. You can listen live here--otherwise tune in on your local EWTN affiliate radio station!

Remember that St. Margaret Clitherow was a convert--when she was 18 years old--and since she was born just two years before Queen Mary I died, she almost certainly had no memory and little knowledge about the processions, rituals and traditions of Holy Week in England before the Reformation under Henry VIII, further advanced by Edward VI and his Protectorate, and briefly restored by Mary. At the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign, and particularly in York, of course, there was a transition period and some Catholic priests continued to celebrate Mass and the Sacraments according to the old ways, but even in York, government pressure to uniformity succeeded in ending those practices.

More about St. Margaret Clitherow from last year here--note that the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales will honor her with a pilgrimage this year on Saturday, May 4 (the Feast of the Martyrs of England and Wales)--and more about the pilgrimage to York I'll lead this September here.

For more information about Holy Week before the English Reformation, please see my posts from last year on the Pray the Mass website: on Palm Sunday and on the Triduum.

My Latest Article for PraytheMass.org

As you may note by the badge on the right side of my blog, I'm a regular contributor to the PraytheMass.org site (although I skipped December!). Here's my latest, covering one of my favorite topics, the Liturgical Year:

St. Augustine of Hippo meditated on the meaning of time in his great Confessions, exploring the mystery of time as God lives in its eternal present in contrast to Augustine living in the past, the present and the future (Book Eleven). We may be more inclined to talk about time management, trying to control time, maximize its use and our productivity—scheduling our lives and activities, squeezing more items in, multitasking (we think) and bemoaning our ultimate lack of control over time. Liturgical time as we celebrate the mysteries of Christ and His Paschal Mystery might offer us a better insight into St. Augustine’s great meditations.

For example, we have just experienced the beginning of the liturgical year with the great season of Advent. Time was a major theme in Advent as we looked forward to the coming of Christ: His Second Coming at the end of time; His coming as an infant, born to the Blessed Virgin Mary at a particular time, in a particular place (as St. Luke’s Gospel tells us and as Pope Benedict XVI brilliantly elucidates in his study of the Infancy Narratives); and His coming to each of us at the end of our time on earth, when we face our particular judgment and enter eternity. At every Mass, in every Sacrament, Jesus is present to us in the present; thus we meditate on all the times Jesus comes during the Season of Advent.

Read the rest here!

The Last Sunday of The Year: Christ the King of the Universe!



For this great Solemnity on the Liturgical Calendar, I refer you to my post this month on the PraytheMass.org site:

As a citizen of the United States, I have always heard the common comment in homilies for the Solemnity of Christ the King that we Americans don’t really understand or connect with the idea of kingship. After all, our forefathers fought a Revolutionary War to free us from the control of a king. If we think of this feast only in the context of earthly kingship, with its hereditary succession and the possibility of tyranny and despotism, we will miss the point of the Solemnity of Christ the King.

Pope Pius XI established the feast of Christ the King in his encyclical letter, Quas Primas (“In the first which”) issued on December 11, 1925. He referenced his first encyclical letter at the beginning (thus the title) and continued to address “the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring”. The source of those difficulties? “That the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives”; that they had decided Jesus and his holy law “had no place either in private affairs or in politics”.

Read the rest here.

I also refer you to my post last year, in which I asked:

I wonder what Henry VIII would have thought of a Pope establishing a feast which pointed out an authority above the King of England? Henry was a Christian, of course, with devotion to Jesus as Saviour and Redeemer; he worshipped Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar. Would he have been able to separate his own Temporal claims to authority in England and the Pope's proclamation of Jesus's supremacy over all the world, superceding any nationalist claims? I find it interesting that the Church of England celebrates the Feast of Christ the King, but they also mark this Sunday as "Stir up Sunday". The collect for the last Sunday of the liturgical year begins with the words "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people" and it is the day to start making the Christmas pudding!!
 
Here are some comments on the Anglican adoption of the Feast of Christ the King from Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford from the sermon last year:  

And if really want to be picky and Little Britain‐ish about the Feast of Christ the King you would perhaps regret that the Feast itself is of Continental and Catholic origin, inaugurated by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as a counterblast to secularism and fascism. It was meant to bring confidence to a Church that was beleaguered, and to send a signal to aspiring European politicians that the Church was still a forceful presence in society. When the Feast was adopted by the Church of England there was not in fact much controversy. Those who looked naturally towards Rome wanted to be in tune with the Roman calendar; those of more evangelical and Protestant persuasion had long been drawn by the theme of the Kingship of Christ, and the only real murmurings of liturgical dissent came from those liberal minded republicans in the Church of England who disliked the emphasis on Christ as king on grounds that it smacks of triumphalism. Something of that nervousness broke through when the Church debated the naming of this season leading up to Advent which was being called the Kingdom season. Nervousness prevailed, and though we boldly call this the Kingdom Season here at Christ Church, the liturgical books call the season From All Saints to Advent.

Oh well, the Catholic Church in the Roman Rite calls the season between Easter and Advent "Ordinary Time"--in the Novus Ordo at least (it has been the season After Pentecost on the Extraordinary Form calendar and today is the last Sunday of that season with the same Collect to get stirred up!)

The Triumph of the Cross and Mary's Sorrows

Last year I posted on Rood Screens in English churches before the Reformation: see that post here.

My latest article, exploring the Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross and the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, on the Pray the Mass blog will be posted early this morning here. Here's a preview:

The Feast of the Triumph of the Cross was observed in Rome in the late seventh century to commemorate the recovery of the Holy Cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 629. St. Helena, Constantine’s mother, had found the True Cross in Jerusalem in the fourth century but the Persians had captured it and returned it after Heraclius defeated the Persian king Khosrau. The emperor returned it to Jerusalem, and this feast recalls that event.
 

But on a deeper level, of course, the Feast recalls Jesus’ triumph over death and the fulfillment of His great statement, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." (John 12:32, which serves as the Communion Antiphon). The liturgy of the Mass for this Feast includes both triumph and sorrow in the readings and prayers, since Jesus both suffers His Passion and defeats sin and death. From the Book of Numbers, the First Reading recalls the story of Moses and the bronze Seraph, raised on a pole—when the people Israel who had been grumbling against God for their sufferings, looked up to the serpent, they were healed of the serpent bites God had sent to afflict them. . . .

Earlier this month, Pray the Mass ran this article I wrote on Pope St. Pius X and Holy Communion--in it I demonstrate how I can find a link between my studies of the English Reformation and almost anything!:

As I’ve studied the English Reformation, I’ve read often about the state of religious practice before Henry VIII broke away from the Pope and established himself as Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England. As Eric Ives points out in his recent study, The Reformation Experience, 16^th century Catholics in England demonstrated great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. At Sunday Mass, they were most attentive at the moment of consecration, worshipping the Body and the Blood of Jesus as the priest elevated the Host and the Chalice. At great shrines and cathedrals, the faithful wanted to see the Precious Body and Blood as each Mass was celebrated in separate chapels. The Feast of Corpus Christi was instantly popular in England with its processions and special liturgies as written by the Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas. Holy Week, with its special vigil protecting the consecrated Host from Good Friday to Easter, also demonstrates their devotion to the Real Presence. The one thing they did not do is receive Holy Communion often. They were obligated to receive during the Easter Season (Easter Duty), but the practice of frequent Communion had fallen off during the Middle Ages. . . .

On this Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, the sad connection to the English Reformation is the destruction of the Rood Screens, the statutes or figure of the Mother of God and the Beloved Disciple standing on either of the crucified Christ, and the widespread iconoclasm repeated over and over again in England during the long period of religious change--even to the English Civil War when Parliamentary forces destroyed so much of the beauty restored by Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud. No wonder some call it the "English Deformation"!

More On Corpus Christi and St. Thomas Aquinas

As a follow-up to my article on PraytheMass.org, which I discussed on EWTN's Son Rise Morning Show, I submitted this article to Catholic Exchange, giving more detail, and texts, about the hymns St. Thomas Aquinas wrote for the liturgies on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in the 13th century. As I'll discuss on the Sunday, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi was introduced to English Catholics in the 14th century, and was very popular. Catholics in England before the Reformation were devoted to worship of the Blessed Sacrament, as Eamon Duffy demonstrates so aptly in The Stripping of the Altars, with processions, the mystery plays, and of course, Mass. And here, as a great bonus, are some performances of these hymns, using the English translations by Hopkins and Caswell I've cited in my article.

The Sarum Use on the Son Rise Morning Show

I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central to describe some of the rituals of the Sarum Use of the Roman or Latin Rite during Holy Week. I've already posted on the Palm Sunday procession and will on Holy Thursday's stripping of the altars; Good Friday's creeping to the cross and Holy Saturday's vigil at the Easter Sepulchre each day. But you can listen to me live here and read a summary here, on the Pray the Mass blog. The blogmasters asked me to become a regular contributor, so I'll submit an article to them monthly.