Childermas

Until the last preconciliar reforms, Mass of the Holy Innocents – Childermas – was said (except if it fell on a Sunday, or was kept as a double of the first class) without Gloria in excelsis, without Alleluia and without Ite missa est: for all these joyful cries were seen as inappropriate to so sad a day. For the same reason, not the red of martyrs but the violet or purple of penance and sadness was worn, with the same exceptions.

Unsurprisingly, this day Fr Paul preached on the evils of abortion and the pro-life cause; Mass was offered up for the protection of human life from conception to natural death. As ever, the culture of life is face to face with the culture of death, as the West embraces societal suicide.

How many little children suffer at the hands of Herods today! And in Belgium we have the gruesome spectacle of euthanasia for children – you'd think the Belgians would have remembered the Nazi regime and all its evil deeds, and not emulated them in pervertedly imagining that there can be "life unworthy of life". How long, O Lord! Such crimes can only cry to heaven for vengeance.

At the end of Mass at Carmel we sang the piteously plaintive Coventry carol: 

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay. 

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we do sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay. 

Herod, the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might, in his owne sight,

All young children to slay. 

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!

And ever mourn and sigh,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay. 

Breviary Offices versus OF Masses

As I'm now in Tasmania, and have been serving the Christmas Masses at Carmel, it's been back to a (quite acceptable) Novus Ordo; and one benefit of serving has been that I've been able to receive communion, kneeling, from our visiting priest, under both species.  (Some traddies have weird reservations about touching the chalice, but that's mad.)

In the Ordinary Form, to-day is the feast of the Holy Family, while according to the Breviary it's the Sunday in the Christmas Octave, and the Holy Family won't be feasted until Sunday the 11th of January.  (Ever since Benedict XV extended this feast to the whole world, it's been difficult to find an older Sunday to push aside so as to fit it in: and I must say it seems to me better to have the Holy Family celebrated in the Octave than after Epiphany.)

Indeed, there's plenty of confusion coming up; while the Octave of Christmas is really just about equivalent to the Solemnity of Mary Mater Dei, as a glance at the respective Offices demonstrates, here in Australia the bishops in their wisdom have transferred the Epiphany to the nearest Sunday, meaning that this year on Sunday the 4th in the Breviary I'll be celebrating the Most Holy Name of Jesus, while perforce I'll hear Mass of the Epiphany, whose Office will occur on the Tuesday; and the same thing will occur with the Baptism of the Lord...

And last but not least, to-day is Childermas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents (read more here), which took precedence over the Sunday until the last preconciliar simplification of the rubrics; Fr alluded in his homily to the truth that Our Lord sanctified the whole course of human life from conception onwards, and one might think that in this dark age of widespread fœtal murder, to have the child-victims of raging Herod commemorated even on a Sunday would be no bad thing.  

(Don't forget, BTW, that to-day is Proclamation Day in South Australia, marking the 172nd anniversary of that Province.)

Proclamation Day

Adelaide: the city of churches, a beaut spot, and one friends of mine hail from.  Well, to salute them and their compatriots, I recall that today is Proclamation Day – on the 28th of December 1836, Governor Hindmarsh at the Old Gum Tree, Glenelg (see image above), read the proclamation of the British Province of South Australia.  It was to be a model colony, for free settlers only, unlike the other Australian colonies...  

Some think they can distinguish a South Australian accent, but in reality all there is to it is a small collection of local words and a minute difference in pronouncing one vowel before "l".  To a non-Australian, the difference would be negligible.  South Australia was meant to be different, too, in that it was to have been a home away from Home for Dissenters, even above Anglicans; but happily the Irish and other Roman Catholics found their way in anyway.

If England had come back to the Faith, say, if Philip and Mary had had a child, or if the Armada had succeeded, then the patron saints of South Australia would have been the Holy Innocents, and Childermas accounted there, not a day of bad, but of good omen.

Childermas

The Holy Innocents bore witness to Christ, not by speaking, but by dying: and so they won the martyrs' crown.

In the Divine Office for their feast (a fine composition), and in a part of it online, an apposite extract is given from St Quodvultdeus, Archbishop of Carthage and Metropolitan of Africa, confessor of the Faith under the Arian Visigoths.

The Coventry Carol, with its haunting tune, and sad words, to me sums up the horror of this commemoration – the soldiers hunting out the children, bashing them against walls, slaying them with swords, the unchilded mothers screaming...

From among many versions of the Carol seen sung on YouTube:

In sympathy with the sadness of this feast, until the last pre-Conciliar reforms, the Te Deum at Matins and Gloria in excelsis at Mass were not sung on Childermas day except it fall on Sunday; and, except on Sunday, not red, but purple was worn.

As often, the Dominican Breviary puts us in touch with medieval tradition, and provides not only proper antiphons, but also proper psalms for Matins of the Holy Innocents, the antiphons drawing on and interpreting those psalms in light of the feast:

Aña i.  Novit Dominus vias Innocentium, qui non steterunt in viis peccatorum.  (Cf. Ps 1:6a, 1b; & Ps 1)

Aña ij.  Rex terræ infremuit adversus Christum: quia rex in Sion constitutus super innocentium millia regnat.  (Cf. Ps 2:1a, 2ac, 6ab; & Ps 2)

Aña iij.  Deus, judex justus, judica nos secundum innocentiam nostram.  (Cf. Ps 7:12a, 9bc; & Ps 7)

Aña iv.  Ex ore infantium, Deus, et lactentium laude perfecta, destruis inimicum.  (Cf. Ps 8:3; & Ps 8)

Aña v.  Judicabit Dominus pupillum, et viduam: et pluet super peccatores laqueos ignis.  (Cf. Ps 10:7; & Ps 10)

Aña vj.  Mortis usuras rex impius exegit super innocentes: sed illi requiescunt in monte sancto Dei; malignus ad nihilum est deductus.  (Cf. Ps 14:1b, 4a, 5ab; & Ps 14)

Aña vij.  Quis ascendit, aut quis stabit in loco sancto Dei?  Innocens manibus, et mundo corde.  (Cf. Ps 23:3-4a; & Ps 23)

Aña viij.  Innocentes adhæserunt mihi, quorum pedes avulsi sunt a laqueo mortis.  (Cf. Ps 24:21a, 15b; & Ps 24)

Aña ix.  Filio regis datum est judicium: ut salvet innocentes filios pauperem: et humiliabit Herodem calumniatorem.  (Cf. Ps 71:2b, 4bc; & Ps 71)

The last antiphon is instructive: Christ the newborn King, about Whose everlasting Reign the Royal Psalmist sings, is He to Whom judgement is given (by the Father); He shall save the innocent sons of the poor; and He shall humble Herod the proud.