Return to the North

This week has been noteworthy for my resumed attendance at weekday Mass - something I didn't achieve during Lent!  I've been off-blog; the past few days have been pleasantly spent in Hobart, with some dear friends of mine.  One thing that has been on my mind (having sung along with it, in the vernacular, at Mass at Carmel) is the Easter Sequence, the Victimæ paschali laudes:

Victimae Paschali laudes immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves: 

Christus innocens Patri 

reconciliavit peccatores.

Mors et vita duello 

conflixere mirando: 

dux vitæ mortuus 

regnat vivus.

Dic nobis, Maria, 

quid vidisti in via?

Sepulcrum Christi viventis 

et gloriam vidi resurgentis.

Angelicos testes, 

sudarium et vestes.

Surrexit Christus spes mea: 

præcedet vos in Galilæam.

[Credendum est magis soli 

Mariæ veraci 

quam Judaeorum turbæ fallaci.]*

Scimus Christum surrexisse

 a mortuis vere: 

tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.

Amen. Alleluia.

Christians, to the Paschal Victim offer sacrifice and praise.
The sheep are ransomed by the Lamb;
and Christ, the undefiled,
hath sinners to his Father reconciled.
Death with life contended: 

combat strangely ended!
Life's own Champion, slain, 

yet lives to reign.
Tell us, Mary: say 

what thou didst see upon the way.
The tomb the Living did enclose;

I saw Christ's glory as he rose!
The angels there attesting; 

shroud with grave-clothes resting.

Christ my hope has risen: he goes before you into Galilee.

That Christ is truly risen from the dead we know.
Victorious king, thy mercy show!  

Amen.  Alleluia!

* Omitted since 1570.

What an extraordinary line: dux vitæ mortuus regnat vivus - "the leader of life, dead, reigns alive"! But better far than any commentary of mine is that given by the late John Paul II of happy memory, in his 1997 Urbi et Orbi address.

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On my trip to and from Hobart, I had the chance to pass by Colebrook, though I was unable to obtain the key to open up Pugin's little masterpiece church (now being restored) of St Patrick.  However, this afternoon St Matthew's, Pontville, was unlocked, so I said some Office there, and a prayer for my godmother buried in the adjoining cemetery, plus one for "the Venerable Archdeacon Marum" whose remains lie interred before the high altar, as his memorial in the church porch proclaims.

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In the State capital, I did some CD and secondhand book buying: Mexican Baroque: Music from New Spain, being recordings of sacred choral music, including a Mass, by Ignacio de Jerusalem and Manuel de Zumaya, as sung by Chanticleer (to go with a favourite CD of theirs I already have); two books about life in pioneer New Zealand, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (first issued 1864; new edition, 1964) and Erewhon (first 1872; my copy, 1936 - a Penguin Books paperback, still with its original wrapper), both by Samuel Butler; Barbara Celarent: A Description of Scholastic Dialectic (1949) by the late great Thomas Gilby, O.P., he of Gilby-edition-of-the-Summa fame; and a rather racy biography of a notorious Nazi sympathizer, Unity Mitford: A Quest (1976; reprint, 1981), by David Pryce-Jones - something light for a change.  

(I ought mention I've also recently read a rather racier double biography, one of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas - Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice; long ago I read, as the authoress reveals herself to have done, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, all unawares of who either lady was, or of their, ahem, closeness... It was pleasing to read that years after Gertrude's death, Alice was baptized a Catholic in old age; she spent the last decade of her life enduring poverty, but praying and suffering, hoping that perhaps by God's secret grace her erstwhile fellow Jewess would be found to have been saved.  Ms Malcolm is rather ignorantly flippant about this, I was sorry to note.)

Three Sermons

Fr Greg, the visiting Dominican at our local Carmel, has continued his masterly sermon series.  I cannot do them justice in extenso, but can summarize the burthen of his words.  

At the Easter Vigil, he impressed upon us what oft we neglect to note in the Gospel account: that the myrrhbearing women at the Tomb were amazed and terrified, not just by the Angel, but by the news of the Resurrection of Christ - for Easter, while joyous, should also amaze and alarm us.  After all, now that One has risen from the dead, our lives take on a totally different meaning: with eternal life now in prospect, we must needs reorder our affairs to take cognizance of this fact, and this will be no simple or painless task (as the lives of the Apostles, Martyrs, and all Christian Saints illustrates).  

On Easter morning, Fr's homily concerned the deepest truth of this Feast of feasts: that the Resurrection signifies the Father's Yes to Christ, His Yes to His Son's trust in Him, and therefore His Yes to all human hopes for deliverance, for life, for salvation.  Having had such an answer, what sure-founded joy is ours!

To-day, commenting on the Novus Ordo Gospel appointed, about the holy women seeing Our Lord, falling down before Him and clasping His sacred Feet, our preacher pointed out what he had once years before told me in pithy form: that the cure for all doubt and fear is worship and prayer.  (As he had put it, and as I ever remember it and repeat to others and pay heed to it, "If you lose your faith, the last thing you do is stop saying your prayers and stop going to Mass" - for that is precisely when you most need to pray and go to Mass!  True.)  

How do we have hope and trust and faith in Jesus Christ, in His salvation, in Him saving even us?  For we can feel unworthy of God's love - "As if that had anything to do with it," Fr commented forcefully: leaving unsaid what we ought ever recall,  that God's love is gratuitous and unmerited!  Or we may feel - in our Pelagian age - that we have no need of His salvation, which our goodness will deserve of itself, thank you very much, God perforce granting it, as too many suppose.  (O wretched deception and presumptuous heresy!  Salvation is unmeritable!)

We strengthen our faith and win against doubt and fear when we come to worship God at Mass, when we pray, when we contemplate Divine things.  The contemplative life is essential for our souls.  (I suspect the nuns well know the force of this: that's why they are in Carmel, for God's love and to save their souls, yea, and by intercession and example to help save men.)

As always, Fr Greg's homilies are deserving of praise, and I do wish he will one day publish them.  In the meanwhile, I will continue to note what I comprehend of them: but be mindful that "everything is received according to the mode of the receiver" - I do note them do with my emphases, in my language, with my editing, comments, revisions and excisions!  Poor Father...

Easter Octave Office

The Office of the Easter Octave is very simple and straightforward.

All hymns, little chapters and short responsories are omitted.  A versicle is only used at Matins (as are the usual two long responsories each day, and the long-awaited return of the Te Deum of course).  (Prime and Compline still have their short lessons.)

Matins, after the Venite with Easter invitatory Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluja, has only one Nocturn of three psalms - Psalms 1, 2 and 3 - each with an appropriate antiphon drawn from the words of each psalm: Our Lord is heard saying "I am Who am...", "...my Father... gave me the nations... as an inheritance..." and "I slept... and rose again...".  What a joy indeed, that for these days alone Matins is reduced from nine to but three short psalms, those that begin the whole Psalter and in a special manner give witness to its Christocentric themes.  The three versicles alternating through the week refer to the Lord arising, He Who was crucified and appeared to Simon Peter, and to the joy of the disciples beholding the Lord again.  Each day, a homily upon the day's Resurrection Gospel is appointed, divided into three lessons (mainly from Pope St Gregory the Great; St Ambrose and St Jerome contribute a homily each).  The Easter Octave responsories deserve a whole entry for themselves...

Lauds and Vespers have the psalms of Sundays and feasts, naturally: for this whole week is Sunday, the Day of Resurrection.  While for the rest of Eastertide, the psalmody of each Hour will be recited under one antiphon, Alleluia, for the Octave, each psalm has an antiphon, all of them drawn from that part of the Vigil Gospel accounting the apparition of the angel at the Tomb (St Matthew xxviii, 2-5); each day, the Gospel Canticles have an appropriate antiphon from the Gospel of the day; but (at least insofar as the General Rubrics would have it), each day, and indeed at every Day Hour, the little chapter, hymn and versicle is replaced by the Hæc dies, the Easter cry of joy par excellence from Psalm 117, verse 24: "This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad".  The Collect follows in the usual manner; to be noted is the addition - at Lauds and Vespers only - of the double Paschal Alleluia to the Benedicamus Domino.

The Little Hours begin with the Deus in adjutorium, Gloria Patri and Alleluia again; but the psalms (those of Sundays and feasts: Psalm 53 and successive portions of 118 for Prime and the rest, while Compline has the traditional trio of 4, 90 and 133) are the same every day, and are recited without any antiphon (at Compline, to be sure, a quadruple Alleluia is inserted after them and before the Nunc dimittis immediately following).  Instead, after the Hæc dies, the usual Dominus vobiscum (Domine exaudi in solitary recitation or when there is no one present who is a deacon at least), Oremus, Collect, repeated Dominus/Domine, Benedicamus and Fidelium follow.  (As normally, the Collect is that of the day, except at Prime and Compline, which have their own fixed Collects.)

Prime again has its usual Chapter Office appended, and Compline its prefatory penitential rite and final Marian Anthem - now the Regina cæli.

Rubrical Conundrum

I have a rubrical conundrum that any readers may be able to help to puzzle out: my 1962 Breviary (a 1995 FSSP reprint of the 1961 Dessain edition) has, for Monday to Saturday in the Octave of Easter, a versicle to be said at Lauds (In resurrectione) and Vespers (Mane nobiscum) instead of the Hæc dies that is appointed for Easter Sunday; but in the General Rubrics of the Breviary, no. 205 specifies that versus dicitur... in festo et per octavam Paschatis in solo nocturno, which I take to mean that during the Easter Octave, a versicle is only said at the sole Nocturn of Matins, and not at Lauds nor at Vespers, and this would imply that the Hæc dies ought be said every day of the Easter Octave, even at Lauds and Vespers. 

Can anyone advise how to solve this contradiction between the Proper and the General Rubrics?